HANOVER BROWSING
THIS ARTICLE, and others to follow, will be written in more or less informal vein with the particular interests of the general reader in mind. I shall probably mention fewer books each month than did my predecessor but this will enable me to devote more space to such books as I choose to review. Obviously I must choose arbitrarily, and my choice will be of books that I find most interesting and informative. With this end in view, then, I shall review certain worthwhile books in the general fields of biography, travel, history, poetry, drama, current issues, and fiction, rather than specialize each month on some general subject.
It would please me, and also add interest to this column, if some alumnus now and then would write to me concerning the books that he has found good enough to recommend to his friends. I hope to print from time to time such letters, or parts of letters, that I think would interest the readers of this magazine. I expect also to include paragraphs written by other faculty members about books that they have found to be specially valuable. If any alumnus cares to write to me about books, or if he has any questions I may be able to answer as to reading lists, etc., I shall be glad to answer them to the best of my ability in a personal letter.
The Quest For Corvo. A. J. A. Symons. Macmillan and Co. N. Y. 1934.
This books tells of the curious life of Frederick William Rolfe, known in astute literary circles as Baron Corvo, author of that most unusual fictional autobiography Hadrian the Seventh. Mr. Symons, in fact, got the inspiration for this book, when in the summer of 1925, he borrowed from a friend a copy of Hadrian. The story is autobiographical in parts, and in the career of George Arthur Rose, who becomes Pope Hadrian the Seventh, the frustrations of Rolfe's life are dissolved in the success of Rose. The psychological background of the book then, is, on the one hand, wish-fulfillment, and, on the other, a device for Rolfe to snarl back at personal enemies that have, so he imagines, brought on his downfall. The Cardinals in Hadrian the Seventh are apt to be members of the Church who forced Rolfe out of the Roman Catholic Priesthood, or others against whom he had a real or fancied grudge. One of Rose's actions as Pope is to sell the vast treasures of the Vatican and give the proceeds to the poor. Wyclif's doctrine of evangelical poverty appears once more.
Mr. Symons does a fine job of literary sleuthing, industriously tracing down all that we shall probably ever know about one of the most curious of recent writers. Baron Corvo is known only to those who seek books-out-of-the-beaten-path, and these few are generally fanatical devotees. This biography is sure to please those readers who are keen on nosing out the great eccentrics of literature and life. Corvo, who died 20 years ago in Venice sunk into perverse debauchery at the age of 53, surely belongs in this group.
The other night browsing in The Yellow Book, published in the nineties, I read some of Corvo's Stories Toto Told Me. They are extremely good.
This book, The Quest for Corvo, is highly recommended as one of the most amusing biographies of the season.
2. Twice Seven. H. C. Bainbridge. Dutton. N. Y.
By an interesting coincidence this autobiography contains a fairly longish account of Corvo. Bainbridge was the one friend whom Corvo didn't attack in his Hadrian the Seventh. Mr. Bainbridge, when he knew Corvo, worked as a chemist for the late Sir Ludwig Mond, and later on in life was the English representative of the greatest of modern goldsmiths, namely Faberge, a Russian. The book contains many amusing stories of royalty, the great, and the near great, who came into contact with Bainbridge in the line of business. The atmosphere is redolent of those dear, secure days before the war. A gossipy and quite delightful book.
3. Lust for Life. Irving Stone. Longmans, Green and Company. N. Y. 1934.
In fictional guise, but following close to the facts, this book depicts the sad but glorious life of one of the greatest of modern painters, Vincent Van Gogh. Mr. Stone has given, it seems to me, details at too great length, and I found myself skipping part of the book. This may have occurred because I was already familiar with the life of Van Gogh. He does describe well, however, the artistic life in France during the growth and development of the reputations of the moderns—Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin in particular. Van Gogh was a genius and was therefore slightly mad, though his madness often took the form of saintliness of character, as, for example, his life with and treatment of a thoroughly depraved prostitute. The author would have succeeded better if he had selected the high lights in Van Gogh's life, as did Maugham writing of Gauguin in TheMoon and Sixpence, instead of giving us everything. Nevertheless the book will interest many who are not already familiar with the facts.
4. Goldworthy Lowes Dickinson. E. M. Forster. Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1934.
Although this is not a fall book I think it worth mentioning at some length for it was the best biography I read this summer. I believe, too, that it should be of special interest to Dartmouth men.
It is a most sensitively written book, by one of the best of living English stylists, and concerns the life of a great Cambridge teacher. You will recall Shaw's well-known dictum "that those who can, do; and those who can't, teach." Mr. Dickinson was one of the latter. Unfortunately the good that Mr. Dickinson did cannot be measured by graphs and statistics. He was, as W. H. Hudson once said of himself, "a traveller in little things"—little things like philosophy, religion, social justice, and ideas. Mr. Forster writes: "The outstanding event is his emergence as a teacher. He becomes more and more anxious to stimulate, and less interested in learning and artistic expression for their own sakes. His studies, his political opinions, his lecturing, his published works, his capacity for friendship, his interest in the young—all flow into a single channel, which might be called educational if the word were not so misused, and 'maieutic' if the word were not a little pedantic It is as a teacher who was constantly being taught that he must be regarded during these twenty-one years." Dickinson himself, on looking back over his years as a teacher, said: "Still I expect I helped to wake up some minds. What more can a teacher do, or what better?" This, it seems to me, is what great teachers succeed in doing. It is no easy task as Henry Adams, one of our greatest teachers, once said writing of his teaching experience at Harvard. Dickinson in 1901 spoke of America thus: "It is a country without leisure, manners, morals, beauty or religion—a country whose ideal is mere activity without any reference to the quality of it, a country which holds competition and strife to be the only life worth living." I might say here that G. Lowes Dickinson so liked Dartmouth that he returned after speaking here in the spring of 1909 and spent a week with Professor Louis H. Dow. In 1931 he wrote, "I feel now that we are all very ignorant and quite incredibly and unimaginably inadequate to deal with the kind of questions we ask about ultimate things." This is the genuine intellectual humility of a great scholar and gentleman. His former bedmaker at Cambridge spoke his epitaph: "He was the best man who ever lived." His best known books are: AGreek View of Life and Letters from aChinese Official, both eminently worth reading. Mr. Forster's life is highly recommended.
5. Napoleon and His Marshalls. A. G, Macdonell. Macmillan. 1934.
This book is an excellent account of Napoleon and his marshalls, especially fascinating the dealing with Murat (cavalry leader), who was executed by the Bourbons in 1815, and of Ney (also shot by the Bourbons in the same year), the incredible hero of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, and of his famous crossing of the Bersina with a remnant of 40,000 men against 120,000 Russians, losing 20,000 men in the accomplishment. Ney fought many personal combats, unlike modern marshalls, and was the outstanding hero of that ill-fated campaign. As Macdonell wrote: "An Emperor, two Kings, a Prince, eight Marshalls, and 600,000 men had been defeated, all, all except the son of the barrel-cooper of Saar-louis." After something like one hundred and fifteen years the Napoleonic campaigns seems absurdly futile. Nothing was gained, certainly, save phantom glory, for the million who rallied around the fantastic little Corporal. We are already saying the same thing about the First World War. At this date the men who suffered and did fabulous deeds as a daily routine are forgotten, and in few more years even the names of Foch and Haig will awake nothing but ignorant sighs. Perhaps it is just as well that history is like that.
This is a well-written book with no dull pages, and for a one volume account of the Napoleonic cavalcade I know of no more readable book.
6. While on the military I must mention Colonel Lawrence by Liddell Hart. (Dodd, Mead & Co. 1934.) Mr. Hart has earned the reputation of being the best of modern military critics. His one volume history of
the war is the best that I know and will suffice anyone save the specialist. Hart believes in the Napoleonic plan of mobility, for otherwise armies bog themselves as they did in the futile four year's stalemate of the Western Front. The policy of attrition does not appeal to Mr. Hart, nor in fact did it appeal to the soldiers who were thrown away. Gallieni, thinks Hart, was the greatest general on the Allied side. Do you recall him?
In this volume the author describes the campaigns, minor perhaps, but already legendary, of Lawrence in Arabia. OE all the figures of the war that have come to light, perhaps Lawrence is the most intriguing, if not the greatest. Unlike the average military man he was a quiet scholar (read his translation of the Odyssey published in 1932 with a desire that the Arabs get justice. Their betrayal by the Allies is a sad story. Mr. Hart gives the reader the pertinent facts of Lawrence's life and career, as well as analysing most competently the nature of the Arabian campaign. A fine book but not too easy reading.
7. Night Shift. Richard Blaker. D. Appleton-Century Cos. N. Y. 1934. Mr. Blaker, a managing director of a business firm in England, finds time to write occasional fiction. This is the first novel of his that I have read, but it is so much better than the average novel that I shall now turn and read his Medal Without Bar and The Needle Watcher. He writes with ease and suavity and the reader is carried along without interruption until he finds that he has finished the book.
The scene of Night Shift is the "Never Sleep" Garage, located about twelve miles from London. Mr. Blaker knows machinery and writes of it with loving phrases. His main character, Hales, the Scotch mechanic, loves machinery, too, and fondles, nurses, and heals each car as if it were a thing of creative beauty—which it is. The story, however, does not concern overmuch the working of a great garage. Rather is it a psychological study of the owner, Ingle, a wise retired major; of two mechanics, Hales and Winter (representing perhaps the forces of good and evil in human nature) of a famous cancer specialist; and of a lovely lady who, though she did not launch a thousand ships, was the force that propelled a seven pound sledge hammer in an efficient and aesthetic arc which . . . .
but read the story for yourselves. Mr. Blaker writes well and builds up his story to a strong climax, unexpected to the reader, and, on the whole, eminently satisfying.
8. In the Dark Backward. Henry W. Nevinson. Harcourt, Brace. N. Y. 1934.
I have long been a reader and an admirer of Mr. Nevinson, who may be called the grand old man of English journalism now that H. W. Massingham, C. E. Montague, and C. P. Scott are dead. David Garnett calls him "the noblest romantic of his generation." With the exception of R. B. Cunninghame Graham, a man slightly older than Nevinson, I know of no writer who has had as interesting a life as the author of In the Dark Backward.
The book records seventeen contemporary scenes of adventure or experience which reminds Nevinson of events that happened in the same places "in the dark backward." For example, as war correspondent with the British armies living at the Chateau Rollancourt he recreates for the reader the battle of Agincourt, which took place only a few miles away, where 5,000 English archers under Henry defeated the superior forces of the French. Likewise, when on the famous S. S. "River Clyde" at Gallipoli, he saw the capture of Troy by the avenging Greeks. When visiting his ancestral home in Westmoreland he saw through the mists the ghostly army with Prince Charlie at their head retreating from their ill guided expedition to conquer England. I liked b?st his description of the Battle of Jena, his vivid account of various scenes of the World War, and his graphic description of the drowning of Mr. Jones when the "S. S. Titanic" went down in 1912.
This book is a good book, but it is not as good as his three volume autobiography, Changes and Chances, More Changes, MoreChances, Last Changes, Last Chances, which if you can get hold of you will find a fascinating months reading. Mr. Nevinson seems to have seen and reported every war on the continent of Europe (and there have been many) from the war in 1897 between the Greeks and the Turks, to the War of 1914-1918. He has known, too, the majority of the great men of the last fifty years. He is also a poet, though not a good one, but I always have liked his AffatimEdi, Bibi, Lusi which you may find on page 52 of his book Lines of Life. In theDark Backward will afford the opportunity of discovering for yourselves one of the real personalities of our time.
Author of "Browsing."
