In An Easy Chair.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13916, 29 May 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

In An Easy Chair.

HOOKS AND WRITERS. Captain Claude Edward Foster, of the King's Own Regiment, has written a dramatic. )>oem dealing with the life of Shelley, preceded by a preface on the poet's matrimonial affairs, a matter which "Matthew Arnold thought was better left alone. The poem consists of a succession of wildly-worded dialogues and does not add to our appreciation of Shelley. The author needs to learn that prose dropped into length is not blank verse.

A crvptic preface! by Mr Iv. Armstroii" 'of Queen's College. Oxford, tells us that the author of " Leaves in the Wind" is "iii the strictest sense a daughter of the "University and an Oxford" poetess, and yet she has no tlrop of British, Irish, or Colonial blood." She may be " a Roos.an or French or Turk, or Pronsian. Her name **Elsa Lorraine," makes us think of the '* blue Alsatian mountains " and perhaps that is the key to the mvsterv. Anyhow, her poems are quite English, and delicately musical withal.

Mnio. Albanesi's new novel •'• fcnvious Eliza." illustrates the curious interest that can be evoked by the sympathetic narrative of the fortunes of very ordinary people. Of, course, its characters do not strike us as ordinary, but that is s because of the distinction they acquire through being selected tor representation. In themselves, Sir George and Ladv Ktchingham. Patricia Etcliiii'diam. "Bobby Gresford, Mr Delvarry, and even Lady Eliza, are not remarkable. It is true that Maurice. Delvarry- is a lion—one of those cosmopolitan reputations, often met with in fiction, which the metropolis accepts with enthusiasm, though there lurks in it something equivocal (like lus name) that tHe lynx-eyed giVardians of our morality, the Provinces, have a sense of from his first introduction. Vnd Ladv Eliza, again, is certainly un•usual among shrewd, large-hearted, and delightful women, in having won fame amon"- the readers of a cheap and'lurid fiction", of which she is in herself a factory running full time aud earning appropriate profits. Incidentally, at this mention of the lady, we may note a value that lies in the use and abuse of a title. "Envious Eliza," in spite of coming pleasantly off the tongue, suggests an ,ugly vice, which, it may be well to assure some readers, does not raise its head very high. Yet. nn the other hand, the suggestion it contains keeps us always expectant of a

development of the good lady's character, and so is effective, much in the same way as a mystery unsolved or an unravelled knot in a- plot. But. so far as the author's use of it goes, it does not make Lady Eliza remarkable, any more than his iniquity is insisted on to give Delvarry distinction. Mme. Albanesi, having made her characters live, declines to throw the limelight on them, just as she refuses to force the sensational elements latent in their grouping and situation. Her story opens with a scene that has the dramatic energy of a climax; but, having arrested our attention and curiosity thereby, she leads us along the quieter though still often poignant levels which the fortunes of the Etchinghanis, and particularly those of Patricia, follow. And such is her tact and sympathy, with sudden flashes of insight, and above all her instinct for the telling of a story, that our interest never, flags.

'•Quaint Subjects of the King."— Whon John Foster Fraser wont '-round the world on a wheel," visited more completely '•.'Red Jlussia." saw "Canada as it is," "America at work." and '-The real Siberia." Jie collected material lor many more good hooks, and in doing so gained also a sympathy with humanity at huge and stranger people that enables him to understand what others have written of them, and to select what his experience' has taught him is important. Jn this latest contribution of his to the stocks of the booksellers, Mr Fraser has journeyed at ease among the contents of ethnological volumes, and has made a collection of human curiosities of a really interesting nature; some of them because we recognise ourselves in the customs of strange peoples, some, because they seem to us inhuman. It is well to be reminded, as we are by the title of the book, that the quaint poopic dealt with are our fellow-subjects of tha British Empire: that in that aspect -we are fully brethren of some of "the. most savage races ill the world. Mr Fraser has given us a cabinet of specimens of different races, and also compared, by ph-icing them .side by side, different ways of doing the same thing in different places stance, dancing, talking, writing, tattooing, the life of children. An abundance of excellent photo pictures is a valuable addition to the text, and altogether this book is one well suited for the instruction and entertainment of old and young, and an excellent one for the school library. (London. Cassell and Co.. Timaru. P.W. Huttoji and Co.) ' • '

''The Old Man in the Corner." by Baroness Orcz.v.—The corner which the old man occupies is in a London teashop, and his audiencd is Miss Polly

Burton, of the •"'Evening ' Observer." I He is a pale, shrivelled, fidgetty old .yjureerow, anil, like every self-respect-ing amateur detective, has an "idiosyncrasy that is at once symptomatic. ol tins' workings of his ingenious" brain and symbolic of the problems that engross it. What play with-his pipe was to Slierloclc Holmes, is to the old man in the corner the piece of string, which his long, lean, trembling lingers keep tying and untving into knots, oi wonderful and complicated proportions. Crihies, wonderful and complicated, and of course never unravelled by a stupid police, are his business, and the reader could not pass an hour more enthrallingly than by sitting down within earshot of him'as lie discovers to the " Evening Observer's" young lady the mysteries over which the rest of the world lias puzzled in vain. Nor will the pleasures of luncheon and the comfortable processes ..of digestion be interfered yith bv his recital: for it is curious. liW the fact that these are undiscovered crimes, and that his detection of, the culprits can never bring them to the gallows, robs them of their gruesonieness, while it leaves them the qualities of excitement and surprise that give the detpctive story a fascination for minds of the most different calibres/ Besides, the old man in the corner yns really— Well, it is not for us tq give away his secret. Enough that hisiloud checks, edged with the flaming tie, covered a more sinister personality than Miss' Polly Burton had dreamed 'of.