IN BOOKLAND

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 17 December 1927, Page 18

IN BOOKLAND

According to .an exchange, it was the late Mr 1 xhvP- blind who sponsored Mr John. Masefield. The young mail, frosh to London, was introduced to the “Academy” office—Mr Hind was then editor —by iMr W. B. Yeates. Mr Hind used to draw a vivid little picture of a group of literary men, including himself, listening to Yeats reading his ocetry in his rooms at Bloomsbury. “The poet knelt on the floor by the light of one candle, guttering on the table; on. on he read, impassioned, ■oracular, fine, until dawn came, and we crept downstairs leaving Yeats, ] think, still reading.” Among the passengers who left Southampton .recently by the Canadian ’Pacific s.s. Empress of Scotland were .Mr and -Mrs Alfred Noyes, who had tost returned from a brief honeymoon in Paris. Mr Noyes was going out to Canada to gi vie a series of readings and lectures in the Dominion, under the auspices of the Overseas Education League, which aims at consolidating the reations between the Dominion and the Mother Country. Mr. Noyes’s acceptance of the invitation was inspired by a characteristic patriotism, which is in t.his case .its own reward.

.Several publishers are bringing out 1 ooks about Paris just now. “On a Paris Roundabout.” in which Mr Jan Gordon gives an intimate picture' of artist life in the. French capital, has ah ready appeared. ‘‘Twenty Years in Par’>< with a Pen,” containing the re-(olPc-lions of Somerville. Story, doyen of English journalists in Paris, i,s almost ready, while another month should see “A Book About Paris” bv George and Pearl Adam, who have lived there for fifteen years, and whose

’ oik illustrated bv H. F. Waring, is intended for a companion volume to binre and iMuirbead Bone’s “London Pearmbulator.”

One of the many interesting disclosures made by Lord Birkenhead in his series of essays, “Law Life and Letters” is his confession that he was taken entirely bv sumirse when Mr.

1 :vd George offered him the Lord Chancellorship just after the Genera] Flection in 1918. He comments on this incident in the chapter which he calls “Milestones in My Life.”

‘‘l made it quite plain (to Mr Lloyd George), almost- in a sentence, that nothing would induce me to accept the office of Attornpy-General upon this condition (without a seat in the Cabinet) And 1 added that T was in full sympathy with the Government., huttliut 1 was perfectly prepared to resume my practice at the Bar; and “hat I was sure I would be able to give, him independent support from the back benches. As quick as lightning, the Prime Minister retorted, ‘Flow <d>out Ho Woolsack?’ It is literally true at that time ,it had never even occurred to me to bring to an end my membership of the House of Commons.” In a chapter on oratory, Lord Birkenhead has this interesting reference to Beaconsfield:

“Disraeli, when his long period of prominence arrived, was a witty and sardonic speaker. His style is so modern that quotations from it would seem, except for their brilliance, transcripts from the ‘Hansard’ of to-day.

Tiier© seems to lie no end to the unearthing of literary treasures. The latest is the discovery of a collection of records in which Ben Jenson is set forth as having “made an assault with force and arms. . .against and upon a certain Gabriel Spencer. . . .at Shordiche . . . with a Rapiour 'oi

the price ©f three shillings and inflicted a mortal wound.” Jonson, it is leeorded, “pleaded his clergy and read his neck-verse,” that is to say, he claimed to be a clerk, and proved it by reading the prescribed verse irom the Bible. thereby saving his neck, He was branded on the thumb with the letter “T,” known as the Tyburn “T.” The broad facts of the incident were already well-known, though there has always been some mystery about the legal proceedings, Jonson, who was of a combative character, killed Spencer, a fellow-actor, in a duel in 1598. A charge of felony arose out of the incident, and except that Jonison escaped severe punishment, biographers have not been able to ascertain for certain what the findings of the Court were.

Mr ,J. W. Henley, brother of the poet and critic, tells in .John o’ London’s Weekly the iol.owing story os Andiew Jamg. “When the journal j.ondon, of which Mr W. E. Henley was editor, was being published, and lie was at the editorial office at (some looms in the Strand, we were sitting in the little room at the back when a rather tall, slim-built man of refined aspect came in, and after the exchange of a lew worus asked for a piece of paper. I placed him a chair and he sat down at the table and wrote some words, pausing now and then as if to think of some phrase. When he had finished he got up and handed the paper to the editor, who took it in almost at a glance and said: ‘Most excellent; thank you, greatly obliged.’ With what I thought was a most exquisite smile the stranger left, and when he had gone I said: ‘Who’s that?’ That was Andrew Lang, and he had sat down and knocked off on the piece of paper which I had handed to him a. ballade which was published that week.”

The late Mr William Le Queux qualified himself for writing sensational stories by wanderings in various countries, and by his studies of criminology, and of the secret service systems of .Continental Bowers. He also < burned to have been the first wireless experimenter to broadcast from his station at Guildford in 192(1-21, and he was a keen collector of medieval MSS. and monastic seals. A sensational story of bis in the “Petit Journal’’ attracted (lie notice of Zola, who on,oarage! him t<> become a writer, in 1891 lie joined the staff of the Globe, lnit resigned in 1893, and travelled about in Russia, the Near East, North Africa, Egypt, and the Sudan, and was a correspondent of the “Daily Mail” in the Balkan War. Everywhere Mr. Le Queux went he made iWends with the police, as well as with people of every class, thus obtaining a store of local “colour” and picturesque incident. He found it advisable to become an expert revolver shot. Of all his stories which numbered over 13). probably the most famous was “The Invasion of 1910,” in which he was assisted by Lord Roberts, and which appeared in 1906 The prophesied invasion was, of course, by Germany. As a criamino’.ogist lie was deeply interested in Landru, the French Bluebeard, and claimed to have discovered that the total number of women whom this man courted was no fewer than 380. .