A MIRROR OF ENGLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20112, 24 November 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

A MIRROR OF ENGLAND.

HAWTHORNE'S MEMORIES. " I liko a man that is a man" says Harry Laudor iri 0110 of his great and simple songs. Most readers of remini :»ccnecs will agree with him. Wo all like to read amusing and intimato anecdotes of celebrities, but the savour of enjoyment is heightened if the teller himself is something cf a man and no mere anecdotal noncnity. Juliar. Ilawthorno, author of " Shapes That Pass," fulfils this condition. Handi capped, as every famous man's son must be, by the weight of his father's genius, ho is not beaten by it, but emerges as a striking personality with a fearlessly individual attitude toward men and things. Ho was taken to England as a child by Ins father, who was for some time American Consul in Liverpool, and ho understands England and the English as few foreigners can hopo to understand them. His lament over tho London bus is characteristic. "It is a compendium of tho city that is the greatest as well as tho biggest in the world. In that human ocean through which it ploughs it has become encrusted with names thicker than barnacles on a ship's bottom and dearer than jewels. Why didn't some American plutocrat buy ono and mount it in his library among his less worthy bibelots? And now, I am told, they are gone, with tho cabs and the hansoms with retired Derby winners between tho shafts, and we aro in tho age of mechanism without souls. London itself is vanishing under tho blight of improvement." The Victorian Days. Amid the literary and artistic world of Victorian days Ilawthorno met everyone svortb knowing and they live in his nages. Anthony Trollopo stands before us "in his successful, glowing, gusty, gesticulating old ago most likeable, lie was sincere and hearty and . . a'raid oi no ono but God and Mudie." Tho portrait of Mrs. Browning is unconventional and nnforget table: "a tiny ady in black, fino as an insect, immense eyes burning through thick black curls: flaming with moral convictions, vibrating with ideals: nervously smiling through a mouth so large that no portrait painter had dared to bo truthful about it: tiny hands that gripped like humming-bird claws." Even loss prepossessing is the description ot Wilkio Collins. "He was soft, plump and pale, suffered from various ailments, his liver was'wrong, his heart weak, his lungs faint, his stomach ■incompetent, . . He had a big head, a dingy complexion, was somewhat bald and his full beard was of a light brown colour." Dealing with publishers, ho has a good story ol the powerful brothers " Ono of tho great Longmans' privately owned authors gave a humble little reception and, greatly daring, invited tho brothers. They camo, but stood austerely apart, and when the tea and cake were handed round one was overheard to say to tho other, with a pessimistic headshake: ' l'es, this is tho way our money

goes!' " Julian Hawthorne was in London when tho Browning cult was at its height and meeting tho poet, " whom no one would have suspected of poetry," asked him why ho rtiade his poetry so obscure. " I don't" was his reply-! "I make it easy; but it comes that way." Tennyson, lie considers, had in him the makings of a poet really great. " But when Albert the Good and Queen Victoria in his wake put their seal of approval on 'ln Memoriam' —' held them dear' is the poor Laureate's namby-pamby phrase in that connection —the valiant spirit of the bard was gone and the Arthurian idylls took its place." Appreciation ol Kipling. Coming to moro modern times, Hawthorne has some finely appreciative things to say of Kipling. Much that lie has written affects me like an organic part of England, or like geologic strata, sustaining the form of the planet—tho things ho says and tho way he says them. Tho granite truths melt and flow from his lips in music. They enter into the language, but do not become hackneyed any more than does the simple sincerity of ocean, mountain and forest.'

The greatest charm—and the rarest—in writers of reminiscences _is a lack of self-consciousness, and this charm is Julian Hawthorne's in the highest degree. In a sparkling description of George Meredith, he nimself speaks of Meredith's desire to attain " the grand old name of gentleman," arid points out that lie succeeded—" except that that foible of selfconsciousness, which gentlemen have not, haunted him and occasionally prevailed. Ho would have been happier as a beautiful and brilliant woman. . . . He played at masculinity and extolled it, but masculine men don't do that. Shapes that Pass" is tlio work of a great gentleman who lacks the Meredithian weakness.

" Shapes That Pass." by Julian Haw thorne (Murray).