LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 1, 1 July 1922, Page 17

LITERARY NOTES

'; Admiral Sir Charles Dundas, of Dun- . das, has; included, in "An Admiral's Yarns," reference to the famous . training ship Britannia, in which "young . Jellicoe" received hi 3 training. .. "Jellicoe, as I remember him," says Sir , Charles, "was a' quiet, rather reserved boy. He was short, and sturdy, aaid, : during our last term, became one ol ; our two chief captains, who had to ! keep the rest of the cadets in order in ' the messroom. I have no recollection , that he ever made himself aggressive , or unpopular in the carrying out of his > duties, but rather the other way. He • was also always polite and civil to us k all." 1 "I wonder that I cannot Teoall more ; than I do recall of those hours at the \ Pines," writes Mr. Max Beerbohm, on his visit to the home of Swinburne and » Walts Dunton. '-.H.& goes on :—"lt is ' odd how little remains to a man of his ) own past—how few minutes of even • his: memorable. hours are, not clean forj gotten, and how. few seconds in any t one of those minutes can be recaptured. 6 . ■. . Of those hours at the' Pines, of , that past within a past,. there was not . a minute nor a second that I did-not , spend with. pleasure. Memory is a l great artist, we are told; she selects ■ and rejects and shapes and so on. No i doubt.' Elderly persons would be in- ! tolerable if they remembered every--1 thing."- Everything, nevertheless, is just - what they themselves would • like to re- , member, and just what they would like to tell to everybody., Be sure that'the Ancient Mariner, though .he remember- ■ ed quite as much as his audience want- : ed'to hear, and rather more, about the albatross and the ghastly crew, was in- > wardly raging at the sketchiness of his own mind; and believe me, that his ■ stopping only one of three_ was the !■ merest oversight. I.should like to im- ', pose on the world many rimes about the Pines." ,; Giving consideration in the Fortnightly Review, to Mr. John Galsworthy, as i dramatist,. Mr. W. L. Courtney, says , that he finds in play after play of Gals- . worthy a single note—the defence of the ■ idealist. "He is perpetually on the.side ' of those who suffer in the thoroughfares ' of life, either because .of their • own •peculiar idiosyncrasies or because fate [ has been hard to them in putting them '. into positions in which they are not at ' home."' The characters, adds Mr. ' Courtney, are full of interest,_ but' often 1 ineffective;.,yet Galsworthy is .so adequate a craftsman that he deceives us ; -many times into believing in their reality. '. At other times his_ plays dealing with men in violent relation to one .another, or women suffering under the injustice of hard social,conditions, change from being plays of men and women into dramas of impersonal forces. . Lord Frederic Hamilton, author of "Vanished Pomps of Yesterday," and "Here, There, and Everywhere," -has written the following letter to a friend in America : "I will frankly own that I had never.attempted to put pen to paper on my own account until I,'wasi well past my sixtieth year, although I had sat for eleven years in an, editorial chair. I occupy, rather, the position of a monthly nurse in good practice, who, after ushering into the world a whole horde of other people's children, suddenly determines at sixty years of age to'become a mother herself. It amused me, I confess, quite enormously, writing these books, but in my most sanguine moments I had never anticipated that any one could be interested in reading them. I am now (greatly daring at sixty-five years of age) writing a boys' book; detective^stories,, full of revolvers, spies, steam engines and airplanes. It' is great fun writing them, though for boys every technical detail must be absolutely correct. As they are written for British schoolboys, they will not appeal to the American public." Sir James Denham, the poet-author of "Wake Up, England!" brings to the present generation, all the graciousness, charm of good manners, and cultured leisure of a past age in his diverting "Memoirs of the Memorable" (Hutchinson). Of King Edward's love of accuracy and eagle-eye for anything that wa3 wrong, two characteristic stories are told. "A little friend of mine was Page of Honour to Queen Victoria, and whilst awaiting Her Majesty's appearance for a Drawing Room, King Edward, then Prince of Wales, noticed that the, boy had omitted the correct adjustment, of the shoulder-knot, and, turning,-to him, -said : "Tell them at home to look after you more carefully." On'another occasion at Eton he noticed the son of a memta of the Court, and told him to brush his hat. I Before going away he gave the boy a sovereign and told.him to buy a new one. It' was. at a small luncheon party in Grosvenor-square that Sir James heard Gladstone say a fine tiling:— "There had been talk of vitriolic vituperations lately rioting to and fro. 'My memory,' said Gladstone, 'has no room ■for the venom of inconsiderables.' " Gladstone, it is recorded, was a glutton for amassing knowledge. 1 The United States Secretary of ■Agriculture, Henry C. Wallace, •was fowmtly sea* a **Py„ „*>f iKaut •Hwasjui's *&«wtJ*,*£ *t»...&o*lnlL

The package was. opened by one of: the myriad functionaries in Washington, who womptly forwarded it to the Bureau of •Soil. Survey. After a time it was dropped i again into the proper channel and reached Mr. Wallace with the official notation attached" :-^"This book does not deal with the scientific aspect of the soil, as might be supposed from its title, but with a small group of people ruled largely by the primitive emotions. The Secretary might enjoy reading it for himself.". . ; Padric Colum 'contributes a poem on John Butler Yeats the artist, father of a clever family, to the New. York Evening Post:— "To-night," you said, "to-night, all Ireland round, ' The curlews call." The dinner talk went on, And we knew .what came to you over it all— . '; The lonely land, the lonely-crying birds. Now your breath's gone, and all your words are gone : <0 free-lived spirit, we'll remember you IBy those uncaught and ever-flying birds : To-night, all 'Ireland round, the curlews call. = Like the arbutus tree That stays for ever green, _ ' That grows beyond the pitch, . Beyond the woodmen's span : Like the arbutus tree, Favoured in Kerry glades, That grows as to embark A fountain sheer of life : You lived forever green, With bright fruit in your leaves, Like the.arbutus.tree. To many, France is Paris and Paris is France. But there is another, quieter France, far from the brilliant vagaries of i'la ville lumiere," and every once in a while it gives •mphatic proof of its" existence. ' It did so recently, when announcement was made by the Pans Figaro that the Figaro prize: for the best novel submitted in its 1921 prize competition had gone to a writer who, upon finishing his studies m Pans years ago, had returned to" his home in the mountains of Auvergne, and never again looked upon the lights nor listened to the alluring call'of the most seductive of cities. The writer in question is Henri Pourrat, and the novel " Les Vaillances, Farces et Gentillesses de Gaspard dcs Montagnes." As might be expected, it deals with the scenes and people of Pourrat's native Auvergne, to which he is passionately attached. His manusoript,- instead of being typewritten, was written by hand from one end to the other. As more and more manuscripts were weeded out by the judges from the hundred-odd ones submitted, the manuscript in the careful handwntmg_ of the industrious Pourrat kept surviving ' test after test to.whioh dozens of its 1 rivals succumbed. And, at last, it was '■ the only manuscript left.. '• Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer, the 'Ameri- ! can. novelist, is said to have a weakness 1 for speaking before women's clubs— though he does not often get a second invitation from the same club. • Pro--9 bably "nine-tenths of his readers are? wo--5 men, but he takes a delight in belittling } their intelligence to their faces. He ' was once invited to speak before a cer--8 tain club in Chicago. From sheer per--8 versity he failed to appear, and when, 1 later, no concern was shown about his ■ absence, he called up his hostess res' peatedly begging for another lecture ■ date^ ;■■;'■■•' * * .Mr. G. Cyril Claridge, in -" Wild Bush * Tribes of Tropical Africa" (Seeley. a Service) charmingly describes the pagan 8 people who inhabit the wild; primitive ° bush of Central Africa, among whom he L" dwelt for twelve years. He gives some '- -examples of native names, such as Mr. !t Blazing-Hot, Mr. Don't-You-Know, Mr. '• Nobody-To-Bury-Me, Miss Knock-Me-;e, About, Mrs. Which-Trousers, and so on. c And the native language, too, _is •'• wealth of queer expressions. To be fc- proved wrong is to be " turned upside ■B down." To die is to .-"■ climb the ( hill. }• To wait patiently is to "throw; youi I s' heart down." Instead of saying -;] ls really do not know what to do/ you 16 say, "My heart is not at home.'! In1_ stead of "I'm horrified," you say "My lli hair shivers." You do not tell,one tc , " get out of the light " ; you tell himtc intake the darkness away." You do not v say, "I am uncertain "; you say "Mj IS heart stutters." "I am grieved " would ' s be "My heart is w*«)ed." Stockings 3" are called " leg-bags." Barley is "maiz; [ c with whiskers on." \