BOOKS AND BOOK-MEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 7, 18 February 1893, Page 152

BOOKS AND BOOK-MEN.

LIKE Lord Beaconsfield Mr Justin McCarthy has given considerable attention to literature and authorship ;

but unlike the famous Tory statesman his literary productions will be read and renew his fame long after his political life and actions are clean forgotten. The author of Coningsby will in future generations be remembered as the man who obtained for England the control of the Suez Canal, the smartest, most brilliant, and perhaps least scrupulous politican of his time ; but Mr McCarthy’s leadership of the faction of the Irish party will be all but forgotten when the ‘History of Our Own Times’ has become the most valuable text book of a past century. ‘ England under Gladstone ’ and the short history are both too wellknown and have been too widely read to need praise in this column. Like all histories they show the views of the

author’s politics to some degree, but they are certainly far less prejudiced than Macauley or Froude. In light literature Mr McCarthy has also made a name for himself, • Dear Lady Disdain ’ being one of the most delightful novels ever written.

Mrs French Sheldon has evolved a big and somewhat pretentious book out of her experiences as ‘ Bebe Bwana ’ —lady master—of a caravan in East Africa. The interest, however, lies less in the positive experiences than in the fact that they befel a woman ; and in this age ot the inversion of the sexes this is an interest of scarcely sufficient strength or novelty to support so large a book. Mrs Sheldon deserves, and will doubtless receive from all who read her book, all admiration for her indomitable pluck, her concentration of purpose, and her lemarkable powers of organisation and leadership, but—she has not written a good book.

The frank revelation of some of the incidents of the journey leaves rather a nasty taste in the mouth. The stoiy on page 306 of the mutilation, carried out by the author’s own hands, of the corpse of the Masai woman for the purpose of obtaining the ornaments from her legs and arms is particularly ghoulish. But Mrs Sheldon is not a lady of squeamish tastes. She discusses questions of morality with frequent and complete outspokenness. She penetrated the arcana of the harem of the Sultan of Zanzibar, and the ladies of the establishment moved in procession before her, and each presented her with a jewelled ling.

There is a certain interest, other than statistical, in the fact that at the close of the procession Mrs Sheldon’s jewellery was augmented by one hundred and forty-two rings I Moreover, she visited and revisited the wild moon dances of the utterly nude El Moran or warriors of Taveta, a ceremony from which the women of the tribe were excluded. Her sex, in fact, though frequently a protection, was never a deterrent. The most interesting part of her experiences to the author herself was her sojourn in Taveta and her circumnavigation of Chala, the crater lake on the north eastern side of Kilimanjaro, over three thousand feet above the sea level. She claims to have been the first human being who ever disturbed the suiface of this eerie lake, and the event evidently made a deep impression on her mind, and is, in a degree, transmitted to the reader.

The book is curiously ill-written. The illustrations are only less profuse than unsatisfactory. Almost all are aepioductions of photographs, and whether the fault lies with the original sun pictures or with the process, ceitain it is that the tesult is never good, and in many instances is superlatively bad.