BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 20486, 17 May 1930, Page 25

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

VERSES BEING HER FRIEND Being her friend, I do not care, not I, How gods or men may wrong me, beat me down. Her word’s sufficient star to travel by, I count her quiet praise sufficient crown. Being her friend, I do not covet gold, Save for a royal gift to give her pleasure; To sit with her, and have her hand to hold, Is wealth, X think, surpassing minted treasure. Being her friend, I only covet art, A white pure flame to search mo as I trace In crooked letters from a throbbing heart The hymn to beauty written on her face. —John Masefield. FROM ‘ THE EVERLASTING MERCY' , How swift the summer goes, ' Forget-me-not, pink, rose. The young grass when I started Vnd now the hay is carted, tncl now my song is ended, \nd all ae summer spended; he blackbird’s second brood touts beech-leaves in t|io wood, ho pink and rose have,, speeded, ’orget-me-not has seeded? )nly the winds that blew, * 'ho rain that makes things new, .'he earth that hides things old, Vnd blessings anifold. 0 lovely lily clean, O lily springing green, 0 lily burst! white, . Dear lily of delight, Spring in my heart agen Tliat I may flower to men. —John Masefield. OH GROWING OLD Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying; My dog and I are old, too old for roving. Man, whose young passion sets the Spindrift fiyiqg, Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving. I take the book and gather to the fire, Turning old yellow leaves, minute by minute The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire, Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet. I cannot sail yo r seas, I cannot wander Your cornland, nor your hill-land, ■v nor your valleys Ever again, nor share the battle yonder Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies. Only stay quiet while my mind remembers,. . Thy. beauty of fire from the beauty of ‘ , embers. ‘ Beauty, have pity! For the strong . have power, The rich their wealth, the beautiful their" race, _ Summer of man its sunlight and its flower, Spring-time of man all April in a face. Only, as in the jostling in the Strand, Where the mob thrusts or loiters or is loud, The beggar with the saucer in his hand Asks only a penny from the passing crowd. So, from this glittering world with all its fashion, Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march, Let me have wisdom. Beauty, wisdom and passion, . Bread to the soul, rain where the -summers parch. Give me but these, and, though the darkness close, Even the night will blossom as the rose, —John Masefield. KICKING THE CLASSICS A CRITIC OF DICKENS Dickens, Hardy, and Charles Kingsley go into tho fining-pot and come out less than pure gold. Critics like Arnold Bennett, Evelyn Waugh, and someone concealed in the letters “A.A.8.” have their go at them, and find feet of clay in the idols (states the 4 Literary Digest ’). Bennett reads over ‘ Westward Ho ’ for his article, but declares he wouldn’t “ read it again for a hundred pounds.” The book sails through too many “doldrums.” Kingsley is too wordy, too much of a preacher, and too full or Protestant prejudices. _ Hardy wrote about upper-class life in 4 Tess of the D’Urbervilles,’ which he didn’t understand, and made a conventional vdlain of Alec, So Mr Waugh thinks. Tho excitement over ‘ Tess ’ in the nineties was due to its defiance of Victorian delicacy. Wo have tin-own ;

that" overboard. But Dickens gets the worst of it. In the Londonn ‘Evening Standard,’ “A.A.8.” feels that if Dickens survives at all it will bo as “ a wr. er of amusing extravaganzas.” It is not the humour that he is supposed to possess, for “where is the humour of playing fools against foolsP ” Take ’David Copperfield.’ ‘Alt the people in ‘David Copperfield ’, arc ' ols, except, two villains and two minor characters, Aunt Trotwood and Agnes Wickfield, who command our sympathy and respect. There is no limelight or sob-stuff about the tragedy of Colonel Newcorac, no raving by a Rosa Dartle, no hysterics by an Emily or Martha—nothing but the sombre sinking of fortune’s victim. ‘ Dickens has no humour but that of the cartoonists; his satire is not irony but, caricature; his pathos is melodrama. ‘The general’ will always prefer the coarseness of a cartoon to tbo delicacy, of an ironist; they like exaggeration, and they revel in the luxury or secondary emotion. Dickens, therefore, ' in all probability will 1 ~ep 1 ’.s place as the most popular novelist. ■‘ Nearly all the leading characters in * David Copperfield ’ come within the range of half-wits. David’s mother was the fluffiest of fools, who allowed herself to be bullied into a second marriage by a seedy, squinting wine merchant, Murdstone, whose name was the best thing Jus creator gave him, was also a fool; for, instead of making Inends

A LITERARY CORNER

with his stepson, ho thrashed him with a cane, and got bitten through the band.

“ David himself, except for that first bite, which is allowed to every dog, and which was the only incisive action of his life, is he not the prince of Niminy-Piminys? Ho was not tho first and will not be the last boy to marry a doll for her ringlets and ankles. But consider his despicable feebleness when, dinnerless, lie allowed Dora to sit on his knee and draw pencil lines down Doacly’s nnso and forehead. A fine hero indeed! Dr Johnson said tliat a man who couldn’t got his dinner properly cooked was not to bo trusted in any of the relations of life. Personally, 1 would not have trusted David Copperfield to typo tin’s article if Dora bad been in the house ” “VENGEANCE IS MINE.”

Thou there’s Steerforth. “Poor Stecrforth! ” A.A.B. calls him. “I don’t think he was such a bad fellow; i ho was very kind to his mother and to David.” Also; ■ “He certainly was hot-tempered m ins boyhood, and spoiled Hose Dartle’s face with a right book, and I’m not certain be didn’t soduco her. 1 am sure ho never wanted to seduce Emily, but Dickens made him do it in order to draw the conventional picture, so dear to the hearts of the middle class, of the rich young ’varsity man, with the silent and unscrupulous valet; ns adroit in arranging his master’s sexual escapades as in packing bis luggage, wno visits like a raving wolf tho humble homes of the proletariat. “Vengeance is mine, 'says Charles Dickens, and to appease the moral fee - ings of himself and his public, which no author ever understood better, he drowns Steerforth, arid packs Martha and Emily and Mr Peggotty off to Australia, in those days the passive receptacle of England’s burglars and soiled doves. When 1 read this ending, 1 feel inclined to say, _ like tho comedian at the close of his song, 4 I’m not sorry, and I’m not sure you aren’t.’ ~ , “ Micawber has been said to be a paternal parody, hut, like most assertions about Dickens, this has been denied. It is undoubtedly the masterstroke of the book, and 1 should say the most popular, at all events tho most quoted, of his creations. But will anybody say that it is a type, like Dogberry, or Moliere’s Miser? Is not Micawher’s (loridity pure farce, tho effect of more exaggeration? “The height, or depth, of absurdity is reached when Wilkins Micawber, who couldn’t keep a bread-and-butter, ac-, count from day to day, is employed to unravel the bookkeeping falsifications and forgeries of Uriah Hcep, the complexity of which would have, called for the most experienced inspector from the C.I.D. “ It is this unreality that spoils the 4 human touch,’ ou which the worshippers of Dickens insist as his chief attraction. There is-more humanity, because more reality, in 4 Here Wo Ride,’ by Antony Bertram, and in | 4 Tiie Sun in Splendour,’ by Mr Thomas Burke, than in 4 David Copperfiekl.’ I consider that these two pictures of low life are better than anything Dickens has done in that line-” , , , . Perhaps the 4 Evening Standard is just a little dismayed over what its writers let loose, for it say editorially: . “There is always a spice or unpleasantness in an incisively expressed , judgment which challenges views long taken for granted. A book one has once enjoyed is an object of pious gratitude, and to'hear it adversely criticised is as disturbing as to hear aspersions on the character of an old friend. Yet we thir that no harm, and some good, may be done by letting loose critics of reputation and proved acuteness on books which are regarded as classics.” SCOTT’S LAST NOVEL SALE OF MANUSCRIPT It was recently announced in this column that tho manuscript of the unfinished novel 4 The Siege of Malta,’ by Sir Walter Scott, has been sold at the highest price ever paid for ii Scott MS. Although the existence of this manuscript has been known by the frequent references to it in Scott’s 4 Journal,’ its contents have been hidden from tho world, reports tho 4 Sunday Times.’ It has lain for nearly a century at Abbotsford in the keeping of the author’s descendants. The presort owner of Abbotsford, General Walter Maxwell-Scott, D. 5.0., Sir Walter’s great-grandson, has sold the manuscript to Mr F. J. Slieed, who has deposited it in a London bank. Although Mr Sheed is the head of the publishing firm of Sheed and Ward, In has apparently made the purchase in his private capacity, and, has not at present any plans for its publication. The news that this last of the Waverley novels has changed hands opens up the possibility that it may one day he published. Tho centenary of the death of Sir Walter Scott will be celebrated in two years’ time, and this may be a convenient date to reveal to the wm-ld the manuscript which has lain at Abbotsford for a hundred years. Tho M.S. of 4 Tho Siege of. Malta consists of 150 pages. It begins with the story of an imaginary hero, but quickly passes to a vivid account _ of the actual siege—an account which shows glimpses of Scott at the height of his powers. RARE OLD BOOKS Some interesting books, belonging to Mrs Alfred Noyes, removed from tho library of Lulworbh Castle in consequence of the fire there, were to bo offered for salo _ at Sotheby’s. They included first editions of Pope, Swi.lt, Dryden, and oth.r great nglish writers. Among tho rarer works, perhaps tho most notable is a perfect copy of the 4 Chastisings of God’s Children.’ “Tho prouffytablo boko for manes soldo and I right comfortable to the body and specyally in acluersitee and trybulacyon which boke is called Tho Clmstysing f Goddes Children.” (Westminster, Wynkyn do Worde). Its date is about 1192. There is a hitherto unrecorded 4 Book of Hours’ for English use, printed t Rouen in 1520, with fifty woodcuts. These works are in black letter, as is also 4 Eironarcha, or the office of the justices of Peace, together with an exposition of certain difficult and obscure words and tonnes of tho laws of this Iloalmo.’* Its date is 1015. ,

NEW BOOKS ENGLAND THROUGH GERMAN EYES Herr Wilhelm Dibelius is _ the professor of English in the University of Berlin. He is the author of ‘ England,’ which has been translated from the German by Mrs Mary Agnes Hamilton, M.P., and it would appear that the translation has been done with singular ability. In an introduction, Professor A. I). Lindsay, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, explains the reasons of Herr Hibelins for writing the work. The idea came to the author in the war. The book was addressed to a German and not to an English public. , It was designed to help the Gorman people to understand the people with whom they had'been fighting. The author, it is explained, has a proper pride in his own people, is convinced that they have made their own unique contribution to tho civilisation of the world, but he is trying to understand and convey, as sympathetically as he can, tlio contribution made by England. It is a clear and penetrating book. After reading it the words of Carlyle _ rise to themind: “Learned, indefatigable, deepthinking Germany,” for these three things are to be found in its pages. The work has been accomplished with characteristic German _ thoroughness, and, considering that it was written when the embers of the great conflagration were still giving out much I heat, with conspicuous fairness and ab- | sonce of passion. He covers a great | field, most of which has been traversed by British historians and publicists. It is really a history of Great Britain, with its social, political, military and naval, religious, educational,, industrial, and artistic developments, but we sec all these events from a different angle—through the eyes of a friendly and appreciative, but frank critic. Some of his opinions are open tc challenge, but his judgment of the English character is, on the while, shrewd and original. Within the average Englishman, • he says, there is a constant struggle between his gentlemanly instinct and the natural passion of his temper. “ Passion is the last thing a foreign observer is apt to ex- | pect behind the cold assurance of the I gentleman’s manner, but this is, ' nevertheless, one of the basic traits of the English character. . . . The British will to power shows this passion in its tremendous potency. It has x made him conqueror of worlds, discovered of unknown regions, inventor and technician.” England’s greatest contribution to civilisation, the author considers, is its hereditary form of government'—its free state. “ It is, m truth, not the ideal state. 'ts faults are plain to see, nor could it work at all with, other than AngloSaxons, but it is an advantage for humanity that the English model is there, to enable the one-sidedness of other systems to be improved and offset by comparison wi ; it. All Eng-, land’s other achievements pale by the side of this. It developed the idea ol tile gentleman more thoroughly and consistently than other nations have done, and by” this gave an ethical ideal of great—though certainly not uniquevalue to the world.” The author, in coi. luding tho book, dwells on what he considers another phase of the Englishman’s character, and that is “ his lust for power which all the outside world feels as a danger.” Ready as other nations aro 1 6 admit the great achievements of the English race, these achievements aro not sufficiently distinctive to give tho moral warrant for absolute world power. “ It would be a loss t > tho world if there were no powerful England, but it would be a lasting detriment to the world, inclusive of England, if ever England were to become all-powerful.” Our copy is from the publishers, Jonathan Cape, Limited. * ‘ MOTHER INDIA • Not many books in recent years have created as much stir as ‘ Mother India,’ by Kathleen Mayo, an American writer. Her conclusions and statements were Hotly refuted and vigorously defended in tho discussions that followed the publication of tho book two r three years ago. Appropriately, at a moment of tension in India, a reprint of the book comes from Messrs Jonathan Cape, Limited. Everyone should read ‘ Mother India,’ for it will help to an uiidorstanding of the difficult nature of the problems that have to bo solved. The dreadful child marriages, tho caste barriers, and many of the other complexities of India’s social system are vividly sketched. As well as the depressing industrial conditions that prevail. When we come to the economic aspects of the Indian population we seem to bo up against a stone wall. Gandhi and his school affirm that Lm peoples of India have been growing steadily poorer and more miserable as a result of British rule. Miss Mayo does not subscribe to this view. She says their margin of safety is indubitably greater, their power of resistance to calamity increased, and their means of enlarging their income lie at all times, now, within their hands, but the masses as a whole have little ambition to raise or to change their actual living conditions. The population problem seems hopeless according to tho author’s deductions. Consider these figure India to-day has 54,000,000 more human beings than it sustained f ‘ )' years ago, ulus an estimated increase of 7 or 8 per cent, every ten years. The prospects, in tho author s opinion, aro staggering, “ for, deprived of infanticide, of suttee, and of her other native escape valves, yet still clinging to early marriage and unlimited propagation, India stands to-day at that point of social development whore population is controlled by disease and disease only. A FULLER LIFE Those who have regard to tho spiritual issues of life will appreciate Miss Olivo Mercer’s booklets. The latest publication of this Dunedin writer is entitled ‘ A Fuller Life for You’ (Coulls, Somerville, and 1 Wilkie. Limited). It comprises a series of short essays showing the way by means of wide’ mankind can reach the goal of union with the divine. It has often boon said that. every person uses only a small portion of tho mental powers of which h is a repository. In reading what Miss Mercer has wrtiten it is made clear that this applies with equal force to the things of ths spirit. Miss Mercer advo--1 cates no school of theology. Her in-

spiration comes from tho sacred book itself and from the words of the saints and sage < (of all times. “ God’s will for ever; 'in is perfection and nothing less,” says the authoress. “ And only as wo are going forwar# to this ideal goal, letting the spiritual express through the physical ever more adequately and perfectly, are we in harmom with this plan for us and the universe.” Miss Mercer’s line of thought will he familiar to many people, but she has her own ideas, and the truth that has been revealed to her is presented with literary grace. Miss Mercer’s road is not the broad and _ flowery way, but though she is dealing ■ with things transcendental, it it not the doctrine of tho Puritan that she preaches, bu a wider vision, in which she sees mankind marching to a happy fate. NOTES A copy of the first edition of Walt Whitman’s ‘ Leaves of Grass,’ printed in 1855, has been sold in London for £515 to Mr Gabriel Wells, the American collector. At the same sale a first edition of Charlotte Bronte’s ‘ Jane Eyre ’ fetched £420. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has resigned from the Society for Psychical Research, of which he has been a member for thirty-six years, since he finds himself out of sympathy with its policy and achievements. Tho Keats House Museum, Keats Grove, Hampstead, has been offered, for £l2O, the desk and inkstand used by the poet when he lived at Wentworth House (now Keats House). Miss Helen J. Niles, the owner of the articles, is a descendant of George Keats, the poet’s brother, by whom they were taken to America. Mr W. T Tilden, the famous lawn, tennis player, has written a novel,' which will appear shortly under the title of 'Glory’s Net.’ Last year Mr Tilden published an autobiography which ho called ‘ Me—the Handicap.’ Miss Victoria Sackville-West, whoso new novel, ‘The Edwardians,’ is announced, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 with hSr poem, ‘The Land.’ Miss Sackville-West is a niece of the present Lord Sackville, and a cousin of Mr Edward Sackville-West, the poet and novelist. In 1913 she married Mr Harold Nicolson, the biographer of Tennyson and Byron. In New York a club called tho Kingsley Club has been formed by stammerers who wish to help themselves by making speeches in each other’s company. Charles Kingsley, tho novelist, after whom the club is named, .was afflicted with a stammer. There is a similar club in Philadelphia.

Tho literature about Rasputin is fairly considerable, and most of it has been written by people who loathed him and his work. Their view of this strange Siberian tramp may be qualified in a volume ‘Rasputin: The Almighty Peasant,’ which Jarrold’s have published. The reason for saying so is that it is by a man who at one time was his adviser and secretary, M. Aron Simanowitsch. He had, perhaps, more opportunity than anyone else of studying the dark monk’s personality and mentality, and he endeavours to present a fair, though colourful, picture of him.

The following list' of novels most in demand in the public libraries of the United States is published in the New York Bookman’ for March:—‘All Quiet On the Western, Front’ (Erich Maria Remarque), ‘ Whiteoaks of Jalna’ (Mazo de la Roche), ‘Roper’s Row’ (Warwick Deeping), ‘A Farewell to Arms’ (Ernest Hemingway), ‘They Steeped to Folly’ (Ellen Glasgow), ‘Hudson River Bracketed’ (Edith Wharton), ‘TheGalaxy’ (Susan Ertz), ‘Hans Frost’ (Hugh Walpole), ‘Red Silence’ (Kathleen Norris), ‘Burning Beauty’ (Temple Bailey), 1 Scarlet Sister Mary ’ (Julia Peterkin), ‘ Ultima Thule ’ (Henry Handel Richardson). Messrs Hodder and Stoughton have no fewer than eight omnibus books in preparation, or just published. The four novels by Mr John Buchan in which the central character is Dick Hannay aro to be published in one volume of 1,000 pages, and the first four of the famous ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ series, also in one volume, are among those likely to be most popular.

By his last wish, Thomas Hardy precludes the possibility of his cottage birthplace at Higher Bockhampton, Dorsetshire—tho Tolpuddle of his stories—ever becoming a national memorial. At the author’s request tho owner of the cottage, Mr Cecil Hanbury, M.P. for North Dorset, pledged himself to lot the cottage to the farm labourers for whom it was originally intended. This wish was revealed when an attempt was made recently to buy the cottage for the nation. A working man from Dorchester, three miles away, has moved into tho cottage, where he will live, as Hardy’s parents did, ninety years ago. All that Mr Hanbury feels he can do in view of his promise is to put up a simple tablet on the wall, saying: “Thomas Hardy Lived Here.”

Mr G. P. do Montalk writes from London: It was with some amusement that I read the cables in the New Zealand papers alleging that 1 told a literary audience m London that New Zealand has produced poetry greater than Shakespeare over thought of. 1 take it you will acoora mo tho justice of being allowed to deny this singular story Ido indeed think that New Zealand has poets who as a group are greater than any other group in the world of the living, noi would 1 hesitate to compare them with any dead poet—other than “ Shakespeare.” May I say in passing that the falsity of this odd report is made clear by tho fact that as those wno know mo will bear witness 1 always speak of tho Shakespeare poetry by the name of its real author, the Viscount St Alban (nsu ally known as Lord Bacon) f That great man, son of an immortal but not virgin Queen I worship as a god.

Mrs T F. W. Hickey, tho author of •The Corpse in' the Church,’ is a daughter of Canon J. O. Hannay, who lias written many popular novels under the pen-name of “ George A. Birmingham.” Canon Hannay, too, has just published a new book called Wild Justice.’

Messrs Methuen and Co. are to publish shortly ‘ Mary Gladstone (Mrs Drew), Tier Diaries and Letters, edited by Lucy Masterman This book contains extracts from the diaries and letters of Mrs Drew, daughter of Mr Gladstone, and covers tho period or her father’s four premierships. Written with characteristic freshness and vivacity, it is said the diaries give graphic and intimate pen petures, accompanied by a wealth of anecdote, of the most famous men aßd women ol tho time. Across the pages move the figures of Gladstone, Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin Burne-Jones, Pope Ims IN.. Beaconsfield, Lord Balfour, Lady Oxford. Queen Victoria, King Edward VIE, Lord Rosebery, Queen Alexandra, George Eliot, John Bright, Low Acton, Joachim, Ellen 'lcrpG ami others distinguished in art, literature, and politics.