IN BOOKLAND

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 24 March 1928, Page 8

IN BOOKLAND

SewSH Stokes,- Who -will too lejnembeirtod foEr hi® Look of piquant “FerQR#p®eß” of a number of literary and other is writing U book' on the life of Isadora Duncan, the once famous dancer, who. was killed bv a miyfar-tfar iNicc lust fecptcnluc r. * Aetoording to'her husband, Mrs Anita Doqs has decided to give up writing after the publication of “But They Marry Brunettes,” her sequel to “Gen. tleraen Prefer Blondes. ’ ’ Out of these tvr'if' bonks she will have made enough ntoney on which to live comfortably for the rest of her life. . IVaneis Ever ton, tlie author oi “ l flie Dalehotise Murder,” is in private life 'an engineer, like that other famous author of crime stories, Mr Freeman Wills Croft. Mrs favourite b-galas are “Pride and Prejudice” and “Jane Eyre,”, and. though he is not at ail fond of reading, ho has a taste for detective literature. It is his opinion that most detective stories are too full of incident. Mr s Oliver Strachev (Kay .Strachey) is now preparing for publication the remarkabl e diary left to her by her grandknother, Hannah W'hatelv Smith, on which. She has-‘based her striking novel Shaken by the Wind.”- Hannah Smith was a noted Quaker preacher wild, seceding from that body, joined successively several of the curious sects which flourished in .the _ iStatcs in her time: and in the diaries slm left, a fuii ahd detailed record of the scandals and extraordinary practices she discovered, which eventually made her return, disillusioned, to her original faith.

“Since I was Twenty-five, ” toy Mr Frank Butter, contains some neat sketches of character and scene. Here arc two: —

I have a vivid memory of Lord Northcliffe coming into -our room one evening and giving the sub-editors a short address on how it behaved them to make the “Mail” a “Halfpenny ‘•Times.’ ” We were never to forget the dignity of our profession, and he ooneluded, ‘‘Each paragraph in the ‘Mail’ should be written with Addisonian pomposity, relieved by a touch of American smartness.” .:. • Sir

George Arthur, the society editor, was the joy of the composing-room. Immaculately attired in evening dress, and dangling a slip of paper from his elegant band, I can still hear him draw - ling to a convulsed compositor, “I say m y good fellow, Would it bore you to set-this up?”

There is a poignant allusion to Marie Lloyd in Mr Shaw Desmond’s “London Eights of Long Ago.” ‘The author recalls the last time that he heard Miss Lloyd sing. It was at the Palladium, and she sang her last success, “I’m one of tho ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit.” The audience frantically applauded, and Mr says:—

■“She tame back from the wings, did Marie, without her wig. an old grey woman, wiping back the frowsy, blousy hair from her poor, worn face T will always believe that, with the premonition of those about to die, the real Marie, contemptuous of convention in that dread instant deliberately showed herself to her audience as she was, knowing the , e nd of the road in sight. ’ ’ Reviewing in the “Morning -Post” Mr Ernest Weekly’s “More Words, Ancient and Modern,” Mr E. B. Osborn soys:—

In his dissertation on “Beefeater,” lie quotes from a popular newspaper the oft-confuted theory that this compound is “a corruption of the French -word buffetier, server at the buffet. ’ ’ This ingenious error dates from about the end of the Eighteenth -Century, and Elizabeth Penrose, author of Mrs Markham ’s tlistory of England, was chiefly responsible for its wide diffusion. As a matter of scientific fact, the Beefeater Urals’ an eater of beef; e.f., German braterifesser, a great beefeater. In the Sixteenth Century it had two special meanings: (1) A burly Englishman, called b.y the French mangeur dc bceuf, just as“ “frog-eater” is the English satirical term for a Frenchman; and (-2) a pampered, over-fed, menial, or, according to the old play, a “powder beef slave-” The word was a popular nickname for the Yeomen of the Guard aHd the Tower Warders, and a Seventeenth Century song contains a prayer for the restoration of their former diet.

Sir Philip G-ibbs is also among the prophets. He has written “The Day After To-morrow,” which Hutchinson publishes, and in it he says:— Women will go on “casting their clouts,” as they are already doing by some unconscious and healthy instinct of vital progress which has nothing to do with the decrees of fashion. I am firmly convinced that the skirt will be abandoned altogether, at least for all ‘forms of exercise and outdoor life, as it has already dwindled to insignificance. 'The ranks of the new armies will be filled with women as well as Men. There will be squadrons of women pilots, and armoured cars will be driven into the fighting line by those we now c'all “flappers.” Without looking far ahead as the Bay after Tomorrow one sees this claim of women to share the dangers of men .and to repudiate their old-time frailty. They are the most reckless motorists. In Europe there are m'any women aviators. Rosi'ta Forbes and L'ady Richmond Brown have gone out into the de'sei't and the wild place's of the earth. There is already no difference in courage be-, tween men and women. There will be no restaurants in the Day after Tomorrow, no public banquets with 17 courses to poison their guests, n'o butchers shops, no anxieties for the young married wife Who has been advised to “feed the brute,” no elaborate cruisine in the scientific household of the future. There will be a few bottles of vitamins A, B, C on the mantelshelf, frOm which the family and friends will help themselves —just a drop or two on a biscuit.

Tho proof sheets of the first edition of Dr. Johnson's “(Dictionary of the English Language,”- 1755, with numerous unpublished corrections and additions by the author and his amanuenses, bound in three folio volumes, were sold at 'Sotheby’s, London, for £3,250, tho purchasers being Messrs Maggs. The first bid whs £75, followed immediately by one of £175. Johnson is said to lvav e received 1,500 guin c-as (out of which he had to pay several assistants) for compiling the Work. The three volumes consist of the great or part, but not the whole, of the “Dictionary”; inserted opposite the words to which they apply are about 1,030 slips containing illustrative .passages, mostly copied by Johnson’s amanuenses, but a few wholly or partly in his own hand. An imperfect copy of the third edition, interleaved and similarly annotated, Is in the British Museum, and. Johnson's corrected Copy of th c , fourth edition, ‘formerly the property of Sir Joshua Reynolds, is in the John Ryl’ands Library at Manchester.