A TRAIL OF CHIPS

Southland Times, Issue 22345, 9 June 1934, Page 11

A TRAIL OF CHIPS

“Letters to Lord Byron from Wellknown Ladies” is the label on one of the crimson cases containing John Murray’s records of the poet, which are preserved in the library at Albemarle street. George Paston has opened the intriguing box, and now displays a first selection of its contents for the April “Cornhill.” The “well-known ladies” t dealt with in this issue are Mrs Spenj cer Smith, Lady Falkland, and Miss ■, Mercer Elphinstone. * * * Referring to i “Desert Cactus,” the life of Putnam, i the animal sculptor (Geoffrey Bles) t Sir John Squire writes: ’ Dear, dear, these fashions in titles. At 1 present they all incline to be metaphorical and omit "a” and “the.” For some reason - both the definite and the indefinite artl icles seem to be considered Victorian, and hence to be contemned and condemned. Mustapha Kemal is "Grey Wolf,” t Gaudier-Brzeska (whom I knew, and who was neither savage, nor a Messiah, > though he cut his hair queerly) is "Sav- ’ age Messiah," and now a good American sculptor of the highly respectable family I of Putnam is exhibited under the sobriquet of "Desert Cactus.” The appellation might conceivably have ' been given to such a man as D. H. Lawrence, who was a solitary, and covered , with thorns. Arthur Putnam, about ■ whom this bool: is written, was obviousl ly a sociable person and not in the least ■ thorny. He did, it appears, write the , sentence, "If you water a desert cactus it dies.” But I cannot see how that applies to his life. Of water, in the sense of encouragement, he had some, but it ; did him no harm, and could do no artist any harm; of water, in the more ' literal sense, he seems to have partaken freely in early youth, but not later. Julie Heyneman, who has written this “life” of Putnam, presents him as an artist unable to cope with the world: It was a shock and an increasing anxiety to his wife when she began to realize that, for the first time since she had known him, he was drinking, as she felt, far more than was good for him. He was never drunk, but he seemed to have recourse to whisky without rhyme or reason. It is probable that he felt the need of a stimulant to whip up the energies that had begun to flag, and also that it may have temporarily relieved physical symptoms of which he had begun to feel the disturbing discomfort. It was to this unaccustomed indulgence that Grace attributed the shaking of his hands, which, at times, he seemed unable to control. In “Company Parade” (Cassell), Storm Jameson has commenced a pictorial work on the first war scene. It is to cover four or five volumes The central figure is a girl in an advertising office, Hervey Russell, who has a husband and a son. * * * “Semi-Precious Stones,” by A. I. Voinova (Heinemann) is a novel on Soviet Russia with Okromeshkov, one of the intelligentsia, as the chief character. It is described as a book of Tolstoyan proportions. A feature of it is that the bureaucrat of the Soviet is loved no more than the bureaucrat of the Tsars. Okromeshkov regards them as “the caste that looks on us as though we were machines.” * * * In “Crowded Nights and Days” (Simpson Ltd.), Arthur Croxton, for fifteen years associated with the London Coliseum, has a chapter on Grock: It will be news to some that the famous clown was a discovery of Charles B. Cochran, who saw him in a Berlin circus. At the height of his success it was arranged that Grock should give a lunch to all the other clowns in the country. Many of the veterans of the old-fashioned harlequinade were there. Congratulations were showered upon all. and we anticipated a successful continuance of Crock’s season with us. But, to the amazement of us ail, there was no Grock when we came to ring up th e curtain on the following Monday, three days afterwards. "There was no Grock. Grock cannot be found!” Never before was there such a sensation in a theatre. We . were staggered. He had completely disappeared. Grock went abroad and has never re- , turned. Every year on April 19 there ap- ' pears in The Times an announcement ■ of Byron’s death with a quotation from j “The Bride of Abydos.” According to ' the terms of the bequest the notice is 1 to appear every year, till a memorial , of the poet is admitted to Westminster ■ Abbey. The Advertising Manager of 1 The Times probably applauds the firm- 1 ness of the Dean and Chapter in refus- 1 ing to be convinced that Byron was the 1 innocent victim of a deficiency (or an < excess) of the thyroid gland. * * * The j Irish Academy of Letters has confer- : red the Harmsworth Literary Award, 1 for the best work of imaginative prose t by an Irish author published during I 1933, on Lord Dunsany for his novel, t “The Curse of the‘Wise Woman.” The a final adjudication was made by Mr i John Masefield. * * * The death of C. t J. Longmann for fifty years a member t of the famous publishing firm of Long- { mans, Green and Co., reminded people c that it is one of the oldest of the pub- i lishing firms, dating from 1724. It has J been associated, in one way or an- 1 other, with “Robinson Crusoe” (whose i publisher’s business was originally ac- t quired), Johnson’s Dictionary, Lindley t Murray’s Grammar, Wordsworth, Col- g eridge and Scott, and Macaulay’s His- I tory. At one time (1824) the title ran 1 to “Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, c Brown and Green,” but that exuber- j ance has been abated. The origin of 1 the firm was remembered in “Long- r man's Magazine,” which was discon- c tinued in 1905, but contained up to the n end Andrew Lang’s causerie under the y title “At the Sign of the Ship”: the a Ship (on the site of the present offices ii in Paternoster-row) being the first p establishement acquired by the firm. r