LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3016, 3 January 1912, Page 86

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICE

“ Keepers of the Gate.” By Sydney' C. Grier. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons. 3s 6d, 2s 6d.)

Once more Mr Sydney Gaier takes us to the North-western Frontier of India, and introduces us to some of those heroic, silent men who there "Keep the Gate” of our great Eastern Empire, and justify the claim of the Anglo-Saxon race to a world-wide dominion. The period is •about 55 years ago, just before and during the outbreak of the great Indian Mutiny. With much regal’d for the feelings of the reader Mr Grier spares him the details of the full horrors of that hideous time. The persons of wham he specially writes escape more than once from the death traps laid for them. The officers are able to defend their waves and families, and the women themselves, though driven, to desperation, show all that amazing courage in the face 'of extreme peril, which seems to be the heritage of even the feeblest and most frivolous. Rumours of war, details of the siege of Delhi, plans of defence, hearty recognition of native loyalty, schemes for circumventing disloyalty, conferences between men in authority, and a thousand other details, give extraordinary reality and interest to a narrative w-hich, although it may be to a certain extent fictitious (the names of people and places being carefully disguieed), is yet a wonderfully realistic picture of what went on in one little corner of the Empire at a period when every day was fraught with a fresh anxiety, and men’s Jives and the lives of those they loved were in constant jeopardy, and they ate and slept with weapons in their hands, and brain always on the alert. Among this band of Gate-keepers—all of whose characters are individualised with that (skill for which the author is justly noted—we meet many old friends whose acquaintance we have made in two previous books —“A Young Man Married” and ‘‘The Path to Honour.” Chief among these are Colonel Robert Charteris, Colonel Ronaldson, and Sir James Anthony. The two former are the men on whom the chief responsibility of “Keeping the Gate” rests; while Sir James Anthony is the Chief Commissioner on whose fiat they must act, but who does not always see eye to eye with them. A mistake by either of these men, an ill-considered order, a sign of weakness, or again undue confidence in the loyalty of troops on the verge of (mutiny, and the whole district rvould have been plunged into immediate bloodshed. The mental and physical strain of these three strong men, their clash of opinions, and arguments pro and con take the reader into the very inmost heart of the struggle, and lay bare the sanctuary of human motive, the springe of human action, showing how it is possible for the noblest and most upright men, who have the same interest at heart, to honestly hold view., diametrically opposed to each other. “You look at your own district, naturally enough,” said Sir James: “I look at India and the Empire. They depend on Delhi, not on Shah Bagh '(the frontier city). You would not compare the importance of the two places?” “Not only so, but if the worst came to the worst, I would sacrifice Delhi and keep Shah Bagh,” said Charteris. Then they went at it hammer and tongs. armed with all the statistics and details relating to the threatened district, Sir James pushing aside the particular in his preoccupation with the universal. Both men wore firmly fixed in their preconceived ideas ; they bombarded each other with arguments without producing anv impression on their respective views. Shah Bagh as a bottomless pit into which huge and increasing sums of money were yearly jxuired without return —Shah Bagh as a property steadily improving, and certain before long to pay its own wav and even yield a profit Shah Bagh keeping locked up and useless European troops cf priceless value at this juncture—Shah Bagh affording an advanced base absolutely unparalleled in its opportunities. Shah Bagh dangling before the eyes of the native Prince Abd-ur-Rashid, just out of his reach, the precious bait which he would sell his soul to obtain —Shah Bagh keeping Abd-ur-Rashid from pouring down his wild hordes and overrunning the Nor’west Provinces. ...” Both men were firmly convinced, neither would yield an inch. The Governor-general settles the

matter with a brief telegram; ‘‘Hold on to Shah Bagh to the last. Abandon nothing.” So “The Keepers of the Gate” hold their position until the tide turns: the European forces come to their rescue, Delhi is taken, and the avengers commence their work of punishment, “the cleansing of the East with steel.” The necessary sentimental interest and relief from the grim realities of war are obtained by tne love affairs of Colotiel Charteris, first with Miss Fanny Dashwood—a mistake speedily discovered and acknowledged by both,—and secondly by his serious passion for Marian Cowper, “the heroine of Kalalkot,” with whom he falls desperately in love at first sight, and who responds to his passion with equal ardour. Fighting and love-making, politics and soldiering, history and fiction, all combine to ma_e “The Iveepers of the Gate” one of the most interesting novels that Mr Sydney Grier has ever written, and as it !« already in its third edition it certainly bids fair to be the most popular of. them all. Not the least of its attractions is its mid-Victorian atmosphere. Ladies in crinolines, scarves, and small bonnets, men in peg-tons and side whiskers, faithfully reproduce in appearance and conversation that era of narrow conventions, hide-bound prejudices, and false security from which the awful news of Meerut, Delhi, and Gawnpore woke the sleeping country as three centuries before the news of the Armada had galvanised it into sudden life and fiery activity. But for a time it seemed as if the public mind was no more stirred than it had been by any sraafl war. “ ‘When the .news gets Home !’ had been the watchword with which men had kept up heart and hope during 10 strenuous weeks, but now, with the sickly season coming on, with fresh bands of mutineers pouring into Delhi as fresh stations revolted, they were to go without reinforcement, without much encouragement even until the troops could come round by the Cape.” No wonder that Sir James Anthony, and many others, yielded to “counsels of despair, ’ and felt' that the country for which they had fought and bled was already doomed,. We who come after have the advantage of knowing that the end was not as they feared; but the tale is well told, and the atmosphere of doubt, despair, and pessimism on the one hand and foolhardy confidence on the other, is admirably reproduced, and holds the reader spellbound.

“The Bathers.” By W. C. Henderson. Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall Co. Paper, picture cover, eight full-page illustrations by Norman Lindsay, Is.) This is a story which goes a little deeper into the realm of hidden motives and realities of life than is usual with this series, avowedly designed for amusement only. The Rev. Thomas Horton, like many other worthy young ministers who have lived all their lives in the unreal atmosphere of a narrow theology, finds himself overworked and “ run down,” and goes to the sea-side to recruit. Here ho makes the acquaintance of sundry unconventional but thoroughly virtuous persons, who indulge in surf-bathing and other harmless amusements having for their object the strengthening, cleansing, and beautifying of that body which Mr Horton and his co-religionists believe to be the “temple of the Holy Spirit.” Horton, who has been hitherto “so busy making himself a clergyman that he has forgotten to make himself a man, with a man’s sense of fairness and cleanness,” endeavours to convert “ the bathers ’ to the error of their ways, but is in the end converted by them to a saner view of life, in which, metaphorically, “he learns to swim, instead of paddling in the shallows,” and awakens to the knowledge that “life is an ocean, and that the churches must follow modern ideas and go in for mixed bathing. Why shouldn’t all the churches swim along together, and enjoy each other’s company, and get cleaner and broader and stronger in the process ?” There are many apt remarks and a great deal of common sense in this little book, which reflects credit on author and publisher alike. “Rocky Section.” By Sydney Partridge. Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall Co. (Paper, coloured cover, eight illustrations. Is.) This is a, bright little “Australian romance,” setting forth how Raymond Templar, having lost his parents, his heritage, and the girl that he believed was devoted to him. sought solitude in one of the wild places of the earth, to wit Rocky Section, intending to live out his days as a determined misanthropist. How he found a lost and dying maiden at the foot of a tree, nursed her back to life, treated her at first with contempt and contumely, but finally succumbed to her charm. It is a pretty little stpry, one of the best of a really good series.

LITERARY NOTES. _Mr James Dunlop, a member of tho Scottish Agricultural Commission, who with two other members visited New .Zealand is about to issue an account of his visit’ to tho Southern Hemisphere in two volumes, one dealing with Australia, and another with New Zealand. They will form an interesting panorama of word piclures of travel and scenes beneath the Southern Cross, and of Ayrshire folk he met there. Messrs Smith, Elder issue in two neat and handv volumes “The Great Duke,” by W. H. f'itchett, 8.A., LL.D. This account of Wellington is written from the jtopular point of view, and deals vividly with each phase of his life —India, tho Peninsular war, Waterloo, and the part he played in politics. The volumes contain portraits and plans. The recent publication of “Peter and Wendy” in book form reminds one of the characteristic reply which Mr J. M. Barrie once sent to the editor of a magazine, who had asked tho famous novelist to inform the readers of the magazine how he wrote? Here is Barrie’s reply, scribbled on a scrap of paper:—“Journalism: 2 pipes equals 1 hour; 2 hours equals 1 idea; 1 idea equals 3 paragraphs; 3 paragraphs equals 1 leader. Fiction: 8 pipes equals loz; 7oz equals 1 week; 2 weeks equals 1 chapter; 20 chapters equals 1 nib; 2 nibs equals 1 novel.” Mr James Tait Black, who died at

Ayr recently, aged 85, was a former partner in the firm of Messrs Adam and Charles Black, the well-known publishers. At the end of 1870, when his father Adam Black retired from the Edinburgh business, of which he had been head for 65 years, it was handed over to him and two of his brothel's. He took, the Athenaeum says, an important part in the preparation of the ninth edition of “The Encyclopsedia Britannica.”

When Mr Lewis Melville was collecting material for his “Life of Beckford ’ ho discovered at Hamilton Palace the “Episodes” to “Yathek,” which were suppoed to have been lost. The “Episodes” are written in French, and Sir Frank T. Marzials. a keen admirer of Beckford’s writings, has undertaken to translate them into English. Messrs Stephen Swift and Co. will publish this version early in the new year, with an introduction by Mr Melville.

Established in 1817 by four sons of Joseph Harper, a farmer in Long Island, the firm issued close upon 200 works before changing in 1858 its destination from J. and J. Harper to that by which the house has become known in both hemispheres. Harper’s Magazine was published first in 1850, and Harper’s Weekly dates from 1857, while Harper’s Young People, now knowm as Harper’s Round Table, was established in 1881. Besides some of the best-known American authors the Harpers were the original American publishers of Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and others; more recently they have issued editions of the works of George Meredith and Thomas Hardy. —ln Notes and Queries, Mr W. F. Prideaux has a note on Colley Cibber’s “Apology,” in which ho speaks of that work as “the finest theatrical history in the English language,” and expresses surprise that it has not been included in one or other of the numerous series of reprints which have been so marked a feature of the publishing world within the last few years In view of the fact that Swift is alleged to have sat up all night to read the “Apology,” and that Johnson allowed that it was “very well done, to be sure, sir,” it certainly doos seem curious that it has been so much overlooked. It was first published in 1740, and there have been several reprints, but the only recent one, so far as we can trace, is the expen' sive illustrated edition issued in 1889 by Mr Nimmo. “The awards of the Nobel Prize for Literature do not advertise English as the future universal language,” says Collier’s Weekly. —“The prize-winners up to the present time have been the French poet Sully-Prudhomme, the Provencal poet Mistral, the Germans Mommsen and Eucken, the Scandinavians Bjo.rnson and Selma Lagerlof, the Pole Sionkiewicz, the Italian Carducci, and the Spaniard Echcgaray, and not one poet or philosopher who uses English—except Rudyard Kipling. This year the prize is to go to Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian by birth, who writes his plays, poems, and essays in French. If English ever becomes the universal language, it will apparently not be on the strength of the showing of its present authors.”

The death was recently announced of “John Strange Winter” (Mrs Arthur Stannard) at tho ago of 56 years. Mrs Stannard’s first story appeared in print when she was a girl of 18 years, and for nearly 40 years she was a prolific writer of fiction. Among her stories were “Beetle's Baby.” “A Born Soldier,” “Beautiful Jim,” “The Soul of a Bishop,” “A Self-made Countess,” and some 80 other books, chiefly dealing with army life. She was first president of the Writers’ Club in 1892, and president of the Society of Women Journalists in 1901-3 In recent years Mrs Stannard was engaged in business, and was the proprietor of numerous toilet preparations. Mr H. G. Wells is so many-sided van author that it is no surprise, says the Daily News, to hear ho has tried his hand on a book for children. Some pages in the early part of the “New Machiavalli,” where ho describes games on the nursery floor, suggested tho idea that tho subject might be amplified and in “Floor Games” Mr Wells will introduce us to a new world of Toyland. with Chamois City for its metropolis. Though the new book is primarily one for children, it will contain a good deal of /satiric comment on present-day movements, after the style of “Gulliver’s Travels.” One thing which Mr Wells deplores is the martial spirit which turns out so many battalions of soldiers as children’s toys, and rarely gives them effigies of ordinary civilians. issued, Mr Frederic Harrison puts Tennyson “at the head of all the poets-of the nineteenth century since tho death of Shelley.” He holds Robert Browning to have been “tho most original and the most san© spirit of the Victorian writers,” but there was “no music” in his poetry. Swinburne, on the other hand, had “the luscious music in him, bet no deep or original thought.” On this point Mr Frank Harris writes in the Academy: —“lt seems to me that hardly any of these judging? will stand. Surely everyone must see today what some of us have seen for the last quarter of a century—that Robert Browning ir; far and away the greatest English poet of tho nineteenth century—the greatest poet, indeed, in England since Shakespeare. ‘Glorious Robert Browning!’ Surely, too, everyone would place Swinburne far above Tennyson?” Success as a novelist led to an important development in the career of the late Clark© Russell. the novelist. An invitation to call at the office of tho Daily Telegraph was quickly followed by an invitation to join the staff. As “A Seafarer” he became a feature of the paper, also writing leaders and originating tho famous “dead-season” debate: “What shall we do with our boys?” His principal work, however, was to “write up” the tragedies and comedies of the sea; and his graphic account of the wreck of the Indian Chief on tho Goodwiij Sands practically made him a second reputation. By that ' time, however, h© was already an invalid, crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, unable to hold a pen,, obliged to pursue health at snas, and court it in kindly climates. His hygienic pilgrimages to Bath. Droitwich, Madeira, etc., can be traced in his fugitive papers. Yet Ire worked harder than many baler men. and formed the habit of dictating his books to a secretary. It is sad to lose the old friend of boyhood. Writing of Mr Everard Meyneil reminds mo (says Bernard Lintot, in T. P.’s Weeklv) of the remarkable literary strength of the family of which he is a member. I do not know another family in the history of English literature that has so many

members actually associated with the art of writing. The heads of the family are, ■of course, Mr and Mrs Wilfred Meynell. The former is the eminent critic and biographer, author of studies of Cardinal Newman and Disraeli; and the latter is, ° course, Alice Meynell, perhaps our most distinguished living poetees, and cei tain y our only woman essayist worth talkm o about; her delicate and subtly-worded essays rank with the most excellent essays in the language. Meet of the children Wilfred and Alice Meynell are connected either directly or indirectly with literature. Of these, Everard MeyneU is the best known. Viola Meynell, Olivia Meynell, Monica Meynell (now tne wife of Dr Saloebv), and Francis Meynell all write poetry' and specimens of their work are to be found in that most delightful of recent anthologies, “Eyes of Youth. viola Meynell is also a having to her record two novels —“Martha Vme and “Crossing-hand Ferry.” * Ariel, finally, there is Mr Sebastian Meynell, another son of this gifted family, who is connected with iournalism and responsible for the Catholic “Who’s W T ho” under Sir t rancis Burnand. . , • Canon T. Teignmouth Shore, in his new book, “Some Recollections, writes ot Charles Reade, the novelist: ing I called to see him at his house m Albert Gate, Knightsbndge, facing Sloane street, I was surprised to see that on the front of it he had painted m enormous letters, 'Naboth’s Vineyard. He explained to me that a wealthy man had bought the adjoining house and wanted to got ms house also, with a view to building a great mansion on the double site, this enraged Reade, and he had the above title at once boldly emblazoned, which much interested and puzzled passers-by. From Finlay, whom he met in Switzerland, lie had the following anecdote of (Maries Dickens; —“Finlay one day remarked to Dickens that it was a curious thing that he (Dickens), the greatest humourist of the age, had never introduced an Irish character into any of his books, which would have afforded such an opportunity for wit and humour. To which Dickens replied that he could not in the least appreciate nor, sometimes, even understand Irish humour. This was illustrated that evening in a small way when eomeono told the following anecdote: ‘There was a countryman near Belfast who desired to learn the vio’in, and hearing of a good teacher in that city, he called to see him. The professor explained that his terms wore 5s an hour for the first month and 2s 6d an hour for the second month, on which the inquirer said: “Well, then. I’ll come to you for the. second month.” ’ Those present laughed, but Dickens took it quite seriously, and proceeded to argue that the professor must surely have meant that the two - ir.ontns should be taken consecutively! Another storv told the same evening, which did not appeal to the sense of humour of the very distinguished guest, was this: An Irishman. desired to have a new barrel made of the same size as one which had been worn out, and he told his servant to cut the bung-hole out of the old cask and take it to the cooper and order him ‘to make a barrel to fit that bung-hole exactly!’ ”

The following throws a grimly humorous light on the difficulties missionaries encounter: —“Sir George Bowen told me that he once mot Bishop Selwyn, who mentioned that a chief of some uncivilised tribe once came bo him to ask about being baptised, and Selwyn inquired how many wives he had. The chief answered that he had ‘only two.’ The bishop explained that under the circumstances ho could not baptise him. The chief seemed much disappointed, and departed. He returned, however, after a few weeks, and was very anxious to be baptised. ‘And what,’ said tlie bishop sympathetically, ‘has become of the other poor creature?’ The chief smacked his lips and rubbed hits hand down the front of his body, indicating that he had oaten her!”