PURELY PERSONAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14281, 1 August 1908, Page 13

PURELY PERSONAL

Mi- Francis Cribble, the author of " George Sand and Jlor Lovers," is en- , gaged in writing a book on "Rousseau j and the Women He Loved." It is reported that the late Mr Davki Christie Murray left sufficient material for a memoir. Ho was » many sided man, and his recollections should prove interesting. Mr Aylinev Maude lias written a. life of Tolstoy, which is to be published in August, <m the occasion of tie Count's eightieth birthday. Mr Maude is one of the greatest ' English authorities on Tolstoy and his works, and the biography will be, if not " official," at least authoritative. Mr Gilbert K. Chesterton authorises the Christian World to deny the rumour that has been freely current in. London literary circles, and has been vaguely hinted at ill the press, that he has joined the Roman Catholic Church. It is, he says, wholly untrue. The death is announced of Mr John Salkeld, the second-hand, bookseller, of Clapbain road, Loudon. He came from Northumberland, and to the last retained a characteristic burr in his talk. As a boy he peddled books from village to village, and when a young man went to Loudon and opened a little shop in Feathenstone Buildings. Thirty years ago ho settled in Clapham road. Among his clients were Lord Macaulay, Mr Georgo Meredith, Mr Swinburne, and Mr Gladstone, and he had anecdotal remuiisconces of them all. The death is announced- ; of Miss Mary Elizabeth Hawker,' who was the author, under the nom de plume of Lanoe Fal--eoner of "Mademoiselle Ixe," which appeared in 1890, " The Hotel d'Anglelerre," " Cecelia de Noel," and " Old Hampshire Vignettes." On the appearance of "Cecilia de Noel," Canon Ainger and others preached upon it, and the work has never failed of admirers. Miss Hawker wai3 the daughter of the late Major Hawker, Longparish House, Whitoelmrch, Hants, and grand-daughter of Colonel Hawker, author of the woll-known work on shooting. She • war, educated partly in France. In his series of shilling reprints of Standard Novels, Mr F. Fisher Unwin includes " Mademoiselle tee;' "The Hotel d'Angleterre," and other stories. • John Ayseough, author of "Marotz," a recently-published novel, is by birth a Yorkshire-man. Ho went to a school near Cowper's-Oluey, and later to Lichfield Grammar School, famous by reason of Johnson and David Garrick. His course at Oxford was abandoned when he espoused the Catholic faith; and be has now bwn for many years in the army, in which be holdu the'rank of Licub?uan'tcolonel.' " Marotz " was written last year - , ajtcr a long absence from this country. The author now dwells in a remote manor house near Salisbury Plain. Since finishing " Marotz," he has beeft engaged upon a still longer novel, which will probably be called "Dromina," In " Memories of Eight Parliaments," now in its second edition, Mr Henry Lucy dealt with the public career of some statesman he has personally known. He lias now completed a book of private reminiscences, the opening chapters of which appear in the July number of tire Cornhill .Magazine under the title '• Sixty Years in the Wilderness: Some Passages by the Way." The serial will run through six months. During the last 30 years Mr Lucy has been brought into intimate relations with men eminent in polities, literature, art, and the drama. His recollections of than will be supplemented by some iittorcsting correspondence. This story of his life will be published towards the end of the year by Messrs Smith, Elder, and Co. Mr Firmiii Roz contributes to the Revue Blcue a study of " Bernard Shaw," whose works are, he says, beginning to make headway in France. As a protagonist of Socialism, M. Roz se.ems to think lie may be on the winning side, for, he tells us, the extension of the franchise, the graduation of the income tux, and the creation of State monopolies all mark the inevitable tendency of modern capitalist society toward* collectivism. But, according to him, the chief note of Mr Shaw's work in bis novels and in his plays is the casting-out of all sentimentality'from the passion of love. In the experience of ordinary men, if M. Roz reads the author aright, the path of the iT.ale is sown with traps and snares, laid for him by the female of his species, who finds marriage necessary, that she may fulfil her destiny and increase, the population. Whv mail is represented in works of imagination as the pursuer rather than the pursued is that those which are successful are written for us, not by ordinary men, but by men oi genius, who are not subject totliesamo experience as their fellows. Docs it not eeein as if M. Roz had liere become the dupe of his author's love of paradox and peculiar scum of humour? Apart horn this, M. Roz's criticisms are shrewd enough. The satire of Mr Shaw is directed, as he says, not against human nature, or the habits of society in general, but against those of English society in particular. Hence they must always lose interest by translation into a _,foreign language, and the yard-long discourses of some of the characters in -I] is plays would not lie tolerated by any other than an English audience, which, to its favourites, is more tolerant than any other in the world. Hence- M. Roz docs not think that Mr Shaw's witty dialogue will compensate in France for the absence of action, plot, and movement from his plays. Yet lie thinks him one of the first figures in English literature at present. The Berkeley Syndicate, Limited, as the proprietors of Almaek's Club, London, are the defendants in an unusual action, opened before the Lord Chief Justice just before the last mail left London, by MiGilbert Frankau and his mot her," Mrs Julia Frankau (bctl-cr known a« " Frank Daubv," author of " The Heart of a Child"' ,iii(l several other successful novels). The plaintiffs are suing the syndicate and Sir Hugh Stewart, secretary, and Mrs Amy Caldwell, lion, secretary pf the club, for broach of contract in re-

speet to their expulsion (rom membership. The court was crowded with ludy members of this fashionable West End dub, many, of them in lm-ts and gowns that would have graced tha lawn at Ascot as well as they did the Jiioi'e (sombre setting of tho Lord Chief Justice's Court. Sir toward Corson, in opening, remarked that Mr_ Gilbert Frankau was a young man of 23, who had just been married, and started in life as the manager of the prosperous business of Frankau and Co., cigar importers, of Gracccliurch street, winch had been founded by his father, and left, by his father to his mother. Mrs Julia. Frankau was a lady who had not only written many novels, but had written a work oa " Eighteenth Century Prints," which was exhausted on the day of publication. He contended that the defendants, and especially Mrs Caldwell, had conceived a personal dislike towards this young man's mother, and thought themselves entitled to inflict this indignity oi the grossest possible character upon' his client. 'The case stands adjourned. The French Academician and dramatist, Ludonc Halevy, who (savs the New York JJookina.il) has just, died in Paris, niter nearly 60 years of literary activity, is best known to the. world at large as the joint author, with Mcilliac, of an amazing number of farce comedies and librettos, notably the inimitable " Grande Ditchcw der (Itrolstein " and " T,a Belle J lelene," winch Professor Brander Matthcwe has somwhere pronounced so subtly ami thoroughly Greek, that no one who is not steeped in Uelbenism can fully understand its delicate irony. Jsut Halevy liad'ajiother and only partly developed side to his creative faculty-that of the novelist. lo the American reader, it k necessary u> name only the "Abbe Constantin,'' which, with tho possible exception of Oluiet's "Maitre de Forge," lias probably enjoyed the widest" circulation of any translation from the French since the Dumas romances, in order to justify the assertion that had li« so chosen. Halevy might have gone as far in serious fiction., as he went in opera. bouff,<s like " Orpliee aiix Enfrns," or in eerious dramas like "Frou Frou." But among his oxperinients in fiction there a; one story, con-' fiderably linger than the " Abbe Constantm," and is not only a more ambitious piece work, but in some respects a more interesting document, and which, nevertheless, is almost unknown to American readers—" Criquette." Just at present, when " The Heart of a Child," by Frank Datiby, is being widely read ami discussed, it is doubly interesting to remember that exactly' a quarter of' a century ago,—for "Criquette" was published" in the summer of 1883—almost the very same problem was propounded by the \ctaan playright, and worked out to a logical conclusion, with greater fearlessness and a more intimite knowledge. Like her Engli«b sister, Sally Snapc, "Criquette" is a waif, without parents or protectors, but endowed with a natural grace of moveniemt and an imitalive cleverness that seems to predestine her for the stage. At :ui early age she is earning her living by selling hot'brioches between the acts at c'ne of the minor Paris theatres. And, one day, when a new comic opera, in which a child's part figures prominently, comes very near being held over because the child cast for the part proves inadequate, some one thinks of Criquette, and she gels her chance amd makes the success of the piece, sharing Hie honours with the lending prima donna. Throughout the early part of the story slio remains:, like Sally Snipe, untainted by her environment, protected by the clean, healthful simplicity of her childish nature. But here comes the inevitable day, when her heart awakens and when she finds herself exactly as Sally Snape herself found herself, alone in a hotel with the man she loves, because tho woman who should have protected her cruelly withholds her protection. Had Mrs Frankau had this particular scene in mind while writing " The Heart of a Child," tho resemblance could scarcely have been more striking, np_to a certain point. But, the man whom Criquette loved, had none of the innate chivalry of Lord Kidderminster, and accordingly what was the moment nf Sally Snape's triumph became in M.' Halevy's stronger and mors convincing portrait, the first stage in Criquelte's long and inevitable tragedy. Aw] what, •gives the book its peculiar vividness is that the background is obviously painted in directly from the life Halevy knew so well— tho life of vaudeville and opera boufies, under the Second Empire,