LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21418, 9 March 1935, Page 17

LITERARY GOSSIP

♦ In the "Quarterly Review," Dr. C. R. Haines discusses present-day tendencies to make "English the Universal Language." "It will not be amiss or unamusing," he writes, "if we give one or two examples of how English is written by natives of Eastern countries. Japanese shop English is sometimes very quaint, and Babu English is a byword. Over a Chinese dairy was the notice. 'Cows milked and re-tailed,' and a baker in Korea placarded himself as 'The best loafer in town.' An Indian, thanking a hospital for curing his wife, added with pathetic inconsequence, 'I will not try to repay you. Vengeance belongeth unto God,.'" Dr. Haines then adds specimens _of English written by (i) an Indian Babu, and (ii) a Chinese applicant for a position. (i) To , Esq., Madras. HONO.URED AND ILLUSTROUS SIR. —You will please remember me as sth Grade Clerk in this Office, for which there is no scope to inflate, and after all my education in Madras University, when I passed B.A. in two sittings. Now this mental effort demands greater area for abilities, but forsooth am doomed with unlucky star in firmament, and still serve unceasingly in grade 35-50 less income-tax. This, Honoured Sir, can never be with qualifications, which are unbounded, must flow into mud stream, where brains are measured by Rs. a.p. I have learned much, August Sir, and with tribulation, acquired arts knowing in sciences, such as "the apple must fall to the ground" (Isaac Newton). I am also sitting this long time in spare evening vacation, acquiring the glorious defunct languages in Latin—viz. Abba Father and so forth.

Now, Reverend Sir, I am what dag says to rat, in tight corner for domestic troubles come in plural and sometimes triplicate, causing slight earthquakes in Heavenly household when there is shortage of coin, and to add to this my wife doth bring me in annual incremental successions, to the ramification of this generation, t,nd by the Lord there is no end to this mischief. You will therefore take notice. Noble Sir, and give me appointment in your Office, where I shall show all things, including my abilities, which are drooping, and which will wither like fragile plant unless watered by your kind patronage in better job carrying more lucre.

Reply favourably to your humble petitioner, who is straining on beam end, and 'in duty bound I shall ever pray for long life on your honour's head

Dear Sir I am Wang. It is for my personal benefit that I write for a position in your honourable Bank. J. have a flexible brain that will adapt, itself to your business, and in consequence bring good efforts to your goodselves. My education was impressed upon me in the Peking University in which place I graduated Number one. I can drive a typewriter with good noise and my English is great. My refers: are of good and should you hope to see me they will be read by you with great pleasure. My last job has left itself from me for the good reason that the large man was dead. It was on account of no lault of mine. So honorable Sir. what about it? If I can be of big use to you I will arrive on some date that you should guess. Faithfully yours, Wang. But Dr. Haines finds fair game, sitting much nearer than Bombay or Peking. He quotes a circular from the Inland Revenue Office: Where on payment of a dividend, other than such a preference dividend as aforesaid, income tax has, under Rule 20 of the General Rules, been deduced therefrom by reference to a standard rate for the year in which the dividend became due, the net amount received shall for all the purposes of the Income Tax Acts, be deemed to represent income of such an amount as would, after deduction of tax by reference to the standard rate last mentioned. be equal to the net amount received, and for the said pui-poses then shall be deemed to have been paid in respect of that income by deduction tax of such an amount as is equal to the amount of tax on that income computed by reference to the standard rate last mentioned.

Dr. Haines's conclusion is the following:

There will emerge separate dialects of English, which may diverge so far as to be more intelligible to other inheritors of English. This has happened in China, where an inhabitant of Canton cannot be understood at Peking. However that may be. the speech of Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyan and Macaulay will become, in a sense in which 210 other language has been so, the language of the whole world.

In commenting upon the announcement that Sir Arthur Pinero left £63,000, the "Daily Telegraph" remarks that playwrights, novelists, poets and authors generally do not greatly benefit the Exchequer through death duties. It supports this opinion by recalling that LyUon Strachev left only £8000; Robert Bridges. the Poet Laureate, £6000; and D. 11. Lawrence about £'2500.

Such literary fortunes as 1 Hat of Sir Hall Caine. whose estate was in the neighbourhood of £250,000, arc rare. Sir W. S. Gilbert is mentioned as one of. the wealthiest writers, with £lll.OOO, Stanley Weyman coming next with £IIO,OOO. Dickens is stated to have left £93,000, Thomas Hardy, £91,000, and John Galsworthy, £BB,OOO. On the other hand, such popular favourites as Arnold Bennett, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and W. J. Locke left the comparatively small sums of £40,000, £30,000, and £24,000.

English booksellers have been complaining recently, notes the London correspondent of the "New York Times" Book Review, of the invasion of their domain by some of the daily papers, which are increasingly adopting the practice of supplying their reader's direct with certain books at low prices. The latest scheme of this kind comes from the "Daily Herald," which offers a "Library of the World's Greatest Books," consisting of 50 volumes at a cost of less than a shilling each, including carriage. The condition is that the purchaser must have placed a written order with his newsdealer for the regular delivery of the paper. As the '"Herald'' has a daily circulation of over two millions, this will probably be a huge bookselling transaction.

"I mean seriously," says G. K. Chesterton, writing in "John o' Londons' Weekly," "that the first things that counted with Bernard Shaw were negative and anarchic things; where for most men the first things at least are positive. We may lose those positive beliefs or affections, especially for a time, but we have had them; and I do not believe that George Bernard Shaw ever had them. And the proof of it is that, being one of the most genial and generous men in the world, he still' cannot understand them."