Bookstall and Study.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 3 January 1930, Page 15

Bookstall and Study.

FROM

The engagement is announced of Miss Pamela Frankau, who is the younger

daughter of Mr Gilbert Frankau. the novelist. Miss Frankau is herself the author of four books, the first of which, “ The Marriage of Harlequin,” appeared when she was only seventeen.

Colonel Arthur Lynch, who is writing a mathematical criticism of the Einstein theory, has also written a philosophical work, “ The Rosy Fingers,” and a book of autobiography. He fought for the Boers in the Boer War, and was an officer in the British Army in the Great War. He w T as an Irish M.P. for a dozen years, and he was born in Australia.

The death is announced at the age of eighty-one, of Mr Alfred H. Miles, who was a journalist and an editor and author of books and stories for young people, and a poet. He was born in Cheapside at a time when it was paved with cobblestones, and was latterly one of the brethren at the Charterhouse. j* s.*

Mr George Jean Nathan shares with Mr H. L. Menekew the position of being the most dreaded critic in the United States. His latest book, “Monks are Monks.” is described as being “not criticism, biography, or fiction, but Mr Nathan’s peculiar combination of all three.” It is the story of a girl who begins her adventures with famous authors at the age of twentyfive, convinced that in their company her life will be a replica of the books they write, but she is sadly disillusioned and finishes up in a nunnery.

The sub-title of Mr H. Ilesseli Tiltman’s biography, “ James Ramsay MacDonald.” is “ Labour’s Man of Destiny.” In this volume an incident arising from Mr MacDonald’s association with Dr Hector Munro’s ambulance unit is made public for the first time. Early in the war Mr MacDonald volunteered to join this unit, and was met at Dunkirk by Dr Munro, who took him by motor to the ambulance headquarters at Furnes. The doctor left him in his own quarters for the night. In the morning Mr MacDonald was missing. He had been arrested by a Belgian general “ under instructions received from the British authorities.” Mr Tiltman says: “The excuse given for this official blunder was that his passport was not in order, but the real reason was that the higher British officials on the spot—one of whom is to-day the Governor of an important State within the Empire—considered him an undesirable person to be allowed to serve on the western front in any capacity. After some bargaining, Dr Munro secured the release of the imprisoned M.P., on condition that he personally drove him to Dunkirk in his car, accompanied by a Belgian soldier as guard, and saw him on the boat for England.” A fortnight later Mr MacDonald was back in 3elgium. In the meantime he had seen Lord Kitchener, who “ was extremely angry about the whole incident, and at once issued to him one of the red ‘ omnibus ’ passes to British headquarters, which permitted the holder to go wherever he wanted over the whole British and French fronts.”

The climax to a series of remarkable sales at auction in London was the sale of the manuscript of the play, “ Journey’s End.” by Mr R. C. Sherriff, at the Mansion House on behalf of the League of Nations Union. The manuscript was sold to Sir Walter Lawrence for £ISOO. Sir Walter Lawrence, who is a builder, will give the manuscript to the nation. Earlier in the day an autographed copy of Goldsmith’s poem, “The Haunch of Venison, a Poetical Epistle to Lord Clare,” was sold at Sotheby’s to a New York buyer for £4BOO. The manuscript of Charles Dickens’s “ The Schoolboy’s Story ” was sold for £IBSO. and a five-page letter from the poet Burns containing the satirical verses, “ The Kirk’s Alarm,” was sold for £llOO. There are two letters each containing a copy of “ The Kirk’s Alarm ” in the correspondence of Burns. The first of these bears the date August 7, 1789, and is addressed to Mr John Logan. Burns, in this letter, says that he is determined not to let the poem get into print, though he is willing to do a service to the Rev Dr M’Gill, who had incurred the displeasure of “ the kirk ” by a sermon deemed to be unorthodox. The second letter : s addressed to Crauford Tait, Esq., of Edinburgh, and was written from Ellisland in 1790. The text is as follows: “ Whether in the way of my trade I can be of any service to the Rev Doctor is I fear very doubtful. Ajax’s shield consisted, I think, of seven bulls’ hides and a plate of brass, which together set Hector’s utmost force at defiance. Alas! I am not a Hector, and the worthy Doctor’s foes are as securely armed as Ajax was. Ignorance, superstition, bigotry, stupidity, malevolence, self-conceit, envy—all strongly bound in a massy frame of brazen impudence. Good God, Sir! to such a shield humour is the peck of a sparrow, and satire the popgun of a schoolboy. Creation-disgracing scelerats such as they God only can mend, and the devil only can punish. In the comprehending way of Caligula I wish they all had but one neck. I feel impotent as a child to the ardour of my wishes! O for a withering curse to blast the germins of their wicked machinations ! O for a poisonous tornado, winged from the torrid zone of Tartarus, to sweep the spreading crop of their villanous contrivance to the lowest hell! _ R. 8,” Bums wrote two versions of “ The Kirk’s Alarm.” The first he called “ a satire,” the second “ a ballad.” The poem was first printed in 1801, five years after the death of its author.

Christian Sinding, Norway’s bestknown living composer, has been presented with the gold medal and chain, awarded in connection with the Harrqonien Musical Society at Bergen. This medal has only once before been given. It was awarded in 1765 to Neils Haslund, Grieg’s grandfather, an eminent conductor. “Education and Religion,” by Charles Franklin Thwing. D.D., LL.D., LITT.D., L.H.H.D., President Emeritus of the Western Reserve University (The Macmillan Company, New York) consists of the material on which the Bedell Lectures for 1926-27 were based, and includes other addresses on Construction and Reconstruction in Education. It discusses such subjects as parallels of progress in education and religion, what constitutes a liberal education in the twentieth century, forces for the world’s reconstruction, ideals in citizenship, what studies make mind, and the relation of the college and university to the community. “The college' to-day,” he says, “is beset by at least two dangers. The first that I name is the danger of the substitution of the stadium for the studium. It is the danger of athleticism. We all recognise the peril. Every college faculty deplores it. The thoughtful in the community mourn over it. It is felt in the responsiveness of the student body to sports. It it heard in the tumult and the shouting of the bleachers. . . . The college is also, contrawise, beset with the peril of laziness on the part of students. This student is not a superior student. College idleness is made a business. . . . ‘Activities’ have taken the place of activity.” Much that Dr Thwing says is coloured by American experience, but the book is nevertheless full of sound ideas, as when he says, “Capital finds no safer security than, is represented in a college vault.” “ One of the most remarkable religious developments in recent years has been the number of British authors who have been received into the Roman Catholic Church,” says the “ Daily Express.” “ Yesterday the “Universe” announced that Miss Sheila Kay e-Smith, the novelist, and her husband, the Rev T. Penrose Fry, had entered the Church of Rome. “ Miss Kaye-Smith follows the lead of many writers whose temperaments and achievements show an interesting variety. “ The Hon Maurice Baring, one of the best living stylists, joined the Roman Church in 1909. “ In 1922 there was considerable comment when Mr G. K. Chesterton was announced as a convert. “ Father Ronald Knox, whose writings have won him a large public, became a Roman Catholic in 1917. Father Knox was previously President of the Oxford Union and devoted much time to theological study. “ During the war Mr Compton Mackenzie, whose novel, “ Sinister Street,” was one of the great successes of the time, also was received as a convert.” In the preface to one of the sections in “ The Collected Poems of St John Adcock,” Mr Adcock tells a story at the expense of the “ higher ” literary criticism. In 1936 he invented an Australian, called him Lance-Corporal Cobber, of Toowoomba (Q.), and related his experiences in a series of ballads under that pseudonym. The book was widely reviewed—“ the only book of mine,” the author says, “ that did not receive a single unappreciative notice.” Several critics said it expressed “the true colonial spirit,” and one added that it was “as typically colonial as anything by Adam Lindsay Gordon.” . A well-known editor wrote to the publishers with regard to an anthology, in which he wished to include some of the poems, and asked whether Lance Corporal Cobber had been promoted. Later, Mr Adcock was himself compiling an anthology, and wrote to a num her of Australian editors for information about Australian poets. Every one of them recommended Lance-Corporal Cobber, and some recommended no other.

The London “ Mercury ” discusses the curious industry of “ghosting,” and the reported establishment of a special agency to handle this form of litera ture:— Authors with some ability, but no reputation, are invited to send their manuscripts in to the agent, who will then proceed to allocate to various eminent persons the articles most congenial to them, and then dispose of these to magazines and newspapers as the work of Lord A and the Rt Hon B. That there are celebrated authors, political and social, who do not always write their alleged works is a commonplace in Fleet Street. But it would be a mistake to lump into one category all the so-called authors who compile works which have been wholly or partly written by others than themselves. The main distinction must obviously be drawn between those whose reputed articles are substantially theirs and those whose reputed articles owe little or nothing to them, and are sold for profit to a public which believes that a signature implies authenticity. It is a curious thing that no case has yet been brought to test the legal status of essays, articles, reminiscences, etc., signed by persons who have not written them, who receive money simply because it is believed that their names will assist to sell there goods to the public—and which are bought by the public under a misapprehension. One of the best stories in Colonel Lionel James’s book, “Times of Stress.” just published by Mr Murray, describes a game of poker in which the author was commanded to take part by the monarch of a State he w r as visiting. His Majesty sat at the table with a revolver and yataghan beside him, and before long the contents of most of the pools were piled against the yataghan. “ Early in the game.” says the author, “I held a con: bination which, with the joker, entitled me to declare ‘four knaves.’ This is a hand of considerable calibre. J made my bets accordingly. ‘Four queens’ was the king’s declaration, and down came the royal hand face downwards on the table and swept the biggest pool of the evening. As the queen of spader was the fifth card in my hand I could only imagine that my royal host was sadly in need of a consultation with an oculist.”