LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20098, 29 November 1930, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP.

In the "Yale He view" Mr James Truslow Adams writes on the comparative advantages of Europe and the Lnitcd States as places residence. His point of view is a persoual one, but his conclusions go far to explain why so many American writers prefer to live abroad. Mr Adams has travelled extcnrively both in the United States and in Europe, but it was not until about two years ago that he tried the experiment of becoming, for the time being, a resident of a foreign city. lie and his wife took a flat overlooking Kensington Gardens in London and made it their homo for a year. Last January they returned to the United States. Now, after some months in New York and Washington. Mr Adams makes a comparison, all in London's favour. He declares that he was able to do moro work during that year than he had ever done in the same length of time at home, and that he had, in addition, moro leisure for travel and reading. His editors and publishers told him that the work he did during that year was better. Hipexplanation is twofold. First, he found that there was no friction in daily life: Social life in London, by -which X mean every human contact, whether with a subway guard, a shop clerk, a taxi driver, or one's distinguished hostess, moves as on a perfect bearing:. Daily life here is tremendously "efficient" as compared with America, where the friction has become terrific. Secondly, he felt while living abroad a senre of continuity with the whole stream of Western European civilisation from tliu Greeks onward. Returning to the United States, he found that the mere business of living absorbed so much of his time and mental energy that it was difficult to find time for work or leisure to enjoy life. In New York he felt as if he were living in a huge business establishment, and in Washington, though he found it more restful, as if he were living in a Government office.

An interesting letter Correcting what appears to be an inaccuracy, though widely accepted, about the marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, was lately printed in the Sunday "Observer": Sir, —In "At Random" recently X read, as I have often read before: "St. Fancrsa Church, where the marriage took place." A few weeks a go, finding that St. Pancras Church v/as in close vicinity to my hotel. 1 entered it one forenoon for the purpose o£ paying my respect to tho memory of tile over-poets married there eighty-four years before. There %vas no one in- the church but o man and a woman engaged in the work of cleaning. I took him to be the sexton, and told him why I had come in. savins thr.t 1 supposed many a passer-by turned into the church for the same reason. This is what, to my great surprise, he said in reply: "Yes, sir. there's many that make the same mistake. But the Brownings were not married in this church. They were married in Marylebone Church, as I took the trouble myself to find Out, and alter his wife's death Robert Browning used to go to that church and kneel down and kis« the spot on which she had stood."—Yours, HUGHJOHN EVANS. Berlin. Mr S. M. Ellis, in his recent '' Life of Michael Kelly, 1762-1526," tells this excellent story about Home Tooke and the Income Tax Commissioners: Tooke . . having returned to some Commissioners under the same Act, his income at two hundred pounds per annum, was questioned much In the same manner as myself until one of the inquisitors Gaid: ' 'Mr Horne TooUe, you are trifling with tis sadly; we are aware o£ the manner in which you live, the servants you keep, the style you maintain'; this cannot be done for five ti'Tr* th* l amount yon hnv* returned. What other resources have you?" "Sir," said Homo TooKe. "1 have, as I . have said, only two hundred pounds a year; whatever elre I get, 2 be?, borrow, or steal, and it is a perfect matter of indifference to me to which of those three sources yon attribute imy surplus income." And thus ended the examination.

Mr j. B. Priestley has protested against a growing tendency to confuse the meaning of "best seller.*' The proper definition of the term is a writer or a book commanding large sales, but with some critics it is coming to mean a trashy book that makes & large but ephemeral appeal. Mr Priestley contends that the term should be used in its original sense only—and wirh a quite definite meaning, indicating that sales have exceeded, say, 40,000 or 50,000 copies—and should not imply the possession or lack of literary merits and permanent value. If a roviewcr, he says, wishes to accuse a novelist of writing sentimental trash, he should make the accusation directly and cot declare, as a recent reviewer did m an important weekly, that this ©uthor is trying to write like a best seller. For there is no way of writing like a best seller. Some silly tales, it is true, have been best sellers, but a far greater number of worse tales have been worst sellers.

In a recent article Mr "Will Dnrant picks out what he calls the "Six Worst Sellers" among the books of the century. The title is dishonest, though catchy, for Mr Durant has not attempted *o discover which books have failed most completely with the bookbuying public, but to select books of great merit, which have not sold as well as they should have done. First on the list is Spengler's "Decline of the West," which he holds to be the greatest book of the century. Then come Bgrgson's "Creative Evolution," "The Education of Henry Adams," Holland's "Jean Christophe," and Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil." When it comes to selecting the sixth book, Mr Durant wishes that his list eonld be to S( i v rt n, for lie would like to include both Proust's "Eemembranee of Things Past" and Frazer's "Golden Bough." After maturo reflection he awards the palm to Frazer.

Mr Christopher Morley recently sailed from New York to revisit old haunts in England. While m London he intended to make a pilgrimag«_ to rhe Criterion Bar, a literary pilgrimage; for, according to Conan Doyle'a 'A Study in Scarlet," it was in the Criterion - Bar that Dr. Watson met Stamford, the young doctor who introduced him to Sherlock Holmes. Mr Morlev thirks that there should be a tablet in the bar to commemorate that oFpnt. and he hoped to interest enough admirers of Sherlock Holmes to arrange for something of the sort. The Italian Government has banned the sale of "The Cardinal's Mistress," a novel written some years ago by Bc_iiito Mussolini, The author, who has some influence with the has not interfered with the edict. "Buy the great Victorian poets," is the advice given to collectors by Thomas J. Wise in a "Strand Magazine " interview. "As for modem firsts," he adds, "don't pay fancy prices—they'll fall, most of them. Conrad, Hardy, Shaw, and Barrie are the most secure." Commander Lowry, in a recently ni'blished book, recalls the fact that the familiar expression. "Tell it to the mnrines." originated with Charles 11., and was given immortality by Pepys'a quoting of it in his diary.