FROM Bookstall and Study.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18635, 12 December 1928, Page 12

FROM Bookstall and Study.

Mr Edward Shanks, the popular poet •nd critic, notices a new trend in pre-sent-day reading. “ Biography,” however fancifully written,” he observes, “is getting the upper hand over fiction.” x k Lord Harris has written a preface to “The Eton Ramblers’ Cricket Club: Reminiscences of the Club by its Oldest Living Member,” Philip Norman. g g g A first edition copy of Kipling’s * Schoolboy ” lyrics, printed for private circulation at Lahore in 1881, and containing a pen-and-ink design by the author, is being auctioned at Sotheby’s this month. Other records of his reporter days in India to be* sold include a copy of “ Letters of Marque,” 1884, from the suppressed English edition. k Lady Hodder Williams has given £IOOO to St Thomas’s Hospital, London, to endow a bed in memory of her husband, Sir Ernest Hodder Williams, a member of the publishing firm of Hodder and Stoughton. X X X Henry Cecil Sotheran, the wellknown London bookseller, who died recently as the result of a motor accident, forty years ago made the biggest private book deal in history. He paid £350,000 on behalf of Mrs Rylands, of Manchester, for the famous Althorp library, which then belonged to Earl Spencer. To-day it is worth over £3,000,000. X St X Speaking of literature, says a writer in the “ Australasian,” I notice that it has become quite a hobby with British men of letters to possess a small island, where, “ far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,” they carry on their creative work. We have quite a number of suitable islets in Australia still unoccupied, and right at the entrance to Port Phillip the very thing for the gentleman who recently published a much-discussed work on Dickens. It is called Mud Island. XXX The library of the London Guildhall has been enriched by a valuable bequest under the will of the late Mr Edward Frederick Phelips, a former official in the Public Trustee’s Department. It consists of about 3000 volumes in various languages, including many manuscripts, maps and plans relating to Spain. Mr Phelips was a constant visitor to library, and the bequest is a mark his appreciation of the help he received within its walls. XXX Dr Spooner, famous for being the man who began “ Spoonerisms,” has celebrated his golden wedding at Oxford. Here are some of the Spoonerisms he is alleged to have made: “ The Lord is a shoving leopard ”; “it is empty work preaching to beery wenches” (weary work preaching to empty benches) ; and to an old lady, “ I am delighted to see you looking as hairless and cappy as ever.” Legend has it that, when being seen off at a train once, he kissed the porter and handed a sixpence to his w r ife! XXX Recent aerial conquests of the Atlantic will give an extra interest to a book, “The Tragedy of the Italia,” by Daniele Giudici, who was special correspondent for an Italian newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, on board the icebreaker Krassin at the time of the Italian airship’s attempted flight to the North Pole. Here the whole story of that gallant venture is told in full: how the Russian aviator Ciuknowski tried to go to the rescue and crashed; how some of the expedition perished, and what hardships the aerial explorers suffered. 'XXX George Moore, the famous novelist, thinks there is too much talk about Shakespeare. “ The public are tired to death of his name. Every -week there are columns and columns on whether there was a comma here or whether a sentence was run on there, whether he mentioned this town, or that man. Someone is always discovering something—there are forty-five volumes on the hats he wore, and another twenty on his boots and fifteen on the flowers he mentions. Shakespeare himself would die twenty thousand times over at the idiocy of it.” The “ Saturday Review' ” offered prices for an epigram on a love letter returned to the sender through the dead-Jetter office, marked “ Address unknown.” The following won the first prize:Cupid’s accounted clever. Yes— But now and then he lacks address. The advice of St Paul to the Corinthians concerning marriage prompted a prose epigram, which won the second prize:—“Ah, well; perhaps ’tis better that you should burn than that I should marry.” X X X Mr Chesterton’s fondness for beer (of which he boasts) and of drinking songs is notorious. It is not surprising, therefore, that he should write for “ Drinking Songs and Other Songs,” by Mr W. R. Titterton, an introduction in which the following appears:— I know that these songs, especially those at the beginning of the book, are songs that can really be sung, because I have sung them myself; and a more complete proof of lyric adaptability and the powerful contagion of melody could not be found. The author, who is an old friend of mine, and an older friend of Fleet Street, has led these choruses in many companies that I remember with gratitude and entertainment; in many gatherings in the brave days of old, before some of the bravest left us for even better things. X X X The title page of a book by Mr Charles Duff, just published by the Cayme Press, reads thus:—“ A Handbook on Hanging. Being a short Introduction to the fine art of Execution and containing much useful information on Neck-breaking, Throttling, Strangling, Asphyxiation, Decapitation •nd Electrocution; as well as Data and Wrinkles for Hangmen, an account of the late Mr Berry's method of Killing and his working list of Drops! to which is added a Hangman’s Ready Reckoner and certain other items of interest.” To this title is appended, as the motto of the book, a quotation from a prison doctor’s letter, “Dislocation of the Neck is the ideal aimed •t.” Mr Duff’s intention is to bring capital punishment into disrepute. XXX

“John Brown’s Body,” a long poem of nearly 400 pages, by Stephen Vincent Benet, is having a remarkable sale in America, over 80,000 copies having been sold in a few weeks. The theme centres on John Brown’s resolve to wipe out slavery; his gathering of a troop; his capture and hanging; and, after that, the growth of the John Brown legend that inspired the real movement towards abolition. Mr Benet has worked in the lives of a number of separate persons who each responds to the cause in a different way, and whose personalities appear from time to time in his poem like returning phrases of music. He writes •iwsys with, novelty and energy, and

with often grotesque imagery, of which this is an instance : “ There was no real moon in all the soft, clouded night, The rats of night had eaten the silver cheese.” X X X Rebecca West is distinguished from many of her fellow writers by her fanatical, inexorable, tireless chase after truth, writes Miss G. B. Stern. She has a deep sense of beauty, of humour, of the richness of romance; but if she thinks that these may in any way impede her in the chase, that the longing to reveal beauty may draw her away from frankly facing an unpleasant reality, or that her sense of humour may tempt her into robust dalliance with laughter and very little else, or that her love of romance might in time edge too dangerously near sentimentalism, then she will renounce all these, still in exasperated pursuit of some explanation of the ways of human beings that will perhaps enlighten and satisfy a tiny fraction of our eternal bewilderment. At the end of it, the author ’is tired out but exultant: she has got hold of a nugget of gold, a “blazing jewel,” she calls it herself, which is of definite value to her; which will help her to go on living. That is good enough, if it helps you to go on living, too. . . For an author who of all her readers is the only one to be sincerely moved and uplifted by the passion and power of her own words, is not a rare spectacle of narcissism!

I am not sure that Addison has not been over-praised as a moralist: it seems to me that his genius was less for morality than for entertainment, writes Mr Robert Lynd in “John o’ London’s Weekly.” But undoubtedly he mingled moralitv and entertainment as they had never been mingled before in English prose, and who can question his title to Johnson’s eloquent encomium: “No greater felicity can genius attain than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of goodness; or, if 1 may use expressions yet more awful, of having ‘ turned many to righteousness ’? ” And who can believe that this praise could have been earned by a mean-souled man ? The truth is, we can no more doubt the essential goodness of Addison’s heart than the playful lightness of his imagination. As to his playfulness, can we not still smile after two hundred years over the humours of “ The Lions at the Haymarket,” and enjoy the comedy of a visit to the taciturn Spectator’s lodgings in which he has taught the landlady and her family to respect his dumbness? It was in this playfulness of the imagination that he turned the essay into a branch of fiction, beginning with the invention of “ characters,” after the manner of Theophrastus, and ending with Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Wimble, whom he made almost as real as the characters of the novelists. Almost, but not quite, for Sir Roger and the rest are general portraits rather than studies of individual men. They are generalisations with names, and we do not know them in detail as we know Uncle Toby and Mr Pickwick. Addison, in the de Coverley essavs. however, may be said to have helped to bring the English novel to birth as he helped to bring English literary criticism to birth in his critical essays. And he did this in exquisite smiling prose, of which you get the quality and the rhythm in almost any casual simple sentence such as that in the essay on “ Superstition ”: “I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night’s rest and have seen a man in love grow pale and lose his appetite upon the plucking of a merrythought.” Many essayists have written in that manner since Addison’s time but they have done so under Addison’s shadow and inspiration.

Mr Charles Coborn, a comedian who for over half a century trod the boards of the variety stage, has written his reminiscences under the title of “The Man Who Broke the Bank.” He relates that while performing in Liverpool he went to see Reynold’s Waxworks, whose “chief attractions were waxwork figures and an extremely clever and well-educated troupe of performing fleas! It was really a very wonderful exhibit, and attracted thousands of visitors. There is an amusing story told concerning this. On one occasion the fleas’ tutor and showman was explaining to a small party of ladies and gentlemen the methods by which they were trained. Suddenly, bowing to one of the ladies, he said! ‘Pardon me, madam,’ and taking something carefully from her jacket and contemplating it studiously for a moment or two, he as carefully replaced it, and added, ‘Excuse me, madam—l thought it was one of my artists ’ ” XXX

A correspondent of the “Sunday Times” (London), having asked whether Byron smoked, the Rev D. B. Fotheringham, honorary secretary of ,the Byron Society, wrote: “Byron was

habitually and generally a non-smoker, with occasional fits of indulgence, in which he was apt to smoke to excess.” Another correspondent wrote: “Certainly he did. How, otherwise, can be explained the gusto of this eulogy of smoking in “The Island” ? : Sublime tobacco! which from East to West Cheers the tar’s labour pr the Turkman’s rest; Which on the Moslem’s ottoman divides His hours, and rivals opium and his brides; Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand, Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand; Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe, When tipp’d with amber, mellow, rich and ripe; Like other charmers, wooing the caress More dazzlingly when daring in full dress. Yet thy true lovers more admire by far Thy naked beauties—give me a cigar! X X X “ Shapes that Pass,” by Julian Hawthorne. Copy from the publisher, Mr John Murray, London. During his long lifetime, Julian Hawthorne, a son of the well-known American writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, met man}' characters of note both in America and England. Of his memories of old days, however, he says: “ My theme here is England, and I am glad to present it in an English dress. England is relatively immutable, yet it is not the same as it was in 1853, and few living Englishmen can remember it as it was then, so that I shall have the pleasure of bringing news of it to the present posterity of ray childhood friends. I came ashore at Liverpool seventy-four years ago, and lived in England (with some considerable intervals) till 1882. I hope to return there some day, whence my forefathers emigrated three centuries ago.”

Julian Hawthorne made a very large circle of friends, which included many in the front row of literature, art and the stage, and Whistler, Herbert Spencer, Browning. Henry James, are among the intimate friends who sparfde in these pages. Here is a new Whistler episode: “ My very first sight of him was at a reception. The lady I escorted wanted a taste of champagne. Behind the collation table I saw a fellow with disordered hair and without a tie. “ A glass of champagne! ” I ordered, rather sharply. He stared at me, produced a bottle and poured out a glass for me. “ That waiter seems to be well heeled! ” I remarked to George Broughton, in passing. “ Waiter! ” cried George. “That’s Jimmie Whistler!” But Jimmie bore me no grudge, and chuckled over the incident when I apologised, after being introduced to him long afterwards.” Of Herbert Spencer he writes: “ He was like a high-en-throned Court beauty, not to be profanely approached unless with a concise compliment or a rapt gaze.” A special Spencer etiquette was to be observed. He sat in a circle of courtiers, whose function it was to prick their ears while he spoke; never to speak, save in assent; questions were forbidden. Why should an ass waste in braying the golden moment when the nightingale might sing?” There are many other notables to be met in these pages. Matthew Arnold, George Borrow, Bohn, the editor of the classics, Thomas Carlyle, Wilkie Collins, Sir John Collier, Keningdale Cook, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Sir W. S. Gilbert, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipping, George Meredith, Millais, Charles Reade, Sir A. Sullivan, A. C. Swinburne, Lord Tennyson, Ellen Terry, Oscar Wilde, are only a few of the hundreds who were known to Mr Hawthorne. The author also relates many interesting incidents and anecdotes, as, for example, the dead heat in the OxfordCambridge boat race. His book is packed from cover to cover with most interesting matter presented in attractive style. X X X “ Scotland’s Heir,” by Winifred Duke. Copy from the publishers, W. and R. Chambers, Ltd., Edinburgh. The historical novel has an enduring popularity, and when the subject-mat-ter relates to such stirring times and romantic happenings as those of the '45 Rebellion the reason is not far to seek. In “ Scotland’s Heir,” Miss Duke has contrived something more than the ordinary historical romance, for. besides making an attractive and appealing story, she has given us some excellent sketches of the principal characters who were out with the Bonnie Prince in his attempt to secure the throne of his ancestors. The crowded incidents of the brief period covering the Prince’s campaign are finely pieced together so that the reader obtains an excellent idea of the preliminary plotting and the strenuous time he had in Scotland and England. Miss Duke scores a fine success in her portrayal of the character of Charles Edward Stuart, the haughty Prince, little more than a boy, who would not listen to the considered opinions of the hardened old campaigners supporting him, yet whose dashing personality enslaved the thousands of supporters who suffered so greatly in his cause. Others much in the picture are Lord George Murray, Lord Elcho, Mr Murray of Broughton, Lord Lovat, besides the Irishmen, Sheridan and O’Sullivan. These characters are most convincing, and help to make a really interesting and appealing story. X X X “ Old Pybus,” by Warwick Deeping. Copy from the publishers, Cassell and Co., Ltd. Perhaps the greatest feature of Warwick Deeping’s books is the excellence of the characters he creates and the manner in which they live in the memory. “ Sorrell ” was one of these, but already Mr Deeping has given us “ Old Pybus,” who will make quite as good an impression as his predecessor. This little old man with the head of a Caesar on the body of a boy has lofty principles to which he rigidly adheres, and the sons who were too selfish to volunteer for active service in war-time are beneath his thoughts, even though he is a hotel “ boots,” and they—very comfortably rich—are prepared to assist him financially. His grandson Lance also has a large part of the story, and it is the book which Lance is writing that provides the central interest around which this absorbing and intensely human action revolves. Lance is also a fine character, inheriting a good deal of his grandfather’s nature, and the story of his struggle makes a very appealing part of the book. Unquestionably Mr Deeping has here maintained his previous high standard, and “ Old Pybus ” will provide a real feast for those who enjoy and appreciate work of this class. The introduction of young Kit Sorrell as Lance’s pal provides a fitting link with another of Mr Deeping’s successful novels. X X X “ No Secrets Island,” by Alan Sullivan. Copy from the publisher, Mr John Murray, London. This is the story of two men and a girl—the sole survivors of a shipwreck —cast upon a small uninhabited tropic island, but it differs from the ordinary in that one of the men is a fugitive from justice while the other is more evilly-intentioned than many a hardened criminal. Add to this the presence of the beautiful heroine and the finding by the evil one of a wonderful pearl bed, and there is sufficient plot to satisfy anyone. The story relates how the villain gets his just deserts, how the

heroine gets away from the island and sets to work to clear the name of the man who really has a good defence to the charge against him, and how he finally finds fortune and happiness. Some parts of the story may reveal slight weaknesses —for example, the hero seems to have things made a trifle easy for him—but there is no doubt about it making good interesting reading. x x x " Traceries,” by Olive Wadsley. Copy from the publishers, Cassell and Co., Ltd. Santa Gordon, a young girl at school in Germany, meets Maximilian van Dornen, and falls in love; and then came the war, shattering old ideals, and presenting new aspects. But Santa has her own code of honour, and works out her future in her own way.