HANOVER BROWSING
BEFORE MENTIONING a few books that I have found interesting and important, I shall start with a comprehensive and good list of books enjoyed by Howie Sargeant '32, just returned from Oxford, where he has been a Rhodes scholar. Four books, definitely fiction, he notes as having enjoyed are (1) TheFountain, by Charles Morgan, of which he writes, "old, but I re-read it on the Bremen, and hold out for it"; (2) Of Time and the River, by Thomas Wolfe; (3) Cold ComfortFarm, by Stella Gibbons; and (4) He Sent Forth a Raven, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts. For short stories he lists (1) Seven Gothic Tales, by Isaac Dinesen, and (2) Time: the Present, by Tess Slesinger. Under the heading, "Heterogeneous," he lists (1) The Exemplary Mr. Day, by Sir Samuel Scott; (2) Music Ho!, by Constant Lambert; (3) Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T. E. Lawrence; (4) 40 Days of Musa Dagh, by Franz Werfel; (5) Twenty Years A-Growing, by M. O'Sullivan; (6) Autobiography, by J. C. Powys; (7) One'sCompany, by Peter Fleming; and (8) Early One Morning, by Walter de la Mare.
This is a fine list and I hereby thank Howie, and the other contributors, for their suggestions.
My Thirty Years of Speed, by Sir Malcolm Campbell. London, 1935.
This is the history of speedmaking by one who has travelled on land at the incredible speed of slightly over five miles a minute. All who are motor enthusiasts, who enjoy speed racing and record breaking, and who are interested in the development of high powered engines will find this a fascinating book. Sir Malcolm tells of his own
many narrow escapes, and of the deaths of other speed-demons, already forgotten, the Englishmen,
Seagrave and Thomas, and the Americans, Lockhart and Keech.
Breaking speed records is an im mensely costly business, and the author does not tell by whom he is subsidized, but one presumes it may be by the English motor industry, or by the government, or possibly by Sir Malcolm himself, though I should doubt if he pays all his own expenses.
Sir Malcolm is modest, and is generous in his praise to his mechanics, the engineers and tire makers, and all who made it possible for this fifty-year-old driver to make his goal of 300 miles per hour, which he did recently on the salt beds of Utah.
Europa, by Robert Briffault. Scribners, New York, 1935.
The author, who once spoke at Dartmouth on .the Guernsey Center Moore Foundation, is one of the most erudite men living. He is, also, according to many competent authorities, the greatest living sociologist, known far and wide in intelligent circles as the author of The Mothers, one of the greatest intellectual efforts of our time.
I remember him as an incredibly bad public speaker, but as one of the most charming conversationalists in private I have ever listened to. I am convinced myself that he is one of the few intellectual giants of our time. But I do not believe, after reading this book, that he is a great novelist.
His characters are mouthpieces for Briffault's own intelligent observations rather than living, fleshand-blood, people. How erudite some of them talk! And how magnificent their way of life! Through the person of Julian Bern, a youngman-about-Europe, we see "a mad world dancing the dance of death," in Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and the Cote d'Azur, before the war. Mr. Briffault depicts the life of luxury and decadence of a dying European nobility, and one might say, of a dying Europe, who received the coup de grace during the eventful years 1914-1918. Many of his personages are real people, and Rasputin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Liebknecht strut through some of the 501 pages which compose this unusual book. The story ends with the outbreak of the European War.
If this is not a great novel, it is a tremendous panorama of a dying civilization, colorful, full of life, gigantic in conception, and it is a book that will hold any reader's interest throughout. Mr. Briffault is aware that the civilization he depicts could not possibly survive, and possibly in a future book he will give us more of a hint of the civilization that is to come than he does in this first novel. This is an important book that should have a wide circulation, and I heartily recommend it.
SOS to the Rescue,
by Karl Baarslag. Oxford University Press, N. Y. 1935.
In this exciting book the author, who is a radio operator in active service, tells the inside story, from the wireless man's point of view, of many of the great tragedies of the sea. He begins with the first great sea disaster in 1909, where wireless saved many lives, when the Republic was rammed by the Florida off Nantucket. Jack Binns was the operator on the Republic and became a national hero, though he himself claimed no such role. Then Baarslag tells the incredible story of the Titanic, billed as the unshakable ship, and the tragedy of the California, hove to close by, but because the former's one radio operator had hung up his receivers for the night, no wireless message from the sinking Titanic was received. Fifteen minutes in the life of Evans, the radio operator on the California, made the difference between saving and not saving over 1500 lives. If the laws then, as they do now, had forced greedy shipping
lines to have two operators instead of one, it is safe to say that no passenger on the Titanic would have been lost. In fact the author blames the shipping lines themselves for most of the great sea disasters, and in the example of the Vestris, of tragic memory, when the captain, who had no say in the matter, was given a dangerously and illegally overloaded ship, there seems to be no doubt where the responsibility for this disaster must be placed.
Read the story of the unlucky Tashmoo and you will be less likely to blame the unfortunate captain who must "go down with his ship."
With the recent disasters of the Mohawk and the Morro Castle in mind, this is a timely, excitingly written, account of a gripping chapter in the history of the sea, and those who go down in ships.
Without going apoplectic with enthusiasm I strongly recommend the reading of the novels by Mary Webb, whom I consider to be the greatest novelist of our time. These are: The Golden Arrow, 1916; Goneto Earth, 1917; The House in DormerForest, 1920; Seven for a Secret, 1922; and Precious Bane, 1924.
Mrs. Webb was a Shropshire woman, who wrote her first novel at the age of 35, and who died in London in 1927 at the age of 46. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was the spark that set her reputation glowing, and since 1928 her fame has been steadily increasing, and more and more people have come to love her sensitive and lovely novels. Mr. Edward A. Newton of Philadelphia selected Gone to Earth as one of the hundred best books of modern times.
Murder in the Cathedral, by T. S. Eliot. London, 1935. This play was written for production at the Canterbury Festival in June, 1935.
The action takes place in Canterbury Cathedral in December, 1170, and depicts the murder of Thomas Becket.
Mr. Eliot shows here that his reputation as one of our greatest poets has not been misplaced. With a language that is as clear cut and brilliant as any he has ever written, he unfolds this tragedy of early English history. 1. S. Eliot is a poet America should be proud of but as yet his reading public resides mainly in England. They were the first, too, to recognize the greatness, among others, of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost.
North to the Orient, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Harcourt, Brace. 1935.
This is the story, simply and charmingly told, of the Lindbergh's flight in the Sirius to China, via Canada, Alaska, Kamchatka, and Japan, in 1931.
Flying may be as safe as other means of transportation, but Anne Lindbergh expresses the state of mind of most people in a plane when seeking a landing in a fog in her admirable chapter entitled Fogand, the Chishima. During the few moments when her husband was seeking a rift in the fog Anne Lindbergh felt fear: "Were we there, then, at the last fight? .... Down again—and the terror. Up againand the return of courage and shame. Think of the radio operators sticking to their posts through fire and flood Think of the air-mail pilots, doing this every night Did he think I really enjoyed this game of tobogganing down volcanoes?—I thought in a kind of bravado anger. Really it was too much—X would never fly again." This experience, common to all passengers on planes, is simply and clearly expressed. Mrs. Lindbergh proved to be a satisfactory radio operator, and her account makes the flight seem much simpler and easier than it actually was. Her husband's maps add much to the book's charm. Recommended.
Lady Hester Stanhope, by Joan Haslip.
London, 1934. Eothen, by Alexander Kingslake.. London, ,1844.
Kingslake gives an authentic picture, purple though it may be, of Lady Hester Stanhope, granddaughter of Lord Chatham and niece of the great William Pitt, in his classic of Eastern travel, Eothen. If you have never read this little book I recommend the Oxford edition with the Hogarth introduction.
Joan Haslip in her recent biography describes Lady Hester as "the last of the Eighteenth Century eccentrics, the first of the Nineteenth-Century pioneers." This is a fine biography about one of the strangest women that ever lived. A Frenchman characterized her as "une creature a part qu' etonne mais ne peut charmer." Lamartine visited her in her remote quarters at Dahr Djoun in 1832 and describes her in his Souvenirs de I'Orient. She became, through her fearlessness and eccentricity, a "strange white queen" to the Arabs, and she herself said that "the Arabs have never regarded me either as a man or woman but as un etre a part."
How To Read Aloud, by H. H. Fuller and A. T. Weaver. Silver, Burdett, 1935.
Ostensibly this is a book for teachers and students of literature, but its scope embraces all who desire to read aloud well. The authors believe that literature, particularly poetry, must be heard either with the ear of sense, or with the ear of imagination, before it can be enjoyed and loved. In other words reading aloud helps to increase one's appreciation of poetry or prose. The book has selections from the best known poets and writers of the past, for the student to practice on. This is an excellent and worthy little volume.
The Last of Mr. Norris, by Christopher Isherwood. Morrow, 1935.
This is a rather cleverish book about a man who lives by his wits in a corrupt and decadent Berlin during the early thirties. It is a sort of O'Flaherty's The Informer, without his seriousness, and with a German instead of an Irish background. The sinister amoral undercurrents of post war Berlin society are objectively and deftly handled. An amusing book not meant to be taken too seriously.
