THE WOODEN HORSE.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 103, 22 July 1927, Page 12

THE WOODEN HORSE.

AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN. And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing and forgot his course. —J. E. Flecker. AFTER a fairly lout, abstinence I have relapsed into reading catalogues, that branch of literature which, if you haven’t the taste, seems so dry, but which, if you have, is in f«act so rich and generous. (I am speaking, of course, of book-cata-logues. I have heard of, even seen and gingerly handled other catalogues, such as Dutch Bulb Catalogues and English Sweet Pea Catalogues, all adjectives and fairy pictures. They have always made me think of great Bentley pole-axing Mr Pope: “Very pretty, Mr Pope; but you mustn’t call it Homer.” —“Very pretty, Mr * * * *, but you mustn't call them catalogues”; and they have always made me think of the terrible Browning 'poem, which ends with something like: “Lies, lies, lies, and lies again.” Which I wouldn’t go so far as to say that no compiler of a second-hand book catalogue could tell a lie; but if you order, shall we say, “267 PHILIPS (Ambrose). The Distrest Mother. A Tragedy. 4to, half (oldstyle) mottled calf, gilt, marbled sides. 1712. £3 5/-” —a nice large copy of the first edition, with the Prologue by Richard Steele—then that is what you get, whereas if you order Pomponius Atticus, the latest unbleachable frilly-edged pink sweet pea, all you get is six little shrivelled up liver-pill-like seeds in a tiny paper bag, and the slugs do the rest . . . .) One book-catalogue differs from another in virtue, as stars differ in glory; but if a dull one has yet been printed, it has not come my way. The best offer such fine, confused reading as might tempt another Lamb to tumble his 20 imaginary daughters into a spacious cupboard full of them, to browse at will

In one of those upon which I have lately regaled myself there are catalogued a great many letters written by W. H. Hudson, the naturalist, to a friend who was also a naturalist and a writer. They range in price between two guineas, for which you can buy a note declining an invitation to attend the Thoreau Centenary (“I

don’t care about celebrations, which as a rule are got up by people to celebrate themselves”), and £l2 10/-, for which you can get a letter which contains (i) a scathing attack on dogs of all kinds (ii) “a reasoned, physiological treatise on their unpleasantnesses, their causes and public manifestations ” and (iii) what the cataloguer calls “physiological details.” But elsewhere he is not so vague; for he quotes quite good pieces from the letters. From a six-guinea letter, for example, he quotes this: . . that little known and unhuman sort of person—Thoreau. I have failed to find in all the books and articles on Thoreau which I have read a satisfying, an adequate statement or exposition of the man and his true place in the world of mind and spirit ... it might be said that I have put him too high—that my enthusiasm has spoiled my judgment . . . nevertheless, when his bi-centen-ary comes round and is celebrated, in some Caxton Hall of the future: when our little R. L. Stephensons are forgotten with all those who anatomized Thoreau . . . and gave him his true classification, now as a Gilbert White, now as a lesser Ralph Waldo Emerson, now as a Richard Jefferies, now as a somebody else, he will be regarded as simply himself, as Thoreau, one without master or mate, who was ready to follow his own genius whithersoever it might lead him, even to insanity, and who w’as in the foremost ranks of the prophets.** His correspondent lived in Brighton : It seems odd to me that you with your ideals should have selected Rrighton as a permanent home. Is there in England a parasite pleasure town that can match it in exhibiting the ugly and disgusting side of our beautiful civilisation? That seems to me interesting, less oecause (as one might expect) Hudson detested Brighton than because he spoke of “our beautiful civilisation.” If one knew' Hudson as one should, one would know whether that is simple sincerity or wry sarcasm. In 1900 he called at “Jefferies’ cottage—Sea View' .... It is a sweet, quiet spot, and I w'ish they had buried poor Jefferies in the churchyard close by.” In another letter (1594) the resemblance between Edward Carpenters’ “Civilisation, its Cause and Cure” and the work of his friend Moriey Roberts is noted: Unhappily, as I think, he suddenly became popular as a writer of “short stories” and . . discovered that be “had to live,** which means, I take it, that it is preferable to make a thousand a year by writing popular stuff than to do good and enduring work and live on fifty pounds One or two other pieces:

I am much given to poetry, but Swinburne is not a favourite of mine and I did not quote him The words, “Tho* he slay me yet will I trust him'* are in the Bible ... I always take it for granted that everyone knows the Bible; but 1 daresay the Bible is not read now so much as formerly—when I was a boy, for instance. Sheets of colour in cultivated llowcrs repel me.

We have no good poem on a caged bird . . . witn me exception of Kennel 1 Rodd’s “Skylark” ... I care little for poor Francis Adams’s poem on the Sparrow. He makes the same mistake as Wordsw’orth made ... of confusing the hedge-sparrow with the sparrow. I am glad you had the courage to include the “Tiger, tiger burning bright”—the best animal poem in the language. But here, finally, is a bit which, for reasons to be set forth in a moment, specially tickles my interest: You wanted to see my Sparrow poem and asked where it could he got or seen. Heaven knows

... in one of the first three or foul numbers of “Merry England.” My copy was lent years ago and never returned . . . About a year ago a Mr Ch. Whibley (I think that was the name) published an anthology of London poems and wrote to ask permission to include a portion of the sparrow poem . . . Well, it was not “Ch. Whibley” who wrote for and obtained permission to use the sparrow poem in a booS; of London poems: it was Wilfred Whitten. I happen to know because I have the letter, dated from the Athenaeum Club, some time in 1900 Hudson kept it and inserted it later in his copy of Whitten’s authology; and that copy, with some others of Hudson’s books, was sold to me after his death and-the dispersal of his library, by the same bookseller from whose last catalogue I have been quoting. How Hudson mixed up Whitten and Whibley (Ch.), two very different men, is impossible to explain and does not need explaining. He was sublimely indifferent to external bookishness, including, perhaps, bookish accuracy—hence “R. L. Stephenson” —but to the heart of great literature he was drawn very close. The eight or ten books of his I have are various in quality. He had read them all — in each are his pencil-marks and reading-slips. But the meaner books are unspotted and undamaged, while the good ones are almost read to pieces. J.H.E.S. THE MOTHERS OF SHAKESPEARE (Written for THE SUN.) Considering the immense amount of literature, critical and exegetic, devoted to Shakespeare’s female vcharacters, it is surprising that one aspect of the subject—the scarcity of mothers (except in his historical plays) has received scant attention. Careful students must surely have noted that the fathers of Shakespeare’s heroines are nearly all widowers: King Lear, Brabantio, Prospero, Shylock, Baptista, Polonius, and both dukes in “As You Like It”; and though their daughters, when presented to us, are all in early womanhood, most of the fathers are depicted as being long past middle life, verging indeed on old age. Among the few mothers delineated still fewer possess the true maternal characteristics, nnd one is tempted t 6 ask did Shakespeare distrust his power adequately to portray motherhood? His young heroines—wonderful portrait gallery containing Juliet, Imogen, Portia. Rosalind, Isabella, Ophelia, Beatrice, Viola, Miranda, Perdita and Cordelia are all motherless, with the one exception—J uliet. Maternal influence of the true quality, than which there is nothing sweeter or more powerful, would probably have altered the whole course of the lives of some of these heroines. If Cordelia's mother had lived, would she have permitted the short-sighted old King Lear to misjudge his youngest and fondest daughter? She surely would have discriminated between the true and the false. Desdemona, deprived of a mother’s watchful care, was allowed to spend many hours listening to the fascinating adventures of the Moor, with what a tragic termination. And poor, ill-fated Ophelia! A touching picture, truly, is this sweet maiden brought up by her garrulous father amid the splendour and corruption of the court of Queen Gertrude. She, of all Shakespeare’s young girls, most needed a wise and tender mother’s guiding hand. And the motherly instinct appears entirely absent in Lady Capulet. Juliet, in her terrible hour of need, cries desperately: O, sweet, my mother, cast me not away! And is cruelly answered by: Talk not to me, I’ll not speak a word. D‘> as thou wilt, I have done with Too late this cold, worldly woman repents the unmotherly treatment of her fourteen-year-old daughter doomed to experience all the joy, the sorrow and tragedy of a lifetime within five short days. Lady Macbeth’s fierce over-mastering ambition, which extinguishes every natural emotion, is demonstrated unmistakably when to her shrinking, recalcitrant husband she exclaims: I have given suck and know Hojktender 'tis to love the babe that I would, while it was smiling in my Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed the brains out, had I so sWorn as you Have done to this! What mother, even in the stress of passion could harbour such a preposterous thought. Turning to Shakespeare’s historical plays we find the mortality among married women not nearly so general, many notable mothers appearing in

these, several holding equal place in interest with the chief male character. A conspicuous figure is Constance, Mother of Caius Marcius Coriolanus, known and most loved of the dramatist’s juveniles. Constance and Elinor, King John’s mother, cherish a mutual bitter hatred, the reason being jealousy, each striving passionately for her own son, Constance to the point of frenzy. Placed between the tyrannical meansouled John and the selfish Philip she fights for her children as an animal at bay, though her so-called love is of a strange nature for she tells him if he were ugly, deformed or unpleasing to the eye she would be indifferent to his fate, for then she would not love him Volumnia, finest type of Roman matron, commands admiration and respect. Mother of Caius Marcius Coriolanus she possesses all the requisite qualities for the upbringing of such a son. Maternal love and pride go hand-in-hand with patriotism; one one occasion only is the latter subjugated, when, Coriolanus being exiled, she cries: Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, And occupations perish! Powerful indeed is the scene in which Volumnia pleads for the safety of Rome, forcing Coriolanus by argument and eloquence to make peace: and finally kneeling before him in company with his wife and son she breaks down his opposition and sends him forth to death. In the acceptance by the haughty Coriolanus of his mother’s rebukes, the very highest tribute is paid to the strength and majesty (softened and beautified by the essential spirit of womanliness), of the character of Volumnia —surely the most impressive of Shakespeare’s mothers. OONA E. BURTON.