LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 90

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICE. “The Revelation of Britain,” by Charles C. Reads. Australia- and New Zealand : Gordon and Gotcli. (Paper j illustrated ; Is net.) The author of this brochure, which is -especially addressed to ‘‘colonials,’ is the descendant of the famous novelist whose “Never Too Late to Mend” made England ring with its powerful exposure of and protest against wrong-doing in sheltered places. Somewhat of his ancestor’s mantle has fallen on the present writer, whose “ Revelation ” is at once an expose, a protest, and a warning. The great cities of the Homeland, their careless structure, their hideous slums, their insanitary, over-crowded dwellings, and evil conditions of all kinds form ’the theme of his deliverance. With skilful journalistic pen he shows what is—what might- have- been. Nor is he content with this, but he demonstrates how the errors of past generations and their evil legacy is being gradually and -steadily overcome with the help of modern knowledge and the fast-growing sense of the responsibility of true citizenship. And I then, when all is told, he turns upon his colonial readers, and points out the moral and adorns the tale. Cities must not be allowed to build themselves without plan and without provision for the comfort and Avell-being of their inhabitants. Private individuals must not be allowed to build when, where, and how they please, without regard to health and decency.' The City Fathers must be fathers m the true sense, not mere exploiters of ether men’s labour ; the protectors of the poor, and not livers “on” the poor. In all the great cities that he take-s for his text—Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford. Liverpool, 'Manchester, London itself,- —much has been done, much is being done, to clear the -slums and give the people decent housing, with all that that means of sunlight, pure air, water, milk. etc. But all these reformer’s are terribly handicapped by the first false- step, which allows a town and then its suburbs to grow anywhere and anyhow, without forethought. without plan, without check on the folly, ignorance, or cupidity of its land-owners. It i© an old saying “that prevention is better than cure.” This is what Mr Reade is trying to teach us. He is like a Spartan pointing to a drunken Helot, and saying, “Look there!. Ho you want to- be like that?” Wo have all heard much of th© shocking industrial conditions of the Old Country. Of these Mr Reads speaks .with force and restraint- as one who “knows” ; but though h© sometimes usese his pen to paint the beautiful -surroundings of tbs Yorkshire towns, and so- enhance the contrast with those cities themselves, he does not allow his feelings to carry him to anv exaggerated or hysterical statements; nil that he tells us is supported by dry statistics, such as; “In London, the wealthiest city in the world, one person, in every 33 is a pauper. “Twenty -persons in -every hundred "die ; in a workhouse or a workhouse infirmary.” j —“London Statistics,” published by the London County Council. And. again;—“The area of land suitable for housing —that is, excluding rivers, mountains, etc.—in England and Wales is 20 million acres. Of this “7,500,000 people occupy 19,800,000 acres, “12.000,000 people live on 152,000 acres, “13,000.000 people exist on 48,000 acres.” ... The abuses are so many and various, the efforts to cope with them so altogether inadequate—although much has been done, and more will be done in the near future—that the whole question confuses the imagination, and. as Shakespeare said, “puzzles the will.” It is probably for this reason that Mr Reade focuses our attention ■chiefly on the housing problem, which certainly lies at the’ base of all the rest. After -showing us what “not” to do. he draws a moving and -attractive picture of one of the “garden cities” which are now springing up all over the Old Country—-an “objectlesson” for the new. And- the example that he takes is Port Sunlight, “the model village’planned by Messrs Lever Bros., on the opposite side of the Mersey, a few miles from Liverpool, and all the blatant -reality of its slums.” The description of Sunlight, its decent, respectable, picturesque cottages, let at 7« to 8s a week, each with a- garden and “commanding a view of park "or garden-like plots,” with iri healthy prosperous inhabitants, reads like a fairy-tale, and a fairv-tale that one would like to -see repeated throughout the I°nr>th and breadth of Australia, and New Zealand, where a 1 ready the slum evil is beginning to he felt. Having described how new districts are being “planned” and how the old conditions are being thus ameliorated, Mr Reade sav«: “The decentralisation of the crowded areas of the modern city, the limitation of the number of houses to the acre, and the number of people that shall dwell therein, the creation of air spaces, of picturesque environment, and the inspiring of mankind to a higher plane of thought and consideration for his habitation, are all one with this remarkable movement of the twentieth century. Their essentials are crystallised into the nrinciples of the “town planning.” that make it possible for Port Sunlight to arise in beauty. Unfortunately, the opposite picture cannot always be dissociated from our colonial cities. Is it, therefore, a good or a- wise policy that they should -go on developing as they are doing without some nvgard or some appreciation) of the knowledge and the experience that lies beyond the sea in modern England today?” From the progress made in Eng--f And in this respect our author takes his 1 ieariers to the Continent of Europe, and

ebowlg what lias been done in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, etc., during late years to improve conditions and relieve congested areas. In this, as in many other respects, Germany seems to be in advance of the rest of the world. Here the municipality possesses extraordinary powers. No talk concerning the “liberty of the subject” hampers the “benevolent despotism” of German administration, and the result appears to be altogether satisfactory so far as sanitary conditions are concerned. There is even a remarkable law called the “lex Adickes ” (from its author) for “the consolidation and redistribution” of unsanitary and congested areas, by which the land may be taken from the owners, properly laid out, and returned to them again. These and other reforms are lending a, dignity to civic life in the old countries, and giving rise to higher ideals of public duty and service. The municipal authorities are beginning to see that “it is their business to promote in every practical way the welfare of / the municipality and the well-being of the burgesses.” When will Australasia recognise this truth in its entirety? “The Revelation of Britain” is freely illustrated, with excellent photos, and well secured, though only in paper cover. It should find a place in every home, as well as in every library, and should serve as a simple text-.book for every one of our rising citizens.

LITERARY NOTES. When reason is subsidiary to emotion, verse is the right means of expression, and, when emotion to reason, pros©. —Glutton. Brock. Lady Butler's reminiscences, entitled “From Sketch Book and Diary,” will be issued by Messrs A. and O'. Black. It will be a companion volume to her “Letters from the. Holy Land.” published six years ago. Lady Butler’s brush and 1 pen sketches will illustrate the volume. —■ Everybody should read. Landor: a man as hardly well educated in literature until he has absorbed at least the poems to lanthe. Landor had a noble independence in literature, which would be still nobler in the case of many men if applied’ to the whole business of life. Even politicians might study Landor with advantage sometimes.—Saturday Review. The volume of family letters which the Duke of Argyll is preparing for publication by Mr Stanley Paul will contain interesting material. For instance, letters from th© Duchess of Brunswick, the eldest sister of George. Ill; from Douglas, Duke of Hamilton, and his friend. Dr Moore, the father of Sir John Moore; Madam© de Stael, whose correspondence must have been enormous; Lord Derby, the “Rupert of debate,” and many others. There will also be a series of letters by the Duke of Argyll of 1703-06. throwing curious lights on the politics of the time. Many bocks have been written of th© Medici, as rulers in Florence, or patrons of art* or tyrants—more or less benevolent—since Roscce’s famous work “Lorenzo the Magnificent” appeared. To Colonel G. F. Young, C. 8., it has occurred that there is room for one more. In “The Medici.” published by Murray lin two volumes, he attempts what he claims has not yet been accomplished either in Italian or English. His aim was to write the history of th© Medici as a whole, writing of them as a family, instead of presenting a study of some of the more .important members of the family, as is the usual process. Mr James Milne, in his interesting literary gossip in the New York Times, says that “there is an undoubted feeling that Mr Thomas Hardy should be mad© a member of the new Order of Merit, in succession to George Meredith. He and Lord Morley, who does hold the Order of Merit, are th© most distinguished English men of letters now living. Within recent years Mr Hardy has probably refused a knighthood, but modest, retiring man as he is, he could scarcely say no to the O.M. Th© giving of it rests jealously with King Edward, but nobody is 'happier than h© in interpreting national feeling.” We have only to think of the great English writers of the last hundred years to see why there is no Academy of Letters in England. Imagine an academy consisting of Blake, Wordsworth. Coleridge, Landor, Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lamb, and 1 Hazlitt, with Southey, Gifford, Jefferies. Campbell, Rogers, Leigh Hunt, and others added to their number. In th© first place, no conceivable electoral body could have chosen them all; and, in. th© second, very few of them would have been on speaking terms with th© rest. But assume them all elected and all brought together in one room without coming to blows, and there remains the still wilder impossibility that they should ever 'do anything in common. —Times. With reference to the forthcoming celebration of the fiftieth birthday of the Cornhill, it is interesting to note that that magazine, unlike Punch, has never changed its coat; it appears to-day in a similar garb to that which cloaked its first issue. For the design of that cover we are indebted, in a way, to on© who did much for the art education of England, the Prince Consort. For it was to him that the institution of th© Art Schools at Kensington was due. and it was to the students of those schools that Thackeray, as editor, went for a design for the cover of the new magazine. to receive, in response, a drawing by Mr Godfrey Sykes that pleased him immensely. “What a fine engraving! What a beautiful drawing!” he wrote concerning it. and it is this design which has graced the outside of the Corn-hill through all these years. The Companion Bible- is announced bv Mr Henry Frowdo, the first part of which —the Pentateuch, with 52 append ices—will be ready immediately. The new edition will consist of the Authorised' Version, with the- Structures, and critical, explanatory, and suggestive notes. The special features of th© -Companion Bible are the amount of information given alongside the text, often, occupying more than half the page, the aim being to make th© Bible self-explanatory; and also its low price. So that the new work’s usefulness may be unaffected, and that it may commend itself on its merits, the edition is not associated with any man’s name. The .recent affixing of a tablet to the wall of No. 61 Greek street, Soho, to commemorate the association of the house with Thomas d© Quinoey, will recall to lovers of juiother, and a con temporary

essayist, William Hazlitt, that it is in Soho where one must look to find what is, we (Westminster Gazette) believe, the only memorial in. London to that brilliant if wayward writer, and that his tomb. Ih° memory of Hazlitt has. indeed been sadly neglected, but it is perhaps* rather in Wmterslow, in Wiltshire, than, in Bondon. that one would expect to find some commemorative record of his place of abode-.’ I'or there, in the lonely wayside inn Winterslow Hutt —on the Great Western eoa.eliroad, Hazlitt, during a considieiraltlo portion of hie life, spent several months of each year, and the to ho wrote many oi hiH essays. But one may look in vain at the inn for any recognition of the fact, and the only result of a literary pilgrimage which the present writer paid to the place a lew years batik was to learn from the innkeepei that the room wherein Hazlitt wrote was now a mere lumber-room, ana not to he seen. Globe and the men who made it, in. the Canadian Courier, the writer tells that in 1864- Mr George Brown, the proprietor, an a bio and honest Scot, was tempted with a governorship to eliminate bus opposition to .certain measures. He wrote as follows: “I would rather bo proprietor of the-Globe newspaper for a few' years than the Governor-General of Canada. i- h lO Globe had always first place .in his affections, and his connection with it was always dearer than any other honour, position, or rank. Strangely enough, the Globe brought his brilliant career to a sudden close; on the afternoon of March 25, low, an employee who had been discharged foi intemperance shot him in the thigh, and Mr Brown never recovered from the wound. The present editor-in-chief of the Toronto Globe is Mr (the Rev.) Jalnes Alexander Macdonald, a Canadian ITignlandcr with the Scotch tang in hie vojice. “That ho was born in Middlesex County in tho vino© of Ontario matters not a whit. He has the same characteristics as if he had been born in a Highland glen.” The paper, it te said, needed a man strong on the platform, and, incidentally, one who would not be looked upon askance by the Presbyterian. Liberals of the province. The experiment of having an editor who can preach sermons on Sunday, deliver a lecture for any historical, social, or political body on Monday, write an editorial on Tuesday, and discuss politics with political leaders on Wednesday has been successful. Sir Robert Anderson, in the latest instalment of his recollections in Blackwood, tells of bis meeting with Charles Reade. He went to ledg’o in bis house, which was kept by Mrs Seymour. Reade was in Oxford at the time, and the fact of finding Sir Robert in the house on bi’s return “set him fuming.” He wouldn’t have ledgers in his .house, be declared, and ordered that Sir Robert should be turned out - at once. But -Mrs Seymour knew bow to manage him, and Sir Robert was left in possession. For a time Read© ignored his lodger, but later they became very g’ood friends. Reade’s literary work was, Sir Robert Anderson remarks, a rare combination of genius and plodding. A brass scuttle which stood by the fireplace held the illustrated and other paners which reached him week by week. From these be culled anything that took his fancy, and the cuttings were thrown into a companion, scuttle, to be afterwards inserted in scrapbooks and duly indexed. Materials for his novels and plays were thus supplied 1 or suggested. The accuracy cf his descriptions of events and! places was phenomenal. Sir Robert Anderson could make “buttered eggs,” and Reade watched the operation on one occasion with great interest. Ho came home very hungry from a theatrical supper, at, which, as bo explained, there ■was a division of labour, he doing the talking and the others the eating. In his handlkerchef he had some baked potatoes purchased at a stall which stood nightly in. the street opposite' his house. But Sir Robert asked him upstairs, and disclosed to him the contents of his cupboard, which included all that was needed for an impromptu supper, not excepting eggs and! bread, a saucepan, and an Etna. The process cf making scrambled eggs excited Reade’s admiration, and from . that hour he regarded his lodger as a persona?©. The Spectator takes off the gloves in ] noticing Mr PI. G. Wells’s novel, “Ann Veronica,” which is described as “a poisonous boeik” for the following reasons: “‘Ann Veronica’ has not a coarse word in it, nor ar© the ‘suggestive’ passages open to any very severe criticism. The loathing and indignation which the book inspires in us are duo to' the effect it is likely to have in undermining that sense of continence and hself-control in the Individual which is essential to a sound and healthy state. The book is based on the negation of woman’s purity and of man’s good faith in ‘the relations cf sex. It teaches, in effect, that there- is no such thing as woman’s honour, or if there is, it is only to be a bulwark against a weak temptation. When the temptation • is strong enough, not onlv is the tempted person justified in yielding, but such yielding becomes not merely inevitable, but something to be welcomed and glorified. If an, animal yearning or lust is only sufficiently absorbing, it is to be obeyed. Self-sacrifice is a dream and' self-restraint a -delusion. Such things have no place in the muddy world of Mr Wells’s imaginings. His is a community of scuffling stoats and ferrets, unenlightened by a ray of duty or abnegation.” After noting the author’s complacent view of a woman’s voluntary fall from honour, the Spectator continues: “ At, the same time, though not in, anything approaching the same detail—lndeed, only incidentally—Mr Wells has depicted the faithlessness of a man to his marriage vows. Such faithlessness is treated as something to be just as easily and as lightly disregarded as a woman’s loss of virtue? He who passes as the hero of the book is an erotic science lecturer. When, he accepts the advances of one of the girl members of his class, he makes it, quite clear to her that he has broken his own marriage vows in circumstances of bestial depravity. He does not even plead the force of a great passion for his double adultery,, but merely opportunity. He had the chance of debauching the wife of his intimate' friend 1 and ofjpemg unfaithful to his own wife, and he points out how very natural it was of him to seize that chance.” As for the possible charge of exaggerated strictures“ We shall be told that there is a great 'deal of charm, and even of goodness, in 1 Ann Veronica,’ that to understand all is to pardon all, and that ‘ to step aside is human.’ No doubt it is. We should, tho last to condemn in harsh or

vindictive terms the Ann Veronicas of teal ]ifo. But while it is human to err and! Christljiko to pity and forgive, the, great duties and prohibitions of life remain, and! Woe. to those who cover thorn with the slimo of their faint-stented sophistries.” _ A sensation has been caused in Eiig* hind by one- particular poem in Mr Williainl Watson’s now collection. It is entitled “ The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue,’’ and is declared to be- a pitiless portrait of a very distinguished lady who was once a uiemlier of that curious club, the “Souls” (| XI which Mr A. J. Balfour belonged), and who now ranks high in the political World. They run as follows; — She is not old, she is not young. The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue; The haggard cheek, the hungering eye. The poisoned words that wildly fly, The famished face, the fevered hand--Who slights the worthiest in the land. Sneers at the just, condemns the brave, And blackens goodness in its grave. In truthful numbers he she The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue; Concerning whom, Fame hints at things Told but In shrugs and whisperings; Ambitious from her natal hour, s And scheming all her life for power; With little left of seemly pride, _ With venomed fangs she cannot hide} Who half makes love to you to-day, To-morrow gives her guest away. Burnt up within by that strange.soul She cannot slake, or yet control; Maliguant-lipp'cl, unkind, unsweet; Bast all example indiscreet; Hectic and always overstrung— The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue. To think that such as she can mar Names that among the noblest are! That hands like hers can touch the springs That move who knows what men and things ? That on her will their fates have hung, The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue. Lest there be any mistake, 'the correspondent of a New York paper drives homo the reference pretty plainly:—“To everybody .conversant with the gossip of what goes on behind the scenes in London. Ino (he writes), the picture is a speaking likeness of a woman who perhaps more than any other in England below royalty has occupied the public attention from the days before her marriage, when she was the leader in a select ootoric known as ‘The Souls,’ to these, later times, when her reported indiscretions have been near pre-, cimtating a political crisis. Whether Mr Watson’s. portrait is true to life or is only envenomed caricature is a question hotly debated. Everybody who knows the lady who is supposed to. be the original acknowledges that she has a sharp - tongue, and it is surmised that the poet may have experienced its keenness. Another suggestion is that Mr Watson may ascribe to this particular woman’s influence the tact that he has mot been the recipient o! any ot those titular honours which are_ occasionally awarded, by the British Government to oeots of more or less merit.”