The Weekly Machen
Not quite half a column, the following dispatch is the shortest article by Arthur Machen thus far posted in this series. However, even the briefest of his commentary on a book should capture our interest. And with that justification, I close, for it is not proper that an introduction should exceed the length of its subject.
Some Autumn Books
by
Arthur Machen
October 23, 1913
“The Humour of Homer and Other Essays.” By Samuel Butler. (Fifield.)
“The Fair Haven.” By Samuel Butler. (Fifield.)
Two volumes in the collected edition of the works of Samuel Butler. Both are edited, and very well edited, by Mr. R. A. Streatfield, and “The Humour of Homer” has a biographical sketch of the author by Mr. Henry Festing Jones. Butler had all sorts of queer beliefs; he thought, for example, that the Odyssey was written by a lady living in Sicily; but, however odd his positions, his reasons for holding them are always delightful: and “Erewhon” is one of the most entertaining and suggestive books in the English language.
“Campfire Yarns of the Lost Legion.” By Colonel G. Hamilton Browne. (Werner Laurie.)
Battles with Maoris in New Zealand, with Bushrangers in Australia, with Basutos in South Africa; these are principal amongst Colonel Hamilton Browne’s topics. One of the best chapters is devoted to the exploits and adventures of a certain gentleman called by the author “Mad Conway,” who went from Eton and a cavalry regiment to the wilds of South Africa, there to achieve impossibilities of valour, and madcap tricks that would have appealed to Charles O’Malley.
“Tales of Hoffmann. Retold from Offenbach’s Opera.” By Cyril Falls, and illustrated by A. Brantingham Simpson. (Chatto and Windus.)
The gloomy fantasy of the coloured plates is well enough suited to the text. Hoffmann is the German Edgar Allan Poe; he turned life into a grotesque and terrific dream.
“The Tour of a Socialist Round the World.” By Walter Wolston Moodie. (Fifield.)
Though Mr. Moore is a Socialist, he is pleasantly old-fashioned in his ideas of how this rich world is to be cured of its pains. He is sorry that the Buddha wasted his time in beckoning Nirvana—in our Western phrase, the peace that passeth all understanding—instead of discovering the microscope, he is convinced that a system of secular education would be the saving of India, though most of us are aware that it has not saved England. And he has the frankness to say that the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount do not make a religion for this world.
“A New Jane Austen.” By Francis Warre Cornish. (Macmillan.)
A volume of the “English Men of Letters” series; very well done. It will be a surprise to lovers of the gentle, ironic, smiling Jane to find that she would now and then compete with Swift in bitterness. Thus, giving the local news in a letter to her sister Cassandra she says: “Mrs. Hall, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband.” The author well observes that “the depth of Steventon leisure is indicated by the fact that Mr. Austen used to read Cowper aloud to his family in the morning.” This circumstance makes the land of the Lotus Eaters seem riotous by comparison with Steventon Rectory.
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Very interesting – if brief – and sometimes tantalizing: thank you (and for the links)!
I’ve enjoyed Erewhon a lot – and Robert Graves’ novel, Homer’s Daughter (1955), but have only peeked into Butler on Homer, and did not know of this!
Charles Lever and his novel, Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon (1841) are both new to me – but not to Dickens or Trollope as well as Machen, I discover. He and Colonel G. Hamilton Browne both sound interesting!
Cyril Falls has lots of interesting-looking books scanned in the Internet Archive, but alas – and very tantalizingly – the Google and Hathi e-books of this one are unavailable for whatever ‘copyright reasons’, nor can I find atmospheric pictures by Alexander Brantingham Simpson, so far… I like the Offenbach a lot, but have never yet read much Hoffmann beyond a translation of ‘Mademoiselle Scudéry’ (1819) (which, however, Wikipedia tells me is “considered his masterpiece”) – and thoroughly enjoyed his own opera of Undine! Interestingly, I find Internet Archive scans of a 1908 study by Palmer Cobb entitled The influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe!
WorldCat tells me of 15 copies of three editions of Moodie’s book in libraries around the world, but none nearby…
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Among hundreds of books lately discarded by the local university library I think I spotted several of these English Men of Letters books, and possibly this one reviewed by Machen. If the Austen one was among them, I didn’t take it, to my regret.
Dowdy old books out, gay Young Adult books in.
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‘Libricide’ is a word, I see – though I have not looked into it history… A lot of library behavior has been saddening, aggravating, sickening, in a crescendo over the past – how many decades? (I remember the foolhardy disappearance of hometown public library LPs when CDs came along…) Parallel with that is the in many ways admirable scanning, photography of manuscripts, availability ‘online’ – but that should complement (as it does with manuscripts), not supplant, since it is not the same thing: copies of books and other printed works are physical artifacts with distinct characteristics (as Orwell shows in 1984!). But, indeed, supplanting of all sorts is sinister policy so much of the time…
Meanwhile, for those of us in whatever ways ‘permitted’ access, Francis Warre Cornish’s book must have been popular as the two copies from North American libraries I find scanned in the Internet Archive are 1914 reprints – sadly with neither having any kind of ‘English Men of Letters’ series links, and the one somehow calling up more varied and ( I think) interesting-looking “SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)”…
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