BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 20 February 1926, Page 11

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

As one calls the roll of literary achievements down the line oi the centuries,, the ’2(s’s are conspicuous for the modesty of their claims upon our notice. Almost no great writers appear to have desired to be born or to die in this year, and they seem equally to have avoided it as a good date for the publication of any outstanding work. Yet 1926 will witness “celebrations.” of no slight importance. Those that seem worthy of general recognition are these three: The tercentenary of the death or Bacon in 162(5. . The bicentenary of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels,” 1726. The centenary of Cooper’s ihe Last of the Mohicans,” 1826. *****

Mr. W. L. George, whose death was reported a week or two ago, was the author of “A Bed of Roses,” “Israel Kalisch,” “The Making of an Englishman.” “The Stranger’s Wedding,' “Caliban ” “The Confession of Ursula Trent,” “Eddies of the Day,” “The Story of Woman,” and other novels. He also published economic and political works He was born of British parents in Paris in 1882, and educated in Pans and Germany. Mr. George contributed to many London publications, and nad been special correspondent for various journals in. France, Belgium, and Spam. He served in the French army, and during the war was section officer in the British Ministry for Munitions. Mr. George married three times. His third wife survives him.

Mr. Charles Kingston tells in his latest work, “The Bench and the Dock,” of the tragic attempt of Edward Kean, the actor, to find an answer to this question: How does an innocent man behave when for the first time an accusation of murder is flung at him? Kean was billed to plav the part of a man wrongfully accused of murder. He decided himself to accuse an innocent man of murder. Two fellow-actors and he chose as their victim a man of sterling character known to have spent the last 30 years of his life helping others, while he lived in a garret. The accusation was made in grave tones by Kean in the presence of the two friends. Mr. Kingston writes: “The old man in the shabby suit interrupted him with a cry of horror, and raising his hands in the air dashed out of the room and down the stairs.” A shot rang out, and the philanthropist was found dead on the floor. It was revealed at the inquest that 40 years before the man had shot a man dead.

Nowadays (says an exchange), no writer, however, distinguished, thinks it beneath his dignity to attempt to win a following of readers who are only just out of the kindergarten. Nor is there any publishing firm so highbrow as to neglect the opportunity offered by the children’s shelves at the bookstored Even the Oxford University Press —what would the serious-minded dons of half a century ago have thought of it? —inserts in the “Publisher’s Circular,” without any apology, a two page advertisement of juvenile literature, and including such items as “The Big Book for Boys,” “That Provoking Puppy,” and “Tales for Teeny Wee. ’ ’

General Bramwell Booth, head of the. Salvation Army has met innumerable interesting people of high and low degree. There should be a deal of interesting reading in “Echoes Memoirs,” by the General, which Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton have, just published. In this volume he presents some delightful stories about prominent people and some illuminating side-lights on the early life of the great movement that has now its legions in no fewer than SO countries.

Lord Saye and Sele, in his ‘ ‘ Hearsay, ” a book of memories, is not backward in telling stories against himself. His opening story is the dialogue: “Your family history goes back a long way,” remarked a casual acquaintance to me. “Yes,” I replied, my bosom heaving with pride, “wo came over with the Conqueror. ’ ’ ‘ ‘ Ah! ” he said, ‘‘ we were waiting for him.” This recollection of the author of “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” is neatly given: Just three years ago I was asked to meet the Baroness Orczy for a special purpose. She had conceived of writing a book, making Broughton Castle the scene of her imagination, with a plot in which in Cromwellian days a Roundhead married a Royalist. The Baroness and her husband stayed here at my invitation to get, as she prettily put it, “local colour.” On the morning she came down in a picturesque muslin frock, and going into the garden she sat on one of our painted seats, and got the “local colour.”

Mr. Ralph Deakin is the author of ‘‘Southward Ho! AVith the Prince in Africa and South America.” He makes it clear that when among the coloured races Ihe Prince of AVales adopted their conception of his part; matched them in the splendour of his habiliments and played the chief. Most of the natives who appeared before His Royal Highness at the Great Indabas had come in the garb of war, and a sure instinct prompted him to show himself to them in his most gorgeous uniforms and as a real prince among men. With their childlike love of pageantry and pomp, they were duly impressed by the external signs of his superiority. Nevertheless, the natives made a brave display: Sobhusa . . . was attired in frockcoat and spats, whilst behind him his wives squatted on the ground. . . . For this occasion they wore rich mantles under black and orange shawls, brown necks, and their hair built up around mounds of brown clay. In front of them sat the most, powerful dowager* in the land, the “Cow Elephant,” Lornowa, who, besides being Soblmsa's mother, was also the rain-maker and mistress of the totems, carrying in her hair the red feather that denotes the rain medicine authority.

Mr. Charles Sawyer of Grafton street, London, recently offered for sale for £SOO what lie called “the most remarkable literary relie ever offered—Robinson Crusoe’s gun.” An interesting four-page leaflet issued by Mr. Sawyer mentions that Selkirk’s right name was “Seal Craig.” In Captain Cook’s “Voyages,” 1712, it is spelt “Selcrag,” and there are those who spelt it “Salcrag” and others “Solgraig. ” C.K.S., writing in the Sphere, mentions the recent purchase of a queer little book dated A.D. 1300, called “Providence Dis-

playetl; or, The Remarkable Adventures of Alexander Selkirk.” By Isaac James. Here, indeed, remarks C.K.S., among the possessions of Selkirk, is that ‘ ‘ musket or firelock, ’ ’ which seems quite worth £SOO to a rich man who loves romance. Here is a fragment of Selkirk’s narrative: Our ears were saluted by the melancholy Howlings of innumerable Seals on the Beech, who lay so thick together, that we were obliged to clear our Way of them as we went along. Isaac James quotes Entick’s “Naval History” in 1757 as saying: Mr. Selkirk, on his coming to England, supplied Daniel De Foe (who was pilloried) with his Memoirs, in order to digest them for Publication; but the honest Writer stole the Materials, which he gave to the public under the Name of “Robinson Crusoe.”

Mr. E. V. Lucas, in an article in the Sunday Times (London), describing his experiences in America, writes: The American author whose work is most eagerly acquired by collectors is, I believe, Edgar Allan Poe, but a Herman Melville cult has set in. I don’t know how Longfellow stands, but I was amused by a discovery which was made while I was there that the schooner Hersperus was never wrecked. It was, during the famous gale on 1839, as far from Norman’s Woe as Boston Harbour, where it lay in comparative safety; but being mentioned in the papers the next day in a paragraph near the account of the loss of a schooner with a woman roped to the windlass bitts, the poet got the items confused, and in his diary for December 17 has this entry: News of shipwrecks horrible off the coast. Twenty bodies washed ashore near Gloucester. One female lashed to a piece of wreck. There is a reef called Norman’s Woe, where many of these took place, among others the schooner Hesperus. I must write a ballad upon this. The skipper’s little daughter, with hair like flax seems, in real life, to have been a Mrs. Sally Hilton, aged 55 years. * * * * * In the Occasional Papers of the Pepy Club, Sir Sidney Lee has a study of Pepys and Shakespeare. In the ten years over which the “Diary” ran, Pepys witnessed no fewer than forty-one performances of his plays or pieces based upon them. But Popys, Sir Sidney remarks, lived and died in complacent unconsciousness of Shakespeare’s supreme excellence. Offered a First Folio by a bookseller, Pepys rejected it, his preference being for Fuller’s “Worthies.” Dr. Joseph Bridge, in another paper, recalls that Pepys called “Midsummer Night’s Dream” an “insipid, ridiculous play.”