Hanover Browsing
SID HAYWARD thrust Webb Miller's Found No Peace in my hands one day when I was in his office. It was Mr. Hopkins' copy and showed definite signs of wear. I read it with great interest, and later was told by the President that he was enthusiastic about it and had given away seven copies to his friends. He liked it all, and if any part was to be singled out for special praise, it was Miller's section on the Ethiopian campaign. Miller, a young reporter during the 1916 skirmish on the Texas border, became a foreign correspondent for the U. P., and has since covered about every significant European event, and consequently has met a lot of important people. He writes of everything with an engaging candor, with the proper amount of humility as regards what actually went on, and is an excellent reporter. He is honest enough to admit that at times his stomach turns to water, and his dream of a life of peace such as is found in Walden (his favorite book) temporarily must be set aside. He hopes to turn eventually from a vita activa to a vitacontemplativa. It is a far more mature account than Negley Farson's saga, and if you liked Vincent Sheehan's, John Gunther's, and Duranty's journalistic autobiographies, you will eat up Webb Miller.
My wife recommends to other alumni wives Vera Brittain's novel HonorableEstate as a vivid tale of four English decades ending in 1930. It is a chronicle of the suffragettes.
A book which should revive interest in one of England's most astonishing characters is entitled The Arabian Knight, by Seton Dearden published in London last year, which is the life of Sir Richard Burton. I wish I could recount here some of the more amusing anecdotes told in this biography. Burton died in 1890 and has been appropriately called "England's neglected genius." The foremost Orientalist of his time, and the translator of the Arabian Nights, he made three of the most daring trips of exploration ever made in modern history. These were his journey to Mecca, the forbidden city, his exploration of Africa and discovery of Lake Tanganyika, and his fantastic journey to Harar in Ethiopia, considered, and rightly, by his biographer as his greatest feat. England regarded him with distaste for several reasons which endear him all the more to me. He should be known by our generation, and a good introduction to him is the book under discussion.
In Language, Truth and Logic (recommended to me by W. K. Stewart), by Alfred J. Ayer (London, 1936), the word building of the transcendentalist philosophers is shrewdly exposed. It is the credo of a phenomenalist and will be enjoyed by those interested in philosophy, and by those who like succinct reasoning.
Mystery stories:
I recommend: Death at the President'sLodging, by Michael Innes. A well written and ingenious story laid in a mythical English University. Far above the average in ratiocination, and the author is erudite, clever, and amusing. One of the best.
Dean E. Gordon Bill recommends: Dorothy Sayre—Busman's Holiday, and says: "Anyone who likes Wimsey's whimicalities without too much gore will greatly enjoy this book." Mr. Bill also recommends the latest Reginald Fortune mentioned last issue, and Arthur Train's Mr. Tutt's Case Book which he describes as follows: "A delightful collection, especially if you have already read each of the stories. Incidentally, the case studies which follow each story ought to be pretty good training for a young lawyer."
Christopher Morley's Streamlines is pleasant reading. He writes in his usual genial fashion of the goth Century Limited, Emily Dickinson's barn, and of "Effendi" (F. N. Doubleday), a great publisher and friend of many writers, among them Conrad. Two novels:
Invasion, by Maxence van der Meersch. Translated by Gerald Hopkins. Viking Press, 1937. Recommended by Kenneth A. Robinson. This is a rather vast canvas depicting Belgium under the heel of the invader. The whole result is well calculated to give the fireside reader an imaginative vision of any great invasion. The author was a child when the War began in 1914, but he evidently was a precocious one.
The East Wind, by Compton Mackenzie. Dodd, Mead. 1937. This is the beginning of a bigger and better Sinister Street, and is highly recommended. Some of the characters speak almost too prophetically of the shadow of things to come (the action takes place around the year 1900) but Mackenzie is a very good writer indeed. This is the first of four contemplated volumes and if you read this one I'm fairly certain you will be looking forward to the next volume. The book discusses the Boer War, Imperialism, Scottish Nationalism, English school life, the continent, and so on. A fine piece of work.
Delightful to epicures will be The Diaboliques, by Barbey D'Aurevilly, which describes six women possessed of the devil. The author's Satanic mysticism (as Ernest Boyd has it) is apparent in every tale. Paris of last century breathes again, and as it is a Paris none of us shall ever know, it is pleasant to read about it in this book. This is a title in Knopf's "Blue Jade Library," and while on the subject I should like to recommend also in the series, Richard Garnett's The Twilight of the Gods, Corvo's Hadrian the Seventh, Marmaduke Pickthall's Said the Fisherman, and Morley Robert's Rachel Marr. All old books but worth keeping alive.
It is with regret that I announce the recent death of Edward Garnett, friend of Galsworthy, Conrad, Hudson, and Cunninghame Graham. A generous man who helped hundreds of writers to fame he was content himself to stay in the background. I don't know whether or not I am his only collector, but I can safely recommend to your attention his study of Turgenev, his book of essays entitled Friday Nights, and his plays published not long ago by the Viking Press with the title The Trial ofJeanne D'Arc. He also edited three volumes of letters from Conrad, Hudson, and Galsworthy respectively. I shall miss my visits to 19 Pond Place, and to the Comercio on Frith Street, Soho. His son David Garnett remains to carry on the literary tradition of the family.
Collectors of Robert Frost will find indispensable the recent bibliography: Robert Frost: A Bibliography, by W. B. Shubrick and Charles R. Green, with a sympathetic and penetrating foreword by David Lambuth, published in Amherst by the Jones Library. It is a handsome book, and one hundred and fifty copies were signed by the poet.
Readers of ghost stories have already seen Alexander Laing's recent anthology and to be placed beside it on their shelves is another recent selection collected by Montague Summers with the title TheGrimoire and Other Supernatural Stories published by The Fortune Press, London! It contains three stories by Le Farm Charles Ollier's well known "The Haunted House of Paddington," and several Gothic romances, which if they don't chill your blood, actually give you a shiver or two. If you are only going to read one of the anthologies I recommend Mr. Laing's, but if you are a glutton for punishment I will add that Mr. Summers is an authority on witchcraft and the occult.
Way back in the twenties Harold E. Stearns edited a critical analysis of our civilization entitled Civilization inAmerica, by thirty (if I remember correctly) intellectuals. Now he has written his own book America: A Re-appraisal. Wiser than he was then he realizes now that America has something to offer: "But the real and lasting salvation in America is that our serious differences of opinion are brought out into the open—not left to corrode in the dark vengeful bitterness of merely personal revolt. We can still voice our discontent; we are still free enough to be allowed to suggest any new economic and social plan we believe may improve and humanize our civilization, etc." You will find this worth reading.
Some of the readers of this column will recall Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Guernsey Center Moore lectures given in Dartmouth Hall some years ago. Some of the stories he told us then you will find in his recent book Adventures in Error, Mcßride, 1936. You will be surprised when you read his last chapter on the history of the bathtub in America; he is amusing in his chapter on standardized wolves. The book is mainly composed of earlier magazine articles.
