BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3842, 1 November 1927, Page 74

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Mr Seymour Leslie, the author of “ The Silent Queen,” is a brother of Mr Shane Leslie, and a cousin of both Mrs Clare Sheridan and Mr Winston Churchill. * * * Mr Edmund Blunden, the poet, is returning to England after three years as lecturer in English at the Imperial University, Tokyo. The chair is to be taken 1 Air Arundel del Re, of Oxford. * * * Miss Ethel M. Dell’s new novel will bear the title “By Request.” The name derives from th# fact that in response to many petitions from her devoted readers, she has reintroduced into the new tale several of her favourite characters.

We do not often think of Sir -Harry Lauder as a literary figure, but he has writter a foreword to “ Music Hall Memoirs,” by Terence Prentis. This is a collection of songs popular in th e music halls of yesterday.

Mr Humbert Wolfe is a very efficient civil servant as well as a brilliant poet. He is to give us a fresh proof of his versatility this season, when there will be published in time for Christmas a new collection of “ Children’s Poems ” from his pen. o * * * • Besides being one of our most picturesque novelists, Mr Thomas Burke is a student of the lore of English inns. He has now made an anthology of great passages dealing with the subject. “ The Book of the Inn” will be published in due course. * * * Mr E. V. Lucas has collected his scattered writings on dogs, both in prose and verse, for a book entitled “ ‘ The More I See of Men. . . .’ ■ Strav Essays ,on Dogs.” * * * Mary Borden, whose new novel, “ Flamingo,” is being published, is an American, born in Chicago. During the war she organised a Field Hospital for the French army, and, having married Briga-dier-general Spears in 1918, settled down in England. * * * Mr George Arliss is remembered by many playgoers as the principal actor in " Ihe Green Goddess,” the late William Archer’s successful melodrama. He has now written his reminiscences under the title, “ Up the Years from Bloomsbury.”

A young New Zealand journalist not long ago realised the dream of his life by visiting England. He has now written his impressions in a book called “ Home: A New Zealander’s Adventure.” to which Mr J. C. Squire has contributed an introduction.

Captain Liddell Hart, who holds revolutionary views on possible wars of the future, and is the military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, has written in “Great Captains Unveiled” five studies of famous soldiers ranging from Jenghiz Khan to General Wolfe. It was he who suggested in another book that Scipio Africanus was a greater Soldier than Napoleon.

Not merely those with an interest in things theatrical are looking forward to Mme. Albanesi’s book about her daughter Maggie, the brilliant young actress who died in 1924. The book is to give us an account of Meggie’s childhood, early schooldays, and student life, as well as of the six short years of her stage career.

Miss Elizabeth Sprigge, whose new novel is “ Faint Amorist,” is setting out on a tour of Scandinavia with her brother, who has just been appointed Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. It will not be to her unfamiliar country, for she has lived in Stockholm and is an expert translator of Swedish literary works.

Sir Henry Newbolt is probably better known to the general reader as'the writer of stirring songs.about seamen and the sea than as a critic of literature. Yet it is probably as a critic that Sir Henry will survive longest for posterity. His “ New Paths on Helicon ” is likely to be the most important critical study of modern English poetry for some years, and will contain a. forecast of the'probable future of poetry in England. Sir Henry, who is 05, has for hobbies birdnesting and heraldry.

John Noy, who wrote “ The Vulture,” is a product of self-education. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith at the age of 15, but paralysis in an acute form terminated that career, and he has since worked as a night-watchman. During the long night hours he pegged away improving his education, and has now produced a novel of considerable merit.

An American officer, 'who prefers to remain anonymous, lias written a war book that promises to be out of the ordinary. It will be entitled “Wine, Women, and War: A Diary of Disillusion,” and will tell not of gallantry in the front lines, but of Paris filled with troops on leave, the bases, the lines of communication, the messes, the estaminets, the language, and all that made up the muddy life behind the lines.

The-Times reprints this from its issue of August 31, 1827, an extract from the Edinburgh Observer: —

The following anecdote, Illustrative of the well-known amenity of manners and goodnatured .politeness of our distinguished countryman, Sir Walter Scott, - is. current among our witlings. An English gentleman and his lady lately arrived in the neighbourhood of Abbotsford, and being naturally anxious to behold its owner, sent a card to. stating that they had travelled thither from a distant part of Englaiid, solely on purpose to see the great “ Lion of the North,” and earnestly requesting him the honour of an interview. Sir Walter immediately returned for answer that as the lion was seen to most advantage at his feeding hours, he would be happy to see them that day at dinner. They went accordingly; and, it is needless to add, met with the greatest attention and hospitality.

Mr Wickham Stead writes in the Review of Reviews concerning the chief character in a book which has created a sensation in Europe and America :—

Some of my readers have wondered whether Jew Suss, or Joseph .Suss Oppenheimer, was an historical personage. There

is no doubt on this point, though how much there may be of fact and how much of Action in Herr Feuchtwanger’s story I cannot say. Within the past fortnight an English correspondent has sent me an antiJewish book called “The Riddle of the Jew’s Success,” by F. Roderich-Stolthelm, of which the second edition, published in German in 1913, has been translated by Mr Capel Pownall. After disparaging references to various famous or infamous Jews it says : “ Of kindred spirit to these Jewish ‘ statesmen ’ was the notorious ‘ Demon of Wurtemberg,’ Suss Oppenheimer (hanged 1734).” This may be taken as additional evidence of the “historicity” of Jew Suss himself, and it is unlikely that Isaac Simon Landauer and Rabbi Gabriel are entirely children of Herr Feuchtwanger’s imagination.

At the age of about 45 or 50 most people are obliged to take to glasses for reading and near work generally (writes' Dr Leonard Williams in the Empire Review). This “ old sight ” is called presbyopia, and is due to the loss of power in the muscles of accommodation, those muscles, that is, which are kept in a state of contraction when there is a visual defect which can be overcome. Between 40 and 50 the power to contract these muscles disappears. The patient is therefore no longer able to produce the eyestrain ; and his symptoms, whether dyspepsia, insomnia, nervous irritability, or whatever they may have been, tend to disappear. This was -the case with Carlyle, the dyspepsias and nervous irritabilities of whose prime have been rendered famous by an incautious and inaccurate biographer. He lived to the ripe age of 85, and the last 25 years were practically free from the miseries from which he had suffered from boyhood until after 50. At 58 he wrote: “It is strange how little decay I feel; nothing but my eyesight gone a little ” (old sight); and at 60, “ The world was well; all was well.’’ This is in very striking contrast to the bitter complaints of constant suffering with which the letters of his earlier period are crowded.

M. Andre Maurois writes an interesting comparison between Gladstone and Disraeli in his “ La Vie de Disraeli ” : — Each was mistaken regarding the other. Gladstone accepted as true all the cynical professions of faith that Disraeli made under challenge; Disraeli believed hypocritical all the fine phrases with which Gladstone in quite good faith deceived himself. Disraeli, who was a doctrinaire, gloried in believing himself an opportunist; Gladstone, who was an opportunist, gloried in being a doctrinaire. Disraeli, who affected to despise reasoning, reasoned soundly; Gladstone, who believed he reasoned, was actuated only by passion. Gladstone, with a great fortune, kept account of his daily expenditure; Disraeli, with great debts, spent his money without counting. Both loved Dante, but Disraeli preferred the Inferno,” Gladstone “ Paradise.” Disraeli, who passed for being frivolous, was silent in company; Gladstone, who passed for a person of gravity, charmed everyone so much by his talk that it was necessary to avoid meeting him in order to be able to continue to hate him. Gladstone was interested only in two things—religion and finance ; Disraeli took interest in a thousand things, of which religion and finance were among the number. Neither believed in the faith of the other, and there again they were mistaken.

Mr Arthur Bartlett, who has just retired from the editorship of the New York Bookman, has a reminiscent article in the issue for September. H e tells of an interview in 1912 with Richard Harding Davis, who recalled the sojourn in New York of Robert Louis Stevenson:-— Stevenson was the magnetic, the romantic figure. Just as he himself had blaved the “ sedulous ape ” to others, so it was the fashion of young writers of those years to imitate him. He came to us he brought with him his velvet jacket. It was a famous jacket, and became a kind of oriflanune of the literary calling. It was destined to become the. father of an illustrious line of jackets. We were young then, and we had ideals. The day of commercialism had not arrived. We did not think and talk ■of how much we had been paid for a story— It was enough that we had a story in Harper's or Scribner’s or the Century. With elation we told our friends about it, and they read it, and liked it, or criticised it. A great many of the stories of those days could be traced to the velvet jacket. The young man sitting dtrwn at his writing table to construct a masterpiece had his pen, his pad, his bottle of ink. Also sometimes an idea. But to achieve the proper inspiration, to rouse himself to heights of creative frenzy he needed the jacket—just’ like that of R. L. S. Sacrifices were made in Bohemia in those days for that jacket; privations were endured. I never would wear one. That was regarded as an eccentricity. It placed me beyond the pale, and is perhans one of the reasons why some people still think me odd.