Page images
PDF
EPUB

Dick Wright, wandering far from his office at "House and Garden", writes as follows:

Firenze, 11 May, 1925.

Dear John Farrar

Yesterday I walked out to the Piazza Cavour to see the International Book Fair, with the idea of making some notes for you on the exhibitions, but it has occurred to me that your regular European correspondent will be handling it, so I'm just giving you a few of my reactions.

[ocr errors]

The U. S. wasn't represented - evidently by agreement - save for a small corner with some dull books by the Princeton University Press and a small traveling show from the Washington Printing Office - farmer's bulletins and a bunch of marbleized end papers for which I blushed furiously. The Siam exhibition, directly opposite in the hall, was twice the size and a dozen times more colorful. France and Germany had each an entire building; Italy, of course, was generously represented; and Poland and Czechoslovakia quite complete shows, with a big section of practically all the British publishers.

The thought that kept annoying me was the contrast between the colorful styles and formats of Continental books as compared with the drab clothing of English books and the even drabber clothing of our American stocks. If you haven't already done it, you could find a perfectly good subject to write on along these lines. Our American publishers carry on the tradition of England and it is a Puritan, Evangelical, colorless tradition in books. The bindings are eminently respectable. Save for Knopf and a few others we seem to have no publishers whose books show a smiling face. Even the Mexican books of which the exhibit was much larger than ours have snap and color. It was like the difference between a woman who is resigned to grey and lavender and one who breaks out into joyous plaids. Anyhow, there's the theme. We're motoring up through Italy. I've found some ancient herbals at prices that would make George Putnam and Henry Smith turn grey with envy. Italy has been cold, however. I'm hoping for better weather when we go into France in June.

Well, Dick, when you return you shall write me an article trying to prove your point. What could be more colorful than some of the American books coming out this spring? Some of them look for all the world like candy boxes.

The memory of my last trip to Boston will be marked all my life by the fact that Amy Lowell died on that day. I had telephoned her in the morning; in the afternoon I spoke of her to an audience at Jordan Marsh's; immediately afterward, as I came in the door to have tea with her niece, I learned of her stroke, and a few moments later, of her death. She was one of the dearest friends I have ever had in the literary profession, and knowing her was a great privilege. I am going to quote here a sonnet printed in the Boston "Transcript". It was written by one of her close friends, Abbie Farwell Brown:

Now she is one with Beauty. She who heard

The call of loveliness in each rare thing
Of craft or nature; lilacs, nights of spring,
Feel of warm fur; old volumes, crossed and

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

with the navy, both during the war and after. Mr. Paine was only fifty three when he died, suddenly, in a hotel at Concord, while on a lecture trip. England has lost Sir H. Rider Haggard, author of "She" and countless other romances. He was sixty nine years old and his life had been a remarkably active one. During the Boer War he was high in official circles; it was in his house that the convention with the Boers was signed after their victory at Majuba Hill. In later years he turned to a study of agriculture, and was considered an authority on various aspects of farming. In New York, Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer died at the age of seventy six. She was an important figure in the social world, and an active member of the New York Historical Society. Her published works were many, the last one, which appeared in 1924, being "The Social Ladder". Earnest and positive in her defense of the old order of things, she was a strenuous and striking personality. A note from Nora Archibald Smith, who has just left town for her home in Maine, is at the same time touching and amusing. "I have only been at home an hour", she says, "but I cannot wait to tell you what the friend who 'saw me off' at the Grand Central last night told me. This friend, who, unhappy creature! does not take THE BOOKMAN, had the May copy brought in to her by an old neighbor yesterday, the old lady saying, 'Here's a magazine with an article in it by your friend, Miss Smith. There are a lot of letters in it, written to her sister, Kate Douglas Wiggin, but I don't know what the editor put 'em in for, for there isn't an answer to a single one of 'em!""

[ocr errors]

A young salesman for a certain publisher was seen at luncheon the

[merged small][graphic][merged small]

bly greater. To which he agreed, and we became fast friends. The book in question was Werner's "Brigham Young". "Why is it", I asked him, "that everyone laughs heartily when you state that the life of Brigham Young has been appearing in 'The Ladies' Home Journal'?" His reply was equivocating, and included something like a pun and a mention of twenty six wives. Maybe all twenty six subscribe to the L. H. J. I forget. At any rate, I reproduce here a delightful woodcut - at least it seems so to me. It is Joseph Smith, Jr., and an angel of God inspecting the Golden Plates of the Book of Mormon. Please do not accuse me of log rolling for Mr. Smith just because he was a fellow Vermonter. Note the keen personalities of the devils. There is one in the left hand corner who strikes me as particularly winsome.

It is only recently, I think, that we have come to appreciate the great picturesqueness of New York City, its beauty, its quaintness, its customs of charm. May has been a month of gaiety and reveling. This morning (Decoration Day) I came down Park Avenue, and then over to Fifth. The Avenue itself is of growing loveliness. The trees are really beginning to be trees, the vines over the iron fences are filling out. The day is perfect. Thousands of children are already filling Central Park, coming from all parts of the city in parades with their parents and teachers, carrying their lunch boxes for a May Day revel. Each of the groups has chosen a Queen of the May, and she prances along in her finery, under a canopy of gay colors, self conscious but happy. When they have all arrived, Central Park will be a rainbow colored, Maypole decked stretch of green, with bands and marching soldiers, and streams of automobiles threading among thirty five thousand children. For blocks you can hear their chatter, their music and laughter. One of the most colorful parties I have ever attended was the May Day revel at the Biltmore, for the benefit of the Dr. Mary Halton Endowment for Girls. Practically everyone was in costume; and the soft lights, streamers, organ grinders, hot dog sellers, gave life and gaiety. Here was Will Irwin, frolicking like a boy, the entire cast of "The Poor Nut", in costume and giving Ohio State University cheers all over the place. Particularly lovely were Arthur Davison Ficke's wife Gladys Brown, in a dark oriental costume, Grace Cristie, the the dancer, dancer, and Phyllis Duganne, slender and agile. Arthur Ficke has just sent me a reprint of his "Sonnets of a Portrait Painter" in the Haldeman-Julius blue book series, and

I am reminded of the days when these great sonnets were the bible of Yale undergraduates. What lovely things they are! Are they not part of every young man's equipment for courtship? What a musical, highly keyed thing is number twenty eight:

Now, O beloved, in this pausing hour When peace, like a great river's twilight flow,

Isles us about from every alien power,
And all that hearts can know at last we

know,

Now let me speak words that within my breast

Have long, too long, dim to your passing view

Lain darkling by a thousand storms oppressed,

Now let me speak my holy love of you.

The topless peaks, the pure unclouded skies That dwell remote within your spirit furled I have not sung; and yet they filled my eyes, Or how else have I sought you through the world?

My humors and my madness, fierce or cold, I have told you all: my love I have not told. Just before Floyd Dell sailed for England, where he is spending the summer, he and Arthur Ficke had an afternoon with Bliss Carman, who came down from his home in New Canaan, Connecticut, to see them. Bliss Carman is, I think, one of our great lyric poets. Overshadowed for a few years by the free verse movement, he will now come into his own. He is a gentle old man, they say, living quietly in a country home, with humor and kindliness gazing at the flurry and rush of modern literary life. So Longfellow in his late years lived at Cambridge, beloved by the children and worshiped by the country.

Mrs. Wilfred Paley, of Brookline, Massachusetts, sends me a copy of an appeal being made by the Robert Louis Stevenson Club of Edinburgh for membership and funds. "The Robert Louis Stevenson Club", it reads, "invites admirers of R. L. S. in all

two

parts of the world to contribute to this Appeal, to complete the purchase of the birthplace of R. L. S. in Edinburgh and to open it as a Memorial House. For those who have the eyes to see and the heart to feel, an old house will always be full of romantic memories. Its rooms are crowded with the ghosts of those who lived there." A list of titled patrons and patronesses is included. Life membership is pounds, two shillings. Annual dues are five shillings. For membership one applies to Thomas Hogg, Commercial Bank of Scotland, 12 N. W. Circus Place, Edinburgh. From Boston, too, comes news of the new A. S. M. Hutchinson novel, said to be of a religious tone. It will be published in September, and is to be called "One Increasing Purpose". Another big autumn title, of course, will be the late Mrs. Stratton-Porter's "The Keeper of the Bees". It will be interesting to watch for the successor to this writer of nature romances, if there can be one. She held a unique place in the affections of a tremendous public, and there is no one else to be seen at the moment who has the same combination of sweet story and a love of the out of doors.

Everyone knows the story about the happiest moment in Humphry Ward's life, when a boyhood friend whom he had not seen nor heard from in years sent him an invitation bearing the postscript, "If there is a Mrs. Humphry Ward, please bring her too!" Samuel Hopkins Adams, who has been touring the Pacific Northwest in the past few weeks, found himself known as "Mrs. Adams's husband", following an unexpected incident during his travels. Mr. and Mrs. Adams were aboard the North Coast Limited of the Northern Pacific route when that train celebrated

its twenty fifth birthday with a birthday cake party in the observation car. The dining car conductor, who had no idea of the identity of the two passengers in drawing room A, car 42, had the problem of choosing a lady to cut the birthday cake. His report to the superintendent of dining cars is too good to keep:

As per instructions regarding cutting birthday cake: The party was quite a success and as I had a number of very fine people on board it was rather hard to choose the lady to cut the cake However a Mrs. Adams was traveling with her husband, Drawing Room A, Car 42, and this being her first trip over the N. P. and she being the most hostesslike, I chose her which pleased her greatly as well as balance of party.

About 40 attended and each one gave a toast of praise to the Northern Pacific and its dining car service. It sure was one grand success, and very much appreciated by all the passengers and myself and crew enjoyed our part.

Mr. James Hopkins Adams, husband of Mrs. Adams, gave a wonderful speech.

The last sentence, although an afterthought, shows that Mr. Adams was not entirely relegated to the background by the charm and graciousness of his wife in her cake cutting rôle.

Louis Wright Simpson of Buffalo has published a charming little guide book to France. He has called it "A Summer in France", and it is neatly and well written. Other small volumes that have pleased this office recently were Ivy Lee's lectures on "Publicity", a wise statement by one of the most famed of his craft; "Ohio Valley Verse, Vol. II", published by the Ohio Valley Poetry Society; "Through Many Windows" by George Elliston, a lady, by the way, who writes charmingly in Cincinnati and has been instrumental in the publication of a new poetry magazine out there, "The Gypsy"; and a luxurious volume issued by Chicago University to persuade ladies

and gentlemen to give memorial buildings to universities. It is called "Great University Memorials" and is really worth seeing, with its dignified foreword by President Coolidge.

At the Query Club annual dinner this year given in honor of Clare Eames and Sidney Howard, shortly after the birth of their daughter and his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for "They Knew What They Wanted", I sat next to Marguerite Harrison, returned recently from her trip with the creators of "Grass". The chief information received was that sheiks are not all they're cracked up to be, and that they have no interest whatsoever in ladies of English persuasion, being very dignified and forbidding gentlemen. Harrison plans a trip to Persia shortly. What an interesting life these intrepid explorers must lead. A letter from Jane West tells me that she went across Panama the other evening to have dinner with the members of Will Beebe's Sargasso Sea expedition, and that they seem to be having a most entertaining time. They will make one more attempt to find that famed home of lost ships before they return.

If I were an explorer,
With nothing else to do
But to look for bugs and cannibals,
I'd not complain, would you?

I'd wear a ring upon my nose,
A band about my waist,
I'd visit many foreign ports
And many foods I'd taste -

I'd dance with Fiji islanders,
I'd treck with Afric chiefs,
I'd visit gay and grand bazaars,
I'd climb on coral reefs

But oh, alas! I'm just a child,
And so, each night, instead,
I dream such splendid wanderings
In my staid and proper bed.

Mrs.

Not long ago, going to Ossining for a visit, I was lured to Sing Sing by a

charming young lady from Denver and her husband, Pete Merriweather. Mrs. Stanley Rinehart, Jr., seemed to know the place thoroughly, and along with several stalwart keepers we proceeded. I was much impressed by the general air of happiness that characterizes the prison. To be sure, the death house is not a pleasant resort. When one of our party was strapped in the electric chair, I must say it seemed like a brisk way to entertain a guest. However, he did not pale perceptibly, and almost immediately afterward became engaged to be married to a lovely young lady who models in clay and marble. Speaking of Rineharts, Dr. and Mrs. Rinehart returned not long ago from Egypt. The journey had been indefinitely planned to Egypt and the Mediterranean shores. But one thing or another turned up, and the trip became quite an exciting one. First they went into the desert for a few weeks, "in much more comfort than home", and later, on the word of a couple of British aviators flown from Bagdad to Cairo, they took themselves to Beirut, in Syria, and motored over the sands to Bagdad and Damascus. The wife of the French vice consul had been murdered making that trip a week or two before; but the Rineharts were never more than thrilled. Now they are both at work again: Dr. Rinehart writing some more health articles which will probably make another book, Mrs. Rinehart preparing a new novel to follow "The Red Lamp", which seems to me one of the most exciting mystery stories ever written.

Susan Glaspell stopped in the other day on her way from Provincetown to London. Her play, with Sybil Thorndyke, has made a great impression there, and her books are best sellers. It is a curious thing that her reputation

« PreviousContinue »