BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 17793, 15 October 1921, Page 12

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

VERSES. LIFE. Life! We’ve been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy _ weather. ’Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear, Then steal away, give little warning. Choose thine own time, Say not “good-night,” but in some.happier clime Bid me “ good-mornincr.” Mrs Barbauld. THE WANDERER. X have come back to ray own again, to my oldi familiar place— To the peace and quiet I left behind in this little circled space. I have warmed my hands by the friendly blaze of many a homo hearth-side: “At last,” they say, “ho has come to slay—at last he is satisfied.” But there is a cry in the wind to-night, and it will not let mo be, !And well I know I must rise and go whenever it comes to me. My feet are stayed in the pleasant ways, my heart is a thing at rest; For mo there is neither north nor south, there is neither east nor west. _ _ ■ [And out of a very thankfulness the spirit , in me sings For a new-boni beauty I find each day in simple and homely things. Yfifc there is a voice in the wind to-night, like tho surge of the western sea. And it’s I that know I must riee and go whenever it comes to me. 1 The West, with its wide and open charm, the East, with its day that were, , The fragrant South, with its, lotus bloom, tho North, with its spicy fir— They have taken my fancy, each hi turn, and held me a- little while, But the feet turn back to tho beaten paths when it comes to the last long mile. ■ Yet there is a call in the wind to-night, and tho grey road opens frea,_ And to-morrow I know I shall rise and go wherever it beckons mo. Esther Clark Hill in Kansas ‘ Star.’ CONRAD AS MASTER MARINER. TN COMMAND OF THE OTAGO. Dunedin can lay claim to an indirect connection with Joseph Conrad. Away back in 1869 Stephens, of Glasgow, launched 'a little iron barque of 345 tons which was christened the Otago, and made her maiden voyage to Adelaide under tho command of her owner, Captain Angus Cameron, who later on joined the Union Company, and ultimately became a director. After Captain Cameron relinquished command the Otago sailed in charge, of a Captain Snadden, who died on board in tho Gulf of Siam in 1887. His successor was tho famous novelist, and readers of the ‘ Shadowline ’ will remember his early experiences as a master mariner. His portrait of his predecessor is unflattering, but is said to have been founded on a misconception. Conrad brought the vessel from Bangkok (where he took charge) to Sydney with a cargo of teak, and then to Melbourne. From Melbourne she returned to Sydney with a cargo of wheat, her next voyage being to [Mauritius. This was the Inspiration of ‘A Smile of Fortum?!’ The Otago was ultimately sold to dart, Parker, and Co., of Melbourne, for a hulk. She was the “tres coquet” little barque that caught the eye of the French lieutenant in ‘Lord Jim,’ and the initiated will find many other references to her scattered through Conrad’s works. Most of bis characters were drawn from life. Mr [B.'Jcer, the “model chief mate” of the Narcissus, is almost certainly a portrait of the chief officer of the Duke of Sutherland. The Alsatian hotelkeeper who figures in several of the Eastern stories ireally flourished in an Asiatic port. Conrad met the ruffiians who figure in ‘Victory,’ or their prototypes, in the West Indies, Almayer really lived on the banks of an Eastern river under another name. The crew of the Narcissus, those men "hard to manage but easy to inspire,” are n sort of composite photograph of all tho seamen with whom he sailed in the day® befoo “ the smoke cloud dusked tho wide 1 white wings.” Future op our literature. "It is not easy to explain why the great English poets of tho nineteenth century found inspiration in a Grecian urn, a skylark’s song, daffodils dancing in a meadow, the Arthurian triangle, or tho last voyage of the aged Ulysses, when rumors of war were blowing in on all the four winds or the whole of Europe was lit up by the white flames of war or tho red ones of revolution," says the ‘Morning Post.’ “It was not until (how few years ago!) the German wax broko in a world-wide storm, a cosmical conflagration, and it was seen that every man and every woman even had a part to play in the tremendous drama, that tho literature of warfare became more than a conventional side issue, a mere manifestation of one’s knowledge of the classical point of view. “ A strange thing happened; the young men who were doing the fighting insisted also on doing the singing. And so Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell, Charles Sorley, and other young war-poets too numerous to mention by name, showed how love of England, whose quiet loveliness belonged only to the brave, was the living root of their service and self-sacrifice. In prose, as well as verse, this new and unexpected breed of writers, their gifts swiftly matured by stress of emotion and a renewed touch with the sterner realities of a nation’s life, told u* the naked truth about war for the first time in the annals •, of literature. And their works will be immortal, since the historiahg of the future will go to them rather than to Cl a use wits and other masters of psychology of_ warfare to find out how the will-to-victory fructifies in the souls of young and victorious soldiers. They have thus built a monument to outlive the brass and marble of all our shrines of remembrance. As they could not, so their written records can fcever grow old. " But what is to be the effect of their example on the future of English literature? 'The dominant note in all literature at present is, naturally and necessarily, a vehement hope that some moans can be found to put an end to war altogether, to cut out' of man’s mind the desire to overcome his fellow-creature by any ultima ratio of applied force. ’‘Meanwhile, in the matter of style at BUy rate, the younger men (and women) of Tatters show a real improvement. Having lived for a time as men (and women) bf action, they economise words and refuse to fee content with the old set phrases of the Victorian peace-time. In poetry there Is a return to reality of speech)' new rhythms are sought in the living conversation of plain people.” NOTES. The following letter appears in ‘A Bibliography of the Writings of Algernon diaries Swinburne/ by Mr T. J. Wise, which has been printed for private circulation; — August, ’9l. My dear Mtr Swinburne,—l am and always have been rar admirer, and in your Birthday Song find metre and diction as lovely as over; but the touch of kindliness toward myself—implied in your praise or overpraise of what I may have accomplhilled, in literature —moved the heart of theSbld poet more, I think, than even the melody of your verso. Accept my thanks before I pass away, and believe me, yours ever.— Tennyson. Tho English auction "record” was recently reached at Sotheby’s for tho late H, W. Bruton’s copy of the first issue of tho first edition of Dickens’s ‘Pickwick,’ 1836-37, Mr Sessler, of Philadelphia, paying £9lO for it. It was complete in the original twenty numbers in nineteen, with cearly f all the advertisements and most other/“point# ” which go towards the making of a fine ‘.‘collector’s” copy. Tho University of London has published • volume of essays in, commemoration of the Boxcentenary of Dante, which will' bo . cherished da a worthy memento tof a great

A LITERARY CORNER#

literary celebration by all lovers of the great 'ltalian poet. The opening essay is contributed by Viscount Bryce, being “Some thoughts on Dante in his relation to our own time.” There is besides a learned essay bv Bcndetto Croce, the greatest living writer on (esthetics, a poem by Laurence Binyon, ami other interesting papers bv Professor Mackail, Dr. Paget Tovnbeo,'Professor W. P. Kerr, Professor Edmund Gardner, and Professor Antonin Cippico. The book is beautifully printed, and contains illustrations by Botticelli and Blake.

Not all the 250,000 volumes in the Louvain University Library collection ’were destroyed when llm Germans, to their eternal shame, committed it to tho flames as they rushed through Belgium in the, early davs of the war. The foundation stone of the new Louvain Library has been laid, and when it is completed, and ready to receive the thousands of books which have been sent to Louvain from every part of the world, the first book to bo placed on its shelves will bo one which escaped the common destruction. This is a valuable ancient volume of manuscripts which Professor Van Der Essen had taken homo with him for the purpose, of consulting. One of the smallest bonks in existence, the ' Confessions of the Emperor Charles Y./ was sold for £BOO at the sale of a, further portion of the world-famous Yates Thompson collection of illuminated manuscripts at Sotheby's, in London. Meant to be hung from a girdle, tho book contains twenty-nine pages, each measuring lin bv l-]in, and is enshrined in a jewelled and enamelled case. Alluding to Millais’s ‘ Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop,’ which the representatives of the Felton Bequest tried to buy for the Melbourne Art Gallery. Mr C. Lewis Hind, writing in the 1 Saturday Review,' says: It is amazing to read with what salvoes of auger, disgust, and vituperation this serene, beautiful, accomplished, and fundamentally intensely religious picture was received when it was first shown at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1850. Blackwood called it “ugly, graceless, unpleasant, unpleasing, atrociously affected.” A Royal Academician remarked that it was “ pictorial blasphemy . . . an eccentricity both lamentable and revolting.” Dickons described it in a leading article in ‘Household Words’ as “mean, odious, revolting, and repulsive.” ‘The Times’ also employed the word "revolting,” and added to it “disgusting.” Literary Paris went officially out to Chateau Thierry on a recent Sunday to celebrate with duo and proper solemnity the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jean Do La Fontaine. The fabulist first saw the light in tho little city on the Marne in a house which narrowly escaped total destruction by the Roches when they made their last desperate drive down from the, Chenu'n des Dames, just throe years ago, and the house in winch he was born was the centre of the ceremonies, says the Paris correspondent of the ‘ Morning Post.’ During the war tho famous statue of La Fontaine, dressed as an elegant, that stands in Chateau Thierry facing the river, narrowly escaped destruction. Tim bridges opposite the statue were both blown up, and the statue became a mutile de la- guerre, through the loss of a leg. Jean Do La Fontaine was born on July 8, 1621, at Chateau Thierry, in Champagne, says tho ‘ Glasgow Herald.’ His father was master of “ caux et forets,” and when his sou married transferred his post to him; and though tho poet discharged his duties with an easygoing indifference, we can see from his work that official slackness did not imply mental indolence, and that, to paraphrase Sainte-Bonve, he had all his senses about him when lie was dreaming. Like Burns at his ploughing, ho was storing his mind, without deliberate intent, but from sheer interest and sympathy, with every trivial and homely incident in the country life around him, and when later he found himself in the midst of the brilliant society of Paris of the “ sixties ” he could pass at wiii from the world of wits to that of his country fables, and by an illuminating flash of phrase set the scone for either. La Fontaine had tho supremo gift of Burns, of making each of his fables e drama in little. His characters are all alive, their talk is the perfection of naturalism, yet even tho commonest phrase received from the poet’s hand the stamp of style. He is thus the most French of Frenchmen, super-eminent in no line save his own, yet sharing the excellence of tho greatest. His lines are tho current coin of ordinary speech, his wisdom is a spring ever drawn from vet unexhausted, Ids humor and wit are an assurance that dullness will never hold dominion in Franco so long as the name of La Fontaine is treasured in her schools. Sir Walter Scott’s favorite walking stick has been presented by Lord Knutsford to tho Scottish Museum of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. It boars an inserted silver plate with the inscription, “ Sir Walter Scott, Abbotsford.” Round it is still tied a faded silk cord and tassel. Tho Pulitzer prize of l.OOOdol for tho best American example of a reporter’s work during the year, the test being strict accuracy, terseness, and the accomplishment of some public good, was awarded to Louis Seibold, of the ‘New York World,’ for an interview with President Wilson. To ’ The Americanisation of Edward Bok,’ by Edward Bok. was awarded tho prize of LOOtldol for the best American biography teaching patriotism. To ‘ Miss Lulu Belt.’ by Zona Gale, was awarded the l.OOOdol prize for the best original American piny. The 2,000d0l award for the best bonk of the year upon the history of the United States was awarded to William Snowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick, authors of ‘The Victory at Sea.’ Edith Wharton will receive'l.OOOdol as the author of ‘ Tho Age of Innocence,’ “ the American novel published during tho year which best presents the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” Cardinal Gasquet, speaking at a London meeting of the Anglo-American Professors of History, said that ho had charge of tho most important collection of historical records in Europe—that at the Vatican, which contained a vast amount of material for research. There was cnougli to keep all pjkerlt employed tor the rest of their liveafjjmd ho would bo glad, if they came to RoVno, to give them every facility for investigation of the records there. Tho loose papers relating to the Napoleonic period alone were the bulk of a haystack, and among them were invaluable letters from Pitt, Edmund Burke, and other Eng. lish statesmen and naval commanders. It was a treasure of interesting information which was practically unknown. A movement has been begun in Bnuth Australia, to renovate and preserve Diggley 'Dell, near Port Mao] formed (8.A.), the old home of Adam Lindsay Gordon (states the ‘ Australasian Tho South Australian Ministry lies promised to purchase the property”if the municipal authorities at Port Mac Donnell and Mount Gambler will undertake its maintenance. About £IOO is required to make tho cottage habitable, and it is suggested that tho Gordon societies in Melbourne and Sydney should assist in providing the money. The annual pilgrimage to -Gordon’s grave in the llrighton Cemetery will take place on Sunday, October 9. Mr Henry Chung, Korean Commissioner in America, in his book recently published. 4 Case for Korea,’ constantly makes it clear that the Koreans aro in deadly earnest in their hostility to Japanese control. Of their attitude he writes : “ They evidently intend to continue the revolution until their country is completely free from Japanese domination. They are roughly awakened, under tho cruel blows of their alien masters, to a sense of national consciousness and racial solidarity. This yearning for political freedom, is coupled with the sudden setting off of all tho accumulated hate, cruelty, tyranny, and injustice of Japanese domination that have been practised during the ten years since the annexation. ... So long as there la a Korean left there will be a cry for

independence. Will Japan continue, to use bayonets to crush the movement. Will this circle of sullen and passive resistance on tho part.- of an unarmed and defenceless people, on the one hand, and tho organised military suppression on the other, be carried to the point of racial extinction of the Korean people I Gan Japan succeed in annihilating the Korean race—2o,ooo,ooo people?” In a sale, at Sotheby’s recently a very interesting manuscript in Captain Looks hand on '“arithmetical trigonometry and “arithmetical dialling,” with some quam verses to any finder, of the manuscript, if lost, brought £230 (Quaritch). The London ‘ Bookman has awarded to Charles H. Cuddy, of 8 Stanley avenue, B irk dale, Lancs, tho prize for the. best epigram on any public man. Iho epigram is as follows: —To Lord Northcliffe. — Great source of all that journalistic light Whose daily circulation ever climbs; How hard,to picture you a Carmelite, Dwelling persistently behind ‘ The Times ’! In the Saturday ‘Westminster’ a correspondent points out teat the famous motto, “They say. What do they say? Let them say” (the late George Fisher, the Wellington politician, was, by. tho way, very fond of quoting this saying), lias a classical origin, being often engraved in Greek on late Roman _ gems. On many Scottish houses, built. in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the motto was carved over the main entrance, in this fashion: They liaif said. Quhat say they? ( Lat thame say. This, so a second correspondent of tho ‘Westminster’ deduces, was tho motto of tho old Earls Marischal, of Dunottar Castle, in Kincardineshire 1 , who founded Marischal College in Aberdeen. The motto, in gold letters, appears over tho main entrance to the old college buildings to this day. The clever political character sketches, ‘ [Portraits of the Nineties,’ by E. T. Raymond. author of the very successful ‘ Uncensored Celebrities,’ which have been appearing in the ‘ Outlook/ are to ba republished in volume form. A correspondent of the ‘Sphere’ tells how, “at an auction of tho library of Lord Carew at Castle Boro, Enniscorthy,” ho bought about 1,200 volumes, in one lot, for £9! “They are,” he writes, “all beautiful volumes, bound in full polished calf, and beautifully bound, dating from 1800 to 1840, and including sets of Swift, Burke, Scott, Burns, etc.” What a bargain! Someone must have bungled badly in not packing tho books up and sending them to London, where they would probably have brought at least £250. An English edition is shortly to bo published of Joseph Hcrgesheimer’s first novel, ‘TEe Lay Anthony.’ written some years before tho same author’s successful stories ‘The Three Black Pennys’ and 'Java Head.’

Mr Q. B. Bin-gin, in ‘ Memories of a Clubman.’ tells how the blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston, had with much difficulty learnt to use a typewriter. “One day he groped his way to his typewriter, put in a sheet of paper, and began a story. Hour after hour passed as he clicked away and threw each sheet on the floor. At last he finished tho best story he had ever written, and when his man came iivto the room, told him to pick up the sheets scattered on the floor and read them to him. The sheets were all blank. His man had taken out the typewriter ribbon and forgotten to put in a new one. Tho story was never rewritten/’ Mr Arnold Bennett, who celebrated bis fifty-fourth birthday recently, has a pretty knack of dealing with journalists who “do not exactly tell the truth” about him. Just before the armistice he wrote to a daily newspaper in the following pained terms:—“You state that when 1 appeared on the stage of the Aldwych Theatre f wore a blue, shirt. Newspapers have had to pay thousands of pounds for libels far less cruel, and only my notorious good nature saves you from an action at law. I can stand, and have stood, practically everything in the way of criticism, but my shirts are sacred to me. I did not wear a blue shirt. I wore a while silk shirt, slightly but charmingly ivoried by war laundries, but of tho finest prewar quality.”

HEW BOOKS. A FAIRY" STORY. ‘The Singing Fish.’ By Edith Howes. Forwarded by E. J, Stark and Co. As a writer of stories for children, Miss Howes holds a high and honored place. Her life’s history is a proof of tho saying that there is always room at tho top. Tho way to tho top 1 may bo strewn with obstacles; but given will power and courage, and then patience, tho summit will be reached eventually. This is the case with Miss Howes. School teaching is an arduous profession, which calls forth from one who is interested in the work and tries to do it to the best cf his ability continuous and exhausting effort. New Zealand is a long way from Lonmere speck in the vastnoss of the Southern seas—and no publisher could be expected to look with eyes of hope in the direction of this Dominion. Miss Howes, therefore, was confronted with two great obstacles to the achievement of literary distinction. The first was the demand made on her time and her strength hy her daily work, and tho second tho distance separating this Dominion from the world’s literary centre. But Miss Howes worked and waited, and then success came to her. ‘The Sun’s Babies’ captivated the hearts of children, young and old, and ‘ Fairy Rings,’ ‘Rainbow Children,’ ‘The Cradle Ship,’ and ‘ Maoriland Fairy Tales’ proved that the first-mentioned book was no lucky accident, but' that we had in our midst an authoress with unusual gifts. This view is strengthened on perusal of ‘The Singing Fish,’ which has just been issued from the press of Messrs Cassell and Co., Limited. It is a book to be recommended to all who like fairy stories, and who desire to see such a taste encouraged in the children of today. An unobtrusive moral adorns a charming story, and many simple natural history lessons are contained in its pages. The parent who intends to take his children to the seaside, during the holidays likes to carry with him presents suitable not only for the festive season, but for the holiday surroundings. ‘The Binging Fish’ will suit this purpose admirably. The story deals with the adventures of Nonio and Tup. For bullying his sister Tup is changed by the Mischief Fairy into a “ cock-a-builic.” “It was splashed here and there with silver, and its bright, round eyes gazed up at the angry fairy with an appealing look that cut Nonie to tho heart.” bionic implored tho fairy to change hint back again to a boy, but she shook liar head obstinately. “What I have done, I have done,” she said. “ A bully ho is, and a bully ho must remain until he knows better.”’Finally in answer to Nome's pleadings tho fairy compromises by turning her into a fairy submarine, by means of which she can submerge aud guard her brother in the pool. Tho story from this on tells of the adventures of the transformed Tup and Nonie among the pools and the rocks and the queer creatures that live below the wate.r. Tho book contains four beautiful illustrations in color by Florence Mary Anderson, as well as some illuminating drawings of the queer folk that live in the sea. Tho songs of the, Singing Fish reveal the ability of Miss Howes to express herself in verso. The following is an example : The pretty rock pools lie warm in ‘the sun, The tide has gone out to tho deep. Come out, little fishes, come out to your fun! Come out while the tide is asleep. The fora=ts of seaweed are spangled with light, The silvery bubbles float up, Each bush with its branches so golden and bright Sits fast in his rock-hollowed cup. Afar in the eea lurk danger and fear, But safe you may sport in your lake. Come out, little fishes, no enemy’s near, Come out ere the tide is awake.