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New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12615, 27 November 1926, Page 12

BOOK PAGE

“ Nelson the Man ” in a New Biography Is it possible to say anything new about the great admiral Nelson? From Southey to Mahan there is a vast literature, swelled by the seven big volumes of his dispatches and correspondence compiled and edited by Sir Harris Nicholas. What drove Arthur Corbett-Smith to attempt in his “Nelson” (Williams and Norgate, London) to add to that mass of national lore? He certainly hae many literary attainments to his credit. These comprise works on the Far East, dealing with Clhina and Japan in their relation to the modern world; works on health; sundry works, naval and military, among them monographs on the “Retreat from Mons” and the “Battle of The Marne” ; works on sociology, the drama, aviation, radio, and music; and much critical, historical and original matter. Among his original compositions are an opera, “Elizabeth,” several concert suites, songs, military and otherwise, and madrigals in the Elizabethan manner. In this large output there is but a slight hint of the liking for writing the life of the great admiral which he has told us in his preface to this book has been a life-long obsession of his. The book itself reveals the reason for entering the literary Nelson arena. Pondering over his hero’s career, the ; author realised that there is nothing devoted to Nelson the man, or not enough. His evident conclusion was that the exploits in war, great as they are, are not sufficient for a proper understanding of the man who achieved them. The two sides of Nelson are inseparable, of course, and therefore there is in this book a fine outline of the man’s wonderful career, with sufficient details to enable the man to be understood; and the shading is filled in with details of. the human 6ide which are not generally considered of first importance by the historians. From the day on which Nelson joined his first ship, to the day on which he died on his last, the story is complete. It is the story of a man small and weak and chronically ill, upset by every rough sea, knocked over by ordinary exposure, subject to headaches and toothache—and all this aggravated by terrible disablements, an eye lost, an arm gone, and bis head covered with scars. This body enclosed a spirit of rare quality. He was brave to rashness, prudent in calculation beyond ail men, quick to understand the fundamentals of things, and quicker to decide, and inflexible in determination. To these qualities were joined rare personal charm, with power to persuade, and a generosity of the most prodigal. He was keenly sensitive to any neglect of his merits, and chivalrously insistent on the recognition of everything done by his comrades in arms. For the honour of his country he was fanatical, and his hatred of the French was of the same order of intensity. He was vain withal, always talking over his exploits, pointing out their : distinctive marks, ever considering himself justified in blowing his own trumpet, which he did with quaint fanfaronades. Harmless generally, this vanity led to his undoing, by plunging him into the Lady Hamilton episode, to the sorrow of his friends and the roaring disapproval of the public. But always the public acclaimed his great exploits, and gave him ovations innumerable, in the midst of which he never could understand its conduct in drawing the line against his most lamentable backsliding, and dis- | appointing him with the demonstra- ; tion that, however great his public ser- i vices, he was not permitted by cither | his King or his countrymen to defy j the laws of decency. Here the author I takes occasion to eulogise his hero’s \ simplicity of mind, but he cannot, do ! what he will, prove that in this terrible episode it was a holy simplicity. ; He rather avoids such an attempt, j That, indeed, is according to the character of the biography he has written. At the outset he likens the life of Nelson to one of the great tragedies of tho Greek poets, in which the final catastrophe oasts its awful shadow over the entire drama from the beginning with certainty, and rushes onwards with increasing rapidity to the inevitable, terrible end. With this idea, ho writes for Ins grandson, arranging his material in the dramatic fashion of a play. It is a convenient method, for the arrangement makes scenes of the different episodes and exploits of the life to the great facility of the condensation and the presenting of the details necessary for throwing the light on the man more than on the admiral. ! On tho whole his attempt to realise the human side of the great admiral is very successful. Ho makes us soar with him in highest admiration of the man’s extraordinary gifts and exploits, and he forces us to ween with him over tho terrible tragedy of his spectacular fall. He has not written with the poetry of the old tragedians nor with their almost uncanny skill, hut lie has followed their method well, and grip- j ped our interest and moved our hearts just as they used to do with their | audiences. The portrait on the frontis- j piece—the host we have ever seen — • h»'lr>s this tragic method to hold us fast.

CRAZE FOR REALISM Modem Autobiographies are Bad Art

A REGRETTABLE pestilence has spread through a section of the American magazine world during the last few years which I am glad to say has so far not reached this side of the Atlantic, for it is a very contagious and dangerous one, writes Stacy Aumonier in the “New York Times”). As a Britisher I have no intention of criticising the United States or of casting aspersions upon those stout and worthy fellows—American magazine editors. After all, it is their pestilence and not mine. The one feature I do deplore, however, is that a number of well-known British authors have been bitten by it and have been exploiting their private emoions for a wad of dollars. Now there are certain things which have always been regarded as sacred, and one, I should have thought, would have been a man’s or a woman’s secret emotions. Even a man’s private material property is regarded with a certain amount of respect. It seems surprising, therefore, to find suddenly that a man’s spiritual and emotional property may be the subject of barter and exchange; that, in other words, he may sell the real estate of his heart for money. The operation is quite indefensible.

During the last year or two, British, American and Continental authors have been pouring into the ear of a hungry public all kinds of secrets about their passions and feelings with regard to their wives, mistresses and lovei*s. Even

; their own fathers and mothers have not been spared. This kind of thing has been done before through the medium of thinly disguised fiction, but never ' till now have actual names and places, j incidents and times, been flagrantly recorded. The departure presents a pitiable spectacle, and establishes a dangerous precedent. It also shows a complete disregard for the true functions i of the autobiographer, j To compare the dignified autobio- ! graphics of men like Evelyn and 1 Fepys with these magazine confessions is like comparing a Sargent portrait to an indecent photograph. For it must be remembered that autobiography, like biography and fiction, is j an art, and not merely a sordid con- : fession of personal experiences. An autobiography should give an impression of the times in which the writer lived, his interpretation of social values, criticism of manners, customs and peoples. Interlarded with records and stories of actual experiences, that have point and entertainment, these enlarge the vision of -mankind. They make for us an autobiography that is worth while. But when the autobiographer lifts the veil and displays the raw edges of his personal emotions we are apt to draw back in disgust. He is no longer dealing in abstractions, but in something which we feci we have no right to witness. He is no longer an artist, but a rather mean bore. We may have been enchanted by the novels of —say—Phillip P. Bronx, but when lie begins to tell us iiow his first wife never understood him, but his second wife did, or how he lived for years with his drunken father whom he tried to save, we are immediately disillusioned. It is no business of ours. We -want him to leave off. For on purely moral grounds, we know that —if it be true, aud we have no evidence that it is true—he not only exposes himself but he exposes others, who, unless a statement be deliberately libellous, have no power to reply. Indeed, tho truer it is, the worse tho position seems to become. For he cannot say these things without wounding and jarring the sensibilities of people, for whom at one time Mr Broux must have had a profound affection. He presents the spectacle of a man selling the second serial rights of his shop-soiled passions for gold. In other words, ho appears to us rather u cad. I cannot help thinking that this regrettable pestilence • has been largely inflamed by the cinema and tho craze for realism. A largo section of the public, incapable of feeling or thinking very profoundly for itself, its pnlato vitiated by conventional emotions, is always clamouring lor “closeups.” Its imagination being blunted it requires to soe the actual thing in a gigantic enlargement. Having tired a little of these conventional emotions as presented to it in plays, novels and cinomas, it suddenly says: “Let’s get a real author and pull him to pieces 1” It is liko tho bnd small boy who wants to pull the lege off bluebottles to see how tho thing works, (t am not, by tho way, suggesting that tho American public is any worse than any other public in this respect, but it certainly has more people keenly alert and competent to exploit any kind of hu-

man weakness that will lead to profit.) And when the small boy has pulled the blue bottle to pieces he finds that the result is rather disappointing. It is the same with the author. But the author is in a worse case than the bluebottle, for he has allowed himself to be pulled to pieces, and in tho process caused the disintegration of other bluebottles. The mission of tho author is one that concerns illusions and by making theso confessions he has helped to shatter illusions. Tho priests who controlled the Delphic oracles were always careful not to be seen. They were wise enough to know under these veiled conditions their prophecies carried more weight. The less that is known of the private life of the author tho more convincing is his appeal. His story should bo just* a voice coming from away back ■KEIio dark temple. actual experience may have but it seldom occurs in a form suitable for presentation. It has happened to most of us on occasions to attain “the time, the place, and the loved one all together.” Aud then, perhaps, the girl turns up with a bilious attack, or the man gets a piece of grit in his eye. These things do not happen in fiction. It is indeed astonishing what remarkable health people have in fiction. The petty disaffections and sick-

nesses that play so important a part in human life never disturb the heroic stance. You never, for instance, hear of a hero who develops pyorrhea and

has to have all his teeth extracted, as so many heroes in real life do. And the disaffeetions of his spiritual state supply equally sordid examples that find no pi ac» in fiction; neither should they find a place in autobiography. Tile rules which govern both these arts should be eclectic and not casual. It is only through the medium of the arts that man attains true dignity. The tragedy of Teas is not the life story of a Dorsetshire dairymaid; it is the universal tragedy of woman. Hamlet must have been a most unpleasant person to live with. He onlv 'endears himself to us because he eiubodies in himself a conflict of abstract emotions familiar to all mankind. “If God had never lived, He would have had to be invented.” One of the most moving episodes I have read in recent years is the description of Martin Arrowsmith’s little wife dying in a hedge of the plague her husband was wearing himself out to combat. If this had been purely incidental the effect would have seemed unnecessarily sordid, almost vulgar. But through the genius of Sinclair Lewis it becomes inevitable and beautiful. It serves its end in shaping the fine purposes of Arrowsmith’s creator. Consequently, if a man wishes to set down the story of his life, he must show as fine an eclecticism. We do not want to hear what is incidental to him, unless it has point and significance. Among modern biograpliists none has succeeded more completely, in my opinion, than Lady Asquith. She has, of course, the eighteenth century manner. She is an aristocrat. She has been a friend of no less than eight Prime Ministers. But in spite of her garrulity, her rather childish egoism, her long and interesting life, she never actually says anything about her real self. She runs on, giving an ample and vivid record of tho times and manners of her age. She tells stories which give a keynote to the characters of well-known people. She is frank, critical and argumentative, and yet in spite of all that, she never actually gives herself away. She remains in the end, as it were, Margot intaeta. Autobiography is an art that any one may discover that he or she has a talent for. The evolution from Lady Asquith to the delightful Anita Loos is less marked than appears on the surface. Both had something to say in an entertaining manner about a world they happened to belong to. Neither of them jnrs our sensibilities with harrowing confessions of their omotions. Both attain the dignity of true fiction. There is, of course, no reason why the well-known author and the best seller should not be a good autobiographer. but he must become so because he feels the urge to express something through the art of autobiography. But in the case of this particular pestilence to which I have referred this lias not been, the case. It has been a morbid exploitation of the secret lives and emotions of authors for no other reason than that they are well-known authors and best sellers, and for this reason a section of the publio will like to gloat over the details in the same way that a. serving maid will gloat over tho police news, divorces, murders and scandals as elaborated in the sensational Press.

Poets Laureate Often Bad Poets POLITICS, and party politics at that, inevitably occupy most of the five hundred-odd pages of “Fifty Years of Parliament-,’ ’ by the Earl of Oxford and Asquith. It is frankly a work for the historian and the student of Parliamentary practice rather than for the casual reader—“intended to be a contribution to history written to a large extent from first-hand knowledge,” as Lord Oxford himself declares. So we do not expect to find in such a work much matter of purely literary interest (says “John o’ London”). Lord Oxford has found it worth while, however, to include in bis second volume two chapters that provide topics for purely non-political discussion. Patronage is one of the curious powers vested in the British Prime Minister. The nomination of bishops and of certain deans and canons is m his hands. It is he who doles out the Civil List Pensions—“these meagre funds,” of which “the rigid limitation of their amount is not creditable to Parliament or advantageous to the nation.” It once became Lord Oxford’s duty, as he conceived it, to offer help to Swinburne in his old age. The poet’s reply is a wonderfully dignified bit of writing:— My Dear Mr Asquith,— I will not take up a minute more of your time than L can help by entering into explanations as to what unavoidable circumstances have delayed by too many days my reply to your letter of the ninth. I trust you will have already assumed them to be unavoidable, and will accept my very sincere apology and expression of regret. You must not tnink me insensible to the cordial courtesy of your letters if I decline the offer or a pension. But the remembrance of Jowett, a friend to whom I owe a debt of regard, which, after his death, I did what I could to repay, gives me pleasure in offering to another old Balliol man my own equally cordial acknowledgment of his courtesy. Believe me to be, Very faithfully yours. (Sgd.> A. C. SWINBURNE. At all events, the intention was creditable and the object worthy. Lord Oxford was equally happy when in 1913 he offered the post of Poet Laureate to Dr. Robert Bridges and had his offer accepted. About the interesting and picturesque sinecure of Poet La-urate Lord Oxford has much that is interesting to say. Not really until Wordsworth, growing old and conservative, accepted the post in 18-13 did a major poet grace the position—though there are those who held that the appointment wrung from young Browning the fierce lines he afterwards regretted:— Just, a handful of silver he left ns. Just for a riband to stick in. his coat .... Teuuyson followed, a worthy successor; at onoe a great poet and a great laureate. Tennyson died (181)2) almost immediately after Mr Gladstone had formed hi« fourth and last Government. I had then become for the first time a member of the Cabinet, and I had the privilege of more than one discussion with the Prime Minister as to the filling of the vacancy. Browning and Matthew

Arnold—either of whom would have been fit to receive the laurel "greener from the brows” of Wordsworth and Tennyson—were both dead; Swinburne was judged to be."impossible”; and Mr Gladstone, acting on Jowctt’s advice, declined to nominate a successor. Lord Rosebery took the same view, and it was left to Lord Salisbury to bestow the laurel on a faithful and busy political scribe, Alfred Austin. Of Austin there is little to be said. No poem of his finds a place in the Oxford Book of English Verse, and it is only anthologists of the banal who are bold enough to quote “Mafeking,” a typical product of Ilia muse:— Then, when hope dawned at last And fled the foe, aghast At the relieving blast Heard in the meller — O. our stout, stubborn kith! Kimberley, Ladysmith, Mafeking, wedded with Lucknow and Delhi. Poetry came back to the office with Robert Bridges:— Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding. Leaning across the bosom' of the urgent West, That fearest not sea rising, nor sky clouding. Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest!* It is not an “official” poem. Fortunately Dr. Bridges has not allowed the “duties” of hia office to weigh on him. There was a time when two Odes a year were expected from the Poet. Laureate. That time is past, and th 9 past is now, to put it plainly, an anachronism. We need not be surprised if Dr. Bridges proves to be the last of the line.