A NEW LITERARY PRIZE

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1330, 6 January 1912, Page 9

A NEW LITERARY PRIZE

At a recent meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, Lord lialdanc announced Hie foundation of a prize by the Princess (In Polignac for tlio advancement of tho objects of the Academic Committee. He said that tho Princess desired that tho endowment should be a memorial to the name of her husband the late Prince Edmoiid de Polignac, himself one whoso interest and sympathy for literature and art were of tne keenest. Her own fooling being for form in literature and for style, she had wished to help the committor in its object, which was to bring to the front form in literature and style, and she had chosen it- as the instrument through which her object might be rceompanied, and had founded the prize and endowment for the committee. She had given tliem for live years an annual sum of ,£l5O for the purpose of the committee, and of that amount <£100 was to be devoted annually to a prize. One of the purposes of the prize was the encouragement ol' stylo; it was to be given each year to an author in respect of a particular piece of work; the book selected must belong to tho current year and ba published in the year emiing' December 31 preceding the award, which was to be mads in November in each year. The award was to have special regard, not to tho past of tho author, nor even necessarily to his present, but to his future; and what the judges wore to look for was literary promise.' They wished to distinguish those to whom . they should look in the future to sustain the credit of British literature. No author would receive the prize twice, and ho need not say that they would not confer it on themselves. Nor did they desire any applications or recommendations, which would be counted for unrighteousness on those who sent, them in. A Reading Committee had been appointed to make suggestions to the Academic Committee and guide it in tho bestowal of the prize. Tho committee had selected as the first recipient of tho prize Mr. Walter de la Mare in respect of his work known as "The Return," which he had recently published, and he had the pleasure of congratulating him on being first person who had this distinction. "The Return" was published in October, 1910. Tho following reference to the book was made in a- review which appeared in the "Morning Post" on October 31, 1910: "Mr. de la Marc has written in 'The Return' one of the most curiously interesting and original books that it has been our fortune lo come across for a long time. In an intensely allurim; way wo get drawn into its vague and misty atmosphere. It haunts us uncannily, and will do so for many a day to conio; wc cannot got away from it. The tale is one ol' a man 'posses-ed,' but in I a new and startling,way. Arthur Lawford. recovering from intlueina, finds himself in a country churchyard beside the grave of a Privichmau. one Nicholas Sabathier, a suicide, dead fur over a cenlury. Lawl'ord leaves the churchyard with Ids own soul ami identity intact, lint iii the outward semblance of the dead S.ibatiiier. He says lo his friend Herbert: 'My flesh seenied nothing mora (ban an hallucination; (hero J. was haunting my body, an old grinning teiie-HK-tit. and all that f thought 1 wanted and couldn't do without, all I valued and prided myself on—stacked up in tiic drizzling street below.' It is a fearsome position, and his struggle for sanity, his fight with the stalking shadows, the haunting phantoms, and menacing fancies, is thrilling and impressive. His 'I'll win through' is pitiful and pathetic. It is difficult not to take the absurd position seriously, it is described so subtly nnd convincingly. We feel alter reading it as' if we had slept through a sort of psychic nightmare, but we v.ake still groping after a meaning." Mr. d« la Mare ha.s ako published ..some voluuifis of Booms.

MR. ARNOLD BENNETT. Mr. Bennett's visit to Now York continues to interest bookish people (here, and this is how one of tho weeklies describes his appearance.—"llis strenuous personality betrays his sure, systemamind, and that he of all persons is least surprised by his rise to lame; he had mathematically figured it out and worked up to it. In many of the finalities of his mind lie is essentially independent in an American way, and wo hope he will judge us as congenial acquaintances and friends." The allusion ill the latter sentence is fo a series of articles for "Harper's" in which Mr. Bennett is to pronounce final judgment 011 America and the Americans.

Naturally (says- an English critic) those articles are not the only point at which the visit touches literature, for occasion is made of it for producing fresh editions of some of the novels and odd volume". Among the former is an edition of "Tho Man from the North,", and it is curious to notice that there is a new work. As a matter of fact it is tho first novel. Mr. Bennett ever wrote, and was published both in America and England so long ago as ISfIS. Indeed, this is the novel of which, under the titlo of "111 tho SliadvW," the author himself gives so amusing an account in "Tho Truth about an Author."" He tells ns how. he sat down to write n story on French lines and to emulate the fastidious art of Flaubert. It proved uphill work, for his phrases turned out "damnably Mudiesque," but after six months' work, when he felt "the sort of elation that probably succeeds six months on a treadmill," lie seemed to strike fire. "Ono evening, in the midst of a chapter, a sudden and mysterious satisfaction began to warm my inmost being. 1 knew that that chapter was good and going to be good. I experienced happiness in the very act of work. Emotion and technique were reconciled. It was as if I had surprisingly como upon the chart with tho blood-red cross showing where the Spanish treasure was buried." Things flowed easily after that, and he finished the book in a spell of twenty-four hours' unintermitted work. "It was great, .this spell; it was histrionic. It was Dumas over again, and the roaring French forties." He found n publisher in Mr. John Lane, and f.he total profits of his first venture exceeded the price he had paid for having his manuscript typewritten by the sum of ono sovereign.