THE BOOKMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 157, 23 September 1927, Page 12

THE BOOKMAN

Ttevi ews ge

THE WOODEN HORSE.

AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN.

And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing and forgot his course.

HAVING been reproved by a friend for appropriating to Mrs Patrick Campbell a story which belongs to Mra Siddons, I can perhaps best (and most pleasantly) atone for the offence by reproducing here a part of the letter which gracefully points it out:

What saith the Savoyard?—“So good an opportunity may not occur again.** Here goes: John Kemble’s most familiar table-talk often fib wed intc blank verse; and so did that of his sister, afterwards Mrs Siddons. Scott, who was a good mimic, often repeated her tragic expression to a t oot boy at Ashestiel “You’ve brought me water, boy; I asked for beer.** Train up a hg-tree in the way it s.hould grow’, and when you are old, sit under the shade of it. Overhaul the Church Catechism, Wal’r, my boy; and when found make a note on. The Mrs Siddons anecdote occurs in Lockhart ....

There, you see —middle stump! But if sin earns such benevolent reproof, let me be diligent in ill-doing. I have taken excursions into the spreading country of Lockhart’s great biography, but, like Silas Wegg, when questioned about his acquaintance with “The Decline and Fall Off the Rooshan Empire,” I must say that “I haven’t been not to say right slap through him, very lately, having been otherways employed. Mr Boffin. But know him? Old familiar declining and falling off . the Rooshan? Rather, sir!” There is a very good abridged Lockhart; but better than the easy perseverance of reading right slap through that —short of the more difficult but no doubt pleasant labour of reading them all—is repeated invasion, from fresh points of departure, Into the wide expanse of the volumes which hold the biography complete. There you range back and forth, often traversing familiar ground, often breaking into new, yet never an end; and this foraying into Lockhart, especially into the six monstrous and marvellously cheap volumes in which, as in six rich counties, the Macmillans before the war parcelled out his acreage, i s best, even though it betray you Into ignorances, misquotations, and false ascriptions. It occurs to me that memory tripped np over the similarity—separated only by a vowel from identity—between Campbell and Kemble; and that the source of my story* was somewhere in the works of old Saintsbury. (One may without disrespect, surely, call him old who writes in his \dgorous eighties with equally learned gusto on hooks and beer and sausages?) I know that he has a reference to a superb speech in a linen-draper’s shop, and I think he tells the other Kemble story in the same context. In his usual wilful way, he alludes without making allusion explicit: I would give much to know w hat that superb speech was—perhaps it too is in Lockhart! But this I am sure of, that whether I drew cn (old) Saintsbury or on another, I set down the beer-arid-water speech, in my too trusting ignorance, exactly as it was there: T asked for water, boy, you’ve brought me brer. Whereas the divine creature, if we are to follow the pure text of Lockhart, said: You’ve brought me water, boy; I asked for beer.” The latter reading is preferable, not only because it is the true one, and therefore must commend itself to lovers of an uncorrupted text, but because the frustration of one w*ho would drink beer and is offered water

Is more fittingly declaimed in blank verse thin is the trivial and indeed cc-mic distaste of a would-be waterdrinker who is offered beer. While we are upon this engrossing theme, let us observe that the words which form the uncorrupted line contain the cause of their own cor ruption: they lend themselves all too easily to metrical re-arrangement, resembling in that weakness Gray’s The ploughman homeward plods his weary way which will “go” in a dozen different orders: Homeward his weary way the ploughman plods. His weary way the ploughman homeward plods. Weary his homeward way the ploughman plods His weary homeward w T ay the ploughman plods. And so on. So we have both sense and metre in: I asked for water, boy; you’ve brought me beer. You've brought me water, boy; I asked for beer. But these obedient words range themselves also: Water I asked for, boy; you’ve brought me beer. You’ve brought me beer; I asked for water, boy. For water, boy, I asked; you’ve brought me beer. Tor beer I asked; you’ve brought me water, boy.

And that by no means ends the de’erence of these 10 syllables to metre. There was brief mention here, when >ast this column was erected fair and tately, of Mr Polly’s marvellous pastiche of Carlyle: “Wow wow wow vow ...” But, unhappily, Mr Polly Stepped off the shelf a night or two later and said: “Falliaceous memory, y Man. Might have said it if I’d thought of it, O’ Man. Better quote !psyissummy verby from the book, O* Man.” So I looked up the book, by Mr Polly’s biographer, Mr Wells, ind found Ihat Mr Polly was right.

His friend Mr Parsons was spouting Carlyle in tae warehouse, among the tablecloths and blankets, and Mr Polly reported his Eloquent Rapsodooce to M:* Platt:

“Carlyle. He’s reading aloud. Doing the High Froth. Spuming! Windmilling ! Waw, waw! It’s a sight worth seeing. He’ll bark his blessed knuckles one of these days on the fixtures, O* Man. He held an imaginary book in one hand and waved an eloquent gesture. “So too shall even* Hero inasmuch as notwithstanding for evermore come back to Reality,” he parodied the enthusiastic Parsons, “so that in fashion and thereby, upon things and not under things articulariously He stands.” “The O’ Man’s drunk with it—fair drunk,” said Mr Polly. “I never did. “It’s worse than when he got on to Raboloose.” It would do Mr Arlen good to go wildly off on the Raboloose, instead of peeping round the bathroom door at the unusual situation of a mole. Which reminds one of the excellent Rondeau Arlenesque: Of this and that I write with ease, Of thus and thus by suave degrees, Till all the world frequents my flat To meet Romance in one green liat, In one green hat and no chemise. For much Romance has power to please.. Arrayed in dainty ribaldries And no chemise and one green hat, And this and that. Let others live by bread and cheese— I mix my spicier recipes; And if you ask what I am at, “Why, so and so, and one green hat, And thus and thns, and no chemise, And this and that.’* J.H.E.S, HEAVENLY CALLS. CHILD VERSE—OLD AND NEW., ['Written for The Sun.] THERE has recently come into my hand 3 a little brown volume of verse for children, published 60 years ago. A perusal of its 300-odd poems gives startling evidence of the great modern advance in understanding of the child mind. Children have not changed, but the literary diet provided for them is very different from that served up for a hapless older generation. An atmosphere of early demise, preferably via :he workhouse, permeates the verses in this book. Was life as lachrymose 60 years ago'as a study of the titles would indicate? “Death and Burial of a Child at Rea,” “The Christian Pauper's Death Bed,” “The Little Boy that Died,” “The Blind Deaf Mute,” “The Graves of a Household,” “The Dying Child,” “The Mother Perishing in a Snowstorm,” “The Orphans”— these are ci few selected at random from the lugubrious collection. Small hoys, far gone in consumption and spiritual ecstacy, are the favourite theme. To judge by the number of ’ heavenly calls” there was an endless succession of vacancies for little choristers in the celestial choir. And dimmer grew his heavy eye His face more deadlj' fair And down dropped from his infant hand His book of infant prayer. I know it now, my mother dear That song for me is given; It is the angel's choral hymn That welcomes me to heaven! A particularly mournful effect is “The Little Shroud.” Another small boy has received his summons, and the mother's emotions are feelingly recorded for the benefit of infantile readers. She put on him a snow-white shroud A chaplet on his head And gathered early primroses To scatter o’er the dead. No harrowing detail is omitted. The mother wept unceasingly, and presently the toy materialised in a way that would have delighted the hearts of Miss Estelle Stead and Conan Doyle: One m!d-night while her constant tears Were falling with the dew She heard a voice, and lo! Her child stood by her, weeping too.

His shroud was damp, his face was white He said, “I cannot sleep, Your tears have made my shroud so wet Oh, mother, do not weep.” Still the procession of sanctified youth winds onwards and upwards. On page 14 Little Willie takes his departure. Sixty years ago virtue apparently throve only in poverty’s soil, and Little Willie had every possible advantage;

You remember little Willie— Fair and funny fellow! Ha Sprang like the lily From the soil of poverty. Poor little Willie! Not a friend was nigh When from the cold world He crouched down, to die. “Come to me,** said Heaven; And if Heaven will save Little matters though the door Be a work-house grave. Contrary to the modern view, girls 60 years ago were evidently of tougher fibre than their brothers. In this sad record of translation only one small girl is mentioned; but the quality of her afflictions atones for this seeming neglect. She was blind, deaf and dumb; but she found her voice as the soprano unit in the celestial chorus: From suffering freed and free from sin In an unclouded light to shine, If faith can such a triumph win Sweet child, a blessed lot is thine! The verses are so highly moral that any modern child would spurn them. No fairy flits across any one of the 155 pages, and the lighter element is supplied by such trifles as “The Time for Prayer,” “My Conscience,” “The Happy and Contented Woodcutter,” and “What is Time?” Even natural history is not spared by the moralist's heavy hand. A prattling child, with a commendable desire for knowledge, sees a swan floating down the river on its last, lonely journey. “What is that, mother?” he asks, and the mother pounces on the inquiry, and replies with concentrated virtue and ghoulish relish: The swan, my love, He is floating down from his native No foved one near, no nestling nigh. He is floating down by himself to die. Live so, my love, that when death shall come Swan-like and sweet it my waft thee home. What effect must this morbid sentimentality have had upon the minds of a past generation? The room has been garnished and swept; children’s poetry nowadays is fresh and sweet, flooded with sunlight, whimsicality, and wholesome humour: The broom looks tattered and tired today, The raggedest stick of a broom. It couldn’t reach up to a cobweb grey Or sweep out the smallest room. And Trusty Tompkins, our little black cat, With fur like the finest silk, Is curled up tight in a ball on the mat, Too sleepy to drink his milk. I know by the old broom’s battered plight And Tompkins’s look of sin They were both of them out with a witch last night And they’ve only just got in. This poem, by the way, appears in “Punch’s” delightful child verses, and is by a New Zealand writer, Alice A. Kenny. ESTHER GLEN. Christchurch. BOOKS REYIEWED Napoleon Bonaparte. Everything historical that the pen of Mrs E. Barrington touches springs to life. Her latest study is Napoleon Bonaparte, and his life and loves are described in “The Thunderer,” which maintains the high standard set by “The Exquisite Perdita” and “Glorious Apollo.” In most imaginations to-day Bonaparte looms as darkly as he did in Wellington’s day. Mrs Barrington shows us a man, and a man spurred to his greatest deeds by the love of a lady. The story really Is the account of his life with Josephine Beauharnais, the Creole who was grace Itself. Restrained as it is, Mrs Barrington’s style is full of power. The narrative seems to glow rather than burst Into

the pyrotechnics of, say, Carlyle. The characters of Napoleon, Josephine, and Thdrese Tallieu are more than excellently drawn. One knows their very thoughts before the book closes with the famous divorce, and Josephine’s tragic fall from splendour. Mrs Barrington, if possible, improves with each novel that she writes, and it is to be hoped that more of the world’s great love stories are recounted by her. “Tile Thunderer.” E. Barrington. George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd., London. Our copy from Robert; on and Mullens, Ltd., Melbourne. Political Revelry. The interest of Samuel Hopkins Adams’s new novel, “Revelry,” depends on Willis Markham, President of the United States, a simple, honest, poker-playing, hard-drinking man, attractive but not great or even able. His persona] popularity has enabled Don Lurcock, the party organiser, whose organisation is graft, to push him into the presidency- But President Markham is the “small-town politician in the giant’s robe;” and while he strives to fill his responsible position with honour, the real power of government is being selfishly misused by the members of his administration. “Friendship in politics undermines more principles than fraud, and gratitude is worse than graft.” From this Mr Adams has developed a ::ragedy of friendship and gratitude. For Markham is too grateful to his colleagues, whose disinterested friendship, he believes, has gained him the presidency; and although one after another they are exposed, he labours faithfully on till death, unable to think them anything but his loyal friends. This no /■oi is causing much comment in America, where the plot is said 'n be identifiable with the history of a *ecent administration. But for us its interest will arise rather from a restrained and faithful characterisation.

CAPS FOR ALL HEADS “My Daily Message” should take readers out of their particular mental rut. Without sermonising in the least, Miss M. P. Stanley, M.L.C., handles serious subjects In an entertaining way. She has a remarkable knowledge of the psychology of mankind, and applies it cleverly. In fact, to misquote the authoress herself, she helps you to “put the right end of the telescope to your eye.” In addition to being helpful the book is simply written, and direct to the point. Every page contains frank criticisms of ourselves which are rendered amusing and unoffending by Miss Stanley’s skill in handling her subject. Most readers will find a cap to fit them in this excellent work. “My Daily Message,” Vol. 11., by Millicent Preston Stanley. Our copy direct from the publishers, Angus and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney. IN THE PRESS. NOTES ON NEW BOOKS. The next story to come from the pen of John Buchan is to be a romance of seventeenth-century Scotland. “Witch Wood” is to be published by Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. “Egypt,” by Mr George Young, is to be the next volume in the “Modern World” series of Ernest Benn, Ltd. Hugh Walpole’s new novel, “Jeremy at Crale,” is to bear the Cassell imprint. H. M. Tomlinson, famous as a writer of travel books, has been engaged for some time on his first novel. It will be called “Galleon’s Reach,” and the Heinemann house will publish it next month. A translation, from the German, oi Rene Fulop Miller's “The Mind and Face of Bolshevism; an Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia,” is listed by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Ltd. Katherine Mayo, who wrote an il luminating and authoritative book on the Philippine Islands two or three years ago, now has written that promises to be a revelation of social factors in India. It is to be called “Mother India,” and Jonathan Cape is to publish it. Six volumes are to be added to “Everyman’s Library” next month. They Include Lord Houghton’s “Life and Letters of Keats,” with an introduction by Robert Lynd; Mrs Garnett’s translation of Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” (two volumes); and “A Book of Nonsense.” Among the volumes in the third instalment of “Collins’s Kings Way Classics” will be J. Middleton Murry’s “Countries of the Mind”; J. C. Squire’s “Comic Muse"; and Henry James’s “The Sense of the Past.” Another new series of reprints of copyright works is announced. It Is the “Week End Library,” to be issued by John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd. One of the early volumes is to be Dr Richard Garnett’s “The Twilight of the Gods,” with an introduction by T. E. Lawrence. Anatole France, Vernon Lee, G. K. Chesterton, John Buchan, and Richard King are among the authors to be repre--ented by cither early volumes.