AUTHORS' TASTES and HOBBIES

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 3, 1 September 1924, Page 42

AUTHORS' TASTES and HOBBIES

HOW THEY MAY BE GATHERED FROM THEIR BOOKS A s , one who browses, in desultory fashion, among books the .notion often strikes the mind that one’s author knows more on a certain subject than he could have learnt as a spectator. Obviously, it interests him for its own sake. George Eliot’s mastery of music is revealed on many occasions in her works as clearly as is Anthony Trollope’s partiality for hunting in his. Among living authors, who can doubt that Mr. Compton Mackenzie is both gardener and botanist? His pen actually drops posies of flowers: wild ones in this sumptuous bit from “Guy and Pauline”: — “Under hawthorns, past the golden fleur-de-lys, past the scented flags, past the early meadowsweet and the flowering rush, past comfrey and watermint, figwort, forget-me-not and blue eranesbill that shimmered in the sun like steely mail.” Patron of Irises And who must not adore that incomparable gardener, the Rector of Wychford, patron of incarvilleas and of irises, and of water-lilies, too? “To each floating cup, tawny or damasked white or deepest eramoisy, the Rector called their attention. Nymplneas they were to him, fountain divinities that one after the other he flattered with courteous praise.” Mr. Arnold Bennett might be a harassed housewife, such a fancy has he for labour-saving appliances. Even as long ago as “The Old Wives’ Tale,” Sophia insists on the instalment of an up-to-date cooking stove in the old home in Bursley. Alice, the heroine of “Buried Alive,” is convinced that a gas cooker is essential to feminine content, and the immortal Demy of “The Card” “collected all kinds of dodges for doing without servants.” Patent Door-step Cleaner Remarked Deary’s mother;— “This is a funny doorstep.” “It’s of marble,” said Denry. “What’s that for?” asked his mother. “So much easier to keep clean,” said Denry. “Well,” said Mrs. Machin, “it’s pretty dirty now, anyway.” “Quite simple to clean,” said Denry, bending down. “You just turn this tap at the side. You see it’s arranged that it sends a flat jet along the step. Stand off for a second.” He turned the tap, and the step was washed pure in a moment. Then later: — “Every wall, floor, ceiling and fixture could be washed, and all the furniture was enamelled and could be wiped with a cloth in a moment instead of having to be polished with three cloths and many odours in a day and a half. The bathroom was absolutely waterproof: you could spray it with a hose, and by means of a gas apparatus you could produce an endless supply of hot water independent of the general supply. The ladies lauded Mr. Wilbraham’s wisdom in eschewing silver. Everything of the table service that could be of earthenware was of earthenware. The forks and spoons were electro-plate.” So intimate is Mr. Bennett’s acquaintance with domestic needs. Mr. Wells, in his stories, frequently introduces an athletic contest in which his hero, as likely as not, plays a humiliating part. For instance, concerning cricket in “The Passionate Friends”: — “Moreover, I had a shameful secret, that I did not really know where a ball ought to pitch. 1 wasn’t clear about it and I did not dare to ask. Also until I was nearly thirteen I couldn’t bowl overarm.” In “Mr. Britling Sees It Through,” a game of hockey is played for the first time by the American visitor, Mr. Direck, and tennis intrudes constantly into his love episodes. Isabel of “The New Machiavelli” wins the affection of its hero when playing tennis, and to quote once more from “The Passionate Friends,” Lady Mary “had a low close .serve I remember that seemed perfectly straightforward and simple, and was very difficult to return.”

Mr. Galsworthy Mr. Galsworthy invariably includes a dog as a completion of the human scene. Everyone must recollect the spaniel John of “The Country House/’ and here is a scene from “The Patrician”;— “Lord Valleys stood with his head man, caressing the wet noses of his favourite pointers, with something of the feeling of a boy out of school. Those pleasant creatures, cowering and quivering with pride against his legs, and turning up at him their yellow Chinese eyes, gave him that sense of warmth and comfort which visits men in the presence of their hobbies. With this pair, inbred to the uttermost, he had successfully surmounted a great risk. It was touch and go whether he dared venture on one more cross to the original strain, in the hope of eliminating the last clinging of liver colour. It was a gamble, and it was just that which rendered it so vastly interesting.” Dogs Fleur, the charming daughter of Soames Forsyte, in “To Let” (who, by the by, owns a black retriever), was surely uttering her creator’s sentiments with her own in the following denunciation:— “She spoke of dogs and the way people, teased them. It was wicked to keep them on chains. She would like to flog people who did that. She knew a dog which some farmer near her home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run in all weathers, till it had almost lost its voice from barking. ‘And the misery is,’ she said vehemently, ‘that if the poor thing didn’t bark at everyone who passes it wouldn’t be kept there. I do think men are cunning brutes. I’ve let it go twice, on the sly; it’s nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy ; but it always runs back home at last, and they chain it up again.’ ” By the way, with reference to dogs, one wonders how it happened that Sir Walter Scott, who had a passion for them, so rarely betrayed it in his books. Women authors are more elusive or impersonal than the men, and rarely can one trace a hidden hobby. One might suspect Miss Clemence Dane of an interest in cooking and Miss Rose Macaulay of one in swimming, and feel convinced, from internal evidence, that Miss Marjorie Bowen loves beautiful clothes and rich colours, but the evidence is not conclusive.