The Faggot

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 961, 2 May 1930, Page 13

The Faggot

A Bookman’s Bundle AMONG THE interesting books of the early part of this year is “The Devil and the Lady,’* a hitherto unpublished work of Lord Tennyson. The “Spectator” in its review says: “Here is a fragment of an Elizabethan comedy written by Tennyson at the age of 14. We see him before his hair was combed by Queen Victoria; a precocious imp, playing with the idea of cuckoldom in a manner as volatile and witty as that of the Shakespeare of “Much Ado About Nothing.” What is so striking about the work is the range of reading it displays, and reading in such out-of-the way channels. Greek tags, mathematics, astronomy, herbalism, navigation, law, theology; all are drawn upon to supply the characteristic vocabularies of the persons of the drama. As for the play itself, it shows an almost mature sense of situation, and is built up with such a cunning hand towards cumulative effect that one wonders why this quality in the poet was never developed more successfully.” Here is a sample of the youthful poet’s wisdom of speech: Procrastination, like the wayward tide With iii'jperceptible and secret course (lains hourly on us till that we are left No landingplace wlicicon to set our feet—So lost and tangled in the nwze of cares Protracted and put oft’ from day to day. -*■*-* Aleister Crowley, a novelist who has written extraordinary stories with magic as their theme has been forbidden by the authorities to lecture at Oxford. He had been invited by the University Poetry Society to lecture on the 15th century magician Gilles de Rias; but the society’s officials were threatened with disciplinary action if the lecture were delivered. Mr Crowley, when interviewed, said he considered there wa3 “some underhand business” behind the prohibition. He said he thought the trouble was due to a report that he was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the death in Sicily of a young Oxford graduate, Mr Raoul who was liis secretary. He also said: “Perhaps the refusal to let me lecture has come because Gilles de Rias is said to have killed 800 children in ritual murder and in some way this was connected with myself, the accusation that I have not only killed but eaten children is one of the many false statements that has been circulated about me in the past. * * * Shafts are levelled at Alfred Noyes by the “New Statesman” critic who reviewed his volume of essa3 r s, ‘The Opalescent Parrot.” “One can admire its scholarship and enjoy its occasional flashes of real penetration.” writes the reviewer. “Yet again and again, one is reminded of the old gentleman who, singling out the youngest of some p&rty, proceeds to heap upon his cowering shoulders the accumulated sins (often fictitio isl of the generation to which he belongs. “So you’re the Bright Young Person, I suppose,” bellows the interlocutor, while his opponent mumbles a few broken sentences of modest deprecation. “I expect you’re a Communist, aren’t you . . . Here’s a picture by Picasso: no doubt our young friend over there will be able to tell us what it means . . . However, I daresay you young people hncw best; old fogeys like myself are ripe for the lethal chamber” —a proposition to which only the rules of courtesy and a natural impulse of contrariness make one hesitate to volunteer one’s complete and ungrudging assent.”

*•*:-* “All Our Yesterdays.” H. M. Tomlinson’s second venture in fiction, published at the beginning of the year, has been greeted as one of England s distinguished war books. The following is an extract from a review in the “New York Herald Tribune Book”: “ *AII Our Yesterdays* is as unmistakably English in flavour as the warplay, ‘Journey’s End.* The book is essentially the reflections of a keen and kindly mind upon the events of our generation; English politics and international policies viewed through the eves of a gentle radical. Nowhere is the book in tone of unrestrained bitterness. It has its quietly ironical passages, and there can be no doubt at all of its author’s own feelings, but these feelings are expressed with balance and restraint. Its style for those who are still able to admire amid the clamour of experimentalists, writing that is in the finest tradition of English prose, is delightful.”