NOTES

Evening Star, Issue 21636, 3 February 1934, Page 22

NOTES

Mr Siegfried Sassoon, the author and poet, is shortly to become engaged to Miss Hester Gatty, daughter of the late Sir Stephen Gatty. Mr Sassoon’s * Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man ’ won the Hawthornden Prize in 1929. It is a little strange to think of Swinburne as the admirer of Kenneth Grahame. Actually, as we are reminded by the late T. Earle'Welby in ‘ Second Impressions,’ the poet himself wrote some magnificent lines on reinembrauce of childhood. Mr Patrick Chalmers, in his book on Kenneth Grahame, describes the sensation caused at the time by Swinburne’s laudatory review of ‘ The Golden Age.’

Alive to the increasing popularity in America of reading in the bath, an enterprising American publisher lias brought out a library every one of whose volumes is waterproof-covered and jacketed. Something in this style is ‘ The Book of the Onion,’ by Ambrose Heath, which with its waterproof and washable cover prevents your tears from wetting the book while you prepare “ the immortal bulb ” according to his recipes.

One of the best short descriptions of a character in recent fiction occurs in Mr Milne’s ‘ Four Days’ Wonder,’ where Jane Latour is thus vividly touched off: “ Not only was her black hair cropped short like a boy’s, but she smoked cigarettes out of a long red holder, and knew the Sitwells. Moreover, she acted on Sundays in plays which either mean nothing at all, which was silly, or meant what you thought they did, which was hardly possible.”

Dr Edith CEnone Somerville is nothing if not versatile. As a girl she studied art in Paris in the studios of Colarossi and Delecluse, and has exhibited in London, Dublin, New York, and Boston, her work bieng mostly in oils and black and white. She was master of the West Carbery Foxhounds from 1903 to 1908, and re-establislied the Hunt in May, 1912, continuing as master until 1919. In collaboration with her cousin, “ Martin Boss ” (the lato Miss Violet Martin, of Ross, Co. Galway), she has written a number of books on Irish life that are classics. Her most recent, ‘ The Smile and the Tear,’ still described as under, the joint authorship, carries on a worthy tradition.

tl I came to the conclusion,” said Mr H. G. Wells in a recent speech discussing the relation between literature and journalism, “ that literature was copy delivered too late for use. Then I "thought it might be copy so written that you could not insert crosswords to make it into journalism. Then I thought that it might be the difference between wit and wisdom, but at length came to the conclusion • that literature was journalism without its false teeth.”

Thirty years ago (s»ys the ' Spectator ’) £1,750 was the record price for a first folio, Burns’s poems had fetched no more than £570, while ‘ Pickwick ’ in the original parts was valued at about the same figure. Now the record for the first folio has increased to £14.500, a fine copy of the Kilmarnock Burns has inspired a bid of £2,450, while the figure of £5,600 has been paid at auction for a perfect set of ‘ Pickwick ’ with all the necessary points. Book collectors, therefore, who eschew the ephemeral and devote their attention to works of lasting quality need have no qualms as to the wisdom of their investment.

The two most famous explorers who have penetrated to the secret sacred cities of the East are Sir Richard Burton and Mr Cunningham Graham. To these must now *be added the late Michael Vieuchange, a young Frenchman who, two or three years ago, set out to reach Sinara, a jealously-guarded oasis in' South Morocco, and, although ho succeeded, perished soon after. He left, however, a'diary of the greatest interest, and this has now been translated. ‘ Smara is the title, and it presents a picture not only of the perils of such an adventure, but of a fine and determined visionary. '

Mr A. A. Milne wants to write a war book. He lias written plays, novels of the lighter kind, humorous articles, and every other kind of article, several of his stories have been filmed .■ . . but ho wants to write a war book. This desire of his is more the outcome of a loathing of war (“ No first-rate mind can be a militarist,” _ says Mr Milne) than of a wish to write a best seller.

‘ The Smile and the Tear,’ a new book about Ireland, is the latest fruit of that delightful literary partnership between Dr E. CE. Somerville and the late Violet Martin of Ross, Co. Galway, who called herself “ Martin Ross.” This remarkable collaboration not only has resulted .in ■ upwards of twenty books full of humour and observation and the atmosphere of the essential Ireland, .but in its more recent activity has presented a remarkable spiritualistic problem. There was a time when'Barrie was a film producer and G. K. Chesterton, whose complete poetical works have just been published, a film actor in one of' Barrie’s productions!_ It happened during the war. Barrie got the film produced (or . produced it himself, you cannot get the truth about what actually happened from him or anybody else) and, Shaw, Chesterton, Lord Howard de Walderi, William Archer, and Granville Barker went along to act in it. None of the living actors will tell you what became of the film except that it was performed once and once only at a midnight supper party at the Savoy—but never generally released.

It is not. often that literary genius of the first order- is transmitted from father to son. The poet Coleridge’s son, Hartley Coleridge, was something, more than an ordinary versifier, and Oscar Wilde’s son is a gifted translator. J. F. W. Hannay, whose stirring tale, (Rebels’ Triumph,’ appears this month, and who has two earlier stories to his credit, is the son of Canon Hannay—otherwise “ George: A. Birmingham whose novels, iri a very different vein from those or his gifted son, have made him a favourite author in several countries.

The Keats Museum at Hampstead, near London, has just been enriched by the gift of a miniature which, was in the room in Rome where Keats died, and was frequently seen and handled by the..poet, who admired it greatly, while on his deathbed (writes 1. K. M'Colvin, borough librarian and curator, to the London ‘ Times ’). This is a picture of the father, mother, three sisters, and two brothers of the artist, Joseph Severn, who, as Dr_ George C. Williamson states in his ‘ Notes on the Severn Family,’ painted it in 1820,t0 fake with him wiien he left England, with Keats, for Naples in the September of that year. It is, therefore, one of the few links that remain connecting. us with Keats’s last journey. Apart from its “ association ” it is a fine example of the miniaturist s art, but has never been exhibited before. It has now been presented the Hampstead Corporation for the Keats Museum, through the National Art Collections Fund, by three great-grand-: children, of the artist. Mrs Mary Unwin, Mrs Winifred Brooke, and Mr Severn Storr, who have also recently given eight copies of old masters painted in Italy by Joseph Severn shortly after Keats’s death.