BOOKS AND READERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 June 1921, Page 8

BOOKS AND READERS

/ COMMENTS AND CUTTINGS.

(By

“Atea.”)

Helen Mathers, the novelist, left only £BOO. She considered that she had lost £20,000 by N selling the copyright of (- “Cornin’ thro’ the Rye” for 30 guineas. n Lady Congreve strikes a nice conceit in lines, “When I am Dead,” published in n her recent book of verses: e What saints we are when we are gone ! r But what’s the use to me t Of praise written on my tomb e For other eyes to. see? e One little simple word of praise By lips we worship said Is worth a hundred epitaphs—i Dear, say it now instead. s f An English literary critic has been . taking a course of the American fiction e with which our bookshops are stocked nowadays, and his experience suggests the 3 necessity for a glossary. Wha’t, he asks, t are the meanings of “a rangy person,” . “a rube town,” “a- four-flash drummer,” 3 “a rooter,” “a josher,” and “the yellow rattlers” ? Count Tolstoy went barefoot and hats less the year round. He was fond of f French perfumes, and kept his linen ; scented with sachet powder. There was i always a flower on his desk as he wrote, t Although very rich, he wore the cheapest > clothes he could buy. Alexandre Dumas, ' the younger, bought a new painting every time he had a new book published. Edgar ! Allen Poe slept with his cat. He was ' inordinately proud of his feet. Disraeli wore corsets. The older he grew the greater became his desire to dress like a younger man. He had a pen stuck behind each ear when writing. Thomas Wentworth possessed a singular power over wild birds, and could easily tame them. Dickens was fond of wearing flashy jewellery. Oliver Wendell Holmes used to carry a horse chestnut in one pocket and a potato in another to ward off rheumatism. He had a great fondness for trees, and always sat under one when he. could. Hawthorne always washed hi= hands before reading a letter from his wife. He delighted in poring over old advertisements in the newspaper files. What docs the plain, everyday person want in his books? asks the “New York Post.” He wants “good Englislt,” not shimmering experiments with rare wo’rus; nor daring combinations of clauses that explode into dashes and dots. Not long words solemnly arranged—he has long since outgrown respect for that kind of pedantry. Not, by any means, halting, imperfect sentences, with bad grammar in them, nor sloppy writing That means two things at once. These last are precisely what he does not want. He desires good English, and he does not have to be a sty'pt in order to know when he gets it. He also wants life as it is, or life as he would like to have it. ‘‘lf I were an advertisement clerk in the office of a London publisher, I should study some of the ‘book announcements’ that appear in the American papers, writes a London literary critic. “Consider the originality of one picked out almost at a hazard. ‘A man,’ it opens, ‘can do without books, as he can without sunshine or music or beauty • but is he the man he might be?’ There is a thought there, and when it has arrested you you find yourself confronted with a erv of a different sort. ‘lf.’ it goes, ‘the lady in the lavender limousine, caught in the traffic,. jamb at Fifth-avenue, and 451 u-street at 12.01. of last Thursday—the one in the sables with the toy pom at her breast--will send us her address we will mail her particulars’—-of a ceitain novel. How would that do here?” I hacker,‘fx - s ideal was the gentleman, writes Sydney Dark, in John O'London, in a clever character sketch of Becky Sharp. 'I iia kei’iiy invites our sympathy and affection for Colonel Newcombe, nut because he was wise, or clever, or witty, but just because he was an upright and kindly gentleman. He is scornful of Becky because she was an adventuress, a woman to whom no gentleman would lose his heart. It was characteristic of him to make Amelia Sedley, one of the dullest bores in fiction, full of kindheartedness, ano capable of self sacrifice, while Becky, who is amusing, clever, fascinating, is described as utterly heartless, caring nothing either for her husband or her child. This is, of course, the genteel point of view. It is also quite untrue to life. A marked feature of the publishing of levels in England in the past few months s a large proportion of American novels.

3 Many novels which have been popular in . -America for some time have just been , brought out in English editions. Amongst , them one finds quite a number of “cow- . noy" stories, and others of a similar kind. . Apparently the English novel-reading pubac is wearying of introspective stories and the so-called “society novel,” and is , nnuing Western stories more invigorat- . in o . r “Poems,” by Eileen Duggan, is the first collected work of a young New Zea- . land girl, whose ’finest sympathies, anil ’ highest poetic powers have been called into piay by her native land, and also ■ the land of her forefathers. She has true New Zealand notes, and gives promise of ( equalling the highest standards reached by t Dominion writers. “The Eamine Wind” begins with a strikingly original descrip; , tion of that hopelessly hackneyed poetical event, a sunset: — < “'1 he land lay alone in the twilight t And over each hill and slim spire j Fell the quiet ash and the darkness Froip the sun’s long embers of fire.” In her pages readers are reminded of Francis Thompson and Yeats at times. Ihe following, for instance, cannot fail to . rcgall “Ex Ore Infantium” :— j “Conficuiigly have torn A. branch of small wild stars i To fling, in filial token, t The bios’my cluster broken Across the knees of God.” 9 Some poems have a daintiness of touch • reminiscent of Alice Meynell, notably r “Sea Prayers” and “The Wide of Heart” ] and throughout the collection one marvels - at the felicity of the titles, and the al- ' most invariably powerful endings. L- *’ Without, question, the death most [ lamented in Germany within the last ’ month is that of John Habberton. The e “Berliner Tageblatt” says, for example, 10 of “Helen’s Babies”: “This full of unspoiled and loving insight into and . feeling for the child’s soul, has carried y *- s ’

an international message.” The work has been included in the famous Reclam Library, where it appeared under the German title of “Helenes Kinderelien.” Habberton’s “Caleb Wright,” on the con trary, never became popular with the Germans. Mr Frederic Harrison has entered upon his 90th year. When interviewed by a representative of “The Times” he had just been reading Sophocles again. “I am not a reading man,” he said, “not a scholar, but I do enjoy the old people. I’ve Trollope at my bedside now; been going through the Barsetshire series. Twenty years ago 1 wrote an introduction to them, and don't find a word 1 could change in it. On the whole, I think ‘Dr Thorne’ is the best, though there are fine things in ‘The Last Chronicle of Barset.’ I was a friend of George Eliot ; read her books when they first came out, and I’ve read many of them since, but find they are rather—rather solemn and elaborate. Now Trollope—l heard him telling George Eliot herself; ‘I sit down and write my 10 or 15 pages every morning’—and you feel that in reading him, his ease and flow. My delight is the same in Fielding Scott, and Jane Austen.”