BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17179, 27 May 1916, Page 12

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

good list of "howlers" in book titles, but I scarcely think they could find quainter examples than the following, taken front a list compiled by a London bookstall clerk. Tho first half of the list gives the titles of tho books asked for, tho second, tho wonderful names in which they were asked for : " J'Accuse " —" Jack Hughes." "De Profundis"—" Deeper Fungus." •'•' Hunchback of Notro Damo " Hunchback of Rotterdam. " Josephus's History of the Jews' " Joe Sievers's History of the Jews. ' "Field Service Regulations " •'Field Service for Galaticus." "Marriage: Before and After " "Manners Before the Altar." "Old St Paul's"—"Horse and Pause." ~ "Lighter Days with Troddles'— " Light of Day With Troubles."

LIBER’S NOTEBOOK. SOME STKVENSOJs'IAN.A. In a recent. issue of “ Tho Soots man ” aro given some interesting par ticnlars of tho sale, in New York, ir February fast, of tho third and con eluding part of the collection of auto graph letters of Hubert Louis Steven son, which belonged to Mrs Salisbury Field, of Santa Barbara, California .vbo inherited.it on tho death of hei mother, Mrs It. L. Stevenson. Tlu grand total of tho sale was no less Mian £16,250. Many of tho letters were addressed to Stevenson’s father and mother, and some of thorn are not to bo found in the two volumes oi “ Letters to His Family and Friends,” edited by Sidney Colvin. As a staunch admirer of Trollope, especially the Barsetshiro Novels, i am specially interested in a letter written by Stevenson from Paris in February, 1878 (he was then twenty-eight, and acting as private- secretary to Fleming Jeni;in, who was a juror at the International Exhibition held at Paris in that year). Do you know who is my favourite author juat cow? How aro tho mighty fallen. Anthony Trollope, 1 batten on him; he i» nearly woarving you, and yet ho never does: or rathor he never does, until he gets near tho end, when he, begin;! to wean you from him, so that you’re as pleased to.be done with him as you thought you would bo iriry I have just finished the “Way of tho World ” (hero is only one person in , it, no, there nro three—who arc nibe.: too wild American woman, and two of the dissipating young men. .: . But what a triumph is Lady Carbary! That is real, sonnd. strong, genuine work; the man wno could do that if he had the courago might have written a fine book, ote. ■ As a matter of fact, in “ The Way of tho World ” Trollope is very far from his best. As a Scot and otic to whom the peculiar admixture of clerical and country-house society which is so cleverly described in, sav, “ Frnmley Parsonage” and “ Bnrchestor Towers,” would necessarily he uncongenial. Stevenson might net have cared for these latter stories, but to mo they are, in their own way, just as valuable memoires pour servir for the social history of Victorian England as were, say, " The Nowcomes ” and " David Copperfield.” In "The Way of the World ” Stevenson may have had the bad luck to strike " a poor Trollope.” Hut even thore lie had to admit Trollope's fine grasp of character, when he cared to trouble himself to. take real pains to clothe his puppet with the eemhlanco of reality. Three years later, in a letter from Davo3 Plata, where, having been to America in the meantime and married, Stevenson had John Addington Symonds as neighbour and friend, he mentions tho trumpery sum wliicli he received for “ Virgimbtis Puerisque,” to many j Stevenson admirers ono of the best of his books. ' “ I only got," ho writes, “ £2O for ‘ Vir. Puer. 1 I could take Paul (Kogan, Panl, the publisher), and knock his head against the wall.” But of course Stevenson had been paid, and well paid, for the essays, on their original appearance in “ Cornhill Magazine,” then edited by Thackeray’s son-in-law. Mr Leslie, afterwards Sir Leslie Stephen, and later on he received regular royalties, which must, in the aggregate, have made up a substantial amount. 1 9 Jn another letter, this time to his mother, he mentions that he is “ read- • ing ‘ Clarissa Harlowe ’ with all the pleasure in tho world. . . Jt is tho cleverest book in some-wavs that can be

imagined; and deals with' so many ab- ,. sorbing problems from different points . of view." Heroin Stevenson was in agreement with Mrjcaulay, but personally I favour Omar Fitzgerald's opinion on Richardson's novels, namely, gnat they are only readable when they . jrp most liberally condensed. Despite ' Montaigne's dictum as to tho folly of attempting to condense the content's of a good hook, Fitzgerald tried his rtand on Richardson's masterpiece. In one of his letters to his friend John Allen, he wrote. The piece of literature I really could benaHt posterity with. I do believe, is on edition Of that wonderful and aggravating " Clarissa Harlowo," and this I would effect with a pair of scissors oDly. It would not bo too long: as it is, if it were nil equally good, but pedantry comes in, and might, I think, be cleared -away, leaving the remainder one of the great original works of tho'world in this » line. Love'aco is tho Wonderful character, fo- »rt, and there is some grand tragedy in It. too. And nobody reads it I . . . As a. matter of fact, Fitzgerald com.meneed an abridgment of the novel, hut got tired of the task and gave it cp. To most people Stevenson's opinions on Scott's novels will b'o more interesting than his criticism on the chef d'eeuvre of eighteenth century sentiment.. In a letter from Hyeres, in 1884, he says, inter alia:

. Has Davie never read " Guy- Manncring," "Rob Boy" or "The Antiquary"? All of which are worth three " Waverleys." I think " KenilwoTth " better than " Waverlcy " ; "Nigel," too. and "Quentin Durward " about «« good. But it shows a true piece of, insight to prefer " Waverley," for it is differ-' Kit. «nd though not quite coherent, better worked In ports than almost any other; surely more carefully. It is undeniable that the love of the slap-dflsh and the shoddy grew •upon Scott'with' success. 'Perhaps it does o>i many of vb. . . . However, 1 hold it, in Patrick Walker's phrape, for an "old condemned damnable error!" . . . Those who

avoid for seek to avoid) Scott's facility are ant to be oontiniudlv straining and- torturing l their styls to get. in more of life. And to many the e.xtra significance does not redeem the strain.

My final quotation shall be from a letter to his father (written from Bournemouth in 188.5), in which Stevenson makes pathetic allusion to Carlyle :-

Yes. Carlyle was ashamed of hinhiolf as few men have been; and let all carpers look nt what ho dtd, He prepared all these papers for publication with his own hand; all his ■wife's, complaints, all the evidence of his own misconduct. Who else would have done so

much?. Is repontflnco, which God accepts, to have no avail with men? Nor even with

tbn dead? I have heard too much ngainsl the thrawn, discomfertablo doff. Dead as lio is, oriel we may be glad of it; but he was a botteT man than most of us. no loss p«leritly than he was a worse. To fill the world with whining # is against all my views: Ido n<n like imtn'ety. Bui—but—there are two fides to ail thinsrir, and the old scalded baby has his"', noble side.—l am, etc.. 'A TERRIBLE PORTRAIT. I have come across, in my time, many unflattering verbal portraits of the Emperor Napoleon the Third. There is one; such in one of Dickens's letters to John For3t»r, another in Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad," and a third, cruelly realistic,, in Zola's great novel of the Franco-Prussian War, " Lo Debaclo" ("The Downfall"). But surely the most merciless of all is a sketch cf Lonis Napoleon which I found in the recently published memoirs of John Hay, once private secretary to Abe Lincoln, afterwards an American attache at Paris, Vienna, and Madrid. Hay was a brilliant Writer, his "Pike County Ballads" being esteemed by many Americans as equal to Lowell's '• Biglow Papers," and he wrote a -.harming book in Spain, ' " Castilian

TREASURES OF THE SHELVES. (By "LIBER.") Cive a man a pipe he can smoke, Give a man a hook he tan read; And his home is bright with a calm. delight Though the room be poor indtti. —Jaueb Thomson

0 for o living man to lend! That will not br.bble when we bleed; O for tho silent doer of the deed!

One thnt, is happy in hi 9 height: And one that, in a nation's night, Hath solitary ceriitude of light!

OLD FAVOURITES

The no.it compiler of an anthology of book verso, verso in praise of books and reading (two excellent collections of this land of verso have already appeared in William'Roberts's ''Hook Verso" jfind Glceson White's "Book Song") should not- fail to include a poem entitled, "When My Shin Comes In," which appears in a little volume, " Some Verse," written by Mr F. -.Sedgwick, and published by the firm of Sidgwiek and Jackson, of which the author is a member. The book has not yet reached New Zealand, but a portion of the poem is quoted by Mr C. K. Shorter in a recent number of "The Sphere " :

Ono room I'll have that's full of shelves For nothing but books; and tho books themselves Shall be of the sort that a man wiil choose If ho loves that good old word, PERUSE: lhs kind of book that you open by chance To browse on the page with a leisurely glanoe, Certain of finding something new, Although you have read it ten times through. I don't mean books like " Punch " in series, Or all the volumes of 'Notes, and Queries"; But those wherein, without e'ffort,_ your eyes Fall whero the favourite passage bos, Knowing the page, and exact position— It's never tho same in another edi'ion!— " Tho Vicar of Wakefie'd " and " Evelina, . _ "Elia," "The Egoist," "Emma," " Catnona," Fuller and Malory, "Westward Ho! And the wonuorful story of J)aniel Defce, And Izeak Walton, and Gilbert White. And plavs and poetry left and right!

I wonder bow many of the good folk who gobble up novel after novel have read ten lines of the " Natural History of Selborne," or' one of Waltons " Lives," still less have even a bowing acquaintance, with the "Worthies" of quaint old Fuller, or tho Arthurian romances of Malory? The genuine booklover, as apart from the insatiate de-v-ourer of fiction, is, I fear, a fast disappearing species And yet there are still left a few of the faithful. Loafing lazily under the trees in the pretty little park at Queenstown a few months ago, I suddenly heard a voice disclaiming some 1 stately verse. Few people there are nowadays who cultivate the good old habit of reading aloud; fewer still are there who would dare to do so in a semi-public place. But thore are exceptions to every rule, and for me this particular exception was alike so surprise-laden and delightful that I let tho enthusiast finish (it was an extract from Keats's "Sleep and Poetry," tho lovely lines commencing:— " What is more gentle then ft wind in Summer." i

that were being declaimed, and forthwith affronted all convention, and introduced myself. A delightful gossip on books and men was the result. THE CLERK-SOLDIER, Mr Herbert Asquith, a son of the British Prime*Ministcr ; and before the war a practising barrister, is now at the. front. He has written a little sheaf of war poems, " The Volunteer " (Sedgwick and Jackson, Is). Here is an extract from the title poom:— Here lies a. clerk who half his life had epent Tciling at ledgers in a city grey; Thirking that so his days would drift away With no lanco broken in lifo's tournament; Yat ever 'twist the books and his bright eyes, Tho gloaming oatfles of tho legions came', And horsemen, charging under phantom skios, Went thundering past beneath the oriftamme. And now those wniting dreams are satisfied; From twilight into spacious dawn.he went; His lanco is broken; hut ho lies content With that high hour, in which he lived and

died. ! And falling thus hr< wants no recompense, Who found his battle in the last resort; Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence, Who goo?) to join the men of Agincourt. RICHARD DEHAN. Richard Dehan, who has never repeated her one big success, " The Dop Doctor." has another book of short stories out with Heinemann's. Some of the stories have a military flavour. It Miss Graves—l beg pardon, "Richard Dehan," would only study the present war on the western front as closely as she must have studied, from documents, the Crimean war, for her "Between Two Thieves," or the Franco-Prussian war, for "Tho Men of Iron," she ought to give us a really great war novel when the war is over. But, after all, what fiction can eqnal the reality? .The plain, unvarnished stories told by the soldiers are in themselves more really romantic than tho most cunningly contrived war novel could ever be. " ' SOME "HOWLERS." Our local librarians and booksellers' assistants could, I expect, make up a

Days," which some of my readers may remember: Here is his portrait of Louis Napoleon:— Short and stocky, he moves with a queer, sidelong gait, like n gouty crab; a man bo wocdteji-loolcinj that you would expect Li« voice to coine'rasping out like a watchman's rattle. A complexion like crude tallow — marked (or Death, whenever Death wants him—to be taken sometime in half on hour, or left,, neglected by tho Skeleton Kins for ycara, perhaps it was properly i.-odd!cd. The moustache and imperial which the world knows, but ragjed and bristly, concealing the mouth' ontircly, is moving n little iier-1 vously as tho lips twitch. Kyes sleepily j wr.lchfu!—furtive—stealthy, rather ignoble; I like servants looking cut of dirty windows and* saying " nobody nt homo." and lying as , tJjav My it. And w'ithol a, wonderful phlegm. H» stands there as still and impressive ns if carved in oak for a Ellin's figure-liend. He looks not unlike one of thoso rndo inartistic j 'statues. His legs'are too short his hndy too long. He never looks we'l but on a. thron© or j on a horse, as kings ought. I It's quite Carlyloan. is it not, in its unsparing realism? What a pity Hay did not livo to give us a similarly telling sketch of n far worse man than Louis Napoleon—the Kaiser! A VOICE FROM THE DEAD. No sentence is, I beliove, more common on the tongues of people in the Old Country than, "Oh, why haven't; wo got a man to lead us just j Tho cry may connote a popular dissatisfaction with both statesmen and generals, but in this I will not go. But that the cry is hsard is well known to all in New Zealand who have friends j in tho Motherland. It is a sentiment which, so it has been pointed outby ft. correspondent of "The Times"; Literary Supplement, was voiced by % ; well-known British poet whose death j , was recently reported, the late Stephen j • Phillips, who. so "The Times" correspondent reminds us, wrote the fol- j < lowing stirring lines : u

Sirs, not with battle ill begun Wo charge you, not with fields nnwea • Nor hsad.ong deaths against tho darkened gun;

But with a lightness worse than dread; That you but laughed, who ehmi'.d hsw led, Ar;d tripped ] ' ke danceis amid all our dead.

I JULIA FRANKAU'S LAST BOOK. , Julia Frankau ("Frank Danby ") 11 left a posthumous novel, " Twilight.'' -j It was fitly named, seeing the, eircum- ' stances under which it was written. ; 'lhe author had been suffering for > many months from an illness which I necessitated a morphia treatment. ' Writing to her New York publisher, '[Mrs Frankau said: "I knew my De I Quincey pretty well, and perhaps this : gavo me the idea of writing my dreams. 'i 'Twilight' was written between eleven and one at night, after the second and before the third half-grain j injection of morphia. Perhaps it is ' morbid; perhaps, being a genuine porj sonal experience, it is only interesting. All my life' has been happy, successful ; tho end has come hard and unexpected. Night and day J. wish it wore over, but if lags." The letter ends by a statement that " Twilight" is the author's " swan song," and with a pathetic "good-bye to my dear American pnblic." • The late Mrs Frankau's three sons arc all at the front. STRAY LEAVES. I Ethel Dell, whose novels are, I believe, immensely popular with. lady readers, is gently chaffed, so I notice, by " A Man of Kent" in " The British Weekly." The critic quotes the concluding sentences of Miss Dell's new story, "The Bars of Iron." which read: " Ten minutes later Grncie stood in the great hall with the red glow of tho fire spreading all about her, her bright eyes surveying the master of the house, who lay back in a low, easy chair with his wife kneeling beside him, and Caesar, the Dalmation. curled up with much complacence at his feet. ' How very comfy you look!' she remarked. 'We are comfy,' said Piers, with a smile." " Matters might.not rest there in real life," adds the critic, "but this is the kind of conclusion which the majority of novel readers will eternally prefer."

How history »nd the. German nature j repeat themselves. In Mrs Wragge's interesting little collection of " Letters in War Time" (Oxford Press, Is 6d) I there is a letter written in 1802, from | Sir Charles Napier, in which, as chance J -would have it, he quotes the following saying of Frederick the Groat, which constitutes a timely reminder that tho absence of morality in Prussian statecraft which has now set the world ablaae is no plant of recent growth. "Give me the money to make war," said the great exemplar of German diplomacy, " and I will buy a pretext for half a I crown." . , I "If Youth but Know " has already, I believe, been used for. the title of ! a novel. Now, Mr Bernard Capes takes,what follows, "If Age Could," for a story of his which Duckworths are publishing. Mrs Maud Diver, the author of "Captain Dosmond, V.C.,'' and other popular novels describing Anglo-Indian and military life, has written a new Indian romance, "Desmond's Daughter," in which Captain Desmond Teappears," though in a subsidiary role. Hodder and .S'toughton announce a new storv by that most industrious novelist, Mr E. F. Benson. The storv deals with the public school and schoolboy of to-day, and is entitled "David Blaizo."

Hilaire Belloc’s - new historical work, I “ The Last Days of the French Monarchy,” was about to be published when the last mail left London. Another well-known novelist, very popular with New Zealand readers, who has recently joined the great majority, is Mr Justin Miles Forman. Several of his novels first appeared in serial form in the columns of " The Windsor Magazine,” which lias always been famous for the excellence of its fiction. Forman lived much in Paris, but a few years ago visited Samoa, and Fiji, and spent a few weeks in Now Zealand. Yet another writer, this timo a litterateur of no small standing, who lias 1 recently passed away is Dr Stopford Brooke, the famous preacher and literary critic. There are many of my readers, I dnresay, who can remember the appearance of Stopford Brooke’s admirable little book, “A Primer of English Literatnre,” published, if I remember rightly, in the earlier ’eighties, as the opening volume in, ” Macmillan’s Literature Primers,” a pioneer shilling series, which justly attained great popularity Brooke was a frequent lecturer on the poetry of Tennyson and Browiiing. ‘I am glad to notice that a free translation of some of the best songs of Theodore Botrel, the Breton poet, who has the distinction of being the officially recognised “ Cbansonnier de l’armee Franoaise,” has been made by Miss Winifred Bvers. To all who can read French I warmly commend Botrel’s last published volume, "Chants du Soldat.” There are several good Australian yarns in Lndv Poore’s “Recollections of an Admiral’s Wife,” recently published by Smith, Elders. Some may be old, but they werp well worth retelling. Hero is one of Sir Georgo Reid. "On one occasion his audience

booed and hissed so vigorously tho very moment, he began to speak that ho was some time before lie could get a hearing. Then ho wailed in his curiously high nasal tones: 'I don't, see what I have done to deserve this treatment. I only addressed you as “ Gentlemen.” ’ ” Another Reid story relates his answer to a woman in his , midienco wlip, being, vorv angry at something lie bad said, shouted: “If * you wore mv husband, I’d' give you • poison. “Madam,” 1 retorted the l vver-resourceful Reid. “if you were F my wife I’d take it.” I Again from Lady Poore’s book. A i Sydney doctor, Dr Seott-Skorving, told y bor of a Scottish immigrant maid who t had been remonstrated with by her mis- r tress for having so many followers: “ Week mum,” she protested, “a’ buddy hes their hobbies; mine’s men.” ( Added to my list of curious novel t titles, “ The Rivet in Grandfather’s y Neck.” A jocular London journal + suggests that a title much more np- i propriate to the moment would be, £ “ The Income Tax on Father’s * Shoulders.” 11