The Weekly Machen
We return to Machen’s “Odd Volumes,” an irregular review column for the Evening News. Unlike most installments, this one lacks a descriptive subtitle. Rather briefly, Machen covers three books, but the second item remains the most enticing volume to find. It is always astounding to consider how widely read our forefather were. What poverty we suffer for convenience and addictive technology!
Odd Volumes
by
Arthur Machen
December 17, 1913
Life in a Booth by Mark Melford.
Here is a contrast between the old stage and the new. Long ago Mr. Melford was “supporting” Mr. Charles Mathews in the provinces. The young actor was nervous, and was afraid that his “support” had not been altogether adequate to the dignity and ability of the star.
“I fear I distressed you, Mr. Mathews,” I said.
“Decidedly not—splendid,” he replied.
“Shall I take the right centre in the next scene?” I inquired.
“My dear boy, stand where you like—say what you like—it’s all right.”
The difference between then and now is, as Mr. Melford notes, enormous; then six hours rehearsal, now six weeks, with every stage position, every “cross” and gesture carefully set down in the prompt book. One may hint to the author that his booth experiences would have been much more valuable if they had been more realistic and less “effective,” less “written up.” No one yet has written on the queer dialect that the old actors shared with thieves, and the world awaits enlightenment as to such idioms as “nunty munjare,” “nunty dinarily,” and “omee of the karser.”
Gossipy Book About Africa
A Woman’s Winter in Africa: A 26,000 Mile Journey by Charlotte Cameron.
Mrs. Cameron, to use her own phrase, has “looped the loop” round Africa. She started last winter, and made her voyage from Mombasa, in the extreme east, to Sierra Leone in the west. On her way she called at Lisbon, and a Portuguese gentleman became a passenger in her boat. He explained that he was a Royalist, and that he had just had a call from a Government official, who suggested that Lisbon was a hot place and that a sea voyage might be beneficial. The Royalist took the hint, having in mind the fate of a friend of his who did not take the hint, and met with a violent death in consequence. “A Woman’s Winter in Africa”—“Round Africa” would be a better title—is a pleasant, gossipy, gently informing volume, and Mrs. Cameron has put in some useful “don’ts” for the use of intending tourists. There is a note on her visit to Portuguese Nyassaland which recalls the Portuguese dinner-bill which gave Mark Twain and his friends such a shock. It was for 29,000 milreis, and the Americans realised that they were ruined and broken men. But the bill was in reality quite moderate, and so Mrs. Cameron tells us how she got 5,000 reis as change for an English sovereign. There are nearly twenty-one of these coins in an English penny. The authoress has to tell of many daring adventures, but from one ordeal she shrank away. She was being rowed out to her ship by a crew of Fans, most of them cannibals, and a bottle of trade “gin” was produced. The oarsmen drank gratefully, and said “Good!” and finally the steersman passed the bottle to Mrs. Cameron, saying, “Mummie have—it live for good.”
She laughed and refused the hospitality.
Macaulay Illustrated
The History of England from the Accession of James the Second by Lord Macaulay (Vol. I).
The first illustrated “Macaulay,” admirably and exhaustively edited by the Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford, Mr. Charles Harding Firth. Professor Firth has enriched Macaulay’s most entertaining book with a complete and invaluable apparatus of contemporary portraits of the kings, queens, and great statesmen, great ladies—not omitting Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn—and minor characters of the chronicle. There are four portraits and several photographs of Macaulay, and a rich series of contemporary prints, English, Dutch and French caricatures, medals both of people and events, maps and plans—views of places and buildings, broadsides, ballads and newspapers, and facsimiles of letters. Professor Firth’s edition is, undoubtedly, the final and definitive “Macaulay.” It is exactly the book to make a boy realise that the History of England is a splendid, significant and quickening story; not a rubbish heap of dry bones and barren dates.
Previous: What I Saw in Ulster
Next: With the King’s Poulterer
darklybrightpress.com 
This is vivid and very enjoyable! And thank you for the links! Mrs. Cameron’s two quatrains of dedication are intriguing – and would no doubt be overshadowed with sorrow in less than a year, as it is “To My German Friends”. Also intriguing in the context is that the next book listed in her Wikipedia article list of Publications is the novel, Zenia: Spy in Togoland, published in 1916, when Togoland was in German East Africa.
I expected Professor Firth’s edition of Macaulay to be published by the OUP and was wondering if Charles Williams was involved – but, a bit of searching in the Internet Archive found a scan of copy of that very illustrated edition in the Robarts Library, University of Toronto – and I see that it was published by Macmillan. It looks lke there are scans of the following volumes as well…
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Here’s a link:
https://archive.org/details/histofengfromthe01macauoft/page/n7/mode/2up
I did not read any of Macaulay’s History till I was an undergraduate, but it is vivid and fascinating – and must be the more so with all these illustrations – I can imagine boys enjoying it!
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Something about Macaulay and Conan Doyle niggled at me… So far, I’ve found this is his autobiographical Memories and Adventures (1924) (thanks to Project Gutenberg):
I had always felt great sympathy for the Puritans, who, after all, whatever their little peculiarities, did represent political liberty and earnestness in religion. They had usually been caricatured in fiction and art. Even Scott had not drawn them as they were. Macaulay, who was always one of my chief inspirations, had alone made them comprehensible—the sombre fighters, with their Bibles and their broadswords. There is a great passage of his—I cannot quote it verbally—in which he says that after the Restoration if ever you saw a carter more intelligent than his fellows, or a peasant who tilled his land better, you would be likely to find that it was an old pikeman of Cromwell’s. This, then, was my inspiration in “Micah Clarke,” where I fairly let myself go upon the broad highway of adventure.
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Thank you for the link!
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