BOOKS and AUTHORS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue II, 13 July 1895, Page 33

BOOKS and AUTHORS.

A LITERARY CAUSERIE for COLONIAL BOOKBUYERS and BORROWERS.

BOOKS marked thus (*) have arrived in the colony, and could at the time of writing be purchased in the principal colonial bookshops, and borrowed at the libraries. For the conuenience of country cousins who find difficulty in procuring the latest books and new editions, the ‘BOOKMAN ’ will send to any New Zealand address any book which can be obtained. No notice will, of course, be taken of requests unaccompanied by remittance to cover postage as well as published price of book. It is requested that only those who find it impossible to procure books through the ordinary channels, should take advantage of this offer. The labour involved will be heavy and entirely unremunerative, no *ees or commission being taken. Queries and Correspondence on Literary Matters Invited. AH Communications and Commissions must be addressed ‘THE BOOKMAN,’ Graphic Office, Auckland.

How ‘The Ebb Tide Was Written.

By far the most interesting thing I have . read for some considerable time is a portion of the diary of the late Robert Louis Stevenson. I got my information from

To Day, Mr Jerome’s.clever paper, and that gentleman was, I understand, indebted to a ’Frisco paper.

Writing on May 14th, 1893, he says:—‘We call it “ The Ebb Tide ; a Trio and Quartet,” but that secondary name you may strike out if it seems dull to you. The book, however, falls in two halves, when the fourth character appears. lamon p. 82, if you want to know, and expect to finish on, I suppose, no or so ; but it goes slowly, as you may judge from the fact that this three weeks past I have only struggled from p. 58 to p. 82 : twenty-four pages, et encore sure to be re-written in twenty-one days. This is no prize-taker ; not much Waverley Novels about this !’

Writing on May 29th, when evidently in indifferent health, he says :—‘ The deuce fly away with literature, for the basest sport in creation,’ and on June 2nd there is a certain gaiety of sadness in the entry : ‘I am nearly dead with dyspepsia over smoking and unremunerated overwork. Last night I went to bed by seven ; woke up again about ten for a minute to find myself lightheaded and altogether off my legs ; went to sleep again and woke this morning fairly fit. 1 have crippled ou to page 101, but I haven’t read it yet, so do not boast. What kills me is the frame of mind of one of the characters ; I cannot get it through.

The Wor Done.

A month later he finishes the work and W rites :—‘ Well, it’s done. Those tragic pp are at ] ast finished, and have put

away thirty-two pages of chips, and have spent thirteen days about as nearly in hell as a man could expect to live through. It’s done, and of course, it ain’t worth while, and who cares ? There it is, and about as grim a tale as was ever written, and as grimy and as hateful. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF J. G. HUISH, Born 1856, at Hackney. London. Accidentally killed on this island 10th September. 1889. He was lovely and pleasant in his lite, and of death he was not disappointed.’ The correspondence dated August 23rd is specially interesting, because more than one critic has suggested that Stevenson merely put his name to the book to aid Mr Lloyd Osborne. ‘ I propose,’ he says, ‘if it be not too late, to delete Lloyd’s name. He has nothing to do with the last half. The first we wrote together as the beginning of a long yarn. The second is entirely mine ; and I think it rather unfair on the young man to couple his name with so infamous a work. Above all, as you had not read the two last chapters, which seemed to me the most ugly and cynical of all.’ The reply of his friend, Mr Colvin, to this letter, induces him to alter his views, and he next writes ‘ Since you rather revise your views of “ The Ebb Tide ” I think Lloyd’s name might stick, but I leave it to you. I’ll tell you just how it stands: Up to the discovery of the champagne the tale was all planueed betwen us, and drafted by Lloyd. From that moment be has had nothing to do with it except talking it over, for we changed our plan, gave up the projected Monte Christo, and cut it down for a short story. My impression—l beg your pardon, this is a local joke ; a firm here had on its beer labels, “Sole Importers”—is that it will never be popular, but might make a little success de scandale. However, I’m done with it now, and not sorry, and the crowd may rave and mumble its bones for what I care.’

Stevenson's Own Opin on of His Work.

His final opinion of this work, and his reference to Mr Crockett, form an interest,ng conclusion :—‘ Did you see a nlan w jj o wrote <• The stick.it Minister,”

and dedicated it to me in words that brought tears to my eyes every time that I looked at them ? 11 s heart remembers now. Ah, by God, it does ! Singular that I should fulfil the Scot’s destiny throughout, and live a voluntary exile and have my head filled with the blessed beastly place all the time. Hi 1 Stop ! You say “The Ebb Tide” is the “working out of an artistic problem of a kind.” Well, I should just bet it was. You don’t like Atwater ; says he’s “ done from the outside.” Yery likely. But look at my three rogues ; they’re all there, I’ll go bail. Three types of the bad man, the weak man, and strong man with a weakness, that are gone through and lived out.’ There is a sadness in the part of his diary, written in 1892, and headed ‘ After lam dead ’ :—‘ It came over me the other day suddenly that this diary of mine to you (Mr Colvin) would make good picking after I am dead and a man could make some kind of a book out of it without much trouble. So, for God’s sake, don’t lose them, and they will prove a piece of provision for my poor family, as Simld calls it.’

ANt bl Bookman.

Alphonse Daudet, the great French novelist, has been prominently before jjrjfjsfi public lately in consequence

of his visit to London, where he appears to have found much to admire and little to condemn. Alphonse Daudet js certainly one of the foremost men of letters of the day. Intellectually he towers over all his own countrymen of the literary profession, and there are few

men of letters living in England, in Europe one might say, who can be placed on the same high level that he occupies. Some of his works are not intended for familyreading, but he is never coarse and brutish as Zola is too often, nor is he given to the flippantimnioralitygenerally supposed to be a characteristic of French novels. As a journalist and essayist Monsieur Daudet has a world wide and vrell-deserved reputation. As will be seen by our portrait, Daudet is an extremely handsome man, with a massively intellectual and artistic face.

‘Scribner’s Magazine tor May ‘

The fact that Mrs Humphrey Ward commences a story in the May number of an( j t| la t Mr Meredith still coutinues liis serial, ‘The Amazing Mar-

riage,’ is of itself enough to draw the attention of bookmen to this magazine. But even were the authoress of ‘Robert Elsmere’ and ‘Marcella’ unrepresented, and had Mr Meredith's name been absent from the contributors’ list, the May Scribner would still have attracted attention. So admirable a specimen of the fine art of wood engraving as ‘The Red I’ope,' which forms the frontispiece, would alone have made the number one of note to any man or woman of culture. Mr Howland’s article on ‘Golf’ is alluded to at length elsewhere, and is assuredly an attractive feature. Very clever is the • Short Study in Evolution,’ one of a series of stories of

girls’ college life. The writer is decidedly clever and interesting, and has been admirably ‘ aided and abetted ’ by the illustrator. Other articles of more than ordinary interest and merit are those on ‘ Posters ’ and ‘ Wood-engraving.’ ‘ The Occupation—A Portion of the Art of Living,’is dealt with a trifle lengthily. In conclusion, there is some very excellent verse. The poem which follows appears to me the best thing in magazine poetry that I have seen for a very considerable time. It throbs with ideas :

PLAYTHINGS. ‘ Back to your playthings, child.’ my Father says; ‘ I cannot tell you now.’ This when I come to him on long dull days. To aak hi n ‘ Why f and ’ How f And other things that, surely I should know — ‘ What brought me here f and ‘ Must I some day go f Whither, and why I' They all perplex me so!

Ah. precious playthings, who shall hold you light I You keep my eyes front tears My empty hands from trembling ; this my kite. That windward wheels and veers— Fortune I call it. and this merry ball Is pleasure, and the dearest of them all. This idol—broken ; once 1 let it fall.

Then comes some careless hand and sweeps away My toys, and while I weep. An ache is in my heart that such as they Hud never stilled to sleep— Its clamorous questionings, that will not bow To Ills denial, uor my silence-vow : ‘ I have no toys. Ah, tell me, tell me now’.’ Louise Betts Edwards.

* a lla -

(raZ/tnisan unpleasant and somewhat dull record of a few erotic passages in the

lives of two or three women and as many men. The heroine of the story is thus described : As a chi d Gallia had never had a doll: had never played at keeping house, teaching sohool, having callers, as most other children do. It lhere was a baby about she hid shivered and left the room. Nothing terrifled her like the society of young married woman. The least mem ion of these miprurient subjects so many women, and even the bett-bred women, habitually discuss, sent her from the scene.

In view of her recorded utterances this last statementmust be pronounced nothing less than amazing. So far as I have followed her conversation through 336 pages of the novel, she speaks and thinks of nothing else. A child who has ‘ never had a doll,’ or ‘ never played at keeping house,’ is an unnatural child to begin with. Either she was densely stupid, or the victim of a morbid and unhealthy precocity. Yet we are told • there are a great many Gallias in the world nowadays, and they are for the most part very unhappy people.’ Gallia proposes marriage to a ‘ dark, tall, thm, young man with a very handsome face,’ who rejects her rather brutally. ‘ I wish I had asked him to kiss me once 1’ she reflects subsequently. ‘ Surely he would not have minded kissing me just once I A woman always grants as much as that.’ Query. The ‘ dark, tall, thin, young man ’ is a tremendous prig—so priggish that none but a woman would venture to make him the hero of a novel. Gallia is occasionally somewhat priggish herself, so that the match would not have been entirely unsuitable. The following remarkably tasteful observations fall from her lips . —

‘ I pardon your astonishment at discovering my parentage.’ she said lightly, ‘ but you may consider me a sport. We can’t all take after our parents, and clever people may have stupid children.’

Gallia ends up by engaging herself to a man she does not love, and the dark, tall, thin, young man confesses to heart disease. The scene in which this engagement occurs is the most degrading I ever remember to have read. With the successful lover the reader will probably feel disposed to cry :—

‘ For Gcd’s sake don't, don't, don't.’ Without knowing why, Merk knew that he could cot bear this. He could bear the rest, but this he simply could not bear. It was the agony of knives to him.

Gallia is said to be a ‘ clever and powerful production.’ So it is. The cleverness is obvious ; it is on the surface, and the power is outraged conventionality under another name. It is true the two main ideas of the book are physiologically and socially truths, but they are neither of them new, and have been infinitely better and more fitly expressed elsewhere. Novels of this type serve a definite, and it might even be alleged, useful purpose, but to the lover of pure literature the introduction of a pathological or social problem into the sacred temple of art is a desecration to be resented and fought against.

Hk in a wise individual who talketh not concerning that of which he knows nothing.