BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 18057, 26 August 1922, Page 11

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

VERSES. , > THIS IS THE WEATHER; ■’ ■ This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; ~ ~ , , . When showers hottunble the chestnut spikes. And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, , ’ „ , And they sit outside at “ The Travellers Rest.” . And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, And citizens dream of the south and west, And so do I. This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I; When beeches drip in browns and duns, And thresh* and ply; And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, And meadow rivulets overflow, And drops on cate bars hang in a row, And rooks in families homeward .go, And> so do I. , Thomas Hardy. ‘THE WHITEWASHED 1 WALL.’ Why does she turn in that shy, soft way Whenever she stirs the fire, And kiss to the chimney-corner wall, As if entranced to admire Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight Of a rosp, in richest green? I have known her long, but this raptured rile I never before have seen. Well, once when her son cast his shadow there. A friend took a- pencil and drew him Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines Had a lifelike semblance to him. And there long stayed his familiar look; But one day, ere she knew, The whit'ener came to cleanse the nook, And covered the face from view. “Yes," he said; “my brush goes on with 1 a rush, And the draught is buried under; When you have to whiten old cots and brighten, What else can you do, I wonder!” But she knows he’s there. And when she yearns For him, deep in the laboring night, Bhe sees him as close at hand, and turns To him under his sheet of white. ■Thomas Hardy. L. DEAN INGE ON PRESENT-DAY NOVELISTS. Dean Inge has been criticising some of the modern novelists. “ Several of them,” he writes, “while keeping clear of indecency, present life as a dead level of sordid meanness and materialism. They give ns no beauty or nobility anywhere; we can find nothing to admire in human •nature as they describe it. A strong example of what I mein is the brilliantlywritten novel by the Dutchman, Couperus. called ‘Old People and Things That Pass.’ It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, for all its cleverness. I find the same low estimate for human nature in an English novelist whose reputation is too firmly established to be injured by my criticism, Mr Arnold Bennett: While admiring the excellent technique of his books, and especially of his new novel. 1 Mr Prohack,’ I cannot help feeling that ther are a libel on human nature, and that his characters —no doubt there are such people—■ are not worth writing about. He does not seem to realise that religion and self-sacri-fice are potent factors in many lives. “Mr Hugh Walpole is, I think, another offender: and I have often wished that Mr Hardy had given us more books like ‘ Under the Greenwood Tree’ and ‘ The Mayor of Castcrbridge,’ instead of ’Jude’ and his successors. “ We have still some thoroughly wholesome novelists, like Mr Archibald Marshall, with his pleasant reminiscences of Anthony Trollope; and I have just read a charming little book called ‘ A Vagrant Tune,’ by Mr Bryan Holland, which is worthy of the author of ‘Cranford.’ ‘Very Victorian tastes!’ I shall be told. But I am a Victorian, and, having tasted the old wine and the new, I think the old is better. “I must take the liberty of making a more earnest appeal to Mr Wells, whose new novel has just been sent to me. T was a great admirer of his early works, the fantastic and ‘ creepy ’ ‘ Time Machine,’ the -brilliant satire, ‘ Tono Bungay,’ and the sociological books, always so fresh and stimulating. ‘Mr Britling ’ will live as a wonderful portrayal of English mentality in the year 1914. “But his'achievement in literature has been progressively injured by a growing obsession of sensuous ideas. He is haunted by thoughts of sex, which intrude offensively'into hooks, the subjects of which should have kept them far away. Even ‘ Air Britling’ is much injured, as a work of art, by the squalid intrigue which the author introduces, most incongruously, into the life of a highly respectable literary man. “ Literary men, as far as I know them, are not at all 1 like fed bosses in the morning, every one neighing after his neighbor’s wife.’ It is bad art; healthy men arc not obsessed by lust in this way; if roving temptations assail them, they can usually suppress them without much difficulty. “ This tendency seems to me to_ have grown upon Mr Wells till it has poisoned his mind and greatly impaired his remarkable talents. Even'his handling of political and social questions seems to me to have deterioratea. He goes on predicting • a social revolution, the danger of which was no doubt acute in 1919, but which now appears to have died: down, at least for a time. “And in this last book he repeats the absurd phrase 'it is a new world’—an absurd phrase because there is no new world, but only the old world consisting of human nature and inhuman nature, neither of which is at all likely to alter. And from the artistic point of view the , uglv story of seduction in his new hook mates havoo of what might have been a very interesting plot*” THACKERAY’S SCHOOLDAYS. The Bishop of Gloucester has written an interesting account of the relations between Thackeray and his school, Charterhouse, in the ‘ Cornhill Mazagine.’ He “ does not agree with the popular 1 idea that Thackeray was unhappy at the school. Thackeray, although -no sportsman, was popular, and popularity at a public school means much; “He had no taste for games, we are told, but for a non-playing boy he was wonderfully social, full of vivacity and enjoyment of life. Hia happy insouciance was constant.' Never was any lad at once so jovial, so healthy, and so sedentary. Good spirits and merriment seemed to enable him to dispense with the glow of cricket and football.” The author bases his argument that Thackeray was happy at Charterhouse on the evidence given in his books:—“Certainly all his heroes -have a good time at Grey Friars and look back to it with affection, and this is the best proof that Thackeray was on the whole happy there himself, and that there is no solid ground for saying that he was impressed with the brutality of school life.” In nearly every one of Thackeray's novels there are allusione to school life, and the Bishop of Gloucester considers that ,an old Carthusian will find many points of similarity between schools in the novels and Charterhouse. In ‘Vanity Fair,’ George Osborne and Dobbin were at “Dr Swishitail’s School”: “Was this school Charterhouse? Lady Ritchie says definitely that it was not, and that she often wondered where the great fight took place. There can be no cotter authority on such a subject; and yet I cannot help thinking that the school was really suggested by Charterhouse, though at this early period of his writing Thackeray had not - definitely adopted Bis £ld school as the place to which he sent is heroes, and therefore, the identification js not so complete as it became later on.”

A LITERARY CORNER.

‘Pcndennis’ contains a number of references to the author’s old .school; “Arthur Pcndennis was not the first of his family to ho sent to Grey Friars, for both bis father - , John Pendennis, and his uncle, the Major, had been there before him, and were schoolfellows of the Head blaster. ... Of Arthur Pendennis in his schooldays there is a brief description, in which wo may recognise to a considerable extent Thackeray’s own experiences.’’ Another of the Thackeray novels which contains a number of references and characters drawn from Charterhouse is ‘The Adventures of Philip'“lt adds- a larger number of Carthusians' to our list than any of the other novels wo have considered. To begin with, there is that scoundrel Dr Firmin, who appears in the ac count of Founder’s Day with which the book opens.” Finally, the bishop quotes from ‘Philip’ a passage which reveals how healthy the school was during Thackeray’s lifetime. SHOULD NOVELISTS TELL TRUTH? “bliss Zona Gale, the author of that very successful novel in the United States, ‘ Mies Lulu Belt,’ recently asked several lending questions of her fellow-writers and readers,” writes Charles Hanson Towno in the ‘Bookman.’ “First, she wanted to know if hooks about lovely living or books about living-that is unlovely, are popular. “For my own part, I think it makes no difference at all. In .America, at one time —and I’ve been an editor of popular magazines for eighteen years, having served on ‘The Smart Set,’ the Buttcvick publications (including ‘Everybody’s’ and ‘The Delineator’) and, until a year ago, on ‘ bPCTure’s ’—there was a craze for the so-called ‘happy ending.’ Is .Miss Gale’s last novel ‘happy’? I should hardly sayso. But it is an enormous success. Is *Main Street’ happy? No; yet it has earned I don’t know how many dollars for (clever Sinclair Lewis. Is ‘Privilege’ filled with Pollyanna ‘gladness’? Thank God, no. But it will make Michael Sadlior famous on two continents. I think it is ns great as ‘ Wuthoring Heights,’ or anything the Bronte sisters ever wrote. Is that .powerful novel. ‘The Dragon in Shallow Waters.’ by bliss Sackvilie-West. ‘pretty’? A thousand times no! Yet I defy anyone to begin- it,, and not finish it I could go on enumerating books of unpleasant character iha-t achieved thrilling sales in their day: ‘ Pigs in Clover,’ ‘ Sir Richard Calmady,’ ‘ The Gadfly,’ and ‘Red Pottage,’ to name only a few. Is ‘Revolution,’ by J. D. Beresford, ‘pleasant’? And how- about the big-selling, robust Frank Swi.nnerton? I don't call May Sinclair a.‘happy’ or an ‘uplift’ writer. Nor is Conrad concerned always with making the weary world laugh. What nonsense it is to try to catalogue literature ; to endeavor to make it conform to certain rules and specifications. Like the poets, the novelists arc not to be moulded into shape, whittled down to a definite pattern. Of course not. Art is not produced where there arc restrictions. Art grows out -of freedom. “bliss Gale wanted to know if the American novel should give us the beauty of daily living. But is daily living beautiful? 'The American novel—the novel of any country—should give us life as it- is, not as we wish it to be.” NOTES. Miss Grace Austin, who died at Shakespeare, Ontario, was bom in Scotland eighty-eight years ago, and was a niece of Thomas Carlyle. Tho death is -reported from London of Mrs Owen Visge-r (Jean A. Owen), author i and journalist, who, as a young woman, came to New Zealand with her husband, Mr .George Owen, in 1865, before going on voyages to various parts of the world. From 1910 to 1913 she lived at intervals in Australia. She has written profusely of her travels and on nature study, and edited all works published under the name of a Son of the Marshes, in which she collaborated with a Surrey naturalist. In 1885 Mrs Owen married 1 ' a second time, Mr Harmon Visge-r, of Bristol. A lawsuit involving the copyright of some of the elder Dumas's best-known novels has just been decided by the French courts. Dumas, as is well known, was in the habit of employing other writers to work in collaboration with him; among those was an historian, August Maquet, who collaborated in ‘Monte Cristo,’ ‘The Three Musketeers,’ and other books. From him Dumas obtained the sole right to put his name on the title pages, but unfortunately went bankrupt, and never paid Maquet for his work. Now the heirs of Maquet have brought an^action against tho heirs of Dumas. The courts have decided that Maquet’s heirs are entitled to a share of the royalties, but not to put his name on the title pages as part author. One result of.the action is that, as Maquet outlived Dumas, the copyright of tho novels is prolonged for thirty years. “ I have read this preface with surprise, and even with some pain,” said Mr Edmund Gosse, in a reference in the ‘ Sunday Times ’ to Mr Thomas- Hardy’s apology for his la-test book of poems. “It is very disappointing to find,” continues Mr Gosse, “ that Mr Hardy seems to bo unaware of tho fact that he is regarded in all parts of the British Empire not merely with affection, but- with reverence. Wherever English is read, that Mr Hardy is the crowning glory of our living literature is .acknowledged by every competent authority. We have, other eminent and oven illustrious writers in whoso works wo rejoice, but they are not Mr Hardy. , , . Ho talks about being frozen by ‘glacial judgments,’ about being ‘ cold-shouldered,' ho -called himself a ‘roujghlyj handled writer.’ , . .If there is a single author living whom young and old alike unitein praising it is he. , . . Ho hints darkly at detractors. Who aro tho detractors of Mr Hardy? It appears that ‘a Roman Catholic young man’ has reproved him for tho ‘ dark gravity of his ideas/ Let that young man be produced and exhibited in a glass case, for he is a rare specimen. What in all tho earth docs it matter what some young Catholic (or some old Protestant, if it comes to that) .has been silly enough to say? . , . I am very cross about this ‘ apology.’ AVhat is tho use of our all being so infatuated a£ Mr Hardy does us this injustice? ” Mr Lytton Straohey, in his new work, ‘ Books and Characters,’ is physiognomical, and finds significance in noses. Writing of Lady Hester Stanhope, ha says: The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its transmigrations through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under whose curves Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak, upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the Younger —the rigid- symbol of an indomitable hauteur. . . . Lady Hester’s was a noso of wild ambitious, of pride grown fantastical, a noso that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some externally eccentric heaven. It was a noso, in f<act, altogether in the air. And when her eccentric life came io an end in 1859 her servants immediately possessed themselves of every movable object in tho house. But Lady Hester cared no longer; she was lying back in her bed—inexplicable, grand, preposterous—with her nose in the air. Mr Walter Do La Mare is both a poet and a novelist, but Iris next -book is to be a volume of verse. He, Air Abercrombie Lasoelles, and Mr Wilfrid Wilson Gibson wore the most intimate poetic friends of Rupert Brooke. Ho directed, that any money lie might leave, and any profits his books might yield, should he divided among them, because “if I can set them free, to any extent, to write 'the poetry 'and plays and books they, want to, my death will bring more gain than loss.” Since then Mr De La Mage has had the success of his ‘ Memoirs of a -Midget,’ and his reissued novel, ‘ Tho P.-etum,’ has also dono well.

NEW BOOKS. ‘The King’s Pilgrimage.* Published by Hoddcr and Stoughton. Our copy from the New Zealand Bible and Book Depot. 3s 6d. It was with a minimum of ceremony, as a mourner more than as a monarch, that the King’s visit was made to'-the British wav cemeteries in France and Belgium earlier in the year. It was a visit which, in its simplicity and its pathos, showed how much tho King is one with his subjects, and tho messages that were sent by him at its conclusion to all the bereaved ones of the Great War, as well as to the French and Belgian Governments, must have drawn all the allied peoples together again, for a- moment at least, with something of the kindliness of ono_ familv. A record of tho pilgrimage, published by authority, has now"been issued, which comes to us'in the form of a handsome volume bound in purple, relieved bv the design of tho gold sword which “ broods on the bosom of” tho white cross of remembrance at Terlincthun Cemetery, The dominions will think it fitting that the account of tho pilgrimage, written with moving dignity, comes from tho pen of MiFrank Fox, who was-formerly an Australian journalist. Mr Fox was the first editor of tho ‘Lone Hand’ magazine, and he lias had much experience since then. The narrative is preceded by Air Kipling's poem, ‘The King’s Pilgrimage,’ recently reprinted in this column; but the most striking part of this memorial volume consists of the photographs, admirably reproduced, which show first one cemetery and then another, tho King conversing with French marshals, placing tokens reverently on this grave or (hat, or talking to private mourners—including Australians—whom ho happened to meet. No pages could bo more eloquent of the sadness of war than those which show these hundreds of thousands of British graves, which Prance guards for her Ally who boro its brunt with her; and these British gravestones in France, in their endless files, should make it- for all time impos.sible for differences between those two countries to be more than the differences of friends. All profits from the of tho memorial volume will, by His Majesty’s desire, be distributed among the philanthropic organisations which have, for some time, been assisting relatives to visit tho cemeteries abroad. NOTES ON NOVELS. ‘Tho Mountaineers.’ By Harold Bindloss. - Ward, Lock, and Co., publishers. Whitcombe and Tombs, local agents. For a plain, bracing, direct open-air story there aro few better writers than Mr Harold Binclloss. ‘The Mountaineers’ lias an additional attraction in that it deals, in an unusually detailed way, with mountain climbing. Mr Binclloss is an expert cragsman, or tho best chapters in this book could never have been written. Jimmy Leyland, who has gone to Canada to gain experience of life before settling down to the humdrum control of a Lancashire cotton factory to which ho is heir, and is gaining it in the costliest way, has reason to believe that, while deer-shooting in a western province, he lias killed one of tho Canadian North-western rangers. With the object of eluding the police lie is persuaded by his false friend Stannarcl, who is, however, a superb mountaineer, as well as a most engaging scoundrel, to make a dangerous traverse- across the Rockies. A moving picture representation of the dangers encountered among slippery crags and precipices could hardly be more vivid than tho author’s descriptions. There is, a love interest, and a picture is given of tho trials and labors of Canadian ranchers in new country. The mystery of Trooper Douglas’s death is cleared up somewhat superficially,’ but the tale is as invigorating as a breeze from the mountains in which it is set. ' Blindfold.’ By Mrs Victor Rickard (Jonathan Cape, London). Forwarded by Whitcombe and Tombs. This is a cleverly focussed study of perfect sophistication and selfishness: a fulllength portrait of a man whoso indifference to ties and' obligations amounts almost to power—who is free with the freedom of those who are utterly callous and heartless. Tho tale opens in Ireland, with this man selling his daughter to her dead mother’s sister for a hundred-pound note, vanishing into his Paris world of pleasure without a qualm. After a lapse of years tho girl, grown to gracious womanhood, meets in Paris tho father she had been taught to think dead, falls under the sway of tho dissolute, debonair man, and elects to stay with him. A curious duel follows, for the father, come now to the age when life and loneliness begin to close on those who have stood aloof from its obligations, wants all that the girl has to give in love 'for himself—wants her deliberately to refuse the garlands of youth.*® Under the spell of his personality she is acquiescent, and this ghostly claim stands definitely between the girl aud her ardent French lover. The crisis is precipitated by a run of bad luck at the tables. Tho gambler finds himself -ready to sell his daughter again, to sink a little deeper into the black "mud of his gutter; but in the revelation of his interview with the lover he sees for tho first time the portrait of himself in the eyes of another man, and is' betrayed in that moment of recoil into the one act of his life that bears scrutiny. This is an unusual story of considerable power, with Bohemian Paris for background.