LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 287, 30 August 1919, Page 11

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Egoism in Excels!;. After having been "0.P." (which, gwd reader, is the book trade's abbreviation of "out of print") for a good many years, the once famous "Journal of Mario Bashkirtseff" has reappeared in n. now and revised edition. The translation, by Mary Serrano, is said to bo much better than 'that of tho original English edition. The "Journal Intimo" of Mpie Bashkirtseff • first appeared some thirty years ago. 'Gladstone gave the English edition a hig push by proclaiming it a "book without parallel" just «s ho helped to boom the absurdly overrated "Robert Elsmere" of . Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Whatever may have been tho G.O.M.'s political faults he ' had " no literary narrow-mindedness.. _ It is not many renders whose' eclecticism permits of almost equal admiration, of the ogoistic moj-bidities of a M n . r ie Bashkirtseff and the somewhat priggish Robert Elsinere's sea rollings after rest for an over-questioning soul. Marie was a young Russian girl who died when 6he was a littlo over twenty. She had a passion for fame, and a mania for being admired as much for hor delicate little person ns for her literary genius. Gonius she had, and its expression in (lie famous "Journal" can give vitality to incidents which, described hy others, might ffeem trivial indeed. Tho "Journal" is the honest unburdening of a soul, far inoro honest than Rousseau's "Confessions." There is something, to me,, at least, very fascinating in books ot this sort: They do not always make pleasant rending, such books as Marie Bashkirtseff '« "Journal," and the' Barbollion book, "Tho Journal of a Disappointed Man," for which H. Cr. Wolls recently stood sponsor, or again, that dreadful self-exposition of a wayward soul, Patrick Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," but they aro intensely interesting as studies in human psychology. The Russian girl may lw set down by some readers of the famous "Journal" as ft neurotic sentimentalist, but her bonk is valuable as a revelation of a voting girl's soul. The new edition contains, I see, reproductions ot Mario Bashkirtseff's paintings. Sho wont to Paris to study art and had tier portrait painted by Bastien Lenage. Francois Coppce, the poet, contributes a description of tho diarist. The new edition .is an American production. I am sorry I cannot givo tho price.

Wilfred Blunt's "Diaries." There tire many piquant passages in the reooiitl.v-publialied "Diaries" of Wilfred Kcawen Blunt, a book which was censored during tiho war period, on account, 1 expect, of Blunt's bitter attacks •upon British administration in Egypt. Blunt, it may be remembered by sohio of tho older' of my readers, was prominent in defending Arabi Pasha. Later on, ho went to gaol as an Irish Land League "martyr," and all this albeit he was a wealthy Sussex squire. Devoted as much to breeding Arab horses and to poetry as to championing causes which, if not exactly "lost," have never 'l/een very popular with the average British squire, Blunt has. 'much to Bay about his .literary con temporaries. Although Lord Cromer was, politically, his arch enemy, Blunt chronicles how ho came to tea with the rebel "as n literary man," in order to discuss the Poet-Laureatesliip. Cromer, it appears, favoured William, now Sir William, Watson, and Blunt ■liked William Morris. But, says Blunt,. Austin ,"was appointed on tho success of a prose volume about his garden in Kent." "William Morris," ho says, "refused ; the Queen objected to Swinburne, old Patmore (Coventry Patmore, of "An-gel-in-fcho-House" fame) was a Catholic, tho rest were, if possibte, worse than Austin." Blunt' has a piquant allusion to the Swinburne-Wntte-Dunton friendship: "Watts keeps Swinburne prisoner as a keeper keeps a lunatic. He had explained that some years ago he had found Swinburne in bed, dyinsr of what is called 'drunkard's diarrhoea,' and that having got him round ho now considers Swinburne as his own property, and treats him like a naughty boy." Stray Leaves, In an essay on Bernard Shaw (ih a collection entitled "Old and New Blasters"), Mr. Robert Lynd, one of tlio elevorcst of the younger English literary critics, makes the following very shrevd remark apropos to the characters in G.B.S.'s plays:— Mr. Shaw often thinks he is presenting us with human nature when he. is mcr.ely presenting hla opinions about liuman nature—the human nature' of s'olflier6, of artistß, of women. Or, rather, when he'is presenting a queeriizzlng mixture of human naturo and his opinions' about it. John Galsworthy, who wont to America to take part in the ceremonies of. the Lowell centenary, afterwards made a lecturing tour, tho not profits of which, amounting to nearly JGIOOO, the novelist generously donated to the Armenian and Syrian Relief I'uiid. Under tlio heading of "The Chafing Eisli," Christopher Morley conducts a gossip and satire column ("colyiim" is, I ■ believe, the ■ accepted American, Press slang term) in a Philadelphia daily paper, In a recent issue .ho tells, of un American in Paris who had a copy of the French edition of .'.'Uncle .Tom's Cabin," which appears over there in two volumes under the title "L'Oncle Tom.'" He took them to a hinder to be rebound. When they returned the backs read thus: L'ONCLE L'ONCLii and TOME I TOME II llow is • it, "Liber" wonders,. that so many lady novelists seem.to take., a malign pleasure in drawing ill-natured feminine portraits and saying ''nasty" things 'generally about the fair sex? For instance, in Dorothy Rose's "Lover's Knots" in the "Royal Magazine" 1 come across the following' geui: "Lady h'louuder was a large, beetroot-faced woman, with inquisitive eyte and one or two chins to spare. She wore an expensive check costume that did not savo her from looking. like Brixton at • its worst. Eunice's neat tweeds wore bearable, but her face was like a distressed war bun, and her ankles Should have been reserved for private circulation only." Tho author of the very Tor7.an" stories will probably sniff wheni lie reads that a monkey is to play a lending role in Will Levington Comfort's Jiew story, "Tho Yellow Lord."

In his latest novel, k 'Who' CaresP" Cosmo Hamilton makes one of his characters thus borato a. young lady acquaintance: "Nothing comes of know* ing you," ho said to her. "It'B a waste of tune. You're not for men. You're for lanky' youths with whom yon can tatk nonsense and laugh at silly jelies. You belong to the type known in wig-

land as the dapper—that weird, 'para- | doxieal thing with the appearanco of flagrant innocence and the mind of an errand-boy. Your unholy form of enjoyment is to put men into fatso positions and play baby when they lay hands on you. Your hourly delight is to stir passion and then run into a nursery and slam, the door." . Philiips Oppenheiui put in a lot. of useful work at the Ministry of Information last year, but found time, 1 read, ■to wife two new spy stories. 'Thus philosophises, on divorce, one of tho characters in William CJaine's latest novel "Tho Wife Who Came Aliv'e":'-?-"I suppose that tho attitude of England and America towards the thorny, matter of divorce may be fairly, summed up thus: that England thinks it wrong .to put asunder those whom God linth joined together,' but will do it price; and America thinks it's wicked for two people, who detest each other, to live together, however respectably they may bo married, and will give them every assistance in her power to separate.' . I Home papers report the death in Paris ih March , last' of Lawrence Jerrold, the doyen of newspaper correspondents m Paris and' a grandson of the famous ■Douglas Jeriold, of -whom he wrote an excellent • ' "Men scorn to like stupid women, she said. "Not stupid; but women- clever enough to seem not clever," he corrected lightly."—"Crofton's Daughtsr," by J. Lecki'o Herbertson.