subjects, are included in or listed after Chapter 15, “For the Literary
Investor.”
iv
In the matter of books of travel, some classification is necessary, and
in addition to the ones just described I am glad to name the following
in all their happy variety:
A GROUP OF BOOKS ON ANCIENT EGYPT AND
PRESENT-DAY EGYPTIAN EXPLORATIONS.
_A History of Egypt From the Earliest Times to the Conquest of the
Persians_, by JAMES HENRY BREASTED. The ninth printing has just been
called for. With 200 illustrations and maps.
_History of Assyria_, by A. T. OLMSTEAD. A companion volume to
Breasted’s _History of Egypt_, and equally admirable. With maps and
many illustrations.
G. MASPERO’S _Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria_, his _Egyptian Art:
Studies_, and his _History of Art in Egypt_. These remain standard in
their field.
TERENCE GRAY’S _And in the Tomb Were Found_ and his _The Life of
Hatshepsut_. The first is a series of historical studies and sketches
including Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, and Rameses the Great.
Some literal translations of Egyptian love songs are added. The second
book is the romance of an Egyptian princess who reigns as a man; the
work is cast in the form of a pageant for the sake of greater vividness.
PERCY E. MARTIN’S _Egypt Old and New_, a general account with many
illustrations in colour.
PERCY EDWARD NEWBERRY’S _The Valley of the Kings_, which includes the
discoveries by the late Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter in a general
account of thirty years’ explorations.
ARTHUR WEIGALL’S _Tut-Ankh-Amen and Other Essays_ is the work of an
Egyptologist and former Inspector-General of Antiquities in Egypt.
Mr. Weigall was special correspondent for the London _Daily Mail_,
New York _World_ and other newspapers at the opening of the tomb of
Tut-Ankh-Amen.
A GROUP OF BOOKS ABOUT CHINA.
_Audacious Angles on China_, by ELSIE MCCORMICK, introduces the reader
to Chinese life as the Western resident there sees it. The humorous
side of such experiences is to the fore, and one part of the book is
devoted to “The Unexpurgated Diary of a Shanghai Baby”--an American
child’s view of the intimacies of Eastern life.
_Swinging Lanterns_, by ELIZABETH CRUMP ENDERS, is a vivid narrative
of what an American woman saw while living and travelling in China. It
contains much that is unusual, including such matters as the Yellow
Llama Devil Dances, never before described. Fine illustrations.
ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS’S _Across Mongolian Plains_.
ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS’S and YVETTE BORUP ANDREWS’S _Camps and Trails in
China_.
HERBERT A. GILES’S _A History of Chinese Literature_, a historical
account written with much charm and taste and offering translations of
the work of various Chinese writers.
THE FAR EAST.
C. M. VAN TYNE’S _India in Ferment_. Mahatma Gandhi and the general
background by a scholar and skilled observer.
SIR HUGH CLIFFORD’S _A Prince of Malaya_ and his earlier book, _The
Further Side of Silence_. These are stories, true, fictional and
semi-fictional, that take rank as literature. The author, a friend of
Joseph Conrad, at the age of twenty-one was “the principal instrument
in adding 15,000 square miles to the British dependencies in the East.”
SYDNEY A. CLOMAN’S _Myself and a Few Moros_. An American soldier’s
lively but not unhumorous administrative experiences, with a good
picture of what the United States has accomplished in colonial
government.
H. O. MORGENTHALER’S _Matahari_. The Frederick O’Brienish adventures of
a Swiss engineer prospecting for tin in the Malayan-Siamese jungle.
THE CALLERS OF THE WILD.
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON’S _Game Animals and the Lives They Live_, Vol. I.
There are to be four volumes.
WILLIAM T. HORNADAY’S _The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals_, a book
of personal observations by one of the keenest living observers and one
who, as director of the New York Zoological Park, has under his eye
and care the most complete collection in the world.
SAMUEL A. DERIEUX’S _Animal Personalities_, including domesticated
animals.
CARL AKELEY’S _Men and Animals: An Autobiography_ and MARY HASTINGS
BRADLEY’S _On the Gorilla Trail_. Mr. Akeley went to the Belgian Congo
on a gorilla expedition, and Mrs. Bradley, well-known as a novelist,
her husband and their five-year-old daughter went, too. Each book
enhances the interest of the other.
WITH ICE.
APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD’S _The Worst Journey in the World_, describing,
in its two volumes, Scott’s last Antarctic expedition, 1910-13.
MEDITERRANEAN.
V. C. SCOTT O’CONNOR’S _A Vision of Morocco_, which is both historical
and descriptive, and C. E. ANDREWS’S _Old Morocco and the Forbidden
Atlas_, written in a distinguished prose.
C. R. ASHBEE’S _A Palestine Notebook_, the result of administrative
experience in 1918-22. The book has interesting personal portraits of
Sir Herbert Samuels, General Allenby, Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Morley,
the late Lord Northcliffe, Lord Curzon, and others.
G. K. CHESTERTON’S _The New Jerusalem_.
ERNEST PEIXOTTO’S _Through Spain and Portugal_, where the author’s
illustrations are so happily wedded to the text.
ROSITA FORBES’S _The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara_.
SOUTH AMERICA.
C. REGINALD ENOCK’S _Republics of Central and South America_, his
_Spanish America_ (two volumes), his _Ecuador_, his _Peru_, and his
_Mexico_.
LEO E. MILLER’S _In the Wilds of South America_, an account of six
years’ explorations.
UNIQUE BOOKS OF TRAVEL.
GEORGE EYRE-TODD’S _The Clans of the Scottish Highlands_. By an
authority on Scots lore.
VAUGHAN CORNISH’S _A Geography of the Great Capitals_, from the
“capital” of the Iroquois Indians, marked by a sacred fire, to the
capitals of government, such as Rome and London, or of commerce, such
as New York, and including vanished cities as well as existing ones.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE’S _Washington and Its Romance_, really a historical
work. Mr. Page had been engaged upon it for several years before his
death and left completed his account of the city’s early days.
S. R. ROGET’S _Travel in the Two Last Centuries of Three Generations_,
a remarkable history, vivid, personal and interesting, derived from the
records and letters of a single family and showing what rapid changes
transportation underwent in the short period of two hundred years.
B. W. MATZ’S _Dickensian Inns and Taverns_, and his _The Inns and
Taverns of Pickwick_, and also CECIL ALDRIN’S magnificent _Old
Inns_--for all who hear the post horns blow and the stage coach drive
up to the door.
STEPHEN GRAHAM’S _Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies_, the description
of a vagabondage with Vachel Lindsay, with a report of many
conversations which left the ground.
_3. A Breathless Chapter_
i
What actually took my breath away (in the first place) was an
inspection of the “general catalogue” of one of our publishing
houses, and a discovery therein. Now, a general catalogue, showing
all the books published by a particular house and “in print”--that
is, procurable new--is in itself a species of adventure. I admit all
that Mr. A. Edward Newton puts forward as to the amenities of book
collecting--by which, I take it, he means the joys, the sorrows, the
moments of irony and the moments of amusement which fall to the lot
of the collector of rare books. The quest of the book that is out of
print, and must be had at second hand by diligent search and patient
waiting, is an exceptional delight. Nevertheless, a special and more
accessible pleasure lies in the catalogue, whether of a publisher or a
bookshop. All but a handful of us are certain to come upon titles that
kindle the imagination or rekindle the memory. Both were lit for me by
the entry:
GABORIAU, Emile
The Most Complete Library Edition
Each with new illustrated jackets
_The Count’s Millions._ 12mo. 2.00
And not only _The Count’s Millions_, but a roll of eleven others, an
even dozen in all, ready to be re-read after these too many years and
pleasingly freshened up by the new illustrated jackets! There they
were: _Baron Trigault’s Vengeance_, _The Clique of Gold_, and a fine
array of enticing titles that memory doesn’t recall--_The Champdoce
Mystery_, _Within an Inch of His Life_, which has the proper ring; _The
Widow Lerouge_; _Other People’s Money_, always an engrossing subject;
_The Mystery of Orcival_ (illustrated by Jules Guerin) and one or two
others besides (of course!) _Monsieur Lecoq_ and that famous _File No.
113_. It is desolating to reflect that there must be thousands, perhaps
millions, to whom the name of Monsieur Lecoq conveys nothing and who
are totally unacquainted with _File No. 113_, the most marvellous
genealogical mystery story ever written, a tale in which one does not
know which more to admire, the genealogy or the plot, until one grasps
that the genealogy _is_ the plot, and that what is desperately needed
is not a detective but an expert in the ascension of family trees.
However, that is not the worst. A yet more fearful thought concerns
the author himself. It is even possible that there exists a whole
generation, and perhaps races of men, to whom the name of Gaboriau
is nothing but part of a quatrain (though rather a famous jingle)
perpetrated first by Julian Street and James Montgomery Flagg under the
auspices (I think) of Franklin P. Adams (“F. P. A.”):
Said Opie Read to E. P. Roe,
“How do you like Gaboriau?”
“I like him very much indeed!”
Said E. P. Roe to Opie Read.
Too, too flippant! Recalling Monsieur Lecoq, one exclaims: “There
were detectives in those days!” And then again, such despondency is
excessive. There is, now and occasionally, a detective in these days
also. For proof, look at this fellow, Monsieur Jonquelle, in Melville
Davisson Post’s new book of that title. Ah! M. Davisson Post! It is but
to mention him to introduce a new and important subject, _n’est ce pas_?
Mr. Post is worth talking about, certainly; and assuming that you have
read him, you have probably discussed what you read afterward. His
reputation as a writer of detective-mystery stories was pretty well
abroad before the publication of _Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries_,
but that book established the reputation solidly. My recollection
is that even before its appearance Mr. Post had written one or two
articles in which he explained his theory and practice of story
writing. I may simply remark that he went into the matter with as
much technical skill and artistic nicety as Poe or de Maupassant; the
man is an artist to his fingertips and his work shows it. One has
the feeling of construction and the sense of ornamentation springing
from fine tastes; his tales are like beautiful pieces of cabinet work
in which, at first sight, the effects of form, of shapeliness and of
beauty and power are felt; on a closer examination you fall to admiring
the sure hand and the cunning art; and at last your exploring fingers
touch a particular joint, disclosing an unsuspected drawer that flies
out and reveals the story’s secret ... though not Mr. Post’s secret,
which, like that of all genuine artists, remains with himself. If
this has a ring of exaggeration to your ear, I need only refer you to
such a perfect thing as the opening tale, “The Doomdorf Mystery,” in
_Uncle Abner_. Or you may make the test on _Monsieur Jonquelle_, where
likewise all the stories turn on a central character, the Prefect of
Police of Paris. _Monsieur Jonquelle_ exemplifies very well Mr. Post’s
method of developing the mystery and its solution side by side. The
gain in movement and surprise is the compensation for a technique
immensely more difficult than the usual formula, by which a mystery is
first built up and then, with inevitable repetition, dispelled. Those
who are interested in the mechanism of stories will also find it worth
while to consider why Mr. Post varies the narrative standpoint in his
new book, so that some of the tales of _Monsieur Jonquelle_ are related
by the chief character, some by a third person, some by the author....
Mr. Post is a native of West Virginia, where he lives (Lost Creek,
R. F. D. 2). A lawyer by training, he became particularly interested
in the possibilities that lie open for the use of the law to aid the
commission of crime; and this led to his first book, _The Strange
Schemes of Randolph Mason_, in which this perversion of the law to
criminal ends was the tissue of the stories.
A rural free delivery route at Lost Creek, West Virginia, has about it
something pleasing in connection with a writer of breathless fiction,
but the height of suitability in authors’ residences belongs to
Beatrice Grimshaw, whose mystery-adventure yarns of the South Pacific
begin to be as numerous as a group of Pacific Islands. Indeed, I feel
it would be no surprise some day, running before the southeasterly
trade wind in a longitude west of 135 degrees and a latitude exceeding
20 degrees south, to sight a succession of dark blue cloud shapes
lying on the horizon and be told: “Yonder’s the Beatrice Islands of
the Grimshaw group--big archipelago.” Beatrice Grimshaw lives at Port
Moseby, Papua, New Guinea, and is a planter as well as an author.
There is practically no place in the South Seas which she has not
visited, including the cannibal country of Papua. An old and possibly
untrue story recalled by Hector MacQuarrie tells of a time when, on a
schooner in mid-Pacific, “the captain, a gentle ancient, thinking that
the dark women were having it all their own way, offered to embrace
Miss Grimshaw, finding in return a gun pointing at his middle, filling
him with quaint surprise that anyone could possibly offer violence in
defence of a soul in so delightful a climate.” Anyway, the lady knows
her corner of the world and the people in it, as anyone may discover by
the exciting enterprise of reading such a book as _The Sands of Oro_,
with its strange group of five persons bound together by necessity
and ugly chance, and committed to each other’s fortunes for a term on
a lonely Pacific island. Here, as in the author’s _Nobody’s Island_,
the reader is at once let into the general secret with the result of a
deepening mystery as to why and how and what next.
In truth, the tale which attempts breathlessness simply by the device
of withheld explanations takes our breath away no longer. We have
come to demand of the author that he proceed with direct and forward
action, producing genuine interest instead of merely artificial
suspense. He must hew to the line of his story, must _move_, letting
the explanations, chips of his tough puzzle, fall where they may. Thus
it has come about that the mystery story which is not also an adventure
story fails to capture our interest or stir our curiosity. Of living
writers, one of the earliest to grasp this was A. E. W. Mason. With
others, I feared a half dozen years ago that he might have forgotten
the vital principle; for his story of _The Summons_ was quite unlike
the Mason who had given us _The Four Feathers_, _The Witness for the
Defense_, and other superb novels. But the fear may be dissipated,
for in his new book, _The Winding Stair_, Mr. Mason has written a
story comparable with his best work. Like _The Four Feathers_, it is
a tale of cowardice becoming ultimate bravery; and I do not recall a
heroine so pitifully appealing, so desperately lovable, so admirably
brave as Marguerite Lambert since Joseph Conrad gave us the girl Lena
in _Victory_. Possibly the title of Mr. Mason’s newest work may,
offhand, convey the wrong flavor to the incipient reader; it is not a
yarn of mysterious goings-on in some old mansion but the history of
a soldier and the son of a soldier, moving principally in Northern
Africa; the very appropriate phrase that christens the book is quoted
from no less person than Bacon, “All rising to Great Place is by a
winding stair.” Seldom does one come upon a novel of adventure which
is also so profoundly a novel of character or which has so direct and
free an appeal to the emotions, or makes that appeal so successfully.
_The Winding Stair_ is the work of a masterly storyteller, and such
scenes as those of Paul Ravenel’s discovery of who he is, his rescue
of Marguerite Lambert, and Marguerite’s discovery of his self-betrayal
sprung from his love for her are something more than exciting drama.
There is a breathlessness here that comes from a slowing-down rather
than a quickening, from a pause, from a moment of perilous silence in
which the only sound or sensation is the painful throbbing of the human
heart.
ii
The other way of breathlessness is laughter.
“Laughter, holding both his sides,” sang Milton; and, in fact, I once
knew a man who sat at a dinner or some place between Don Marquis and
Pelham Grenville (P. G.) Wodehouse. It is not necessary to recall what
happened to him. Let us draw a veil, and proceed. Don (perhaps you
recall it) was under the necessity of conducting a guessing contest in
a New York newspaper. The purpose was to guess his real name. People
refused to believe that he could be Don Marquis. The Supreme Court, in
a case brought as a test, has since decided that such incredulity is
not a sign of moral turpitude. Even Donald Robert Perry Marquis, held
the Court (seven to two; Holmes, J., and Brandeis, J., dissenting),
does not sound sufficiently possible, especially when the evidence
shows that he was born in Walnut, Bureau County, Illinois. The
Court ruled that Don was conceivably a literary hoax, but that his
play, _The Old Soak_, was the real thing and within the Amendment.
Popular rather than judicial cognisance has extended to the other and
uncollected works of Don Marquis, such as _Prefaces_, his stories in
_Carter and Other People_, his truth-telling about a young woman called
_Hermione_, his newly rededicated record of _The Cruise of the Jasper
B._, his iliad of _Noah an’ Jonah an’ Captain John Smith_, his poetry
in _Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady and Famous Love Affairs_, etc., etc.
You have read Anatole France’s _The Revolt of the Angels_, but are you
familiar with Don’s _The Revolt of the Oyster_, I ask you? Or _Pandora
Lifts the Lid_, by Christopher Morley, writing under the auspices
of Don Marquis? Or _The Almost Perfect State_, a vision vouchsafed
exclusively to Mr. Marquis?
The truth is, there is a good deal of Mark Twain in Don Marquis. Don
is usually as good as ever Mark was and in some cases a good deal
superior--and throughout, more genuine. When I make the comparison I
am thinking of the best Mark Twain, the satirist and not too easily
satisfied thinker; neither the embittered and savage pessimist of
those final years nor the facile (too facile) humourist. Marquis, who
can sustain the severer comparison with Twain, can also well sustain
the comparison on the lighter side; for Don is a humourist, too. The
point is in the “too.” And the exemplification may be sought in (let
us say) _The Almost Perfect State_. “No matter how nearly perfect an
Almost Perfect State may be, it is not nearly perfect enough unless
the individuals who compose it can, somewhere between death and birth,
have a perfectly corking time for a few years.... In the Almost Perfect
State every person shall have at least ten years before he dies of
easy, carefree, happy living.” A place of pay-as-you-enter wars; a
heaven where everyone is an aristocrat and there are no professional
reformers--in short, a Marquisate. Where Don differs from Mark Twain
is in being a poet who sometimes uses poetry as the medium of his
expression--see _Dreams and Dust_ and his _Poems and Portraits_.
Christopher Morley (whose essay on Don Marquis, in _Shandygaff_,
deserves to be read) has coaxed Don into a Frank R. Stocktonish
enterprise in _Pandora Lifts the Lid_, with its narrative of seven
young women snatched from the shades of a young ladies’ seminary and--.
But as I write, Pandora has lifted the lid on a crack only.
P. G. Wodehouse is another matter, a chap over whose books thousands of
people have found themselves unable to keep straight faces. Yet, not
long ago, writing in the London Sphere, Clement K. Shorter declared he
had never read a single one of the more than twenty Wodehouse yarns.
He had never read _Jeeves_, or that new one, _Leave It to Psmith_, or
_Mostly Sally_, or _Three Men and a Maid_, or _The Little Warrior_,
or A _Damsel in Distress_, or _Piccadilly Jim_--think of it! Or no,
don’t think of it. It won’t bear thinking of, it won’t really. The
Wodehouse novels, though in most respects like those jolly things he
writes to go with music by Jerome Kern, have now and then a page that
dips far below the surface of fun into something very deep and true
to the inwardness of human nature. Such are some bits in _The Little
Warrior_, and such are the more tragic moments for Sally in _Mostly
Sally_; and yet Mr. Wodehouse brings his story up again quickly like a
diver clutching a pearl and rising up through clear water to sparkling
and sunlit air. It is the prettiest talent imaginable, and I can think
of no other contemporary writer of light fiction who has the same
dexterity.
iii
There is no formula for achieving breathlessness. Those who are most
susceptible to what may be loosely called Plot will find an enviable
difficulty in breathing while they peruse, besides the stories already
mentioned, some of the following tales:
JOHN BUCHAN’S _Midwinter_ and his _Huntingtower_. Buchan is a master
of suspense and a humourist of very exceptional quality. His stories
are rightly called “the grandest of grand yarns.” Have you ever read
_Greenmantle_? The literary merit of these books (quite incidental) is
far above the average of their kind.
FRANK L. PACKARD’S _The Four Stragglers_, an “unguessable” story with a
steady acceleration of excitement, and his new one, _The Locked Book_.
WILLIAM GARRET’S _Friday to Monday_, which will give you the liveliest
week-end of your possibly rich experience. Black pearls, a Chinaman,
torture, a fight in the dark, a rocky cavern of the sea and an
airplane are used.
WILLIAM JOHNSTON’S _The Waddington Cipher_.
H. C. MCNEILE’S _The Dinner Club_. The six members had each to tell two
stories worthy of the dinner, and did! Also H. C. McNeile’s _The Black
Gang_, with its further adventures of Bulldog Drummond.
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE’S _The Amateur Inn_, remarkable not only for its
mystery puzzle but for the presence of an irresistible maiden lady who
says: “A person not ashamed to lock a door with a key, need not be
ashamed to lock his mind with a lie.”
CAROLYN WELL’S _Wheels Within Wheels_, another story with Penny Wise as
the detective. The village idiot is a protagonist.
C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON’S _The Lady From the Air_ and their _The
Night of the Wedding_.
When Ghost Meets Ghost.
The “borderland” in F. BRITTEN AUSTEN’S _On the Borderland_ is the
region between the conscious and the subconscious, assuming that such a
neutral zone exists. The book offers twelve weird stories striking in
their ingenuity.
E. F. BENSON’S _Spook Stories_.
Ordeal by Water.
TRISTRAM TUPPER’S _Adventuring_ is entirely off the beaten track of
adventure fiction--the story of a middle-aged, ordinary man whose love
for the songs of the Grecian Sappho quickens his imagination to a dream
of her beauty and leads him into an homeric sea adventure.
A. HYATT VERRILL’S _The Real Story of the Pirate_. A fascinating book
about those fellows whose colouring is perhaps a little faded in spite
of their being scoundrels of the deepest dye; although (as you may not
know) Kidd was by no means so black as he was hanged for being.
A. HYATT VERRILL’S _The Real Story of the Whaler_. More thrills for all
of us who had ’em as we watched the film, “Down to the Sea in Ships.”
Almost Anything by HAROLD MACGRATH.
His _The World Outside_, or, if you haven’t read them:
_The Ragged Edge_
_The Pagan Madonna_
_The Man With Three Names_
_The Drums of Jeopardy_
iv