The Bookshelf.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 15, 10 April 1912, Page 45

The Bookshelf.

By

DELTA.

FEUILLETON. Mr. C. F. Holder. ZT\ R- CHARLES FREDERIC K ill HOLDER, author of ‘ Life in •J I 7 the Open,” which has just been « J issued in a new and cheaper edition by the Putnams, has been selected as the recipient of the Gold Medal awarded from time to time by L Acadepiie des Sports, to sportsmen who have gained international renown through distinguished services to the fraternity. {This medal had previously been awarded to Fdererick Selous, the big-game hunter, whose last important undertaking Was the direction of Colonel Roosevelt s 'African hunt.

Some Putnam New Publications. George Putnam and Sons have just published ‘’The Natural History of Religious Feelings: A Question of Miracles,” by Dr. Cornelison. Dr. Cornelison has Jnade a study of religious emotion, particularly as manifested in the phenonemon of conversion. Further, it is a protest against the Pharisaism of those who look upon conversion as the only sign of spiritual worth. This is a neurotic age, and any treatise that deals with nerve treatment is sure of a cordial reception. To meet this want of the age. Dr. Collins, who is a distinguished nerve specialist, has written a book entitled ‘"The Way with the Nerves” (Putnam’s). The work takes the form of a series of letters to a neurologist on various modern nervous ailments, real and fancied, with the replies thereto, telling of their nature and treatment. Another Putnam publication of interest is Mr. A. T. Story’s ‘’Building of the Empire.”

A South African Story. Mr. Edgar Wallace, who will be remembered as the “Daily Mail" war correspondent who was censored during the South African War, if we remember rightly, for sending home information that did not altogether please the War authorities, has written a West African story entitled “Sanders of the River.” (Wa'rd. Lock, and Co.) The book’s acenes are laid in West Central Africa, and the hero is a commissioner there. Magnificent indeed, are the descriptions giverf by Mr. Wallace of West Central Africa and its people, who, he declares, are “splendid stuff.” McLino, the hero of the story, has not a few love affairs, and in the recording of these, and in their recital Mr. Wallace is not a little reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling in his Indian tales. We have always been an admirer of Mr. Wallace's work, which is keen, virile, discriminating, vividly descriptive, and intensely arrestive. ‘’Sanders of the River” is far and away, in our opinion the best thing Mr. Wallace has as yet turned out.

Some Burton Harrison Recollections.

"Recollections, Grave and Gay.” is the title of a book that has been written by Mrs. Burton Harrison, and published by Smith, Elder, at 7/6 net. Mrs. Harrison is a lady of versatile talent. She is well known both in England and America, as a dramatist, a club woman, a beautiful lady, a charming singer, a wit, and a traveller. But her time charm lies in the fact that, during the Southern rebellion., she worked with her own hands the first flag for the Southern soldiers, and stirred them into heroism by her singing of "My Maryland.” besides doing the work Of two women in tending and nursing the men of Dixie. In short, no woman during the civil war did more to inspire noble deeds than Constance Cary, now Mrs. Burton Harrison. As a stirring narrative of the Civil War. seen from the inside, this book is of intense and enduring interest. Outside of this, the book is distinctly entertaining in its reinlniscences of people “I have met.” Here is a Ellen Terry story:—“l first met Ellen Terry at the house of Parke Godwin, aon-inlaw of William Cullen Bryfcnt, At an evening party. Miss Terry .was radiant in face, and voice, and Manner; an irresistible being on the atage and off it. Mrs. Lemoyne had just recitai for Irving and herself the spirited pmpn of “Kentucky Belle,” Him Terry

yielding her the tribute of a gentle rain of tears. One reads of a certain Miss Sophy Streatfield, a friend of Dr. Johnston’s, to whom her friend would say: “Cry, pretty Sophy, cry!” when she immediately responded by an overflow of weeping, in which she looked prettier than before. Miss Terry must have been the only other living person to whom tears are becoming. Madame Pat ti, it would seem, was, like Gorki, strongly disapproved of by the unco guid of New York society. “Adelina Patti had been in her youth, in the South and elsewhere in America, a darling of the social world (although actresses were not then, and even now are not, so generally’ received in the best American houses as in England). When she returned here after her separation from her first husband, the Marquis de- Caux, the dandy equerry and cotillon leader of the Tuileries, she was known to have formed a new alliance with Nieolini, the tenor singer, whose wife still lived. New York, whieh rarely condones an offence of this variety, failed to invite or receive in private the world-famed diva.” In the late ’sixties Mrs. Harrison heard Patti in Paris, and wrote as follows: —“She doesn’t look a day older than when I saw her at Washington before the war as Rosina in the ‘Barbiere,’ a little tripping thing of fifteen or sixteen. Now she is a great diva, making £24,000 in a season at the Italian Opera House. Crowds follow

her carriage and wait around her hotel till she comes out on the balcony to throw their flowers. At Marseilles she was jostled until her bonnet fell off; the bonnet was torn to pieces for souvenirs. Certainly’ she sings like a lark at Heaven's gate.” To the Swedish singer and Victor Capoul (“the ineffably gallant and deli cate stage lover”) are devoted several pages. Talking one day to Capoul, Mrs. Harrison is disillusioned by him about Nilsson:— “Rather disillusionising, certainly, was the singing a demi-voix, but not so much as was my talk with the elegant M. Capoul, who was presented to me when lie came strolling around the house. In the course of it I spoke of Nilsson, her perfect voice, her fine art, and great personal beauty. “The only trouble with Mdle. Nilsson,” responded her ardent swain, with a malicious twinkle in his eye, “is that she has the bands of a frog.” Ob! Ohl I protested in veritable distress. Faust to say thia of h’s ’Marguerite! And Faust laughed with a laugh borrowed from Mepbistopheles. Years after, Mrs. Harrison saw Nilsson at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo looking the ghost of her former self. There is mention, too, of Matthew Arnold and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Mention, also, of Colonel John Hay. who, crossing the Atlantic once with Mrs. Harrison, likened the sea as being smooth and monotonous like one of Lewis Morris’s poems.

There are recollections of Lord Dufferin, of the Empress Eugenie (“like some old carving of a saint”), Thomas Carlyle, Mrs. Fiske, the actress, who starred in one of Mrs. Harrison’s plays, Father John of Kronstadt, and many other celebrities, living and dead. But as we before indicated, the book is chiefly valuable as a personal record, from the inside, of the war of abolition. Ballade of the Book Lover. Grim legends, poets’ rhapsodies, Romance and fact his love excite, The flowers of all the centuries •Shed sweetness on his restless flight. Goddess and queen and damsel slight, Fond Herricks Julia, proud and tall, Brown Beatrix, Iseult the White— His heart hath room for one and all. The tenderness of Heloise, And wild-eyed Viviens subtle might Rival in power to lure and please Jane Austen’s dames, demure and bright, Provocative of sly delight— Dainty, genteel, ironical; Maids who amuse, bewitch, affright— His heart hath room for one and all. He follows where sad Syrinx flees. He mourns strange Lyndall’s bitter plight, Dark Egypt’s fascination sees, Swift to caress and swift to smite. From her whose beauty’ swayed the fight And lit, like a torch, the Trojan wall, And to the vers de-societe chiffon sprite— His heart hath room for one and all. Envoy. Prince, bow the knee and yield the right To one whose passions never pall; Fair phantoms throng his day and night— His heart hath room for one and all. E.C.C.

REVIEWS.

The Lady of the Spur : By David Potter. (Philadelphia and London: Lippincott’s. Melbourne: George Role ertson and Co. Auckland: Wildman and Arey. 3/6.) Since the. advent of larger populations, better roads, good lighting, telegraphy, and increased facilities of transit, highwaymen, except for purposes of fiction, are decidedly at a discount in Great Britain. But in some of the sparsely populated baekbloeks of America he and his ilk still flourish, or so it would seem from this romantic story of Mr. David Potter’s, who is indeed a charming writer. The story opens where a highwayman, masquerading as Henry Morven, of Morven Hall, West Jersey, la recognised by the landlord of the Pole Tavern, in the Morven township, as Tom Bell, the Dick Turpin of those parts. But Tom Bell manages to convince the landlord that he is mistaken, for an luck will have it, a cousin of Henry Morven •urns up at the Pole Tavern and claims Bell as her cousin Harry Morven, who has returned after a long absence to assume his rightful place as Squire of Morven. More than thia, she in bearer of a warning to Henry Morven. There are, it appears, two other aspirants to the Morven estate, and these two aspir-

anta have conspired together to make Morven Hall uncomfortable, and, indeed, so dangerous a place for the new squire to live in, that they hope to frighten him away and continue to enjoy the very considerable pickings of the estate of an absentee squire. To this end a band of scoundrels had been raised who called themeelves “Pine Owls,” who had succeeded in terrorising the rural population of the Morven township for miles around. Now, curiously enough, Tom Bell had only visited Morven township for the sake of placing in the hands of the Morven lawyers the private papers of Henry Morven, together with testimony of his death, the said Henry Morven having •been a comrade of Bell’s for years. And here we may- just as well say that Bell was a criminal manufactured by the State, who had wrongly imprison ed him. Well! Tom Bell falls in love with Henry Morven's cousin, and, being an adept at the “Pine Owls’ ” own game, determines to outwit them by disregard ing the warning and fighting them on equal terms as Henry Morven. And so well does he like his assumed role, and so much do the Morven people like him, that he is loth to cease his masquerading after he has rid the countryside of the “Owls.” How h ■ accomplishes this task, and how eventually he becomes Squire of Morven, must be discovered by readers themselves. “The Ladv of the Spur,” which we have received from Messrs George Robertson and Co., is as wholesome as it is entertaining. It is also delightfully original as to plot, con sistent as to characterisation, prolific in exciting incident, romantic in denouement, and, in short, one of the best examples of American fiction.

Zuleika Dobson : By Max Beerbohm. (London: Wm. Heinemann. Auckland: Wildman and Arey’. 3/6.) Mr. Beerbohm’s novel will afford entertainment to past and present Oxonians, at least such of them as like burlesque. A more extravagant plot could not be imagined. In fact. Mr. Beerbohm. in fiction, as in c.iri. ature, easily outrivals his compeers in the realm of comic fiction. Zuleika Dobson, a granddaughter of a Warden of “Judas” goes down to Oxford for the Eights week. Zuleika is very beautiful in a theatrical sort of way, and turns all the graduates heads, from the “Duke” down to the American Rhodes scholar. The “Duke,” being Oxford's greatest swell, must have first chance of winning Zuleika's favours. Wherever the “Duke” leads, the others follow. The Duke vows he will die fol Zuleika. The others vow they will d e too. The Duke’s affection wanes, and he trys to get out of dying. But a telegram arriving from the butler of his ancestral seat telling him that the spook (or spooks in this case) that generally-her-ald the dissolution of the head of the house, have been seen, causes him to revert to his vow. And what the Duke will not do for love he does for family tradition and superstition. There are many hard knocks both at Oxford life and ways, and the foibles of many well known people of note. Cleverly droll thbook is undoubtedly. But 350 pages of extravagant caricature is too much, and we sincerely hope that Mr. Beerbohm will not see fit to parody Cambridge. Whieh seems likely, since the story ends where Zuleika takes train for Cambridge, with a view, we presume, to opening up a similar campaign in that town.

Mr*. Drummond's Vocation : By Mark Ryce. (London: William Heinemann. Auckland: Wildman and Arey. 3/6.) The authoress of “Mrs. Drummond’s Vocation” calls her novel “light literature.” Well! it is the sort of light liters ture that gives one “furiously to think” of the pass to which the modern novel has arrived. It is a clever character sketch of a “light” woman, written with a cynical brutality that sets it’ author apart among women authors. And it is a shameful libel on an heroic band who daily and hourly risk their lives in brave effort to disseminate the truths of Chris tianity among the Chinese. Fortunately, such books as “Mrs. Drummond's Vocation” have a short life. We wish it the shortest of short lives.