BOOKS AND WRITERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19838, 7 January 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

BOOKS AND WRITERS.

Explorers, like other people, says the London Daily Telegraph, may live to an eld age, ones they ha?e escaped the perils of their exploration. Here, in Reminiscenses of Adventure and Ser■vico" (Scribners), is General Greely, U.S.A., retired, looking back on sixtyfive years and finding them good. f Long urged," he says, " to write the story of my life, it has finally taken form, and is finished in my eighty-third year." Warning his readers that the book has no literary display, he adds the interesting personal note: " It sets forth the varied activities of a native American, a man of the masses—non-collegiate in education, without private income, favoured by no political influence —whose ancestors for nine generations laboured yv-ith their hands in New England. » « » * •

The most notable event in General Greely's career was the Arctic expedition which he led in the years 1881 to 1884. It was no adventurous, Poleseeking voyage, but an event in scientific research, and for America it marked a forward movement toward fellowship with other countries. He recalls ihe expedition with modesty, but indeed his reminiscences are all told with simple piodesty.

Less Eminent Victorians" (Peter Davies), by E.D., is a literary joke and adjudged by the Observer one of the most successful of recent years. It is a collection of Victorian woodcuts from The Leisure Hour, The Quiver and other periodicals. These portraits of crinolined beauties and whiskered gentlemen in attitudes of rapture and abandonment have inspired R.D. to a number ot spirited limericks, and the publisher to a sedately mischievous experiment in book production. End-papers, binding, the actual paper and type are perfectly in key, so that the whole is irresistibly reminiscent of horsehair sofas, wax fruit, antimacassars and Tennyson at his parochial-pastoral worst. » • 4 • • Sir Edmund Chambers, best know for his invaluable volumes in the Mediaeval and Elizabethan stage, has now ia ."Arthur of Britain" (Sedgwick and Jackson) tackled with gusto and precision the problem of the legend before Jlalory put his seal upon it. He traces the first records of the King-hero in the early chroniclers; shows how Geoffrey of Monmouth evolved his amazing and circumstantial narrative; how with his story for warp, with threads of chivalry from Wace, the Norman trouvere, threads of magic from Layamon, the Worcestershire priest for woof, the shining fabric lay at last ready to Malory's hand.

Cloud-capp'd Towers," by Viscount Esher, and published by Murray, gives us glimpses of the almost over-described jVictorian era and a way of life already* unbelievably remote. For instance, glance at Lowther Castle only sixty years ago and watch the then Lord Lonsdale being wheeled to the head of his table, to sit there ladling soup and carving venison, with a background of golden racing cups. "The fare was.as massive as the plate. After isunset the corridors were dimly lighted by oil lamps and all that, could be seen was the glimmer of armoured figures emerging from the gloom. Passing up ithe great stairs to bed was a terrifying affair. beds were lofty, hard, and curtaimd, and so high from the ground that steps were provided in order to clamber into them. When, thirty years later, as Secretary to the Office of Works, King Edward drew my attention to the fact that not a single bathroom existed up to then within the walls of Windsor Castle, L>| was not surprised when I remembered the Lowther of my youth."

In a chapter on Hughenden Lord Esher reveals to his readers the secrets ©f Disraeli's success. So far as ' Queen [Victoria was concerned, it lay less, he thinks, in subservience to the monarch than in masculine appreciation of her sex. "He treated every woman as if she were a queen, and he treated the Queen like -a woman." Disraeli once gave Lord Eslier himself a revealing explanation of his convenient momory. I never contradict, I never deny; but I sometimes forget. On the other hand I never trouble to be avenged, but when a man injures me I put his name on a slip of paper and lock it up in a drawer. It is marvellous how men I have thus labelled have a knack of. disappearing. • * * *>■' Much modern verse makes its appeal more to the intellect than to the emotions, and this tendency is clearly discernible in " First Poems," by Eveline tspenser (Blackwell), of which a example is entitled " Perplexity " : If I follow my heart I mas - lose my head; If my head I heed Then my heart may bleed; And if I wait for a true accord Of my heart and my head I may be dead, So what shall I do? • * It is one thing to have the faculty of patient and precise observation; it is quite another to possess the literary gilt which presents the results ol this obser vation in such a form that the casual reader is beguiled by charm of style into a lively interest in the subject treated. Fortunately, from Gilbert White onward, many naturalists have possessed this gift, and none surely in fuller measure than the Frenchman, Henri I abre. So the two volumes just published by Holder and S toughton,' The Life «jE the Finder" and "The Life of the Ily, find us willing to walk into e*her parlour. The volume on the fly is further enriched with several chapters of autobiography, in which Fabre tells the story of his first bird's-nest, and his first finding of a mushroom, of his first acquaintance with Newton's Binomial Theorem and the classics; reminiscences tola witn a sentimental delicacy all his own.