THE BOOKMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 163, 30 September 1927, Page 12

THE BOOKMAN

& Notes® iTTr " 1 t

CHESTERTON’S BEACONSFIELD.

[Written for The Sun.] yN Ills latest romance, “The Beturn 1 of Don Quixote,” there figures a hansom cab, ot which Mr Chesterton says many clever things. He also quotes Disraeli’s analogy o£ the gondola. One has a sense ot home-com-ing when G. K. C. speaks of Beaconsfipld the man. since Chesterton has become one ot tbo recognised aiaeni ties ot Beaconsfield the town. II was said of him there that when he contemplated writing a book, he com pounded with a native taxi-driver fot Ihe period of incubation, and toured ihe Chilterns, writing as ha went. II is probable that of late he has altered his procedure, as he is the owner of a car, skilfully driven by the lady who acts as his secretary. Beaconsfield is what the guide books would call “rich in literary associa. lions”; but probably no writer has sojourned there and left a more permanent impression than Gilbert Keith Chesterton. I have heard him at bis own tea table tell how he lifted his eye 3 from the plains of Battersea unto the hills, and resolved upon taking train in search ot a new habitation. He alighted with Mrs Chesterton at Slough, walked on to Bsaconsfield, and resolved to dwell there. Now he has become as much a part of the district as the beeches of Burnham. Again, I once heard Chesterton talking of Bernard Shaw’s "Saint Jean” to a select company in the hall of a Jesuit college oft Park I.ane. He prefaced what he had to say by a very diverting description of his journey from Beaconsfield, and apologised for his lick ot gesture, owing to an attack of lumbago. But, if the beeches of Burnham could move their arms, tiey were less mobile than Mr Chesterton in other respects. He is more o* less free to attack I-ondon from his elevation, and is as übiquitous as most public men. Still, there are quiet days in the Old Town when he may be seen, seated in the Square, fantastically cloaked like the Scholar Gipsy, but girthed like Falstaff, tracIrg patterns in the dust with his stick, and meditating some aphorism which will soon, like as not, be incorporated Ir the Sun lay “Observer’s” “Sayings of the Week.” I suppose that every reader of Chesterton has his own tale of discovery to tell. I am one of many, I suppose, who knew of him before being aware ot him. My first impression of him was gained at a visitors’ debate at the Cambridge Union, when he was oippossdi In debate to Mr St. John Kankin, the Edwardian dramatist who approximated more than any other to Oscar Wilde. Mr Chesterton was defending the censor of plays, who •boot that time had banned “Mrs Warren’s Profession.” I merely connected the stout, spectacled man with Battersea, "The Illustrated London News,” and a vague kind of festiveness; and my real discovery of him dates from the reading of “Orthodoxy," which he wrote in answer to a Challenge from Mr G. S. Street. De•pHe the years of disillnsior—ent, the

Cfilfestartcn complex persists. That ife why Beaconsfield will always seem something of a Mecca to mo as long as Chesterton, continues to dwell there. “The Return of Don Quixote” Is a return to the earlier manner of “The Napolton of Notting Hill" or “The Man who was Thursday.” It lacks the fine gusto of the latter work, but there are passages in which, one recognises the Chesterton of one’s first loyalty. Here Is a speech put Into the mouth rf Herne, the librarian, who has been rduced to play Cceur do Lion in the play at the Country House, and refuses to get back into his twentieth century clothes at the end of the performance; “Have you never looked through an archway, and seen the landscape beyond, as bright as a lost Paradise? 1 hat is because there is a frame to the picture. You are cut off from something, and allowed to look at some-hing. When will people understand that the world is a window, and r ot a blank infinity, a window in a wall of infinite nothing? When I wear this hood I carry my window with me. I sa.v to myself, ‘This is the world that Franc s of Assisi saw and loved, because it was limited. The hood has the shape of a Gothic window’." But for the title of the hook it would not dawn upon the reader until very l3.te that it draws any inspiration from Cervantes. It would be a difficult matter to follow the convolutions of the plot. It advances the theory that the modern world has gone colour-blind, which is a very possible hypothesis. Someone has said of it that it is Chesterton trying to impede with his bulk the march of progress. Now that the Zoo is to invade the Chilterns it is possible that Mr Chesterton has been driveD against his own roof tree, and that “The Return of Don Quixote” represents a crl du coeur from Chesterton's Beaconsfield. C. R. ALLEN. Wellington. •'‘THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH” _ {Written for THE SI X.) TS he out of date? Do we no longer read him? , The report that Mr. H. C. Witwer has received from a magazine £750 for £ 4,090-word travesty on “Ivauhoe,” , ft! 6,. ia. paid, ta hn*er

brought its author only £325 for something like 150,000 words, is certainly not reassuring, and it is to be hoped that it in no way stands as a criterion of public taste or “sign of the times.’

We know that there is a tendency to belittle the great figures of our literary history, to quibble about Shakespeare, to grow querulous with Scott, and to sneer at Dickens, but I doubt if anything is obtained by the authors of travesties or similar piratical productions, save the drawing of invidious comparison to themselves. Scott needs no defence. We may take it that age cannot wither nor custom stale, his infinite charm, for he claims the love —if not of the seven ages—of the five at least.

Of the particular work in question, it was stated by a close friend of Scott's family in 1827, that the novelist asked his daughter —previous to her marriage—whether she would prefer £5,000 in ready money or •lvanhoe” (then unpublished). In choosing that beautiful romance, it is to be presumed that the lady did not repent, since the first edition brought her £4,000 at the least. That £325 was an almost incredibly small amount to receive for 150,000 words, such as go to the making of “lvanhoe” will be readily admitted, but there were also purple splashes from the author’s point of view. In May, 1810, Scott received for copyright of "The Lady of the Lake” 2,000 guineas, and from that date down to the month of July. 1836, no less than 50,000 copies were disposed of by legitimate sale la Great Britain. It has been said that he it we.s who “first made the dry bones of history live,” and surely for that alone he commands our respect, as well as for the stores of varied and accurate learning garnered in his capacious mind, for he was a student from his youth upwards, and scorned no labour or trouble that would benefit his writing. He stands a wonderful example to present-day authors, never having any sympathy with what he terms the “bedgown and slipper” brigade. He rose at five in the morning, lighting his own fire when the season required, one, and arrayed in whatever suit life intended to wear until dinner time, was seated at his desk by six o’clock; his papers arranged in accurate order; books of reference marshalled round him on the floor, and—delightful to relate—a dog or two for company. By the time the family assembled for breakfast —between nine and ten —he had done enough (in his own language) “to break the neck of the day’s work.” Breakfast over he gave another couple of hours to writing, and by noon he was—again to use his own expression “his own man.” On wet days he laboured incessantly, humorously stealing hours of sunshine from others to balance the account. When we know that it is on record that every letter he received was answered the same day, we must bow the knee to the great man who wrote not for fame or gain, but as he says “to amuse in one [corner the pain of body, in another to jrelieve anxiety of mind; in a third place to unwrinkle a brow bent with the furrows of daily toil; in another to fill the place of bad thoughts or to suggest better; In yet another to induce the Idler to study the history of his country; in all, save where the perusal interrupted the discharge, of serious duties, to furnish harmless amusement." In spite of travesty, passing of time or aught else, in the hearts of lovers his memory will be green even as the peaceful meadows and broad terraced walks of his own Ashestlel, fitting home for the birth of thoughts which 3hall “unwrinkle the brow bent with the furrows of daily toll.” As long as ‘Waverly” and “Marmion" are remembered, Sc-.ott —In his old-fashioned garden bound with holly hedges; its deep ravine clothed with venerable trees, its sweet brooding silence broken only by the sound of a mountain stream on its way to the Tweed, will be as a picture seen but yesterday. Of Scott as a man, we know most things permitted to an admiring public: we know that he was benevolent and humorous, that he loved the young. We should know It even were there no kindly and sincere biographer such as Mr. Lockhart to tell us, and for the rest we cannot do better than quote

Professor Masson, who says: “Scott is greatest in his Scotticism. It Is as a painter of Scottish life, an interpreter of Scottish beliefs and Scottish feelings, a narrator of Scottish history he attains to the height of his genius. He has Scottic ised European literature. He has interested the world in the little land. It had been heard of before, it had given the world some reason to be interested in it before it had ' spoken and acted with some emphasis in relation to the bigger nations around it, but since Scott, all round the globe the little land is 'amous, and afar —where kilted regiments do British work, and the pibroch shrills them to it, ask whence they come, and the answer is, ‘From the land of Scott.’ ” ALICE CARR TLBRITS.

IN THE PRESS.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS. Republication of authentic but rars narratives of travel and adventure is promised by George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd. The “Argonaut” series, in which they will be published, is under the editorship ot Arthur D. Howdeu Smith. It should not be confused with the publications of the “Argonaut Press.” “A Wayfarer on the Seine,” by E. I. Robson, and “A Wayfarer in Portugal,” by Philip S. Maiden, are being added to Methuen’s “Wayfarer” series. “From the Middle Temple to the South Seas.” containing the recollections of Mr Justice Alexander, late of the High Court of Tanganyika, and formerly Chief Police Magistrate, Fiji, is to come soon from the house ot John Murray. A new book on present-day world politics, by Lieut-Commander J. M. Kenworthy, M.P., is announced by Ernest Benn, Ltd. Its title will be “Peace or War: Will Civilisation Crash?” “The Note-Book of Elbert Hubbard” has had a great run in America. An Australasian edition is being publish by Angus and Robertson, Ltd.

“A more than usually powerful novel,” says a publisher’s puff about a new book. Yet the title of the work is “Slhaken by the Wind!” E. Temple Thurston has re-told for children a collection of world-known stories. “Come and Listen” is being published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Ltd. Charles A. Lindberg’s “We,” which is the famous aviator’s story of his own life, is being issued in an Australasian edition by Angus and Robertson, Ltd. There are many people who prize the verse of the late Edward Thomas, especially his nature poetry. The fortunate among them will soon have the best of Thomas’s poems in a form befitting their merit, for a limited edition (only 275 copies) of Thomas’s “Selected Poems” Is to be published by the Gregynog Press. They will be on Japanese vellum.

BOOKS REVIEWED.

A GREAT LADY’S DIARY. LUCY Caroline Lyttelton was daughter to the fourth Lord Lyttelton. The great Mr Gladstone was her uncle. She married Lord Frederick Cavendish, whose Chief Secretaryship of Ireland was cut short by assassination. Her father-in-law was therefore the Duke of Devonshire, her brother-in-law Lord Hartington; and she sat in the centre, and enjoyed bright day. But “sat” is not the word for a lady so ardent, vivacious, active, persistent. Hers is not the diary of a lady whose men folk moved in and directed the world of large affairs, outside her scope. Mr Lytton Strachey has taught us to think of Mrs Gladstone’s share In politics as the knitting of woollen comforters for William or for John Morley. . . . Tending the simpler domestic needs of politicians would have provided no outlet for the fine and swift energy of Lady Cavendish’s mind. She had no submissive stillness. She came near to outraging the ducal solemnity of Chatsworth when she married. “Hands up,” she would cry, with shocking informality, to a stiff assembly of guests, “hands up those who want to jgo driving.” She had humour. “Oh, 1 Green” —to a stolid butler, when her (impetuous hand knocked over a coffee>pot—“oughtn’t I to be in a lunatic asylum?” “Yes, m’Lady.” “Green, I could ride to York on this knife.” “Break my heart”—to the captain of a ship, after a rough night—“or tell me we have had a gale.” A ticket clerk she asked whether the return half of her ticket to South Africa would “do for her coffin.” To remove a possible faint impression that Lady Cavendish was a packet of intellectual crackers, perhaps the briefest course Is to mention that she was devoutly religious and to repeat that she was indefatigable in pursuit of, for instance, the educational reforms her heart was set upon. The two volumes of her diary being accessible to complete and correct this sketchy impression of a most remarkable woman, admirable and likeable for her many gifts but most of all for the personality in which she summed them, the reviewer feels less loath to leave it so.. The diary is of absorbing interest. It touches constantly and surely great men and great events, and it is written with a fine-pointed pen—sometimes in that agreeable language known as “Glynnese,” of which Mr Bailey, the editor, kindly gives an amusing glossary. When she says “She (Queen Victoria) shot my locket” she is writing Glynnese for “She spied and looked closely at my locket.” When she says, of an evening at Windsor. “We played demure whist.” slie uses one word so exquisitely well that it holds a chapter of meaning. She was a good political hater: “I shot Dizzy in a brougham, looking more horribly like a fiend than ever: poor old wretch —green, with a glare in his eye.” “The Diary of I-ady Frederick Cavendish.” Edited by John Bailey. John Murrajr..

In Search of Harmony Taking as his text, “A living for labour before dollars or dividends,” Oscar Newfang in his latest work, “Harmony Between Labour and Capital,” presents quite a new case for the settlement of industrial strife. He defines capital as a commodity entitled | only to a fair interest and no more, , while industrial labour, brain and brawn, is treated as something living, entitled to a reward in proportion to the amount of effort contributed to industry. He advocates legislation for the fixing of a maximum rate for dividends, giving a fair return for capital, much on tlfe same system as cumulative preference shares of the present day, and after making provision for reserves, etc. —the distribution of all surplus to labour. The contention is that under such conditions industrial strife would to a large extent be eliminated and industry made safer for investment. The preliminary wage would be determined by free competion, but the final earnings of the workers would he whatever they could make the business pay above a reasonable dividend. At first sight, e.ven for the first few chapters, the proposition appears impracticable and unworkable with human nature as it is, but, as the writer progresses, he combats every argument that arises in the mind until the reader is compelled to admit that it would certainly bring about a more satisfactory state of affairs than socialistic doctrine of the nationalisation of industry. The work provides food for considerable thought for all students of political economy or industrial welfare. “Harmony Between Capital and Labour,” an essay on the welfare of nations, by Oscar Newfang. Our copy comes to hand direct from the publishers, G. I Putman and Sons, London and New York. A Week-End Mystery Jimmy Wrome is advised by a specialist to read detective stories as a cure for overwrought nerves and an impaired digestion. He does so with such effect that when a case of apparent suicide occurs at a weekend party, he ferrets out a first-class murder mystery. This he proceeds to solve along the lines pursued by his favourite detective of fiction. The climax is rather a. strain on credulity: but the story is very well told and Jimmy finds the solution to the mystery before the reader has anticipated it —which is something not altogether usual in the average detective story. “The Week-End Mystery,” Robert A. Simon: Collins, Sons and Co. Our copy from Whitcombe and Tombs. Convict Slaves of America Not since Marcus Clarke penned his drama of Van Dleman’s Land and Norfolk Island has there been so powerful and vivid a description of convict life as that portrayed in Jack Bethea’s “The Man Trip.” This is the tale of a convict hell in Alhabama, where the unfortunate prisoners are leased by the State to a swindling coal-mine owner in league with the warden of (the stockade. Even Port Arthur was no worse than this place with its slaver}’, torture and floggings, and Maurice Frere was almost humane lompared to the refined fiend who iluled it. There is a second Rufus Ipawes (only this one was not convicted of something he did not do—tie was a lawyer who misused another man’s money), and a second Sylvia, though a Sylvia of a different type and destined to misery and the heartbreak ofl a lost lover. It is a tale to cause shudders; but one which rivets the rejader’s interest. “The Man Trip,” Jack Bethea; Hodder and Stoughton, London. Our copy direct from the publishers.