BOOKS AND BOOKMEN A LITERARY CORNER

Evening Star, Issue 22631, 24 April 1937, Page 23

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN A LITERARY CORNER

VERSES SUMMER O Daphnis flute your longing, O Chios turn your cheek, The gleaners sing the Linus song, the girls play hide and seek. Beauty and Youth go naked to tempt the lusty sun, And in and out among the vines the little foxes run. Shepherd and sheepdog seek the shade, drowsily hums the bee, ’And Sappho’s topmost apple drops in transport from the tree. ..The black ewe snorts, the younglings stray to crop the upland turf, The halcyon lulls the wate to rest, the sea-birds ride the surf. Sweet, sweet the whisper of the pine, the heifer’s breath is sweet, A babbling mountain spring at noon is the sweetest of the sweet. Love leads the laughing Graces, the Graces lead the Hours, And Love’s bright skin is dappled with the pollen of the-flowers. Cicalas in the corn-shocks sing to the singing stream, Pan’s pip© is hushed, Silenus nods, the shag-haired Satyrs dream. Narcissus sighs and drop his eyes, his name is writ in water, Red poppies fall in swift surprise from dear Demeter’s daughter. 'And Ohio© flies yet faster and Daphnis makes pursuit, Only in death desire shall fail and the singing stream be mute. —George Rylands, in the 1 Spectator.’ CLOUD MOUNTAINS The sky has mountains even as the Earth, And goodlier, soaring crests of curdled snow, O’er which cerulean shadows come and go, Cast by the wind and sunshine in their mirth. There gods of old Olympus seem to grow To bodily shape by witchery of the light. And o’er the bastions of a city bright Bend thoughtful brows upon our world below. The Sky has mountains, that the eye can climb; No need to-travel seeking them afar; To all they come; unbound by space or time Their beauty dawns to bless us where we are: , Like passing thoughts they fade into the blue— An hour’s sunlight builds them up - anew. —H. R. Pyatt, in the ‘ Scotsman.’ FOR REMEMBRANCE “ There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember,” sang Ophelia. And lovers will have an opportunity of remembering forgotten boobs when the Rosemary Library, issued by the London publisher, Michael Joseph, makes its bow soon. The ‘Rosemary Library,’, which is edited by Sir John Squire, seeks to revive hooks which, produced a number of years ago, are now forgotten, hut, in the opinion of tho editor, deserve a new lease of life. First on the list will he ‘ The Speeches of Charles Dickens,’ first published in 1870 under the title ‘ Speeches, Literary and Social,’ and ‘ The New/Republic,’ by W. H Mnllock. ‘ The New Republic,’ which was first published in 1877 and was called a “ reckless piece of literary caricature,” satirises many famous contemporary characters, including Professor Huxley, Professor Tyndall. John Iluskin, Thomas Carlyle. Profes-. sor Jowett, Matthew Arnold, and ,Walter Pater. No book will appear in the ‘ Rosemary ’ series. unless it was first published, more than 30 years ago. MR H. A. VACHELL ON THE PERFECT NOVEL Mr E. M. Forster and Mr G. M. ;Young were presented recently with jthe A'. C. Benson Silver Medals of the RoVal Society-of Literature, in recognition of their services to literature. The presentation was made by Mr A. E. W. Mason, who presided at a meeting of the society in the absence of Loyd Crewe, tbe president. Mr Horace Annesley Vachell addressed the meeting on the subject of ‘Technique in Novels and Plays.’ A reader. Mr Vachell said, might expect to find in the perfect novel,' if it had ever been written, style, story, originality, imagination, credibility, characterisation, fight balance of narrative and dialogue, wit and humour, cumulative tension, and charm. Here were 10 qualities, and he suggested that it would be interesting enlightening to award marks for each, with a possible maximum total of 100.

This rough-and-ready method of criticism had the merit of constraining the reader who applied it to como to a reasonable decision about a novel; and it forced him to recognise the less Outstanding qualities in fiction which, in their_sum. might outweigh the telling of a good story. Sir Vaehell’s equivalent list of requirements for the perfect play was shorter. It ran:—Story of the play, cumulative tension, humour, credibility, .characterisation, and setting.

NEW BOOKS PIONEERS, THE RHODES BROTHERS' A VALUABLE BUCK. All New Zealanders should feel grateful to Mrs A. E. Woodhouso, granddaughter of. George Rhodes, of the Levels, South Canterbury, first for compiling the record of her family, stalwart pioneers in the development of this island, and again for publishing the record for all to read. ‘ George Rhodes of the Levels and His Brothers 1 makes a substantial volume, but it is worth its size, because it describes history in the making. The name of Rhodes was one to conjure with in the early days of the Canterbury settlement and before it. The three brothers, scarcely differentiated by most readers of our earlier history, live separately and vigorously in this nai/rativc. They came of good Yorkshire breed, and, when they thought of a career, judged it “ mbst respectable to look after stock.” William, the eldest and the first to leave home, had been at sea for 16 years and had farmed sheep in New South Wales when he_ bought land, in 1839, in partnership with others, to the amount of two and a-half million acres in Wellington, Hawke’s Bay, and Canterbury, foreseeing the value that would be given to it by settlement. Most of these purchases were disallowed by the later Land Commissioners, but enough was left to make William Rhodes, and his brothers when they joined him, highly important persons in the first years of colonisation. It was William Rhodes’s manager, William Green, who welcomed. 1 the French immigrants to Akaroa, hoisting tho British iiag and gathering his employers’ cattle beneath the flagstaff as a sign of possession. William Rhodes preferred to live in Wellington,, whore he had a store and where the first substantial wharf was built by him. It was , not till 1843 that tho Hays, the Sinclairs, and the Deans Brothers arrived in Canterbury. In that year George Rhodes came out, at the age of 27, to take charge for his brother first at Akaroa and then at Purau, opposite the future town of Lyttelton. In 1850 Robert, a younger brother,joined him at Purau, bringing mure stock, and a partnership was formed by the three brothers. In 1850 their Peninsula stations carried 6,508 sheep and 103 cattle. They supplied the meat for the Lyttelton settlers. In 1851 Robert and George took 5,000 sheep overland to South Canterbury, where they had acquired a new station at tho Levels, close to the present Timaru. They were the first sheep to reach South Canterbury. George became the manager of the station, and in 1854 took_ his newly-married wife there. The journey aver rivers and plains occupied seven days. Their home was a three-roomed dwelling on the beach—later, a sod hut.. The only other white woman in South Canterbury was nine miles away. A Maori woman was nurse "when Mrs Rhodes’s first baby was born. ' * They had great hearts in those days. A pioneer woman on Bank’s Peninsula, who had gone there delicate and who dreaded the Maoris, her only neighbour, learned to walk eight miles over the hill to sell her butter in Akaroa, returning on foot with purchases, and milking, before and after. When the first settlers arrived at Lyttelton the baby of one woman, for whom accommodation could not be found in a hurry, was born on a pouring wet day in a tent, through which the rain leaked, while Robert or George Rhodes held an umbrella over the mother. From letters and journals accounts are given of the life at Purau and the Levels, and the romantic story of Mackenzie, the Highland reiver who made off with George Rhodes’s sheep, driving them through a new pass to new country, is told in all detail. Follows the story of the foundation of Timaru. The Government planned its township at the wrong place. George Rhodes knew the site that was required, but could not convince the Government, so two townships were built, on different plans. To this day they fit badly with each other. In every way Mrs Woodhouse’s is a rich book. The record from family papers is supplemented from narratives of contemporaries, some of whom she has sought out herself, and so we get commentary, humour, comparison. The Rhodes’s were generous to those who served them and also in their public benefactions—fine types of the pioneer. The last of the brothers died in 1884. The second generation of Rhodes’s, most of whom are well known, was by that time beginning to play its part m the life of the colony. The hook is well illustrated, and is a model of that type of biography which doubles the value of history by providing its full background of character and manners. Whiteorabe and Tombs, publishers. A HOVEL OF QUALITY * Seed and Stubble,’ by Margaret Ho' on (Messrs Angus anti Robertson Ltd.) is a work of real quality, and one that indicates that this writer has the gift of characterisation to a marked degree, a vivid imagination, and the ability to say much in a few words. She has the sympathetic and understanding heart, and her figures in this story of the Australian Mallee country all live. They command respect or dislike, admiration or contempt, affection or pity, but never indifference. When the story opens harvesting is in full swing on tho farm of Jack Stewart, a giant of a man who has swept off her feet and married a refined young school teacher. With the work and the hustle of the harvesting season the farmer’s young wife, with tho premonitions of approaching motherhood, is on the verge of a nervous and physical breakdown, but there was tem-

pered steel in her spirit. She lived to bear and rear a son, and to win the respect and become tho real ruler in the home, of a husband whom she hated. But in spite of her efforts she could not dissuade her son from a desire to follow in his father’s footsteps on the farm. This is the kernel of a story in rihich is laid bare the souls of the inhabitants of a Mallee town, and throughout' the story is marked by pathos and gentle humour, and in its human appeal it should be enjoyed by all who read it. Our copy comes from tho publishers. KIPLING'S FIRST PUBLISHER DEATH OF MR E. E. MOREAU A correspondent writes, to the London ‘ Times ’; — In the death of Mr Emile Edouard Moreau tho City loses a personality well known in rubber and other circles, who was well known also in Allahabad, as the senior partner in Messrs A. H. Wheeler and Co., and formerly in Calcutta, as sC partner, with Lord Cable, in Messrs Bird and Co. Few of his many friends, however, knew that he was Kipling’s first publisher. I met Moreau first when I was Director of Eastern Propaganda, in wartime. Later, when I was staying with him at Withdean, Brighton, ho showed me a contract between himself and Kipling, dated March 7, 1889, relating to the publication of ‘ Soldiers Three/ ‘ Wee Willie Winkie,’ ‘ Under the Deodars,’ 1 The Story of the Gadsbys/ in ‘ Black and White,’ and ‘ The Phantom Rickshaw,’ and signed by Kipling in a very characteristic manner. Tho two men met first when Kipling was on the staff of the * Pioneer,* in Allahabad. Moreau had noted Kipling’s stories in the ‘ Week’s News,’ the weekly edition of the 1 Pioneer,’ and offered to publish them in book form, taking all the risk, and paying him £2OO and a royalty of £4 a thousand copies after the sale of tho first 1,500 copies, for the entire right of publication of the six books. Kipling consented, with the £2OO went on a trip round tho world via the Far East and America, and arrived in London to find himself famous. Moreau had sent a set of the six books to London and tjjey had been taken to Messrs Sampson, Low, Mansion, and Co., whose reader, Andrew Lang, at once recognised their merit. Many years later. Moreau sold to Kipling all his publication rights except those for India, whioh Messrs A. H. Wheeler , and Co. still hold. - -i THACKERAY'S LIFE More light will shortly be thrown on tho life of William Makepeace Thackeray by the publication of an authorised collection of letters made from the three to four hundred unpublished letters now in the possession of the author’s grand-daughter. In these letters Thackeray describes his lonely boyhood, his high-spirited career at Cambridge, his romantic mar-, riage to a girl of 17, his wife’s illness/ his battle against poverty, and his final literary recognition by the publication of ‘ Vanity Fair/ Through tho kindness of English and American friends, the family Fetters have been augmented, and for the first time a full account of Thackeray’s life from every angle will be made public. Thackeray, like Dickens, was a magazine editor in his time, and the ‘ Cornhill Magazine/ of which he was the first editor, still survives to uphold the freat standard of his editorship. In anuary this year—since Thackeray died in 1863—the present editor of the ‘ Cornhill/ Lord Gorell, was surprised to receive a manuscript addressed to W. M. Thackeray, Esq. At first one of those intriguing romances of a letter’lost for 70 years was imagined. But, no, the letter was posted in 1937, presumably by a beginner of the gentle art to whom Thackeray is but a literary name and® not the initiator of a great magazine tradition.

EDWARD GARNETT THE MAN AND HIS WOF.K Edward Garnett, who died in England last month, will live in memory for the great influence ho exercised on English literature and for the deep interest ho took in discovering new talent among young writers. An appreciation of his work as a publisher’s reader which was given yesterday by Mr Jonathan Cape, in an interview with a representative of the ‘ Observer,’ shows, how remarkably receptive he was to tlio work of young men until the very last. “ The first thing that occurs to me, Mr Cape said, “ is tlurt Garnett never lost any of his enthusiasm or ms industry in the search for new talent. For 16 years it , was customary for us to meet him at lunch on Wednesdays, and ho used to talk about the manuscripts he had been reading, and to give us reports about them. “ For sixteen years regularly he came to our office to go through the manuscripts that came in. He was wholeheartedly devoted to his work, not merely as a reader of manuscripts, but as general adviser on the literary policy of the house, and he identified himself with its fortunes.” MARY WEBB DISCOVERY. One of the famous manuscripts he read for the firm was Mary Webb’s ‘Precious Bane.’ It was only partly written, and he unhesitatingly advised the firm to publish it. “ In the last few years,” Mr Cape wont on to say, “ ho was particularly interested in the vital and more or less autobiographical books' of real experience; and so far as the younger imaginative writers are concerned he never lost his interest in or ceased to search for young and authentic talent. “ Whilst he held to his admiration for the Russian, classic writers—Turgenev, Chekov and Dostoievsky—it was the young and new talent he was always searching for. A small scrap of manuscript would often attract him as much as the carefully typed and fulllength novel. The inconspicuous few sheets were always very carefully scrutinised by him as possibly revealing someone who had the real root or writing in him. SOME OF THE YOUNG WRITERS. “ Among the young writers whose work ho was quick to recognise in its beginnings were H. E. Bates, Arthur Calder-Marshall, L. M. Nesbitt, Eric Linklater, Liam O’Flaherty, Ralph Bates, . Walter Greenwood, Naomi Mitchison, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and Sean O’Faolain. “ Whilst he was extraordinarily painstaking in his examination ,of manuscripts, he was very patient, and would spend a great deal of time in talking with and advising young writers who in his view, were concerned only to write with integrity. He would have nothing to say to the bright young people whom he believed were putting commercial success in front of artistic honesty. His own integrity was both uncompromising and constant.” THE SENSE OF IRONY. His attitude to his work as a publisher’s reader may be best summed up, Mr Cape added, in his own words in the first paragraph of his ‘ Friday Nights; Literary Criticisms and Appreciations ’: —“ The work of a publisher’s reader cultivates the sense of ir0ny...... He sees so many writers start, so many men of promise never arrive, perhaps for lack of encouragement. He witnesses the daily triumphs of the mediocrities, hailed everywhere by the mediocre, the success of the adroit shallow talents quickly staled by the years. Ho watches the literary cliques at work, each loyally championing its members. He notes with a smile the Press men rushing to acclaim the work of a writer suddenly grown popular, whose finest effort, iO years back, was greeted with chilling or patronising nods. Ho sees also the force or fire of the finest craftsman finally prevail, and the day of other fine "talents dawning. The publishers’ reader knows what literary success signifies; he has no need to cultivate his sense of irony.” MR ARTHUR MACHEN DN HIS WRITING LIFE Mr Arthur Machen, famous sou of Monmouthshire and noted poet in prose, was honoured at Newport re. cently, when he was entertained at luncheon by friends in his > iiative Gwent on his seventy-fourth birthday. Sir Henry Mather-Jackson, Lord Lieutenant of Monmouthshire, presented Mr Machen with a cheque for 200 gs as a slight recognition of almost 60 years’ service to literature. Mr Gwyu Jones, English lecturer at South Wales University College, proposing the health of Mr Machen, spoke of him as a literary critic. Students of literature who were willing to think would be everlastingly in his _ debt. Arthur Machen was first in point of time of the writers of the present Anglo-Welsh renaissance, linked in remembrance with the name of another man of Gwent, W. H. Davies, known as the “ tramp-poet.” Mr W. J. Townsend Collins, editor of the ‘ South Wales Argus,’ spoke of Mr Machen as a working journalist on a London evening paper. “ Journalism was to Machen a great adventure,” he said, “ but when ho left newspaper work he rejoiced as a prisoner released from bondage. He climbed the hill of dreams, and has beckoned us to follow.” Mr Machen, in reply, said that he began to write in 1880, and with brief intervals had been writing ever since. Last year he Svrote and published a volume of short stories, and he might repeat the performance this year. It was certainly not praise that was the incentive for him to continue writing. Some time ago he compiled a “ fat little book,” containing bad reviews of bis works, and he called, it ‘ Precious Balms.’ “ And if praise were lacking,” ho added, “ the account .is much worse when wo come to the pudding. _ I find in one of my books of reminiscences that I cast up accounts in 1922. and found that for 18 volumes written in the course of 42 years I had received the sum of £635. at the rate of £ls and some odd shillings a year. Ido not. think that this would be considered a satisfactory state of things in strict business circles. Let me speak for myself. Others and happier writers may have found the iob an easy one. I have found it beyond expression difficult. severe, abounding in disappointment and despairs. The paths that look so promising are apt to lead up to a black pit or a blank wall.” “ When time has at last performed its salutary task of destroying the accidents of temporary enthusiasms or temporary reactions Swinburne will, I believe, again take his place among the groat English poets,” says Mr Leonard Woolf.

NOTES A volume by Miss Elizabeth Belloc, a daughter of Mr rriluiio Belloc, is the latest edition to Macmillan’s shilling series of Contemporary Poets. “ The best literature of to-day is journalism,” said rho well-known novelist, Compton Mackenzie, in a speech at a dinner in London recently. Among Englishmen who have gone to engage in the war in Spain is the poet, \V. H. Auden, who is driving an ambulance for the loyalists. Mr Bernard Shaw makes it a fixed rule never to contribute to anthologies. A selection of his work will appear, however, in the ‘lrish Academy Book,' which Mr . James Stephens is editing for Methuen’s. The ‘ Scotsman ’ coxisiders the present output of autobiography astonishing, especially when it is remembered that the word itself was coined by Southey as late as 1807, and that relatively few of such personal records existed before that date. '

The American author, Melrich Rosenberg, spent 12 years on his biography, ‘ Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of the Troubadours and of the Courts of Love.’ Working from original sources, he had first to brush up his Latin, then learn' Provencal, and finally Norwegian, to say nothing of taking trips to England and France.

The Society of Civil Service Authors, formed in London a few months ago, already numbers as many as 70 members. The majority of- them it seems, write thrillers. Their president, Bernard Newman, explains that most of them regard their writing as an escape from routine.

“ Criticism of my work seems to run in cycles,” exclaimed Mrs Edith Wharton, American novelist, in the first interview she has ever granted. “ When a critic thinks up a good label for me, it lasts about 10 years. . . . I was

once called, you know, a ‘ revolutionary writer.’ Critics then .talked about my ‘ audacious treatment of unpleasant themes.’

At Sotheby’s recently a copy of Blake’s ‘ Songs of Innocence and Experience ’ fell to a bid of £1,400 by Dr A. S. Rosenbach (Philadelphia). This price has twice been exceeded in the auction room, a copy in 1930 making £1,900 and another copy in the following year making £1,600. This last was sold for only £2 in 1833.

Aspiring authors may welcome the news that the London ‘ Daily Mirror ’ is offering a prize of £250 in a romantic novel competition. The prize-winning novel will be published by Hoddev and Stoughton. Tho competition is open to authors all over the world, provided that the author has never had a novel published by any firm of publishers. Tho closing date is September 30, 1937.

Lecturing before the Royal Society of Literature iu London recently on the centenary of tho publication of Captain Frederick Marryat’s ‘ Mr Midshipman Easy,’ Professor Frederick S. Boas asked; “ Who will venture to predict that any novels based on the Great War will in the year 2,037 appeal as strongly to young and old as Marryat’s novels, with their background of the struggle with Napoleon, still do in 1937?” Marryat himself, apparently, would not. So far back as 1845—only eight years after the appearance of ‘ Mr Midshipman Easy ’—Marryat expressed his conviction that his novels had had thir day. Yet a representative of J. M. Dent and Sons, the publishers, said there is still a demand for his books, and a few years ago this firm found it necessary to reissue its complete edition of Marryat’s works.

London is witnessing a wholesale transfer of accumulated knowledge iu the moving from South Kensington to tho new London University building at Bloomsbury of over 300,000 volumes, composing the university library. Many of these books are priceless and irreplaceable, and expert assistance is being employed, not only in transporting the volumes, but in placing them from shelf to shelf as between South Kensington and Bloomsbury, the experts working from elaborate drawings planned on a svstem of classification and numbering. The books’ new home, the Goldsmiths’ Library, has walnut shelves and a cypress ceiling. Above the library, in the higher, reaches of the main tower of the building, will be built a ten-story bookstack, capable of holding a million volumes.

Dickens lovers will be glad to hear that that a new edition of Dickens, with illustrations reproduced from the original plates, may shortly be issued. The Nonesuch Press, the London publishers, have bought the complete set of these plates from Chapman and Hall, the original publishers of ‘ Pickwick Papers,’ and have publication in mind. The plates in question have always been a highly-valued part of Chapman and Hall’s “Dickens Inheritance,” for Dickens himself supervised the making, and in many cases suggested the composition of all illustrations which appeared in his hooks during his lifetime. It is sometimes thought that Phiz did most of the illustrations for the works of Dickens; actually, though Phiz cut many steel engravings ns illustrations for the novels, a large number of steel and wood engravings were cut by George Cruickshank. Some of the plates were made bjvGeorge Cattermole, John Leech, and six or seven other contemporary artists. SOVIET’S LOVE OF DICKENS The Soviet Press devotes much space to the commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. The extent of his popularity in Soviet Russia is mirrored in the fact that more than 1,(X)0,000 copies of his works have been published in a Russian translation by the Bolshevists in the past 19 years, as compared with 70,000 copies published in the 10 years before the revolution. “Dickens,” the ‘ Izvcstya ’ declares, “ has become one of the most beloved authors with Soviet readers, and the number of his volumes available in Soviet libraries hardly meets the demand. Last year 166,000 copies of ‘ Pickwick Papers,’ ‘ Dombey and Son,’ ‘ Hard Times,’ and ‘ Bleak House ’ were published. So eager was the public to acquire them that none were left at any of the book stores in Moscow within a week. ‘ Oliver Twist,’ ‘ Little Dorritt,* the collection of short stories, and a tbreevolnmc collection of Dickens’s works for children are on the publishers’ lists for this year.