The Bookshelf.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 16, 16 October 1912, Page 45

The Bookshelf.

By

DELTA,

FEUILLETON.

Popularity of Fiction. Thousands of new books have been written to meet with the requirements of the English autumn and gift season. Proofreaders, printers, and binders worked furiously to get ready for this busiest section of the publishing season the work at which many a well-known—-and maybe unknown —author has hopefully been toiling at all through the Year’s bright spring days and long summer nights. While it is not possible to indicate which of these volumes will find their way to this Dominion, it may be interesting to our readers to hear the titles of sonre that we have been informed are soon to be available at the various bookshops in- this city. In spite of the oft-repeated assertion that fiction is on the decline, publishers are predicting a record season in the sale of iho novel 'which deals with real and present-day life. Recently, a famous publisher declared to an “Express" representative “that what the public was still crying out for was the Great Human Story.” Realism —a trifle sentimental — ever goes down. So does humour. There is always a demand for the really funny book. The craze for biographies is not nearly so great as it was a year or two ago, when the novel dropped slightly in favour, and the position in the market of the 15/ colourvolume is more unsteady now than the drawing-room freak table -which holds it. There is generally a safe sale for books on travel and nature and sport, but the popularity of fiction seems eternal. The novel is first favourite this autumn season by whole necks and lengths. The Earliest New Fiction. Miss Clo Graves, who writes under the name of “Richard Dehan,” has already led the way with her new book, “Between Two Thieves,” io which Mr A. E. W. Mason’s “The Turnstile,” is an excellent second. Another of the earliest, and unquestionably one of the most important novels published this autumn, is “Barriers,” by the Hon. Mrs Julian Byng, the wife of General Byng, who has just been appointed to command the troops in Egypt. Mr T. W. H. Crosland has completed,and Messrs Ewart, Seymour, and Co., Ltd., has published a new book on the lines of “The Unspeakable Scot,” entitled “Tally was a Welshman,” a special Welsh edition of which will be published. Other new fiction is:— “General Matlock’s Shadow,” by W. B. Maxwell. “Meadow Sweet,” by Baroness Orezy. “Come Rack! Come Rope!” by Robert Hugh Benson. “The Outpost of Eternity,” by Cosmo Hamilton. “The Maker of Secrets,” by William Le Queux. “The Antagonist,” by E. Temple, Thurston. "The Heather Moon,” by C. N. and A. M. Williamson. “A Knight of Spain,” by Marjorie Bowen. “My Own Times," bv Lady Dorothy Nevill. Some Methuen New Books. Methuen’s Autumn list is, as usual, * lengthy one. Mr G. V. Lucas is such a prime favourite that his new anthology entitled “A Little of Everything,” and compiled from bis own writings, is sure (| f a cordial welcome. Among new novels we notice “A Woman in the Limelight,” by Charles Gleig. It is a story of stage life, and deals with the doings of a musical-comedy girl. There is plenty of humour and first-hand knowledge of the upper Bohemian life of to’lay, and the characters are vividly drawn, it is said. Mr Pelt-Ridge has a new novel entitled “Devoted Sparkes,” «'' ( l is as usual, a tale of that London life he. knows so well how to depict. Interesting to motorists will bo the information that on August 15 was issued volume third of Mr Charles G. Harper’s Autocar’ Road Book.” Thia volume comprises routes eastward of the Holy-

head Road, and includes Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Huntingdonshire, and portions of Herts, Northants, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire. The Great North Road from London as far as Newark, is included in these pages. Volumes one and two, which were published some time ago, deal respectively with England, so,uth of the Thames, and Wales, and the West Midlands. Volume four, dealing with the North of England and South of Scotland, will also shortly be ready. As many Donrinionit.es are already planning next year’s trip to England, and as so many of them conceive a motor tour of Great Britain one of the most desirable of things to do while at Home, and as no successful automobile tour can be made without an efficient Road Book, it would

be well for intending travellers “Home” to make a note of the titles and the name of the author and publishers of these exceptionally reliable “Road Books.” Mr Balfour As a Mau of Letters. With Mi- Balfour as a politician most readers are acquainted through the medium of their newspapers. But we venture to think that few readers are acquainted with the cx-Prhne Minister as a man of letters. Yet Mr Balfour has w-ritten several books of great merit, says Dr James Moffatt, who is both a Doctor of Divinity and a Doctor of Literature and should know. “Yet,” says Dr Moffatt, “Mr Balfour’s books are not about literature. Indeed," ho continues, “it is almost as difficult to ascertain his literary interests and quality from what he has published as it was for Tariff Reformers and Free Traders during his last Parliament to discover his exact whereabouts on the misty seas of high finance. With this difference, however, that his elusiveness as a man of letters is not tactical; it is due to the fact that his main interests lie, intellectually, iu philosophy, from Bacon to Bergson. Only now and then, in some address or casual reference, is it possible for his readers to perceive his literary bearings through the atmosphere of mental distinction which characterises his pages in ‘Hansard’ or out of it. He is not n man of letters as Lord Rosebery is, for example, or Lord Morley, or Mr Wyndham, or Mr Birrell." Dr Moffatt's article is a very scholarly one, but we gather from it as a whole that if Mr Balfour has any decided views on literature at all it is lliat

literature’s supreme function is to cheer. “What I ask from literature,” says Mr Balfour, “mainly is that a world which is full of sadness and difficulty, in which you go through a day’s stress and come back from your work weary, you should find in literature something which represents life, which is true in the highest sense of truth, to what is or Is imagined to be true, but which does cheer us.” An utterance which defines one of the functions of literature certainly, but which leaves the reader as completely befogged as to which walk of literature Mr Balfour treads as his attitude (aforementioned) on the question of high finance. But, upon the whole, Dr Moffatt feels that “Mr Balfour eauno-t be called a man of letters in the strict sense of the term, not even in the sense in which that flexible title could be applied to his hero, Bishop Berkley.” Literature as literature is verj- little to Mr Balfour. As a medium for the expression of various philosophies it certainly justifies its existence. Dr Moffatt’s article is profusely illustrated, the Downing Street illustrations in particular affording uncommon interest to those

readers whose imaginations are vivid enough to people the various interiors shown. The September “ Bookman.” The “Bookman” for September is to be an Overseas Number and should be of peculiar interest to Dominion readers, since it will deal especially with the literature of the colonics and of India, It will criticise more particularly the Work of living authors, and will bo illustrated with numerous portraits. Now, it has ofteu occurred to us that the literary talent of New Zealand is too lightly estimated by Dominionites. So that an expert opinion will bo highly valued, since it will settle for all reasonable people the question of “Who’s who” in Dominion literature. Who is Dan Chaucer ?

“People are asking,” says a “Bookman” scribe, “who is Dan Chaucer, author of ‘The Simple Life Limited,’ whose brilliant new satirical novel ‘The New Humpty Dumpty,’ has just been published by John Lane?” Well, wo would like to disclose the secret, but Mr Dan Chaucer says we must not. He says there is nothing interesting about his personality beyond the fact that he is partial to toast and bananas; and that as for his personal appearance, if you go to Maidstone on a market day and photograph the first farmer you meet, so long as he has not side-whiskers, you will have a pretty accurate portrait of him. Personally, we should not have described Mr Chaucer as looking at all like that, but as that is what he thinks he looks like, we Can only set it down.

A Novel of Journalism. After “Mightier Than the Sword." it was a bold writer, we should think, that would so soon present a new novel on journalism. Yet Mr Burgin, who, as everybody knows, docs not lack for readers, is the author of a new story of literary and journalistic life in London, which Messrs Hutchinson have published or are about to publish shortly. The story embodies some of Mr Burgin’s own experiences, and certain well-known authors have unconsciously sat as models for some of its characters. This is the sort of novel that sells like hot cakes, and, having pleasurable recollections of some of Mr Burgin’s Canadian stories, wish him an extensive circulation of his new work. Topical. Apropos of the boom in Shakespearean stock which we sincerely trust will not dje away after Mr Asche has finished his tour of this country, it may be interesting to hear from “Fra Elbertus" that “Hamlet is not a fiction of Shakespeare’s brain. Far back,” he says, “in the dim and distant Middle Ages, the

incidents describe : > . pl:'.;. were aflv tually enacted b n.ti people; and Anileth performed substantially the part that Shakespeare assigned to him. Ainleth’s uncle did murder the King and wed the Queen; and Amleth did feign madness iu which there was unmistakable method. The story is told in the third and fourth books of the Latin history of Denmark, written by Saxo Grammaticus, near the end of the Twelfth Century.” REVIEWS. From the Angle of Seventeen: By Eden I’hill potts. (London: John Mu nay. Auckland: Wildman and Arey.) As we before indicated. “ From the Angle of Seventeen” constitutes a sequel to “The Human Boy,” and describes a year of the “boy’s” life in London directly following his emancipation from school. Circumstances make it imperative .that the “boy,” now arrived at the age of 17. shall earn his own living. So a post is found for him in the Apollo Assurance Office, and a home in the flat of a maiden aunt, who is an A.R.8.A., and a veritable guardian angel to the “ boy.” Exceed ingly interesting is this year’s record of how latndou and tho assurance businesi strikes this unfledged youth of Intent ability. After describing the staff, the quarters, and the procedure of the Apollo Assurance Company, as it strikes thii “angle of seventeen.” Mr Phillpotts go.'i on to describe the “boy’s” leisure hours. The mental side of him needs intellect n il food, so he takes lessons in elocution, with a view to one day becoming a great

actor. The description of this elocutionary clss* constitutes some of the best reading of the book. . He also writes some verse, ’ and has .the . unqualified pleasure and somewhat unusual experience of seeing his first effort print. He is also entrusted the editor of the .“Thespis” to criticise i( *n amateur performance of “ Diplomacy." and discovers, to his disgust, “ that alt that is written, even by critics, by no 3 ,leans gets into print.” The physical side of him. too. is clamorous for strenuous expression to correct the inertia of clerical occupation, and “seventeen” is fortunate enough, by the help of one of his colleagues 'in the Apollo, to be elected to the L.A.C., and succeeds in winning for his company’s team a- “ best siveraee” in cricket. A thoroughly wholesome''"seventeen” is this Corkey senior, who takes himself and his doings rather more seriously, and expresses his views and opinions with more pomposity’ than js usual at the “ angle of seventeen."

Jtase of the Garden: By Katherine Tviian. (London: Constable's Colonial Library. Auckland: Wildman and Arey. I Apart from the fascinating charm and sympathetic presentation that always characterises this popular author's work, the historic panorama it presents to view alone makes it highly. interesting reacting. The book's heroine is Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of that Duke of Itichmond who nourished in the second George’s reign, and who was the most beautiful woman and most adored personality of George the Third’s court. The reader will follow with the keenest interest and the most, tender pity the career of Lady Sarah, who herself was tne child of a passionate re-union, and in turn felt, 1 hough chaste by temperament, a slave to passion. What a strong individuality Lady Sarah was is shown by the many' letters written during her life do various confidants, and which arc reproduced .in this romance. 'These letters not only mirror every aspect of their writer’s mind and character, and show her more sinned against than sinning, but constitute a valuable record of the political and court life of the third George's reign. Never, we think, has Mrs Tynan’s art been so apparent as in this deeply pathetic romance, which shows how very nearly Lady Sarah Lennox in whose veins ran the blood of the unfortunate Marie Stuart, and some of whose. “fatal charm” she undoubtedly inherited—became the consort of George 111. As frontispiece,in ■photogravure, is a beautiful portrait of Lady Sarah Lennox, reproduced from a mezzotint after Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1’11.A., by E. Fisher. The Cloak o£ Convention : By Leslie Moore. (London: Alston Rivers. Melbourne: George Robertson and Co. Auckland: Wildman and Arey.) Ihe name of Moore is held in much estimation in the literary and dramatie world, and we regret to see a novelist bra ring this name as the writer of a. novel which is, while it is eminently' readable, only .a variant of “The Woman Who Did" theme, in the fact that while that ephemeral novel pointed a no uncertain moral there is not a shred of one in “The Cloak of Convention." For “the woman who •lid" of this story is made to marry' a good man and live happy’ ever after, a state of things specially undesirable in these days of lax morals, and immorality which is even a worse staite of things. I hat the conventions are often used as a cloak for vice and sin and folly’, does not m the least prove' that convention is wrong or that, the purest society’ can dispense with this bulwark, which has been erected almost exclusively’ for the protection of the women who did, as Mr Grant Allen's woman did, and as Miss l-eslie Moore's “Zoe” did. But the growang cult of the emotion of the moment, regardless of pain of the future, has so many votaries that we do not doubt but • hat "The Cloak of Convention" will find ptany’ readers, and especially’ feminine readers, for the book is essentially fem mine in outlook. But we strongly eoun- , its rejection as food for the young, plastic mind which takes unconsciously and almost indelibly the imprint of things wholesome and unwholesome by sheer reason of its plasticity. Selmiu of Selmiugford : By Bertram Mitford. (Melbourne: Ward, LockCo. Auckland: Wildman and Arey.) Afbf ol^ 1 e . scarcely imagine Mr unreadable book, he nardly up to his ordinary standard in

“ Sclmin of Selmingfurd.” We confess to a strong leaning to a very, very bad villain in our fiction, and Dr Durward is a very poor villain indeed. Mr Mitford is evidently a believer in auto-suggestion, a greater believer, certainly, than his Dr Durward, or we might have been treated io that mos-t revolting of all spectacles - the murder of a hitman being by auto-, suggestion. And that this can l»e done we have not the slightest doubt. But the lover of sensation and thrills will not find himself disappointed in this story, which provides two shipwrecks, a narrow escape from sharks, and several -other hairbreadth escapes and exciting adventures for his delectation. But (he chief blemish of the book lies in its weak characterisation, a fault not usually attributable to Mr Mitford. BITS FROM THE NEW BOOKS. Memorising a Sunset. “Whistler and Mr Way once left the studio at dusk and were walking along the road by the gardens of Chelsea Hospital. Suddenly Whistler stopped, and, pointing to a group of buildings in the distance—an old public-house at (he

corner of a road; s with windows and : shops “showing. golden lights through thefathering mist of twilight—said, As he did not seem to have anything to sketch or make notes on, T offered him my note-book. ‘No, no; be quiet/ was his answer. And, after a long pause, he turned and walked hack a few yards; then, with his back io the scene at which I was looking, he said, ‘Now, see if I have learned it/ and repeated a full description of the scone, even as on? might repeat a poem one has learned by heart. Then we went on, and soon there came another picture which appealed to mo even more than the former. I tried to call his attention to it; hut he would not look at it. saying. ’No, no; one thing at a time.’ In a few days f was at the studio again, and there on the easel was the realisation of the picture.”—Memories of James McNeil Whistler, by T. It. Way. The “Honeymoon” Dialect. “Happily married people habitually say things with no earthly meaning to anyone but themselves.”—Nights and Days, by Maude A lines Icy. Man, the Egotist. “Every man prefers I he woman who gives up something fur him, to the woman who sacrifices' herself to any Cause whatever.”—Anne of the Barricades, by S. IL Crockett. A Proud Duke. “Elizabeth Percy, who was twice a widow and three times a wife before she was seventeen, married the ’proud’ Duke of Somerest in l(»70. This Duke never allowed his daughters to sit down in his presence, eVen when they were nursing him for days and nights together in his eighty-seventh year, mid he omitted one of his daughters from his will because he caught her involuntarily napping by his bedside!”—London Stories, edited by John o’ London. A Californian Solomon. “When Commodore Stockton instituted civil government over the territory so recently wrested from Ihe 'Mexicans, t InRev. Colton was appointed alcalde of Monterey. Gambling w« tlien the

besetting sin of the Mexican Californian. There was also a dearth of milch cows in the community, which was all the more severely felt l*ecause in those days condensed milk and the other substitutes were unknown. “One day two gamblers were brought before the clerical alcade, and with them a magnificent fresh cow. They were charged with having gambled over it, and the ownership of the animal was disputed. The Rev. Colton considered the story as set forth by ihe parties with great interest, and then submitted the fol low ing decree : “ ‘You, sir, lost the cow, consequently it does not lielong to you.’ '1 hen. turn ing to the other man, he said: ‘You. sir. have won it — you have won it by gambling; but this is a form of transfer that the Court docs * not recognise. In my opinion, therefore the animal eschews to the Court.’” —Edward Fitzgerald 'Beale, by Stephen Bonsai. The Limit ! “A German gentleman at breakfast one morning said to the servant: ’Did I come homo very drunk last night. Gretchen?’ Iler reply was : ‘Oh, lor* tir, ,f fid Why. you kissed the missis'.’” —JjJ Aeat-en Tracks in Brittany, by Emil Davies. Getting the Right Side of Them. “It’s easiest to get a man to marry you when he first loses his head; then he’ll do anything, and not know he’s doing it.” “Unless you get women to fall in love, you’ll get nothing helpful out of them. It’s not naughtiness; it’s just their nature. Man has a dozen incentives to doing things; a woman has only one, and everything is half-hearted that she does without it.”—'lhe Last Resort, by 11. F. Prevost Battersby. A Critic in Danger, “At a festive, gathering Air Hardy's host once showed him several trophies which included the .war club of Sitting Bull. Hardy’s strength was taxed in swinging it. ‘How much I should like to have this in my head when I meet the critic who called “ Jude the Obscure” /‘Jude the Obscene,” ' he sighed. There Was an embarrassing silence for a moment or two. The culprit was among the guests. She was the lady who had sat next to Mr Hardy at table.” — Many Celebrities and a Few Others. I.y William H. Rideing. The Chaste Husband. . “Lord Coventry, who married .Maria, the eldest of the beautiful Aliss Gunnings, was a. very sedate young man, objected to powder and patches ami all frivolity, ai*d was of an exceptional!v jealous nature. ]( is stated that once at Sir John Bland’s house, before sixteen guests, he chased his wife round the table, suspecting that she 'had used a little, red on her face. He seized hold of her. and scrtibled the colour off !»v force with a serviette. Whereupon he declared that, as she had deceived him once, lie would at once take her away from the gay city and home—and so he did!”—• London Stories Edited by John o’ London. A New Definition. “A motor boat is any that can mote, and which positively refuses to do so at irregular and unexpected intervals.” —My Demon Motor Boat, bv George Fitch. Temperament. “People ignore temperament a deal 100 much in this world. One person may be perfectly contented feeding hens, while another is Avretched if lie hasn’t got a liying-machine; he doesn’t want to feed hens. He may learn to do without a liying-machine, and make the -best of things bravely, but nothing can prevent him wanting it all Hie time! It is just how a person happens to be made.”— The Mark, by Mrs Philip Champion de Crespigny. A Feast on Horse. “During the Kimberley siege, a colonel in charge of Hie mess one night addressed his fellow officers thus: ‘Gentlemen, I am sorry to say we were only able to draw’ half our ration in beef to-day; this joint I am carving is beef, at the other end of the table the joint is horse; if anyone would prefer to trv it, perhaps ho will carve for himself.’ But as no oue volunteered (o carve the horse joint, the colonel had to eke out the beef as best- he could. And when the dinner was over an orderly confessed

that he had misplaced the joints and that the beef still remained intact.” A Nurse’s Life in War and Peace, by I’. U. l/auren<v Business. “Business is simply having the law-* fixed so that you can steal without having to pay any line. ’ Happy Hawkins, by Robert Alexander W asou. Our Greatness. “In the booking office at Brest we >aw two individuals, most unmistakably Englishmen on a sporting trip. One of them stood disconsolately in the middle of the room, while the other was vainly endeavouring to make the officials understand what he wanted. A porter walked up to the isolated individual, and in precisely fifteen seconds tired oil’ a string of about five hundred and fifty words at him. It would have taken an cxpiil Frenchman to have under- tood hall of it but the Englishman looked at him calmly, and said: ‘Oh, yes!’ It is in moments like this that one realises why it is we have become a great nation.” till' Beaten Tracks in Brittany. h\ Emit Davies. Life of the Oxford Don. • “Closer and closer creep the walls of experience, softer and thii-ker are the garments worn to keep out the cold, gentler and gentler are the specula tions born of a good old port and a knowledge of the Greek language. About, the High tables voices softly dispute the turning of a phrase, eyes mildly salute ihe careful dishes of a wisely chosen cook, gentle patronage is bestowed upon the wild ruffian of ihe outer world hush, he sleeps, his feet in slippers, his head upon the softest cushion, bis hand still covering the broad page of his die tionary . . . Nothing, not birth, nor love, nor death, must disturb him.” ‘■fhe Prelude to Adventure.” bv Hugh Walpole.