Hanover Browsing
Revelations of the Browser's Personal Preferences For Reading in A Horizontal Position
IN H. M. TOMLINSON'S Old Junk there is a brief essay "Bed-Books and Night-Lights" in which he discusses the kind of book one should read in bed. Having browsed considerably lately while horizontal I should like to add a few words on the subject. As Tomlinson says I should have read the Bible, Dante, Tolstoy, or Goethe, but I actually read books quite unlike these and with real satisfaction.
It was at least 30 years ago that I first became acquainted, I think in the Strand magazine, with a world-renowned character whose name is Sherlock Holmes. So real is this creation that a biography has been written about him; when in London one looks for 221 B Baker Street; and even to-day one fancies him still keeping bees down in Sussex alone with his memories, for the doughty Dr. Watson is no more. Holmes himself must now be well over eighty. And so I re-read The CompleteSherlock Holmes for the umpteenth time, a volume of 1323 pages, rather heavy to handle in bed, but still so enthralling, that the discomfort of the volume is scarcely noticed. The curious thing is that the stories seem better each time they are read. The practiced reader of detective stories will find flaws; some of the problems which once seemed difficult seem obvious now; his long stories are not as satisfactory as his shorter tales. Yet, on the whole no detective in fiction is as real, as charming or compelling. Sir Arthur, once having killed him off in the falls of the Reichenbach, had to bring him to life again. I can well understand.
Next to Sherlock Holmes on the shelf is a book, entitled, The Damon RunyonOmnibus (Blue Ribbon Books), which contains stories about Harry the Horse and other delectable Broadway characters, dolls, moppets, and so on. I have written of Runyon before, and suffice it to say here that he proves a fine bed-side companion.
For slightly more solid fare it is difficult to beat Mr. W. Somerset Maugham's Traveller's Library, issued in 1933 by Doubleday, Doran. This huge anthology contains Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives'Tale, Swinnerton's Nocturne, and E. C. Bentley's now famous detective story Trent's Last Case: three very worthy novels. You will find short stories by Conrad, Beerbohm (the remarkable EnochSoames), Arthur Machen, a writer neglected but well worth collecting, D. H. Lawrence (The Prussian Officer), and so on; essays which include Bertrand Russell's A Free Man's Worship, and Lytton Strachey's satirically etched portrait of Florence Nightingale; poetry well chosen; and many other entertaining pieces. This book is not only a great bargain but it may be read again and again. Somerset Maugham, a shrewd and suave cosmopolitan, is a good critic, and you will enjoy almost all of his selections as well as his own comments.
Then there is N. B. Fagin's AmericaThrough the Short Story which reprints some of our best short stories under such sectional headings as "The Indian," "The Negro," "Religion," "War," and so on. Probably any other anthology of short stories will do but I have found Mr. Fagin's extremely good. Little, Brown & Co. is the publisher.
My Funniest Story, published by Faber & Faber in London, contains examples of humor by twenty-six English authors. Mr. Wodehouse is, of course, included. The English type of humor (humour) is very unlike that of Mr. Damon Runyon, but it has its points. On this point read Kenneth Robert's For Authors Only.
Dorothy Sayers, creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, edits The World's Great CrimeStories (Blue Ribbon Books) and divides her selections into "Detection and Mys tery," and "Mystery and Horror." Next to this volume I have Great Ghost Stories, edited by J. L. French, and published by Dodd, Mead. None of them have given me weird dreams. Alexander Laing's an thology of ghost stories is a better book but I don't possess it.
When I have only a few minutes to read I dip into two anthologies: Robert F. Leavens's (Dartmouth '01) Great Companions, the Beacon Press, Boston, and Robert Bridges's The Spirit of Man, Longman's. Both contain a good deal of spiritual dynamite; both contain selections from the best in prose and poetry that man has as yet created.
Two more books complete my bed-bookshelf. One is Great Sea Stories of All Nations, 1103 pages, and published by Doubleday. The other is Best Short Stories of the War, and issued by Harpers. Both have introductions by H. M. Tomlinson. I find that the Great War is still fascinating to read about, and I have always liked sea stories.
While mentioning sea stories I strongly recommend Harper Gosnell's Before theMast in the Clippers. This is one of the well known Derrydale Press books. Most of the book is concerned with Charles A. Abbey who kept diaries of his voyages in the clippers from 1856 to 1860.
For sixty-two cents you can import a lovely little nature book which I missed in my book on nature writers. This is ASummer in Skye by Alexander Smith. Smith's most famous book is Dreamthorp. The print is small, unfortunately, but if you don't mind this A Summer in Skye is a little gem. The publisher is Routledge.
Gregory Mason, author of Rememberthe Maine (Holt, 1939), is a friend of mine but my enthusiasm for his book is conditioned wholly by the book itself. As a boy of eight he heard his family discuss the sinking of the battleship "Maine," and forty years later owing perhaps to the impetus of Mr. Walter Millis's stirring, truthful, and entertaining book The Martial Spirit, Mr. Mason wrote his own account. Mr. Mason's book, however, is an entirely original creation of his own, and there is no book about the Spanish-American War like it. It is amusing; it recreates an epoch. If there was ever a comic-opera war this was it, yet it had its tragic angles, and the result was not only the defeat of a dying power, and the rise of a new imperialistic one, but also the conquest of malaria and the dread "Yellow Jack" which followed the American occupation of Cuba. Mr. Mason's analysis of the character of Theodore Roosevelt was for me the best thing in the book, but only because my father was a Bull Mooser in 1912 and my suspicions of this estimable man began early in my life, and Mr. Mason confirmed my views. I suppose really the most valuable contribution of Mr. Mason is his masterly analysis of the naval engagements, the war on the land and his very funny account of General William R. Shafter. Quote: "The mere fact that General Shafter weighed more than 300 pounds should have been enough to mark him as unfit for service in the steaming Cuban jungle. However, a War Department which sent its men to the tropics in flannel shirts, flannel underwear, and other items of apparel suitable, as Roosevelt said, 'for Montana in the autumn,' could not be expected to foresee the unfitness of a general whose first council of war at the front was accomplished while reclining on a door."
Mr. Mason has a light touch, and the story of this war has to be read to be believed. Mr. Mason has done a competent job historically; he also has written a lusty and humorous book.
In the first decade of this century (1906) some of the tobacco growers of Kentucky formed a tobacco co-operative in order to force the buyers to pay them a fair price. A small war resulted in which there were burnings and killings, and finally martial law. Mr. Robert Penn Warren has written of this in Night Rider, the latest of the Houghton Mifflin Fellowship novels. It is an extremely well written book. Tragedy stalks more o£ the characters than would have happened in real life, but the atmosphere is often hauntingly beautiful, and the dialect (and it is not excessive) is perfectly handled. The author knows of what he writes but in spite of exciting events the novel is, curiously enough, a little on the dull side. Perse Munn, who is the leading male character, is depicted as being in an almost continual fog, and there are many gaps in the progress of his defeat which Mr. Warren doesn't explain. Moreover, his wife Mary is a little too shadowy a figure. Still Night Rider is a distinguished first novel which I think you will enjoy.
Dean E. Gordon Bill recommends three books: (1) The Fourth Forger by John Mair, which tells of the "unbelievably successful Shakespearean forgeries of William Ireland," (2) Life in an Air Castle by Frank M. Chapman, the latest book by America's veteran ornithologist, and (3) Bicknell's Thrush by George J. Wallace, concerning which Dean Bill says: Everyone who has been haunted by the notes and identification of our rarer thrushes towards the tops of our New England mountains should read this complete and excellent description of one of them.'
For those who love the sea and ships by all means buy Albert Cook Church's Whale Ships and Whaling published by W. W. Norton & Co. There are more than 200 photographs chosen from a unique collection of over 40,000 negatives, and there are only 35 pages of text, in which the author, a New Bedford man, summarizes the history of the once thriving whaling industry.
Suggestions
PAUL SAMPLE '20, distinguished American painter and now assistant professor of art and artist in residence in the College, was asked by the Browser for recommended reading for alumni in his field. His suggestions follow:
The following books I have selected from my library as having an appeal to the laymen as well as the professional in the field of the fine arts. They are a selection having to do with painting and painters as distinct from other branches of the Fine Arts—and deal for the most part with the human rather than the scholarly or technical aspects.
THE JOURNAL OF EUGENE DELACROlX—Translated from the Frenchby Walter Pach. Covici: Friede 1937. This intensely human personal record of Delacroix covers the last 40 years of his life. The leader of the Romantic school of French painting and a storm center of his period Delacroix not only was a great painter but a significant personal figure of his own time. A friend of Chopin, George Sand, Baudelaire and others this journal is filled with revelations of his personal life, love affairs professional differences as well as reflections on the aspirations, triumphs, and disappointments in his work. Fascinating reading.
THE NOTE BOOKS OF LEONARDODA VINCI. Edited in two vols, by Edward Mac Curdy. A good book to dip into for occasional glimpses of the most amazing intellect of the Renaissance. The curious combination of a searching mind absorbed in the various branches of learning, science, and the arts and the driving urge to create with his own hands is revealed in the fragmentary notes of this genius.
THE ART AND CRAFT OF DRAWING. Vernon Blake. Oxford U. Press 1927. Not a craftsman's reference book but rather a work which combines the technical with the aesthetic in a point of view which is concerned largely with the outlook and meaning of art.
PAUL CEZANNE. Gerstle Mack. AlfredKnopf 1935- The most complete and thorough biography of one of the greatest painters in recent times. There were no heroics in Cezanne's life—little of drama or struggle or romance except within his own soul. This biography helps to reconcile the greatness of his work with the curiously retiring and stilted personality of this shy little man.
MEN AND MEMORIES. Sir Wm. Rothenstein. Tudor Pub. Co. N. Y. The recollections of this not overly gifted painter covering the period from 1872 to 1922 is filled with interesting comments on his contacts with the art circles of his day—men of the period in England and on the continent Degas, Verlaine, Beardsley, Beerbohm, Whistler, Sargent, Swinburne, George Moore, Augustus John, Conrad, Rodin, Shaw.
THE ART SPIRIT Robt. Henri.Lippincott 1923. This book comprises the notes, fragments of letters and excerpts from lectures and criticisms to his students of Henri who was such an important influence on the progressively minded painters in the earlier years of the 20th century. These are spicy and exciting morsals for the art student and being colored by Henri's healthy and dynamic conception of art as part of everyday life it is good reading for the layman.
THE MEDICI Young. . . .Modern Library. I use this book frequently as a travelling companion. Being the complete history of the Medici Family the greatest patrons of the arts in history it presents an absorbing picture of the important figures in art during the period of the Italian Renaissance.
MEN OF ART Thomas Craven. Simon if Schuster 1931. Although colored by Cravens agressively journalistic style and point of view this book gives a very interesting picture of the great figures in the history of painting and presents them in a matter of fact way stripped of all romantic and sentimental trappings.
PRIMER OF MODERN ART Sheldon Cheney. . . .Liveright 1933- Has much to say on the modern movement in art and has done a great deal to clarify a general misconception about it. RENOIR An Intimate Record— Vollard—Knopf 1925. In no sense a formal biography but a book filled with anecdote and witty revelations on the great French Impressionist as recalled by his friend the dealer Vollard.
DEGAS Vollard. . . .George Allen ifUnwin... London. Another intimate portrait and informal record of the surly Degas—the only man who frightened Whistler.
QUEER THING, Painting WalterPach Harpers, 1938. Memoirs of 40 years in the midst of the modern movement in Paris and America. Brief remarks, frank opinions, searching descriptions of a hectic period in American art.
PAINT AND PREJUDICE Nevinson, Methuen, London 1937. The interesting auto-biography of a modern British painter with a persecution complex.
LUST FOR LIFE Stone. . . Longmans—Green & Co., N. Y. 1934. Van Gogh's life fictionalized. A more adaptable subject for such a book—and it is a fascinating tale—could hardly be found.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF REMBRANDT VAN RIJN Van Loon. The absorbing story built around the life and era of Rembrandt. It presents a brilliant and cunningly conceived story structure centering around Rembrandt and although probably questionable as regards authentic historical basis is indeed an engaging work.
PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
