FROM Bookstall and Study.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19271, 7 January 1931, Page 11

FROM Bookstall and Study.

A tablet affixed to a house at Broadstairs, London, reads: “ Charles Dickens did not live here.” The house of Mr Edgar Jepson, the author of many detective stories, was recently visited by burglars. A monument to Victor Hugo is to be erected near the place where his daughter, Leopoldine, and her husband were drowned on their honeymoon in 1843. The three books recommended for this year’s Femina Vie Heureuse Prize are “ Miss Mole,” by E. 11. Young, '* High Wind in Jamaica,” bv Richard Hughes, and “Three Daughters,” by Jane Dashwood. The French committee will select one of these to receive the prize. This award, worth about £4O, is presented annually by the French magazine ‘ Femina ” for the best work of imagination published during the past year. The Northcliffe Prize is a reciprocal award for a French work of imagination. A committee of Englishwomen select the final three books. The president and vice-presi-dent respectively for the ensuing year will be Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith and Miss G. B. Stern, in place of Mrs Robert Lynd and Miss Ella Hepworth Dixon. According to a story published in the “ New York Times,” the Museum of Peaceful Arts at New York has recently received from Mr Ambrose Swasev, of Cleveland, a seventeenth century potter’s wheel, and a letter relating its history. At one time Longfellow, in youth, is said to have been inspired by the wheel, then in the possession of Benjamin Dodge, of Exeter, N.H., to write the following quatrain: No handicraftsman’s art Can to our art compare; We potters make our pots Of what we potters are. Mr Bernard Shaw was at a luncheon party which included a lady of the gushing type, and the subject under discussion was: What constitutes true happiness in life? “Do tell us what you think, Mr Shaw,” she asked him. lie looked at her with a stern eye. and replied, with just that soupcon of a brogue which is natural to him: “ There are two things in life without j which happiness is impossible.” I The lady continued to gush. *‘ Oh, : do-oo tell us what they are! ” I “ Easy boots and open bowels, madam,” was the reply. The plain truth is, obscurity is a \ice n literature, whether it is due to woolliness of mind or to pretentious play with language. The object of a writer is to get into as full communion as possible with his readers, and obscurity of expression is no more praiseworthy than mumbling in conversation. There

they do not ttnderstand a new book, take it for granted that the fault is their own. and treat the book with unusual deference. Such humility is unnecessary. If an author has not conveyed his meaning somehow or other to an intelligent reader, the fault is the author’s. It is manifestly a critic’s duty to make a serious attempt to understand an author who at first sight may be obscure, but if the author continues to be obscure at a third or fourth reading, he has so far failed as a writer.—Robert Lynd. Major Cornwall]s-West, in his delightful book of reminiscences entitled “ Edwardian Hey-Days,” tells an excellent story of King Edward. One year he had a number of very indifferent three and four-year-olds, and, after a great deal of persuasion, allowed Marcus Beresford to enter one for a big handicap at Newmarket. The weights appeared one evening, and the King’s horse was, in his opinion, unfairly handicapped. He was furious with his manager, and rated him soundly in the rooms before everybody for having allowed the horse to be ertered, saying: ‘‘l told you what would happen, and I was right.” All the answer he got was: “Well, sir, if you were King Henry the Eighth no doubt you could have the liandicapper beheaded, but you can’t do that now.” Sir John Simon, in his “ Comments and Criticisms,” criticises Portia’s speech for the defence in the case of “ Shylock v. Antonio, Bassanio intervening”: “ Of course, she was a lady barrister and it was her first brief; so on both grounds we must speak with indulgence and consideration. But I don’t greatly admire her performance as a matter of advocacy. No doubt that was a very fine passage, all about the quality of mercy, and it would have been a most admirable way the Court in mitigation, supposing that Antonio was going to be convicted. But since she had got in reserve that point about the pound of flesh, I-must say I think she ought to have brought it out immediately. If I had been the Duke of Venice, though I should have decided in Portia’s favour, I should have made her pay the costs of the first half-hour ( of the hearing.’’ Mr Bernard Shaw once travelled as a Roman Catholic. Professor Thomas Okey betrays the fact in his book, “ A Basketful cf Memories.” Mr Shaw and the author were travelling in Europe with the Art Workers’ Guild in IS9I Professor Okey being the organiser of the tour:Mr Shaw’s rigid vegetarian principles gave me at first some trouble at the Italian hotels where we put up. Italians cannot understand anyone, except on religious grounds, refusing to eat meat when able to in-

early stages, was actually suffering from insufficient food (even macaroni a] sugo he refused—the gravy was repugnant to him), until at length I hit on the expedient of seeing the head waiter on our arrival at the hotel, and explaining to him that one member of our comitiva was under a vow. This was at once understood, and for the remainder of the Italienische Reise Mr Shaw travelled as a devout Catholic under a vow to abstain from flesh, wine and tobacco. In Kirriemuir (“Thrums”) the other day (an English visitor to that famous township writes to me), says a contributor to the “ Passing Show ” (London), I was interested to learn from a local ice-cream merchant, an Italian, that he had chosen this far northern spot as the scene of his activities because of the business he expected to do with tourist visitors to the Barrie shrine. He had not been disappointed. Year by year the tourists to “ Thrums ” increase in number. Some years ago I found a flourishing ice-cream and tea cafe at Ecclefechan, hard by the cottage where Carlyle was born. This establishment also was run by an Italian, with the belief that a resort of literary tourists would provide him with a livelihood. In order that he might make suitable conversation he had read “ Sartor Resartus ” and “ Heroes and Hero-Worship.” He, too, was doing xvell. Before coming to Ecclefechan this ingenious Italian had tried his luck at Dumfries, where he thought he might do profitable trade with Burns worshippers. The harvest belied his expectations. Mr Montague Summers, writing in London “ Notes and Queries,” points to a parallel between a passage in “ Pickwick Papers ” and a portion of Lacy’s “ The Dumb Lady,” published a century and a half before. He writes;— It will readily be remembered that in the “ Pickwick Papers ” (Chap, xxxviii.), when Mr Winkle, being at Bristol, accidentally finds his way into the establishment of “ Sawyer, late Nockemorf,” Mr Bob Sawyer initiates him into various mysteries of the profession.

A lamplighter has eighteenpence a week to pull the night bell for ten minutes every time he comes round; and my boy always rushes into church, lust, before the Psalms, -when the people have got nothing to do but look about ’em, and calls me out, with horror and dismay depicted on his countenance. “ Bless rfty soul,” everybody says, “ somebody taken suddenly ill! Sawyer, late Nockemorf, sent for. What a business that young man has* The church is traditionally said to be St Augustine's, College Green, Bristol.

“ This conduct of Mr Sawyer,” Mr Summers continues. “ so nearlv resemb T “s the devices recommended by Parson Othentick to Doctor Drench, in Lacy's “ The Dumb Lady, or The Farrier Made Physician,” 4to, 1672, that it is hard to believe Dickens was not acquainted with this old comedv. At the commencement of Act V. Parson tHiiikiaiirii

some rules fit for a physician to observe ; Be sure you keep the Church strictly on Sundays; and i’ th’ middle o’ th’ Sermon let your man fetch you out in great haste, as if ’twere to a Patient; then have your small Agent to_ hire forty Porters a day to leave impertinent notes at your hpuse, and let them knock as if ’twere upon life and death; these things the world takes notice of, and you’r cryed up for a man of great practice, and there’s your business done. “ The Man From Butler’s,” by Charles Lanstone (John Murray) is an unusual book, dealing with the story of a courier of a great travel agency. It presents life from an entirely new angle, and it is written in a strong, convincing manner. Wilfred Steadmore is a man of good education and qualification, but with a restless mind and body. Drifting at an earlier date in his career, on to the stage, he married a woman who flouted his passion and conferred her migratory affections first on one and then on another of her acquaintances. Exasperated beyond endurance he joins the ranks of the professional wanderers employed by Butler’s. lie plays with many women, but at length has visions of a steadier life under the inspiration of an unsophisticated young Jewess. Dora. The secret of his marriage still unrevealed, he struggles between two passions for his wife and his sweetheart. He is shadowed by the Jackal, who is employed by a relative of Dora’s, and the story ends tensely in a vivid drama.

“Queer Partners,” by Sinclair Murray. Published by John Murray, London. Sinclair Murray enjoyed some measure of success with his first novel, “John Frensham, K.C.,” but his succeeding works did not arouse so much enthusiasm among the reading public. But with his latest novel.

“Queer Partners,” he should reinstate himself in public favour. The story is laid in German South-West Africa, where a strangely-assorted couple discover a vast number of huge diamonds scattered among the desert sands. The partners quarrel, mend their friendship, suffer poverty and hunger together, but are finally returned to civilisation—and a happy, if less adventurous life. The story is briskly told and has several parts of undeniably clever humour.

Mysteries within mysteries complicate the plot and absorb the reader’s interest in Mr Horace G. Hutchinson’s novel, “The Lost Golfer,” which Mr Murray published on November 21. Fie was lost, our hero, most mysteriously, as he went practising his mashie shots along the fringe of the links. He had but lately been vainly seeking the solution of another mystery—the kidnapping of a girl from a big London house. How these two disappearances were entangled provides the reader with food for conjecture and possible solutions to the mystery until the very last chapter. The vivid and delightful characters of “ Wanderer’s End,” which Mr MurHiMitiiniiMriiMi

compared with Mr J. B. I riestley s Good Companions,” so fresh and whimsical are they. This book is the first, as unfortunatelv it must be the last by Mr Dennis Cleugh, who djed suddenly an hour after rehearsing with the Hoboken Players of Christopher Money, who contributes a preface to the volume. For years the author had been writing the story, a labour If' , to ** ec Ml the life and people he had loved when he plaved Shakespeare up and down England. riiHtfMiiiiiMfe

described by Sir Edmund Gosse as * th hope of literary history.” Ilis book “Independence Day,” is an importan addition to the literature of the American Revolution and the publisher, Mr Murray, has decided that the time ha now come to issue the volume in a cheap edition at six shillings. Everyone who reads history should make a point of getting this book, if he has not already done so.