Hanover Browsing
AS IS frequently said in Hanover this time of year, "I hope you had a pleasant summer." Your browser spent his rather quietly doing some miscellaneous reading, and watching his house in the process of construction. The summer was made more pleasant than usual by meeting quite a number of alumni who visited Hanover during their vacations.
This issue will recommend some books that I found distinctly worthwhile the past few months.
Books by Dartmouth men should be particularly interesting to readers of this column, and although they are all reviewed in another place, I wish to mention a couple here.
Eric Kelly's Three Sides of Agiochook, published by Macmillan last year, is a well written tale of early Dartmouth during the perilous times of old Eleazar. All Dartmouth men are familiar with the terrain, which ranges from the old campus, north to Mount Washington, and beyond. This is a book which may be enjoyed by adults as well as children.
I was frankly disappointed in Alexander Laing's last two thrillers, but have only admiration for his recent story of the East entitled Dr. Scarlett. The atmosphere is excellent, the story is well told, is plausible, and in the character of the "punning" doctor he has created a most likeable personality.
Another book that I read which has a link with the college is Yankee in Africa, by I. H. and Julie B. Morse, published in Boston in 1936. Philip M. Morse, who accompanied his father on the first African expedition, is of Dartmouth, class of 1924. The story begins many years ago when the author as a boy dreamed of some day going to Africa, as had his hero Stanley. His dream was of a practical nature, too. He wanted to create in the little village which had nurtured him, namely, Warren, New Hampshire, a museum of world curios and African big game. The interesting fact is that Mr. Morse made both of these dreams come true. He went to Africa; he created the Morse Museum.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Morse are keen observers, and give details which are of practical interest and value. Mr. Morse tells what equipment is necessary, and recounts in plain, forthright language just what adventures he and his son Philip had in their first African adventure. Mr. Morse proves himself to be a cool marksman as witness his narrow escape from a charging rhino. The difficulty in getting an elephant with suitable tusks is mainly to find such a beast. An elephant gun leaves little margin, it would seem, to chance. My natural sympathies are with the big game, but the author was not shooting for the delight in killing, but always with an eye for suitable specimens for his museum.
Women, too, will enjoy the book, for the second half, called Safari in the Rain is written by Mrs. Morse. She records honestly and frankly her terrors, the curse of constant rain, mosquitoes, tsetse flies, and so on, but she enjoyed it all, was a good sport, and proved herself equal to many harrassing situations.
The illustrations, though not unusual, add to the value of the book.
A good book about a neighboring college is MacGregor Jenkins' Sons of Ephrairn published a couple of years ago. The author has also written a book called EmilyDickinson: Friend and Neighbor. Emily Dickinson died in 1886 so Mr. Jenkins cannot be a young man, nor is he, if one can judge by Sons of Ephraim, senile or in his dotage.
This book is about Williams College, and I gather that the author recently lived at Williams in an attempt to get an understanding of a recent college generation. To get his impressions, and to trace the career of one Ferguson through four years, he talked with the faculty, the administration, the townspeople, and most important of all, to many students. Throughout the book there are flashbacks of the older Williams; its growth, its tribulations, its presidents, faculty, buildings, and Mr. Jenkins also describes a couple of football games with Amherst. He is a tolerant gentleman and has plenty of Williams spirit. That is as it should be. This is a book which I believe you will find well worth your time.
Two books by Henry Williamson: Salar the Salmon, Little, Brown if Cos.,Boston, 1936.
Mr. Williamson enjoyed a deserved success with his book Tarka the Otter published some seven years ago. With this book on a salmon he has returned to the scene of Tarka. It is a country the author knows well, for he has lived there more or less ever since the war in a cottage called Shallowford in North Devon on the edge of the Exmoor stag country. I have wandered along the River Bray with him watching for salmon and trout, and together we followed the Two Rivers (the Taw and the Torridge) to the sea. Williamson is certainly one of the best of English nature writers, as is Donald Culross Peattie here, and this book is the result of hundreds of hours of careful observation of salmon, from trees overlooking the streams, from bridges, boats and so on. He knows, too, the characters of the North Devon country, and can reproduce their dialect, midears, as can no other writer that I know of. Here is the saga of the salmon, which returning from the sea, brooks no interference, neither the lures of man, nor the dangers of the deep, in getting up the rivers to spawn. I strongly recommend this one.
Devon Holiday, Jonathan Cape, London, 1936.
The last thing that Colonel T. E. Lawrence did before he met with his fatal accident on his motorcycle, was to send a telegram to Williamson saying that he would be delighted to read the manuscript of this book. Lawrence appears as Colonel Everest in the story, and in one brief scene he comes to life again. There is also an American Professor in the book, a "kindly satirical picture," but I cannot imagine to whom he refers. The book describes a walking tour in Devonshire, and is written in the "holiday spirit," and for those who know the country the book will be particularly charming, but it must be confessed that it is one of the author's lesser efforts, though I found it peculiarly fascinating.
I have not read Donald Culross Peattie's new book on the great naturalists but if you have, you will also want to read Singing in the Wilderness, a lyrical novel about John James Audubon and his passion for birds, and also An Almanac for Moderns, composed of lovely prose passages, sometimes over-written, dealing mainly with nature, and with shrewd critical comments on Aristotle, and other naturalists. I know very little about the author, save that he has lived in Italy, went to Harvard, and is a professional entomologist and botanist. In reality he is a poet, and one of the best prose stylists of recent times.
By all means read H. L. Mencken's monumental fourth edition of The American Language. First published in a limited edition in 19lg, it has now been doubled in pages, subject matter, and interest. It may almost be read as a novel, or it may be dipped into wherever one pleases. It is a scholarly piece of work, is most entertaining, and is unquestionably the book that Mr. Mencken will be remembered by.
Walter and Margaret Hard have collaborated in a book that is not as good as it should be, entitled This Is Vermont, published by the Stephen Daye Press. Tricks of style are irritating, but anyone who knows Vermont, and its beauties of scene, will want the book. The illustrations are excellent.
Herbert Childs' widely publicized ElJimmy, Lippincott, 1936, will interest masculine readers for it tells of the strange doings of an outlaw who lives in Pata- gonia.
Lovers of the English countryside will enjoy Hilaire Belloc's The County of Sussex, a brief and readable account of one of England's loveliest spots by one who is a native.
Many alumni have read F. S. Oliver's excellent book on Alexander Hamilton. Ihose students of mine who took Comparative Literature 13, will recall his remark on Jefferson, "that he died in an odor of phrases." Those who wear the sunflower today might paraphrase that remark when they refer to the opposition candidate, but, at any rate, the late Mr. Oliver is the author of a posthumous book entitled The Anvil of War, described as "Letters between F. S. Oliver and His Brother, 1914-1918." This book is full of intelligent observations made during the war by this Scottish business man, and is required reading for those who like "personal history."
The late R. B. Cunninghame Graham's best stories have been recently published in England under the title of Rodeo.
Collectors of T. E. Lawrence probably know that Adrien Corbeau's symbolical story of a California redwood tree, called I he Forest Giant, Cape, 1924, is a genuine Lawrence item, for he translated it under the pseudonym of J. H. Ross. A fine, little book, which can stand on its own merits.
