BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Evening Star, Issue 20996, 9 January 1932, Page 17

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

VERSES SANS PHRASE The greatest, grandest city that the ' earth has ever seen, "Ten thousand highways, byways,, and ; her hundred parks of green. ' She buys and sells in millions and her boats bart all the seas, • She bridges, dams, and builds afar with such consummate ease. 1 In blood and brains and bullion she has served the world apace, . .. Her marts, her port, her river, how. her ■{. soaring spires all grace. Happy-go-lucky Londoners, the smile’s not in the sleeve, • Your pleasures and your labours leave you little time to grive. Shade of Athens and shades of Rome, Carthage, and Constantine, •All wave thee on thy worthy way, no : fighting foul or whine. [What an epic, what an ode, when in language fit is told ' The story of this city loved, the universal fold. ■ —“ A.M.," in * Public Opinion.’SILENCE T Ah I Quiet jn the woodland! The beech trees are still. The cloud shadows wander Over the hill, . No sound from the' robin In the hawthorn alone, Last singer of autumn, The'swallows gone., Even the river, . , Shallow with mirth - And song of the pebbles, Has sunk to earth.’ Farewell to,, the reaper j i Farewell to the sun. i The tumult is over, The task is done. •—Richard Church, in ‘John o’ London’s Weekly.’ "BIBLIOPHIIY TRIUMPHANT " Milton defined a good book as 1 the ' precious life blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” T 9 which a contributor to New York ‘ Times Book Review’.adds that books have done infinitely more good than harm, and that “ those moderns ' who argue against this influence are anxious only that we should listen to their own shallow dogmatising, broadcast through the radio, which, we are told, is to he the aerial library and newspaper of the future—a [prospect dreary enough for those who Lave been' brought up in_the old familiar habit of reading.’ This American tribute to books and reading is made 1 in the course of a review of the second 1 volume of Holbrook Jackson s The Anatomy of a Bibliomania, a work de- . scribed as an “ astonishing synthetic . analysis of the influence of. books on mankind.” Though his original intention,,. it, is said, was to write only of ' .*» book madness,” he amassed material that broadened his purpose, and his comparatively narrow theme became “ part of a vision of the world, which is more and more seen to be made out of books.”' Attempting a definition of bibliomania, Mr Jackson argues that . “ book men are normal according to the extent and balance of their atfec--1 tion.” The abnormal are consumed by an acute restless / passion for boohs rather than by love of them. Bibliomania is perverted bibhophily. .Isaac dTsraeli designated those who collected an enormous heap of books without intelligent curiosity “bibliomaniacs. 'Lord Chesterfield advised his son not to acquire a passion for scarce books in ’ preference to good books. Sir Walter Scott described Don Quixote the ‘ most determined as well as the earliest J . bibliomaniac on rcord.” Mr Jackson ' contends that Scott hmself was on the edge of. bibliomania. The New York ’‘Times’ contributor suggests that the true bibliomaniac is “he who concerns himself with everything about books except' their contents ”—a suggestion which, incidentally, brings one back in a sense to reflections associated with the . « flood ” of books and the time-absorb- ; jhg task of discriminating concerning their contents. Be that as it may, there is something definitely inspiring about the conclusion reached by the subject of r the American review under the heading of ‘ Bibliophily Triumphant,’ that 1 “book love lasts throughout life; it never flags or fails, but, like beauty itself, is a joy for ever.” - POET LAUREATE'S HEW BOOK OF VERSE If Mr Masefield has not said in so many words that his master is Chaucer, nle enough have been found to say )r him ever since publication of ‘ Reynard the Fox ’ (writes Frank Kendon; m ‘John o’ Londons Weekly). ■: But there is, in ‘ Minnie Maylow s i; Story,’ as near an. admission as any poet can make; for in the third narrative, called ‘Adamas and Eva’ Mr Masefield imitates Chaucer in theme, ■■■ manner, and language. 0 sely Eva, moder of us al, • Thou wast to nice and grene, ye, God woot, , , , , The rede apple round as is a bal Goth doun the sclendre golet of thy throot; Thou ettist it when thou was tolde noot. ... Wepe, Adam, wepe, thy wyf has lost I ’'” sense, Sewith thy napron, farewel innocence, ’ WRITTEN WITH DELIGHT. This poem is, of course, done in lightness. It. parodies Chaucer’s pecuhariv ties, and that, and not what it says, is the reason for its existence. Indeed, ■ there is a light-hearted air over much of the book. Even when, as in the story of King Henry and Queen Eleanor, the matter is tragic, what Mr Masefield is . enjoying is Ins mastery of the quaint ballad manner—in a word:. Mr Masefield enjoys what he is doing, and is . never lost in what he is telling. ■ j In this, which is, I believe, charac- . ■ teristiu of him, he is, indeed, very like Chaucer. Exultation in the craftsman-

A LITERARY CORNER

ship of verse-making is his reason for writing. “Give me a good story,” he says, “ and I will tell it as it should be told ”; and it is significant that all these tales seem to have been written to provide exercise-grounds for a team of verse speakers. Not that they are any the less worthy, poetically, on that account. . Mr Masefield’s narratives have always had momentum. There was a time when he used extravagant devices in order to get force into the story. He was once so fond of contrasting passages of bland beauty with passages of brutal talk that Mr Squire made this trick the basis of a very piercing parody. But that was a long while ago. In these new narratives, the tnck is no longer crudely used. Mr Masefield has found how to make the very lines like whips, driving the excitement of the story along. Nobody can say about these poems—what is said with too much injustice about much poetry—that they are dull. They leap and race With life. They may perhaps be lacking in wit and subtlety. They may have little reference to the age of which the poet is our laureate, but they have muscle and vigour, colour and music—and these qualities are so rarely in modern poetry that we had almost fprgotten how. properly they can come in. A CHARIOT RACE. I can refer only to the account of the chariot race in ‘ The Wild Swam The noise and excitement and speed or the contest gets into the verse beyond doubt. This is far more real to read than all the films to see. So. into the roaring channel of tossing banners . , And sßouting and running men and blowing trumpets, . • . Our four swift galloping teams went i thundering on. ■ . A flame in the horses’- hearts, a flame in our hearts, , , ~ Math, Erbin, Conan to beat in three short furlongs, , , All three leading by lengths: and the Post in sight. , ~ Then the horses cried Aha, and the thousands husht. , , The blackness of watching people suddenly stilld, , The multitude made one face, one soul, wide-staring. ( Put a short quotation from a long poem cannot prove my opinion. There are in all fourteen of these narratives in the book, and, variety show's how deeply-thought the craftsmanship has been Minnie Maylow’s Storv ’ (I cannot understand the title) is a humorous retelling of a story found in ‘ The Arabian Nights. bon of Adam ’- is a delightful satire upon vanity. This shiny Lion, full of beauty of Went to the drinking-pools where the BartVSSk gazelles. Into the He V peered a long, long time at his Anfsmiled' and said: “Perhaps not beautiful, . , , But oh, how interesting and how Let'son of Adam come hero: only let him. A GHOST STORY. Two off-shoots of the Tristan legend give Mr Masefield an opportunity tor the richer and more romantically tapestried manner. Both have their roots in a universal philosophic truth. Simkin, Tomkin, and Jack is the only. poem with any direct reference to our present age, again in a gently satirical vein, but with a great and rising climax of inspiration. ‘Young John ot Chance’s Stretch ’ is a ghost story m verse . . • an d so one might go on. After all our curious, clever, original, introspective, moody,, feverish experiments—after the wines, confections, and strange meats-how nourishing and deeply satisfying to come upon this wheaten stuff. Substantial, crisp, unpretentious, wholesome, masculine but let the epithets go 1 TO GOVERN THE CHOICE OF. READING Dr Richard Roberts recently delivered a series of lectures at the Union Theological Seminary in New York on ‘ The Preacher as Man of Letters. In a chapter devoted to “ the choice or reading,’ which will also interest the layman, Dr Roberts says: “ Literature is a transcript of life; but in order to be great literature it must needs bo a •memorable transcript. If for the moment we might assume that all great literature is equally great, then the obvious procedure is to range it in the order pf its nearness to life. You will, of course, remember that I am now thinking of prose only. “ First, then, will come the literature created by the man who writes of himself, of his own life and .its circumstances. Ho may do this in a spontaneous and intimate way in letters to his friends, or he may be doing it of set purpose and with an eye on the public in an autobiography, or he may be doing it for his own private ends in a diary or book of confessions. “ Here you have life reported at first hand. I am not sure that we should not include in this company the intimate essay, which Montaigne begat and Charles Lamb superbly practised, and which has made itself very much at home in an English habit. “ Next to these comes biography, the tale of one man told by another, and as often as not as much a disclosure of the writer as of his subject. With biography should go history, which is ideally the biography of men en masse. “ Then, I think, comes the literature that deals with the world in which men live—the rich literature of adventure, of travel by land and sea, the literature of nature (such as W. H. Hudson and John Burroughs have given us), the records of exploration, mountain climbing, colonisation, ships, piracy, whaling and other fishing, these generally being not only descriptive records, but human documents of profound interest. With these would go the records of missions, such ns ’ the ‘ Jesuit Relations ’ and the ‘ Life of David Livingstone.’ “ My next choice is the literature of reflection upon life—books like Santayana’s ‘ Soliloquies in England ’ and Havelock Ellis’s ‘ The Dance of Life.’ “ And finally there is the imaginative reconstruction of life that wo call fiction.”

NEW BOOKS ? THE MAN OF SUBSTANCE ‘ ‘ The Man of Substance,’ by Arthur Hodges (Hurst and Blackett, London), ia a book of absorbing interest, very ably written. The scene is New York, ’and the period the closing years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. The central figure of the book is Vernon Blake, a millionaire, but not a man of the grasping, unscrupulous type so often associated with America’s rich men. He is a very fine character. The author introduces us to his wife, his children, other relatives, and his friends and business associates. There is a wide diversity of personality and of temperament, but each individual is presented in a most convincing way. The incidents described cover politics, finance, music, art, and the stage, and the joys, loves, struggles, and defeats of a type of people that has practically disappeared. It is a book of humour and pathos. The author presents his characters without censure or applause. He sets himself out to give a record of their lives and of their thoughts, ambitions, and desires. The long littleness of life is his theme, and he depicts it with a vivid pen. ‘MARKUS' The life and philosophy of a simpleminded, honest Norwegian fisherman provide delightful reading in ' Markus,’ a story by Gabriel Scott, and translated by Soloi and Richard Bateson. Markus is a simple soul, but at the same time a shrewd observer of the life around 1 him. He tells of ( his neighbours and their petty ambitions and quarrels, but Nature and the. sea are bis real friends. There is a fine intimacy in the description of his solitary fishing expeditions which makes this book a little gem of natural observation. ‘Markus,’ which has been translated into five other languages, is published by Messrs George Allen and Unwin Ltd. ‘THE SWEEPSTAKE MURDERS’ A new murder mystery story by Mr J. J, Connington opens in very original style at the end of a bridge party, one of the guests suggesting the formation of a small syndicate to have a flutter in a coming sweepstake. Winnings are to be pooled and divided among the members. Most of the players join, on terms proposed and accepted on the spur of the moment. A syndicate ticket wins a big prize, but before the money is collected one of the syndicate dies, appareptly as the result of foul play. Under the agreement his share has to be divided amongst the other members of the syndicate. Then, in startling fashion, several other members are killed, and suspicion naturally falls on ■ those who are certain to profit, by the deaths. Personal characteristics, possible motives, alibis, and circumstantial evidence provide the detectives with an intricate problem of clues and personalities. The guilt is eventually traced to a member of the syndicate, who had at first covered his tracks cunningly. ‘ The Sweepstake Murders ' is the title of this highly-exciting story, of which the publishers are Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, London, ‘THE SEALED ENVELOPE? A mystery story that is far above the level of the usual novel of that character is * The Sealed Envelope,’ by Mr Ben Bolt. The novel secures such a grip on the imagination of the reader that it is with great reluctance it has to be put aside or else it involves the burning of much midnight oil. The scene of the story is a remote part of England, and the principal characters are Chicago gunmen who are ip search of papers which will cause a judge of the United States courts to release a criminal who is to come before him for trial, How a young Englishman helps the judge’s daughter to circumvent the criminals makes extremely interesting reading, and the author has struck a vein which is unusual. Ward, Lock, and Co. are-the publishers. A READABLE MYSTERY ‘ The Crime of Herbert Wratislaus,’ by Michael Lewis (Herbert Jenkins) is a mystery novel that is well worth reading. The story, is well told, and many of the situations that arise are quite novel An apparently straightforward story causes the reader to jump to all sorts of conclusions except the right one, and this adds to the attractiveness of the hook. The story opens in Spain, where a young aviator on leave comes across a recluse who is living with his daughter, a young and fascinating girl. The solving of the mystery is unfolded in a way that holds the interest of the reader throughout, and ultimately, of course, everything ends as a good novel is expected to end. NOTES Zano Grey has a new book of adventures among the giant fish of the South Seas entitled ' ‘ Tales of Tahitian Waters.’ In an election speech recently Mr Baldwin said that he hoped before he died “ to make the use of inverted commas in England illegal.” Mr Francis Grierson, the novelist and journalist, does not intend to live permanently at the cottage he has bought in Wiltshire, but merely to spend ids week-ends there. Mr Gilbert Frankau has been ordered by his doctor to take a rest from writing. Consequently his new novel, which he intends to call 1 Christopher Strong,’ will not be ready until January. Mr John Drinkwater recently went to Rome to discuss with Signor Mussolini the play which the Duco has written about Napoleon. Mr Drinkwater hopes to adapt it for the English stage. A hitherto unknown drama by Bjornstjerne Bjoi'nson, the great Norwegian novelist and playwright, has been discovered among some old documents by his daughter. It will- probably be presented during the. celebrations of the centenary of his birth which will be hold in December next.

Rupert Brooke’s personal library, which was purchased last July when it came up for sale by a New York book shop, has now been sold en bloc to the Dartmouth College Library, where the collection will be preserved intact. The original manuscript of the three additional stanzas that Byron wrote to his ‘ Ode to Napoleon ’ is to be sold in London shortly. The manuscript of the first sixteen stanzas fetched £320 in 1910. The Masque Theatre of Edinburgh for the 1932 season has resolved that one of the outstanding novelties shall be a new play on Sir Walter Scott, presented by Mr Compton Mackenzie. The Scott centenary falls next year, and the play will be produced in June. It has just been revealed that the anonymous purchaser of the Burrel cob lection of Wagneriana, which was sold in England last year, was Mrs Curtis Bok, widow of the famous Philadelphia philanthropist and editor. The amount Mrs Bok paid is not stated, but the original price asked was £250,000. Miss Rosalind Wade, whose first novel, ‘Children, Be Happy!’ has just appeared, is a granddaughter of Sir Thomas Wade, at one time Ambassador in Peking. She started to write when she was seven or eight in Copenhagen, where her father was military attache. She is now twenty-one, and spends much of her time stage-manag-ing for various private theatres. The latest addition to the Keats Museum at Hampstead is a letter dedicated by Theodore Watts-Dunton, the poet and critic and friend of Rosetti and Swinburne, a-A' signed only- half an hour before his death, It was addressed to Dr Arthur Lynch and acknowledged an article on the Keats relics. The donor js Mrs Watts-Dun-ton. A novel that is not about is something new and strange. ‘ The Kingdom That Was ’ shortly to be published, is a tale of Africa us it may have been thousands of years ago. when the animals were supreme and man was subservient and despised —a little creature running and hiding. Mr John Lambourne, the author, has undertaken to give the animals themselves individualities. These he makes the characters of his story. Dr Arthur Schnitzler, the famous Austrian dramatist and novelist, who has died at Vienna, was connected with various Vienna hospitals for many years, and in spite of his literary work retained a small medical practice to the end of his life. He was born in 1862, the son of a professor of medi- 1 cine. He studied at the university, and when he was assisting his father at the Vienna Polyclinic he brought out his first book of poems and snort stories. Its success encouraged him, and soon he became known for his brilliant studies of Viennese life, gaining the title of the “ German Guy de Maupassant.” The vogue of Dickens never grows less, and printing presses, over sixty years after his death, are _ still kept busy in publishing new editions of his works, with their ever-appealing messages to humanity. Lovers of the great master will welcome the appearance or the New Library edition of Dickens, which was published by J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. at the end of October. The complete set embraces twenty-two volumes of full library size. The books, each with a frontispiece illustration, are well printed, and are strongly and attractively bound. Every work, even the longest, is complete in one volume. The set should prove one of the most popular of the cheaper editions of the great author. No more extraordinary story of charlatanism and mass credulity exists than that of the rise and fall of Sabbatai Zevi, the son of a poor Jewish poultrymonger of Smyrna, who became known as the Messiah of Ismir in the sevententh century. At that time the Jews of Central Europe, especially Poland, were suffering the extremities of oppressoin, and the appearance of a Saviour was expected in the year 1666. Sabbatai Zevi conceived himself to be this Messiah, and soon the whole Jewish world was divided between his supporters and opponents. How he failed at the supreme moment, his subsequent fate—in fact, the whole story of this gigantic fraud—is told in ‘ The Messiah of Ismir ’ by Joseph Kaston, translated by Huntly Paterson, which is published with twelve illustrations from contemporary sources.