LONDON LITERARY GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1213, 31 May 1895, Page 15

LONDON LITERARY GOSSIP.

From Our Own Correspondent. London, March 23. Mr Archibald Forbes' " Lord Clyde" in Macmillan's admirable " Men of Action " series, gives a vivid sketch of the long and energetic career of a truly great soldier. The Indian Mutiny scenes are particularly well done, and several stories told illustrating Colin Campbell's extraordinary popularity with rank and file. One of these seems worth retelling. The incident occurred during an inspection of the depot at Chichester. "I noticed," said Sir Colin, " that an old man, evidently an old soldierthough in plain clothes, was constantly on the ground, and apparently watching my movements. As I was leaving the barrack yard at the end of the inspection he came towards me, drew himself up, made the mil i Gary salute, and with much respect said ' Sir Colin, may I speak to you ? Look at me, sir! Do you recollect me ?' I looked at him and replied ' Yes, I do/ ' What is my name ?' he asked. I told him. ' Yes, sir; and where did you last see me?' 'ln the breach of San Sebastian,' I replied, ' badly wounded by my side/ 'Eight, sir!' answered the old soldier. ' I can tell you something more/ I added ; ' you were No. in the front rank of my company/ * Right, sir !' said the veteran. I was putting my hand into my pocket to make the old man a present when he stepped forward, laid his hand on my wrist, and said : ' No, sir, that is not what I Avant; but you will be going to Shorncliffe to inspect the dep6t there. I have a son in the Inniskillings quartered at that station, and if you will call him out and tell him that you knew his father, that is what I should wish/" And that was forty-three years after San Sebastian, in the Peninsula days. Mr Forbes adds that Sir Colin, when Commander-in-Chief in India, could recognise by name all the men of his favourite regiment who had served in the Crimea.

The copyright of the six-shilling volumes of Kipling's Indian Tales, which were originally published iri Thacker's Railway Library (and in London by Sampson Low), have now passed into the hands of Messrs Macmillan, who are reissuing them in two handsome volumes tmiform with "Life's Handicap " and " Many Inventions." Looking through these volumes for the fifth or sixth time I found they held one fast as ever. Even in " Life's Handicap," that gorgeous collection of masterpieces in which Mr Kipling's genius reached its high-water mark, there are few things stronger than " The Man Who Would Be King," "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," or " Only An Ensign."

The supremest proof of a writer's popularity lies in the fact that his books are unobtainable second-hand. In all the years I've haunted the" bookstalls and bookshops of East and West End London I have never seen abook of JBai'rie's, and only on two occasions a book of Kipling's, offered for sale at less than the ordinary discount price.

Mention of Barrie reminds me that he and his wife, after spending a quiet winter at Fowey, have gone north to Kirriemuir ("Thrums"), where they will stop for some time. In the current Woman At Home the Scotch schoolmaster who recently described a visit to Gladstone, tells how he interviewed Barrie, or rather how he didn't. I gather that marriage has not made the creator of the "Little Minister" more resigned to being " lionised," and that the dominie was hard put to it to turn "copy " out of him.

It was inevitable, that the success of "Barrabas" should lead to other literary hacks trying to turn an honest penny by improving or rather . embroidering on Scripture. "As Others Saw Him" is a retrospect written a.d. 54, by one who knew Christ. The author's idea seems to be to give us some idea of the manner in which the Jews of the period may naturally be supposed to have looked on our Saviour. Mr Gladstone, to whom "As Others Saw Him" was sent, confesses to reading it with " unexpected interest." " The book," he says, " brings into series many of the latest acts of our Saviour's earthly life." Dr Cunningham Geikie praises " the learning that shines through each page," and Mr Price Hughes finds the volume " striking and suggestive."

Miss Rosa Mackenzie Kettle, who died at her residence at Callender, N. 8., last week, belonged to the Miss Austin school of novelists and never wrote anything particularly thrilling. She had, however, a public of her own and brought out seme dozen books altogether, which I suppose paid their way. The Daily News mentions " The Magic of the Pinewoods " and " The Old Hall Amongst the Water Meadows" as her most popular tales, hut T fancy myself "The Mistress of Langdale Hall " is better known.

The "Degradation of Geoffrey Alwith " is a grim and ghastly story told with all Mr Morley Roberts's rough strength. Alwith is brilliant, successful, and engaged to a supposititiously charming girl when he gets his death-warrant. A terrible and little understood disease suddenly blights him, and though feeling well the doctors tell him in three months he will be dead. The fiancee behaves as badly as possible, shrinks from the stricken man with physical repulsion and sends him away broken-hearted. Then Alwith turns to Paris, and after wallowing for a time in dissipation takes up with a little cat who robs him. Finally he dies in the garret of a model. This girl has always loved Geoffrey secretly, and her patient attachment is the one gleam o£ decency in a hideously painful narrative. '

That Mr 11. W. Massingham would sooner or later oust Mr Fletcher from thw editorial chair of. the Chronicle has for some time been certain, but it does not reflect much credit on the perspicuity of the Messrs Lloyd that he should have succeeded thus early.. Messrs Massingham and Fletcher are - intemperance and temperance personified. 'Twas the sterling common sense of the latter's articles made the Chronicle the organ of tens of thousands of anti-extremist s.' Mr Massingham's bawling and brawling appeal to quite another order of reader.

Newspaper men could hardly believe that when the time came Mr Astor would really stop the Pall Mall Budget, but stopped it was yesterday, and some twenty men in the employ dismissed. Mr Cust, disgusted, has gone off to the East sick of millionaires and all their works, indeed of the original Astorian staff only Mr Mullin and Mr Steevens remain. [The New Budget, owned by MrJLewis Hind, late editor of the Pall Mall Budget, has now appeared. With it is incorporated Mr Harry Furniss' Lika, Jbfco.—Ed. N.Z.M.]

The best proof that we don't overestimate the terrible mischief done by sex-maniac fiction lies in the heavy sales of these morbid and disgusting books, viz • " Keynotes," 10,000; " Discords/' 6000 • "Episodes," 2000; " Great God Pan," 2000"Earl Lavender," 1000; "Gallia," 2000- " Woman Who Did," 8000. '

It is stated with some show of authority that a harmless young gentleman who had never previously exhibited any signs of eccentricity observed after reading Mr Grant Allen's latest effort in artistic fiction that if the heroine were the "Woman Who Did," the hero must have been the " Man Who D d." He was immediately confined in a strait waistcoat.

The next novel to appear in the Times weekly edition will be the " Light of Scarthey," by Mr Egerton Castfe, who besides oeing a novelist of repute is the

■finest living amateur, at all descriptions of swordsmanship. Clark Eussell thinks his novel "The •Convict rfhip/' which is now being pxiblished, may excel in thrilling interest and Tvorkmanship anything he has yet pro•duced. [The story commences publication ■in serial form in the New Zealand Mail mext week.—Ed. N.Z.M.] Mr Walter Raymond, whose sweet and "wholesome little tale " Tryphena in Love," received such a splendid notice from the Tiroes last week, first attracted attention by his " Gentleman "Opcott's Daughter " in tAo Pseudonym series. He is an elderly man, a glover in Somersetshire, and he knows his own country through and j ihfoogh.