BOOKS AND WRITERS

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18776, 26 October 1932, Page 10

BOOKS AND WRITERS

BOOK LOVER'S GIFT. BEQUEST TO LIBRARY ASSISTANT. Miss Alice Martha Ponder, an assistant In Messrs W. H. Smith and Son’s library at Muswell Hill, London, who has been left £SOO and £52 a year under the will of Mr James Henry Crouch, of Wellfleld Avenue, Muswell Hill, said she had known Mr Crouch since 1915. “Daily he came to the shop for his morning paper," she said. “He was a great book-lover, and I often helped him in his selection from our library.” Mr Crouoh left £12,506 with net personality £12,417, stating that the legacy to Miss Ponder was “ in grateful remmebrance of her kind companionship.”

QUEEN ELIZABETH. A VIVID PEN PICTURE. In “ Quean Elizabeth,” Mona Wilson has written what she calls “not a fulldress biography of the Queen herself,” but “ a drawing in outline." She has succeeded in making her outline a good deal more vivid than many “ fulldress ” biographies, and she has abstained from more fashionable descriptions of thoughts which, may, in the author’s imagination, have occupied Elizabeth’s mind at 'certain moments. Here, with accuracy, scholarship, and very little fuss, is drawn a portrait of “ Gloriana,” her foibles, her weaknesses, but above all, her greatness—which is as it should be .“Queen Elizabeth of famous memory," said Cromwell in an age that badly needed her, and addea “We need not be ashamed to call her so.” But for a modern biographer to “ call her so ” Is a welcoae change.

Business of Being Queen. We see her here with her mixture of horse-sense and Celtic flashes of genius, her vanity, her vacillations, her lively, concrete mind, and her determination to put the whole of herself into the business of being Queen and “the natural mother of this State.” She was a hard mistress to serve: her “ progresses ’ ’through England ruined financially many of the loyal subjects who entertained her. She never openly countenanced the expeditions of Drake and ■ Hawkins as part of the national programme, and if her servants failed they might lose their heads. But when they succeeded Elizabeth was there to welcome them: she was not only a secret shareholder in their undertakings and a participator in any profits, but the heartener and goal of their plans, so that when Drake “ sailed over Plymouth bar with a million and a-half of gold and jewels in . his hold his first question to the fishermen he hailed was whether the Queen’s Majesty was alive and in good health.”

Brave Words. There is surely no braver reading than some of her speeches:—“While I call to mind things past, behold things present, and look forward to things to come, I count them happiest that go hence soonest. Nevertheless, against such evils and mischiefs as these, I am arme.d with a better courage than is common to my sex: so as whatsoever befalls me, death shall never find pm unprepared.” That was part of a message to Parliament when it was • considering the death senten'ce on Mary Queen of Scots —an act for which posterity lias held Elizabeth to blame. Miss Wilson believes that Mary’s execution was “ the first and only time during her reight that Elizabeth’s private wishes were in opposition ... to the will of her people.” Personally she would have preferred Mary to live.

“THE LONG RIFLE.” STEWART EDWARD WHITE’S BOOK In “ The Long Rifle,” Stewart Edward White pictures the conquest of a continent —America, moving westward, till in the end sound the, mellow gold of the San Gabriel Mission bells. The period covered, roughly 1810 to 1810, has been neglected. Just as the “six-shooter” typifies the cowboy era, so the long rifle, stands for tiie adventurous half-century before 1850. “The Long Ride,’’ it is safe to say, is the finest achievement of an author whose “Gold,” and “ The Forest,’ are modern classics of the frontier.

TARZAN AGAIN. LORD OF THE JUNGLE. The mighty and indestructible Tar7,an continues to astonish beasts and men in “ Tarzan Triumphant,” staged as of yore in the Dark Continent, somewhere, not very definitely indicated, west of Abyssinia. A choice variety of races contributes to the action: Lady Barbara, celebrated solo aviatrix parachuted from her plane into tlie depths of Africa; Professor Smith, American geologist, and his pal, a Chicago gangster; an Italian renegade and infamous partner in slave raiding; a Russian Bolshevik; descendants of a lost tribe of Israel still living as in Adam's time; as supers, Arabian banditti and bands of black mercenaries; among the animals, lions, apes, wild pigs, panthers, etc. The object of the ensuing bedlam is for Tarzan to rescue, repeatedly the imperilled men and women from the jaws of death, while taking fearful toll of Ids adversaries, the Kalian-Bolshevik combine and their savage cohorts. Never, even in his unparalleled feats of past heroism, lias the big fellow achieved more stirring and fabulous deeds. It depends, of course, upon your mental age and reading requirements whether you will llnd tin; book an enthralling adventure tale or so much nonsensical drivel.

COMMENTS AND EXTRACTS. “Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women, a vast number of clever, hard-headed men.” —From “ Roundabout Papers.”

ETHEL M. DELL. DISCOVERED BY MR PRIESTLEY. Mr J. B. Priestley, (author of “ The Good Companions,"), having read a book of Ethel M. Dell for the first ■time,, claims to have discovered the sceret of her popularity. She does not, he says, let real life break in anywhere, but creates her fiction out >of other fiction—good, oldfashioned, well-tried day-dreams. He considers the main reason of her success is her efficiency. Her novels being well devised within their own oonventon and soundly constructed narratives, Mis% Dell, Mr Priestley thinks, might teach something to more ambitious writers.

STRAY LEAVES. In addition to winning the Hawthornden Prize for her novel, “Without My Cloak,” Kate O’Brien has also been awarded the James Talt Black Memorial Prize for the best novel published in 1931. Mies O’Brien’s book was accepted for publication under unusual olrcumstances. When she had written a few chapters she sent It to Heinemanns, who accepted the work without seeing another word. Within a few weeks of publication over 10,000 copies ‘nad been sold.

A characteristic of the new Action, remarks' Mr J. B. Priestley, author of “Good Companions,” is the entire lack of responsibility of its characters, who show no desire, he says, to earn their own living, to take part in public life, or to Improve the world or themselves.

The verger of St. Andrew’s, llolborn, has discovered many names of Dickens’ characters in the church registers covering the period when their creator lived in that parish. Among them are Weller, Chadband, Boflln, Dorrit, Varden, Tigg, Guppy, Marley and Dawkins.

“To say ‘My love is like the red, red rose’ would seem to the modern artist ridiculously romantic and sentimental. But to say ‘My enemy is like the red, red beetroot’ is, for some extraordinary reason, regarded as merely realistic.”—G. Iv. Chesterton.

Susan Ertz, whose sixth novel, “The Galaxy." ranked her as one of the most, successful contemporary women novelists, lias married Major J. Ronald MeCrimllc, who retired from the Royal Air Force in 1922, and now practises at the Bar.

A familiar theme Is handled by the ! Poet Laureate. John Masefield, in his latest work, “A Talc of Troy.” It is a narrative poem dealing with Helen t and the people who moved about her i and Ihe events in which they all parJ ticipated.

THE MODERN ENDING. INTO THE SUNSET—OR ETERNITY. A Manchester Guardian reviewer wonders why so many novelists think a clear-cut ending inartistic. It seems the fashion now to close with some figure walking out into the night or the sunset or eternity. “THE GLOOMY DEAN.” BROUGHT UP-TO-DATE. ■Dean Inge has written a new preface to the fifth popular edition of his “Christian Ethics and Modern Problems,” which will be published shortly. In this preface he shows how the whole subject has advanced even since 1929. Unemployment has become a world-wide problem. America is no longer a land of wealth and prosperity. “Economists are completely puzzled by a situation to which history provides no parallel. No constructice policy is being tried anywhere.” He goes on to mention the fall in the British birth rate and the possibility that in ten years’ time an actual decrease In our numbers will be recorded. “But the moralist cannot afford to ignore the subversive ideas which are now being freely advocated.” GOOD BEER. “MUST TASTE HEAVENLY!” In “Let There Be Beer!" Bob Brown says:— “Good, beer must taste “round, clean, full-mouthed and keen.” All five senses are required in tasting Its quality. To the sight It must ring clear as a bell, It must snap in the ear, feel pleasantly stioky between the fingers, smell fresh and tempting and taste heavenly. The foam must be sprightly, upstanding and crackling; it Is as important as the bead on old ale or wine; the connoisseur oan tell much about the body of the beverage by the mere sight of the white collar.” At times he breaks into verse, as follows: Take me down, down, down Where the Wurzburger flows, flows, flows. There you oan drown, drown, drown All your troubles and cares and woes. Oh, wine may be fine, But a big stein for mine, Down where the Wurzburger flows!

“Victor Hugo Is too thunderously and rampantly active, too bland in his exercise of poetic power to attract the present generation, and he has never been forgiven for his apocalyptio phase,” writes Mr. Austin Clarke. “At present, his fate is to be a text book, for schools and colleges, once thought to be the real destination of great poets.”