LITERARY NOTES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5859, 29 April 1897, Page 2

LITERARY NOTES.

[From Our Correspondent.] LONDON, Feb. 20. The death of Mrs Hungerf ord, whose last book— a collection of stories called "An Anxious Moment "*—was only, published last Wednesday, occurred quite unexpectedly from typhoid fever at her husband's country seat in Ireland. Though she had written upwards of forty novels the lady had barely reached middle-age, and was noted for her youthful appearance and robust constitution. The daughter of an Irish squireen, she began to scribble very young, blending the literary virtues and vices (including the odious present tense style of narration) of Miss Rhoda Broughton with her own high spirits. L At seventeen she submitted to Smith, Elder and Co. a story called " Phyllis," and their reader (James Payn) reported very favourably thereon. It was published and well received, bat the public did not really catch on to the new writer till "Molly Bawn" took the feminine reading world by storm. After that Mrs Hungerf ord (then Mrs Argles) was known as the author of " Molly Bawn," and though she adopted the pseudonym of " The Duchess " thelonger description stuck to her. For twenty years she has appealed to a huge public consisting almost entirely o£ women, and chiefly very young women. In America " Molly Bawn," " Mrs Geoffrey," "Airy Fairy Lilian" and "The Duchess" are (as countless pirated editions show) almost classics, and even here circulating libraries evidence her books to be surprisingly popular. I say " surprisingly popular," not because Mrs Hungerf ord's stories are bad, but because they are so alike. ' The high-spirited, loving, hottempered heroine appears in all of them. In her later books, Mrs Hungerford went in more for plot, and I read one, called, I think, " Undercurrents," with a good deal of pleasure. Probably the Irish lady's nearest approach to a masterpiece was "Mrs Geoffrey." Most of the Kipling family have taken advantage of Master Rudyard's fame to do a little "ink-spilling" on their own account, but it cannot truthfully be said they share any of their relative's genius. Mr J. Lockwood Kipling is of course an authority in liia own department of the Civil Service and a fair draughtsman. He has produced more than one stodgy and painstaking volume, but without exactly setting the Ganges aflame. Beatrice Kipling some years ago wrote a rather quisby novel of Simla society called "The Heart of a Maid." It was published in America, but not here. Then Rudyard's brother-in-law, Walcott Balestier, was "boomed" on us as the coming novelist. The world did not, however, rave over "The Naulhaka," in which he collaborated with the author of "Soldiers Three," and his later literary adventures solus were even less successful. Now Mrs J. M. Fleming Kipling) has joined the family band of story-tellers with " A Pinchbeck Goddess," published this week by Heinemann. Most of the story is concerned with Simla. We are introduced at the outset to a young Englishwoman with "a face of possibilities " — a woman who is a little soured and saddened at thirty, mainly through the controlling spirit of her aunt Agatha, "whose habitual petulance formed a prickly scabbard to the steel blade of her will." Madeline is homeward-bound after a visit to India, when she hears of her aunt's death. The drama thereafter drifts to Simla and its " society," to flirtations, parties, woman's chatter, and their "infinite deal of nothing to relate at great length." But there is also a love-story, with a woman's strange ruse, which it would not be fair to reveal. Considering that she turns out two books a year regularly and sometimes more Adeline Sergeant's work attains quite a respectable standard. "The Idol Maker," just added to Hutchinson's Colonial Library, is one of her betwixt and between productions. It cannot rank with "No Saint " in either originality or vitality, but is much superior to " A Deadly Foe " or "The Mistress of Quest." I can forgive a great deal to any author who has got the genuine narrative power, the gift of carrying the reader along. And Miss Sergeant certainly has this. Few will want to i - ead her stories twice, but nobody picking up a new one casually is in the least likely to leave it unfinished. . ; One of the ablest of Mi- W. E. Henley'a disciples is Mr G. S. Street, who was discovered in the palmy days of the National Observer, and has more recently been a bulwark of the Pall Mall Gazette. ' Readers of that journal know his humorous allusive writing well, but by the world at large he I is recognised chiefly as the author of " The | Autobiography of a Boy." This brilliant satire achieved considerable success some years ago, and led reviewers to predict a great future for Mr Street. He was, however, content to stick to newspaper and magazine work till last year, when John Lane commissioned him to write a novel for the " Keynotes " series. This work has now been published, but not in the "Keynotes" series. It is called "The Wise and the Wayward," and generally pronounced a very clever and cajiable book. Plot proper the book has none, being simply the commonplace story of an unhappy marriage. But the author tells it with admirable art, and the development of the complex characters of George Ashton and his wife will be found thoroughly entertaining. Of course, too, Mr Street's style is polished and clean cut, though one could dispense with such additions" to the language an " enpeptic." The sequel to Anthony Hope's "Prisoner of Zenda" will follow "St Ives" in the Pall Mall Magazine, and is to be called " Rupert of Hentzau. ' There is you may remember a dare-devil knight of that name in the original story, and it is no doubb of his after-career Mr Hope has elected to tell us. The "Looker On," in the National Observer, alleges that J. M. Barrie is tackling the — I should have thought impossible — task of dramatising "The Little Minister.". "WoYild he not be well advised,"' asks the "Looker On," " to allow that sort of thing to be done for him by some more practised playwright— by Mr Edward Rose, for example, who has been so successful with 'The Prisoner of Zenda' and 'Under the Red Robe?' Though Mr Barrie has all along shown an inclination to the theatre, note his Richard Savage, written with Mr Marriott-Watson so long ago as 1891 (or earlier), his Ibsen's Ghost, his Walker, London, his Professor's Love Story, his Becky Sharp, his share in that infantile production Jane Annie— he has never yet exhibited any real command of dramatic technique. To be sure, he is the husband of a charming lady, who has a good deal of experience as an actress, and who ought to

be able to give him valuable assistance in his work as a dramatist. Still, novelists do not, as a rule, make good playwr/gfhta, arid it is best to let play-making be done by professional play-makere. Mr Rose, they now say, is going to give up 'adapting' for a while and take to original writing. But it is better to be a skilful adapter than the writer of original plays which do not take the popular fancy." Mr Stephen Crane's new volume of stories, " The Little Begiment," &c, are to the full as remarkable as "The Bed Badge of Courage," and should on no account be misaed. They consist of war tales, of course, and picture the battles of half a century ago; yet so forcefully and faithfully are the fever and fury and fearsome filth of the scenes brought before us that one finds it hard to realise this lad of twenty-five could not possibly know anything personally of what he writes. George Meredith— who does not often gush —gives in half a dozen lines a succinct description of Mr Crane's style. Says he:— Mr Crane's style stalks straight on. It does not amble to the right, neither does it nuzzle to the left. Its movement is like the slow, solemn, serious strength of the engiae of some ocean-going steamer. The words bite into the page. Long after the book i 8 closed and put away, his soldiers, swarthy and stained, clatter through the mind haloed by the misty glory of battle. Miss Corelli has imagination — nobody denies that — but her imagination is like water that gushes up and floods the street from a broken main. Mr Crane's drives along its controlled channel in ample, strenuous servitude. It is said that he has undertaken to supply war correspondence for an American paper. Will he, I wonder, be able to describe things seen as admirably as he can visualise things imagined ?" When first I heard that Mr John Macqueen had paid . Wilson . jßarrett J2IOOO down for the English and American copyrights of the actor-manager's literary version of " The Sign of the Cross," I confess I could hardly believe my ears. It seems, however, the publisher not merely did this but engaged to give royalties as well in event of sales exceeding a certain limit. This limit, we are now told, has te n pas ed, and both Mr Barrett and Mr Macqueen express "profound satisfaction" thereat. I should think so. One ought :aot, perhaps, to marvel at a go leration which 'went mad over "The Mighty Atom," buying "The Sign of the Cross." At two shillings, indeed, I should have expected the latter to sell. But where and who are the tens of thousands ready to put down six shillings apiece for an indifferent "shocker," vamped out of a second-rate melodrama ? I confess it puzzles me. "An Australian Duchess," by Amyot Sagon, is, I should think, the work of a very young lady who knows something of. up-country life in New South Wales and has read, marked, learned and inwardly digested her Family Herald. , The hero, a sprig of English aristocracy, meets with a , bad accident whilst out after cattle. He is carried to the nearest station, which happens* to be owned by a noble-souled "old lag "with six charming daughters. Neediest to say, the new-chum loves the nicest of these girls, and, _ after saving her life, marries her, papa-in-law incidentally explaining that he was transported for killing his sister's seducer. Our hero rather likes him for that, and the family are getting on quite nicely when the young husband becomes Duke of Eiversdale, and has to take his Australian bride to England to run the gauntlet of London society. Up to this, time Ainyot Sagon has got along passably, but quitting colonial ground she comes to sad grief. The adventures of the Australian duchess in England are indeed almost as unparalleled as those of her husband'a,famous Waler "Bushranger," who, wliilst fresh from a long sea voyage, runs third for the Ascot Gold Cup, and the following season, wins the Derby.