Books and Literary Gossip

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16038, 31 January 1920, Page 8

Books and Literary Gossip

“My ambition is a modest one.” declared Berta Ruck (Mrs Oliver Onions) when interviewed recently. “I am simply the box of chocolates for the beguiling of a leisure hour. I want to please young people, gay up to the age of 28. I seem to understand the psychology of youth. Sometimes 1 think that I was a boy in another incarnation, and only loved to be 24, for my penetration of masculine character eeems to end there. Although,” she added reflectively, “I do recall that once I had lent a book of mine to some girls in a rectory, and when I asked them for it (I seldom have a copy of a book of my, own in my possession) they were quite distressed, for they had lost it. They offered to replace it, but before that was actually done the missing; book was found under their father’s piDow. So, perhaps,” she concluded modestly, “my readers are not confined fo any one particular age.”

A. D, Willis, Ltd., have just received a cheap pocket edition reprints of successful novels. They are "The Remembered Kiss,” by Ruby M. Ayres; “Mrs Red Pepper.” by Grace M. Richmond; and "The Case of Jennie Brice” by Mary Roberts Rinehart. They are ■cheap at the price as novels go now.

There seems to be a good deal of doubt, as to the meaning of the title of Mr Arnold Bennett's latest play, which is an adaptation of his novel, "Sacred and Profane Love.” but it seems clear to us that he intends the sexual impulse which the heroine has at first for the great pianist Diaz to be the profane love and the self-sacrificing devotion which she bestows upon him years afterwards when he falls a victim to morphia, and wrecks his career, to be sacred. It is not a pleasant story; in fact, many people will regard some parts of it as extremely unpleasant, but it is interesting and impressive. Mr Bennett writes the dialogue with bis accustomed skill, and if you may think that the characters are hardly real, you will agree thfit they are never dull. The play has been published by Chatto and Windus, simultaneously with its production in London.

A ovel from Miss Ellen Glasgow, after an interval of throe years, is assured of a welcome. In "The Builders” John Murray) she lays the scene of the story in Virginia, and it concerns chiefly the lives of David Black.bum, a self-made man, who is at heart an idealist and animated by lofty aims; Angelica, his very beautiful, but utterly selfish, self-centred wife, and Caroline Meadle. the well-born daughter of a planter,' who, through the reverses of fortune, has had to engage in the profession of nursing. The American people have been stirred into a condition of excitement by the sinking of the Lusitania, and controversy wages strongly over the question of the President’s attitude towards war. Angelica, too shallow to understand her husband’s breadth of outlook, and resting upon the assumed superior social status of her impecunious family, thwarts him in every conceivable way, knowing that he Ls too generous to expose the little artifices by which she places him in an unfavourable light, with the object of damaging him politically. Caroline Meade, entering the family as nurse to an only child, who is constitutionally delicate, gradually gets the measure of Angelica’s character, and her sympathies are aroused in Blacuburn’s cause, with the result that Angelica turns her feminine weapon of slander on the girL There sire various subsidiary characters, all interesting and admirably drawn. The story ro- <’ ■- fluctuations of American opinion during the first two years of the war, and the rising tide of conviction, which finally swept the nation into the conflict.

Readers who love tales oi mystery and intrigue will find satisfaction in Miss G. E. Mitton’s •■rue Two-Stringed Piddle” (John Murray). It is a story of Buraia, and concerns the schemes and nefarious transactions of a wealthy Chinaman, named Min King, and a white trader, Tom Marjoram, partner in a trading firm which has got into financial difficulties and endeavours, with the Chinaman’s aid, to avert disaster by unscrupulous means. The two-stringed £ddle is an instrument played by one of Min King’s familiars, who used its low wailing sounds as a blood-curdling agent in the prosecution of his schemes. Part of the designs of Marjoram is to discover the secret of an invention made by a young engineer named Carstairs, in the development of which it is believed a great fortune may be made. Incidentally there comes into the plot Mrs Forbes, a widow with a young stcjison, by whose death, she stands to inherit a great fortune, and who is present with her in Burma for the purpose of shooting big game. Here are plenty of elements for the manufacture of tragedy, not to speak of a skirmish with the hill tribes, and Mrs Mitton makes excellent use of the material which she has called to her aid. The scenery and life of Burma give an added fascination to the story.

OF INTEREST TO LOVERS Of READING.

Up to the present time 12,000 books, articles and engravings have been published in France concerning the Great War, and it is claimed that the most complete War library is to be found, not in Paris, but at Lyons. . . An amusing work is called “Les fausses Xouvclles.” It is a record of all the untrue rumours and stories which crystallised round each striking event and even episode of the four yeas’ coniflct. The most extraordinary example of “false news” was the supposed passage through England of a huge Russian army in August, 1914. It is said that the rumour was first started deliberately by Lord Kitchener in order that he "might learn through his secret agents in Berlin how soon a circumstantial story of the kind would reach the enemy. Another explanation _is that a telegram was sent mentioning “two million Russians,” the Russians in question being eggs !Yet a third explanation is that certain troops, passing through London, when asked where they came from, answered in pure Scotch doric, “Ross-shire,” and that this was translated by their Cockney questioners into Russia. The first explanation is probably the truest.

“The Ne’er Do Much.” By Eleanor Hn.llowell Abbott. (A. D. Willis, V mis. Ltd.). A rich Sou til American gentleman, Signor Dario Carmi, goes to New York City to celebrate his 68th birthday. This he does by giving a dinner—a gorgeous affair, in which price is the least consideration. His guests are confined to painters, actors, singers, musicians, pugilists, baseball players, footballers, alTin fact who are idols of the public. It is veritably a feats of the gods at the expense of a millionaire mortal coming together noth plenty of good rich food and wines of rarity and price before them. The idols all talk, as their host beams cheerfully and sun-like down upon these curiously assorted convives. Press agents had been very busy about the dinner long beforehand. The papers had taken it up; thousands of people, not idols of the public, were dying to be invited. They were out in the cold. “Then all of a sudden—as such tilings seem always sudden—the dinner itself happened! An affair momentous, unique, even in a city as momentous and unique as the great city of New York! “Against a scarlet background as excitative as an acre of oriental poppies, in a dazzling foreground of silver and crystals and candles, and napery and strange exotic forms, amid throbbing harps and wheedling violins and ecstatic flutes and twittering songbirds, Signor Carmi’s five hundred guests sat down together to dine! ° “Like a drift of artificial snow, the myriad tables packed the banquetroom. Iu gay little groups of four, six. eight, each guest, according to his kind, hurled himself into the general fervour of the scene. Much strutting pride was certainly there—and much humility. Brain, Brawn, Heart, Soul, Lungs—all indiscriminately represented! “Iu a blue flannel shirt that he thought symbolised the ‘equality of man."’ the Richest Eccentric of New England joggled elbows with a spanglesmo thcred little Prairie Princess who had mortgaged her whole tarred-paper homestead in a desperate effort to achieve for this one nignt at least the equalitv of women! “Unable to talk church doctrine with his own special vis-a-vis, America’s most famous Theologian, and WorldRenowned Prize-Fighter was entranced to find the Theologian perfectly competent to talk prize-fighting with him. “Recognised you from your picture, sir!” beamed the World-Renowned Prize-Fighter. ‘Same Here,’ confided Die Theologian—his speech as facile as his mind! “Almost everybody’s speech seemed facile that night. In great waves of cheer nervous excitement, the myriad voices rose and fell, while over all, transcending all, from the high-raised platform at one end of the room, Signor Carmi himself, indisputably, actual, swarthy, vivid, with the President of the United States on one side of him and Goodnoss-Knows-Who on the other, beamed down upon his guests.” Was there ever such a dinner, ever such a flow of motley speech! It is all exceedingly clever and always amusing. ‘‘The NeVDo Much” is an entertaining as it is an entirely original novel.

“THE GOLDEN SCORPION,” by Sax Rohmer. (H. I. Jones and Son.)

Those who read Sax Rohmer’s recent book “Dope” will be pleased to obtain a copy of his latest, “The Golden Scorpion,” which has been published by Methuen and is distributed locally by 11. I. Jones and Son. “The Golden Scorpion” is a book of mysteries, and is so enthralling that it grips interest from the very start. A series of mysterious deaths of celebrated ’persons leads a French agent over to England to investigate matters. The “Scorpion” gang, headed by a wily “Chinkee,” lead the French agent and a Scotland Yard detective into sinister East End resorts and opium dens. Thrilling adventures follow each other in rapid succession, until at last, through the aid of a plucky doctor, the “Scorpion” makes his exit off this planet. “The Golden Scorpion” is a book full of interesting incident, and it should prove as big a seller as “The Yellow Claw,” “The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu,” and other very readable and popular books by the same Sax Rohmer.