14 Tachwedd 1919
Papurau Newydd Cymru
Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru
5 erthygl ar y dudalen hon
Cuddio Rhestr Erthyglau
5 erthygl ar y dudalen hon
- ."THE BOOK WINDOW.
Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu
"THE BOOK WINDOW. THE DIVERTING LETTERS OF AN ENGLISH I LADY OF QUALITY. T ONE book begets another, and why not, v if both books be good, anyhow interest- E ing? A year before the war, Sir Herbert Maxwell, one of the old county gentle- I men who were also good scholars, pub- lished a Life of Lord Clarendon. Its I contents included some bright letters by j a friend of his, a- lady of quality of the nineteenth century, Miss Emily Eden. r Those letters whetted a desire for more I from the same informed, observant pen, and so we get, through the Macmillans, • -illilss Eden's Letters, edited by her great- niece, Miss Violet Dickinson. Miss Eden was a keen politician of the Whig order, clever, amusing, critical, an excellent friend and a devoted sister to her brother, the second Baron Auckland, whom she accompanied to India when he was Viceroy there. Born three years be- t fore the eighteenth century closed, she f lived a full life, knowing most people worth knowing, and dying in 1869. So did her brilliant woman friend, Pamela Campbell, to whom she wrote many of her letters, 4iiid from whom she received many just as brilliant. Naturally; for this lady was the daughter of Lord Ed- ward FitzGerald, and romance and talent were part of her inheritance. | A Fair Rebel. £ It would not have been unnatural I either, if there had not "been something t of the rebel in her. Anyhow, this is i .what she wrote to Miss Eden when | George III. died iHusli, hush, Emmv, the King is dead and we have entered a new reign. Yes, yes, and George IV. has been proclaimed and I have wondered what he'll, do with his wife, and Henry VII. would not let his Queen be crowned for two years, and Hume says so, and all the newspapers are very black, and the Times blacker than any, and there is an end of the topics and we know it all. Again, in 1821, when Queen Caroline passed from her royal but unhappy state on earth, we have Lady Campbell dat- ing, from London, a letter in which she says: It is quite impossible to give an idea of the hurry and scurry of the people in every direction, and as if the rain only increased their ardour. Women with drooping blacic bonnets and draggled thin cotton gowns, I and the men looking wet and radical to | the skin. I catch myself twaddling and moralising to myself, just as I went on -about poor Buonaparte. They say fools are the only people who wonder, and I belfeve there is something in it, for I go on won- dering till I feel quite imbecile. Old England. The charm and value of such letters is that they give us a living picture of 4ife as it was in England at the time, not history, which is apt to dwell on the big things only, but a chronicle, which re- cords, the always essential little things. Here is .an amusing story, .related by Miss Eden, from a house near Doncaster in the far yea.r 1824, about a christening in which an amiable lady named Maria Copley figured She and her sister stood Godmothers to two little twins in the village and carried them to church. The children were only a fortnight old and, therefore, were much wrapped up, and Miss-Copley, who • is not used to handling children, carried hers with the feet considerably higher than the head. She gave it carefully to the clergyman when he was to christen it, and together they undid its cloak in search of its face, and found two little red feet. They were -so surprised at this that the clergy- man looked up in her face and said, Why, then, where is its head? And she, being just as much frightened, answered, I really cannot think." Maria at last sug- < gested that in all probability the head would he at the opposite end of the bundle [" from the feet, and so it proved! I When she was still only seventeen Miss t Eden was a keen observer of the passing show, which, indeed, she could hardly mis- because it was all about her, thanks to her good fortune of birth. The following note to her sister, a Countess of Buckinghamshire, illustrates that: We have been very much surprised by a letter from Miss Milbanke to Mary, in- forming her she was engaged to marry Lord Byron, a person of whose character she had had the best opportunity of judg- ing and who as he merits her greatest esteem, possesses her strongest attach-1 ment." That last sentence certainly sounds very well, but, that she, does not seem to be acting with her usual good sense is Mama's opinion, as by 0,11 accounts Lord Byron is not likely to make any woman very happy. j Poets and Others. Other poets and men of letter's were of the circles to which Miss Eden belonged, in particular Tom Moore, as read i Moore has been here the last three days, singing like a little angel. He has some ■■k new songs that make one perfectly and comfortably miserable, particularly one, set to a very simple air and with a constant return of the words They are gone," etc. He sang that song onoe too often, at all events for his own pleasure, although the place was no less lordly than Bowood, the seat of the Lansdownes He was singing it here on Friday, and there was a huge party' of neighbours, amongst others a very vulgar bride who is partly a Portuguese, but chiefly a thoroughly vulgar English woman, calls Lord Lansdowne Marquis" when she speaks to him and turns to Lord Lans- downe all of a sudden with, « Law, how 'andsome you look." Just as Moore had finished this and we were most of us in tears, she put her great, fat hand on his arm and said, And pray, Mr. Moore, can you sing (CJlerry Pipe '? George and I, who were sitting the other side of him, burst out laughing, and so Moore was obliged to make a good story out of it afterwards; else, he owns, he was so angry he meant to have sunk it altogether. Meant to have sunk it! There are quaint contemporary ways of saying- things in Miss' Eden's letters, things which we have forgotten but which we are glad to recover again in print. Some of those quaint ex- pressions help to make a personal portrait of Macaulay, whom Miss Eden knew well and liked -rather well. His famous Parliamentary defeat at Edin- burgh finds a fitting record I think Edinburgh, which affects all sorts of classical and pedantic tastes and enthu- siasms, turning off one of the finest orators and cleverest men of the age for a trades- man in the High-street (both men having the same politics), must feel slightly foolish now it is over. They say the prejudice against Macaulay was entirely personal; lie never would listen to a word any of his constituents had to say, which is hard, considering his demands,.on other people's ears. Returned Unopposed! That was in 1847, and five years later Macaulay was returned unopposed for Edinburgh. Good it is to have fresh lights on those notables of the nine- teenth century who were before most of us now living. Not less good is it to have Miss Eden's pictures of the "trivial round, the common task" when she was young, middle-iaged and old. Take a snatch about a Sunday in Kent: We had on Sunday morning the finest sermon I ever heard from Mr. Benson—so fine that we went in the dark and in the rain to hear another. He began by preach- ing at the Opposition, which gave me a fit, c I the sullens; then he went on to smugglers. then to brandy merchants; and, lastly, laid the sins of the whole set and all the other misfortunes of the country upon ladies who wore fancy dresses and en- couraged smuggling by example and money. You will like Miss Eden's Letters if you like this review of it, because the review just samples the book. ELIOT BUCKRAM. Other Books to Read. 1. Patron and Place-Hunter, a study of George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, by Lloyd Sanders. (John Lane. 16s. net.) A Personal Record, by Joseph Conrad. A re-issue, with new material, of his Some Reminiscences. (Dent. 6s. net.) Round the World In Any Number of Days, by Maurice Baring. (Chatto and Windus. 6s. net.) II. Seven Men, by Max Beerbohm. (Heine- mann. 7s. net.) Alrg. Marden, by Robert Hichens. (Cassell. 7s. net.) Mountain Paths, by Maurice Maeter- linck. (Methuen. 6s. net.)
"ROUNDS FROM A PULPIT." •—❖—
Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu
"ROUNDS FROM A PULPIT." —❖— « Rounds From a Pulpit." By a Padre- Gunner. By Captain the Rev. J. A. F. Ozanne, R.G.A. (Philip Allan and Co. 58.) THE author of these forceful sermons is the Rector of St. Pierre du Bois, Guernsey, but during the war he served with the Royal Garrison Artillery. It is not surprising, therefore, that his addresses are coloured by his war experi- ences,. These messages are moulded to find their billet." We like the following definition of a' ( sound churchman." It is quite painful," says our author, to read some of our Church papers on this subject. The Church, too, can show a stunt press which is quite as ludicrous as the secular counterpart. What a pity it all is Faith, to be sure, is a great gift, but there is a yet greater gift—the gift of charity. SureJy there can be no better definition of a sound churchman than that he is a sincere Christian, a man who realises that Jesus is the Eternal Son of the God of Abra- ham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and who with a firm confidence born of that reali- sation is always ready in times of doubt, dang erand perplexity to turn unto Him who is the sure refuge of xll those who are in need." We wish there were more fr round,i It of this sort from our pulpits.
NEW NOYELS, ■'»
Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu
NEW NOYELS, » THE DESPERATE MARRIAGE." WHAT is a desperate marriage? Mar- jory Royce has no difficulty in answering the question, for the most desperate of marriages is a loveless mating. In her pleasantly-told tale, The Desperate Mar- riage (Hodder and Stoughton. 6s.), she brings us right into the midst of middle- class society, and pictures households as mixed in quality and as strangely divided among themselves as those we know. We follow the adventures of the heroine in the well-to-do home, whose high-minded husband has for his wife a flippant woman who neglects her child and forgets her duty to her husband. The nursery governess strives to do her duty, and finds herself unconsciously in love with the neglected husband. He leaves for the East, and the young woman is got rid of by the mother, who wishes to pursue her amour unobserved The life of the country town, with its old evangelical views, is told very cleverly, and the way in which, on the rebound from the discovery that the lady a wounded doctor wishes to marry is en- gaged, the doctor proposes to and weds the one-time nursery governess, seems to be the most natural thing in the world. Nevertheless, we have in it the seeds of tragedy. The home is not a home—dives drift apart, and both are convinced that they have done wrong. The conse- quences follow inevitably, and keen suffering is ended by the relief given by sympathy and death. Somehow as we read we seem to be in touch, not with fiction, but real life. The jumble of emotions and tendencies, of aspirations and fears which we call human nature, is faithfully portrayed. We recognise as experiences we have met the recourse to the fortune-teller, as well as the strange loss of faith by the earnest evangelical. Very few of us want to be humbugs, but a great many of us succeed in being hum- bugs. We must add a word of praise for the poetess who day by day in secret writes cheerful words for the London Press. She is a character quite new to us in fiction, and at heart she certainly was no humbug. Perhaps Miss Royce wishes to teach us, "Trust thyself; everything vibrates to that iron string." That seems to be the underlying message of a book that is extraordinarily in- teresting, and contains many allusions to well-known men who will be recognised by readers. There is much to be said in favour of naming minor personages by name. Miss Royce always dees it kindly; in fact, in the whole book there is a stream of generous thought for others that canmot be too highly com- mended. Our authoress is apparently young.. As she attains greater mastery over plot-construction she will become even more attractive than she un- doubtedly is. "THE DOMINANT RACE. k Miss F. E. MILLS YOUNG in The Dominant Raoe (Hodder and Stough- ton. 7s.) maintains her place as a writer who can see and describe what she sees. For her the problems of white and black in South Africa present many aspects that demand attention, and she finds their solution in fair treatment on both sides. The tragedy of the book is told with telling restraint, and proves that no man can possibly play fast and loose with morality without setting free passions that are bound to bring Nemesis with them. The charm of veldt life is portrayed as a setting of the lives of the men who strive to win the love of a young English girl who goes to Africa to make her living. We see the two types in con- flict, and wonder who will succeed. Both competitors have points for and against them, and the way in which the success-, fill suitor clears himself in the eyes of the woman who loves him is not so satis- factory to the clergyman's wife as it is to the lady herself. The situation cer- ,tainly is unusual, and we are left in doubt as to what the clergyman, who is the well-b loved minister of the people of Ceres, thinks. Do men often speak in this fashion?—"I think you one of the finest women God ever made. That is why I never fully unburden my material mind to you. If I made you custodian of my conscience you would hamper me." Even lovers do ¡not give half-confidences of this kind. They prefer to speak clearly or not at all, but the exigencies of the plot force Miss Young to make mystery even darker than it need be in order to bring everything to a happy ending. We have shuddered over the account of the ill-treatment of a half- caste girl, we have been thrilled by the narrative of the rescue of the "heroine by the man who arrived just in time to save her life, and we have found in the Boer wife something attractive in spite of her capacity of criticising what she did not understand. We lay down the book feel- ing we have been in the company of its leading characters, and after all that is one of the best recommendations a tale can have.
[No title]
Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu
READERS who respond to any of the advertisements in this journal would greatly oblige by mentioning the Church Family Newspaper, M the eourc§ gf their information.
Advertising
Hysbysebu
Dyfynnu
Rhannu
-r- Ready Everywhere. Crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. net. THE SUPREME ADVENTURE: Being the Amazing Story of the Lord Jesus' Descent on Earth. By MERCEDES MAC ANDREW, A utltor oj Honoria's Patchwork" A Coat oj Jlany Colours," "lVhat JJlattcrs," etc. THE BISHOP OF DURHAM writes to the Author: My opinion o? th value of your work, in its conception and exscutisn alike, is a high ona. It is scarcely necessary to say that here and thsre, on points of detail, sosnj o! thjm interesting and important, I am not in complete accord. But this doas not, far I a moment, rule my high estimate of your book as a whole. I have read passa*; 1 after passage with the, utmost pleasure, as have noted your happy combination I of an qutisok arid styl3 which is, in every good sense, imdsr.i, with an unswerving I recognition and acceptance of the wholly supernatural contsnts of th3 Gospsl I narrative." I The Rev. R« J. CAMPBELL wr:t;s in ths 1: Church Family Niwspauer" :— | "A correspondent whose name I cannot recall asked sima tims aga for a racent I Life of our Lord, or, rather, a statement of the historic facts upon which Ghris § tianity rests, that might be put into the hands of young pssph. A book has I just been published which should fulfil the requirements. It is written with I revercnce and restraint, but is by no means obscurantist in tone aid tendency. I I do not like tha fsfia very much. It is called The Supreme Ad/enture, and i3 written by Mercedes Macandrew and publishKl by Messrs, Chimin and Hall." Ti<e book has its own force. Many parents will be glad to give their children the opportunity of reading the book.—Times. I It tells the amazing story of the Lord Jesus' descent on earth as a continuous narrative in the language of to-day to meet the particular case of a clever, free-thinking girl of eighteen who is sick of Christian apologetics, yet desirous of getting a fresh, natural view of the Founder of the Christian Faith. The result is wholly admirable."—Scot-man. The Life of lives is treated reverently as an absorbing drama."—Dundee Advertiser. The power of the hook lies in its consistent and stistil-icid appeal to the reader's interest. (I r Behind it all is the realisation of conscience and the call to the Supreme Adventure which Jesus achieved. The idea "i the writer and the execution in terse, pleasing English are alike L excellent."—Metkodid Time?. London: CHAPMAN & IS ALL, Ltd., 11, Henrietta Street, W.C. "FROM~MOWBRAYS^"0sTr IMMEDIATELY. _nn_' STEPS TOWARDS UNITY a By the Right Rev. CHARLES GORE, D.D., lately Bishop of Oxford. Being an Address delivered at Kingswav Hall. 6d. net. THE QHR1ST AND HIS GRITICS. An Open Pastoral Letter to the European Missionaries of his Diocese. By the Right Rev. FRANK WESTON, IXI)., Bishop of Zanzibar. Cloth, 6s. net. SPIRITUAL COMRADES. By a PADRE with a Foreword by the Rev. H. P. BULL, M.A., Superior General of the Society of S. John the Evangelist, Cowley. 2s. 6d. net. THE MEANING OF THE MONTHS. By the Ven. E. E. HOLMES, B.D., Archdeacon of London. With Twelve IlJua trations in Colour, by ISABEL BONUS. Parchment, 2s. 6d. net. Seventh Edition SAXON AND NORMAN CHURCHES IN ENGLAND. By the Rev. E. HERMITAGE DAY, D.D., Author of Gothic Architecture. With Thirty-Two Illustrations. 3s. 6d. net. This scholarly and very readable sketch of church architecture in England from the earliest times to the. end of the twelfth century ti illustrated by a series of photographs specially taken for the purpose- THE ENGLISH CAROL BOOK. Second Series. Music Edited by MARTIN SHAW. Words Edited by the Rev. PERCY DEARMER, D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical Art, King's College, London. Paper, 2s. 6d. Cloth, 3s. net. THE COWLEY CAROL BOOK. Second Series. For Christmas, Easter, and Ascentiontide. Compiled and arranged by the Rev. GEORGE R. Vv-OODWARD, M.A. and Dr CHARLES WOOD. Words only, 2d. Music and Words, Paper, 2s. net; Cloth, 3s. net. A DICTIONARY OF ENGUSH CHURCH HISTORY. Edited by S. L. OLLARD, M.A., Rector of Bainton and Hon. Canon of Worcester. ,I Assisted by GORDON CROSSE, M.A. With an Appendix and Three Maps. Cloth, 15s. net. In the new edition some articles have been rewritten and others revised, and such events as the creation of new dioceses since the Dictionary was first published are recorded in an Appendix. A new map showa the effect of these changes on the diocesan boundaries. A. R. MOWBRAY & CO., Ltd., 28, Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, London, W. 1 and 9, High Street, Oxford. I A FINE NEW SHEET ALMANAC. THE Church Almanac 1920. In full Art Colours, with coloured views of Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and York Minster, and por- traits of the Archbishops. A SCRIPTURE PASSAGE FOR EACH DAY. Feast Days, Moon Phases, Holidays, etc. Size of Sheet, 24 in. x 16l in. Single Copies, Price THREEPENCE. For Localising A SPECIAL EDITION is printed without the title. Specially low prices given for supplying this edition with the name of your own parish or church, together with items of local interest. t, ORDER now for the New Year. The Almanac is already very popular and has been taken up- by many parishes. This edition is limited and cannot be reprinted. Write for free 8ample and prices MORGAN & SCOTT, Ltd., 12, Paternoster Buildings, E.C.4. tHmHnHMnBKnBHBMHtBni I 1¡'i&á;JL >, .-< > '); ( c "¡ Now Ready packed with Good "Things" "BOOKS ARITTHE TREASURED FE WEALTH OF THE WORLD." 1 There are few pleasures so keen and satisfying ■ as collecting a library. Call at our "open" ■ shops and see what little money will purchase I this "treasured wealth." If von cannot call ■ write for our monthly list of BOO K SA RGAINS. B S. KIE K & SON, 12, CLOCK HOUSE. B Paternoster Row, E.C. IiI1 on Theological, Educational, UV^V^iVv3 Scientific, Medical, Law, and ALL other subjects. Secondhand, at half prices. New books at Best F-ricoc Books sent on approval. Catalogue 154 f ret. State wants. Books Bought. I W. A G. FOYLE, Ltd., 121-125, Chii4pg Cross-road, LONDON, W.C 2.