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YHE REAL BERNARD SHAW. By Maurice * Colbourne. Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, Limited. FELLOW dramatist here undertakes the difficult business of digging in to find the man, Shaw. Bernard Shaw has collaborated so ardently with his public that almost every sort of pen addict has found him a perfect chameleon to suit his own mood and manner. So, the gerious writer finds a great man in Bernard Shaw, one of political vision, of national fore- sight, of charitable activity, of humane intent. Another sort of writer finds exactly the oppo- site.” And one is led to the notion that, after all is said and done, Bernard Shaw is a mir- ror in which the sincere critic finds substance and sobriety, in which a scandal-monger finds iolf also lurking in the whimsical behaviors [2 is mercurial Irishman. Maurice Colburne is one of the few who are poberly going over the facts of Shaw's life. One of the few who are not making use of the man for his own specularity of effect. Here s a plainr story of Bernard Shaw—believe it or not.” The record of a young fellow who tried %o find his own job and failed, tried and failed any number of times. The young man who firmly believed himself to be a novelist, in em- bryo. After having written nine of these, fruit- lessly, he reluctantly abandoned this seductive notion. A make-shift newspaper job sent him %o see plays—not a thing real about any of them. Not a breath of life anywhere about them, So he took a hand at playmaking. And there you are. And there he was and is. Mau- rice Colbourne’s account, a close first-hand ac- count, is a joy of record-making, a re- strained and believable story of the particular human with whom he is engaged. It pays due to Mr. Shaw's genius. It pays equal due to the upstanding, public-spirited citizen that he is. Maybe the little book is a joy, in part, by this all-around view that it projects. Maybe, in other part, by the clear appreciation of values that it conveys. In either case, or in both, it #s a most desirable study for intelligent, and impartial, readers to take in hand for a near and clear picture of Bernard Shaw. THE REAL PERSONAGES OF MCTHER GOOSE. By Katherine Elwes Thomas. Il- lustrated. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shep- ard Co. : T a lot of things we don’t know! Every- ' day, commonplace things at that. Take, in point, the case of Mother Goose, friend and familiar of children, these hundreds of years. Who is Mother Goose? Where did she live? Did -she spend the whole of her time making up rhymes and singing sounds to put babiles to sleep or make them forget to cry? Nothing seems able nowadays to f:;_cnpe the causéd her to deliver herself over, then Kath- erine Thomas set herself to the task of making en orderly chronicle of the astonishing facts disclosed. Most interesting facts. Most engag- Bleep: Political satires of the most scathing, THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. COF |k C., DECEMBER 21, NV 1930. % DA _GILBERT MYER/ T'zvo Books Concerned With Shaw and His Work —The People Pictured in Mother. Goose Rhymes—Other New Books. dropped secretly here and there, or sung cau- tiously in ale houses. The King and the cardi- nal—this was the day of Henry VIII and Wol- sey—came in for a deal of this biting rhyme- stuff. “The sheep are in the meadow and the cows are in the corn”—weighty with the strug-. gle of church and state in the day when Mother Goose was alive and going. So with hundreds of these rhymes, so familiar that we need no reference books to get at our material. Here it is and of it Katherine Thomas makes a com- prehensive and orderly picture of political his- tory in a momentous English period. No, it is not the first time that scholars have been drawn to this theme. But, so far as I know, it is the first time that a sequential view has been offered in terms calculated to interest general readers. To me, the book is a fascination, as I'm thinking it will be to many of you. About the next thing for us, here in the Capital to do, is to pay homage to Katherine Elwes Thomas of Washington®for this absorbing and scholarly revival of Mother Goose. MENCKEN & SHAW: The Anatomy of Amer- ica’s Voltaire and England’s Other John Bull, By Benjamin de Casseres. New York: Silas Newton, Publisher. Tn!bookwuwfltten.lamw;d,topme ® that Shaw is a mountebank and that Mencken is the true modern Voltaire. Coming out from the tumult of it, one’s first impression is that butcher knives and bludgeons are not the tools of logic, not the instruments of conviction, of persuasion. And in this case certainly, these are the weapons—yes, that is the right word—of this quite famous writer who has elicited high encomiums from a siz- able group of intelligentsia—Maeterlinck, Ellis, Cabell and some more. Mr., de Casseres gives Bernard Shaw short shrift. It doesn’t take long to butcher and bludgeon an animal. So, there at our feet, lies Bernard Shaw, weltering in his own gore, in just about no time at all. Not so easy to make a Voltaire out of Henry L. Mencken. Hardly any one but this particularly daring man would have tried that which the Creator himself ob- “viously never did have in mind concerning this Voltaire-Mencken complex. Benjamin de Casseres is an interesting man, with all sorts of high reputation for culture, quality, essence and the rest of it. Honest— that is plain. Primitively brutal—that also is plain. him over by the way of this one reaches the point that all this time De Casseres is talking about himself—hammer- ing what he thinks about life and the universe into some part of the anatomy of one or the other of these two subjects. Parading himself— his quite remarkable self—by way of these perf ance, de blusters his way into another open door of ob- servation. . News comes that a man is starting a great publishing house for the sole purpose of putting Mr, -de Casseres across to the above-average public. Well, a man has a right to do what he will with his own money. ]if;lilding ‘That Suburban Home FTER all,” says Joe Davis, “why pay rent? Why don’t you do as Mellish is doing and build?” “For the same reason,” I re- . turns, “that I'm not in Latvia ghooting left-handed giffle-birds or dining on stewed missionary with the chief of the Eczemas. I have no desire.” “What a ridiculous comparison!” sniffs Minnie Mellish, whol;adnofi;lnghutltork the day it rained brains. “What is the con- pection between shooting what you're talking #bout and building a house?” “Don’t you know?” I exclaims. her Joe.” A “I thought it was common gossip,” plays slong Davis. “The giffle-bird’s a fowl with the features of a crying hyena that lives in the mortgage tree. When the wind is in the right direction its high-interest notes can be heard for a mile or three.” “That’ll be enough of that herring,” snaps ¢he missus. “You ceased to be funny at birth.” “Seriously, though,” goes on Joe, “what do fou want to keep on paying rent for?” “I'm willing to quit,” I assures him. “Ran- soming the hut every month isn’t a hobby of mine; but landlords have got to live, don't they?” “Not necessarily,” returns Davis. ¢hat goes so does Minnie . . .” “Léave me out of this, please,” cuts in La Mellish, with some hauteur. “I do as I please.” “Here you are,” continues Joe, “forking up ghree.thousand annas per annum for rent, and what have you to show for it at the end of the o “I shave every ,” says I, shrewdly, what have I to show for it at the end of y? What have you to show for anything the Jong run; except a stone with your mon- chiseled into it?” X3 “You tell “As far as Poarree R LRSS R S ol “BUYING & house,” remarks Davis, “is a serious matter, but it hardly calls for a crying jag or a graveyard stew. Know how much dough three grand is the interest on?” “No,” I returns, “but it's one of the things I've wanted to know for many years.” = “Why didn’t you ask me?” inquires Lizzie. “Oh, well,” I shrugs, “you have a lot of housework to do and you haven't been in such good health lately and . . .” “Pifty thousand iron men,” interrupts Joe. " “Let’s say you sink 35,000 into a shack. You put up 10 and set yourself up to a couple of well bred mortgages for the rest . . .” “The mortgage idea strangles the plan,” says I “You know darn well I've no son.” “What's that got to do with it?” demands Ira Mellish, who up to this time has said nothing. ‘' That, however, doesn’t mean he hasn’t been talking. “Who,” I wants to know, “is going to come back from the wide open places and lift the mortgage just as the sheriff is auctioning off our baby’s cradle and the chrome of Kate’s uncle Zebullem? Who's going to dash into the garden when me and the old lady are kiss- ing the family cheese-hound goodby and yelp ‘I forbid the bands?’” “Hades and hominy,” barfls Davis. “Haven't you anything on your mind tonight except cemeteries and poorhouses?” “In a pinch,” says I, cheerfully, “I drag out a hospital or a young hanging. “I think,” exaggerates Minnje, “your reasons for not buying a house are silly, don’ Joe?” . . “Well,” says Davis, “there is a great deal to be sald on neither side of the question. Of course, when I first brought up the idea I had no notion that Kate had an uncle named Zebullem . . .” “I haven't,” snaps the frau. “And then,” goes on Joe, “if expects to keep a cheese-hound he’ have trouble getting a place. One of them could SAVINELLI. By J. Chartres Molony. New York: The Dial Press. I’rhthewuo!theuuumrwlmhhworm that gives lure to this story. And, after all, it is the quality of the writer that counts quite as much as it is that which he has to say. Now here is a tale of no great heights, no great depths. Just an account of the meeting of two mmen in the World War. The story itself comes later, when these two come together in Normandy, the home of one of them. Following is, simply, a picture of every aspect of life in that quarter. folks, the look of the land, the ways in which the country has shaped the minds and the outlook of the people. Not much, you see, but it is delightfully given—for the author himself is that kind of man. A man who sees pretty much all that is going on, who enjoys the of it, who is amusing as well as shrewd in his appraisals; a man who, by virture of gifts turns that corner of France over to us for own enjoyment. Yes, there is a plot. is even a mystery, one that b the Corsican, Savinelli, a detective That is quite as plausible as mystery are designed to be. It is, however, the land itself and the people thereof that give this novel a valid claim to one’s attention through Martha Ostenso, author of “Wild Geese,” etc. New York: Dood; Mead & Co. A REALISTIC novel of current American life that would have carried gloom comparable to that of “Wuthering Helghts,” itself were it skies. It wears its burden of misfortune val- iantly. It is a real part of the common “smil- 8 philosophy. Family tragedy cast in the terms of every- day small-town life. Children, seven of them, know at once that the father of here Martha Ostenso dawdled a bit. the dire disclosure. being “artful” In ters a little too long-- ts pace there is no second The matter with the father? Loved his children. Looked out em—you bet he did! “My dear boy,” ‘Dearest daughter,” his usual way of approach, when some specially hateful tyranny was to be . That old man was the family—ull of it. Not so old either—save that, in truth, he Tl 3 53 ] pups’ll destroy anywheres from 80 to 23 lawns a night, not counting window-boxes and the wistaria vines around the hen-house.” “Maybe,” suggests Ira, “you’ll change your mind about: building when you see the bungle- house we’re throwing up.. Come along. We're on our way out there now.” “Not me,” says I, decisively. “Id love to go,” declares the wife, so we piles into the Mellish car and beats it over the Northern Highway, and my objections, to the point in Long Island fo be infested in the future by Minnie and her meal ticket. Tfl!ho\mbubouthfi!flnuhed. We parades through the joint, hopping up ladders, walking along rafters and broad-jumping over sacks of cement and other parts of the whole that go to make up a first-class mortgage and other incumbrances. “When,” I asks Mellish, “do you expect to get into this deadfall?” e “In about six weeks,” he returns. tically finished now.” “What!” I gasps. “If this is practically finished I'm practically the late empress dow- “It’ll be finished, all right,” asserts Ira. “The builder has promised to have us in by . . .” “Don’t make me laugh,” interrupts Davis. “This is the anniversary of my dog’s death. There’s no more connection between a builder “It's prac- “Wasn't there any penalty?” inquires Mellish. “Penalty, my eye,” snorts Joe. ‘“The .con- tractor I'm telling you about won the builders’ hold is the tragedy, in effect. I think. KO - has been alive and active since “a head of the house” came into fashion. Under him the chil- dren finally surrendér—ambition, personality, hope character—not from cowardice, but from the hopelessness of a case that is founded upon custom, tradition, the fable “father knows best,” upon the male’s sedulously cultivated superi- ority complex and se on. No, I'm not blaming this father. He thought he was right. He ‘is merely a product—a logical one, at that. So beyond either praise or blame. Nor does Mar- tha Ostenso blame him. Good girl! She merely pushes him out, gently, where he can be seen. And not once does she let up on this mild and continuing act of disclosure. At the close of the matter there does come a gleam of hope. And it is high time, since about every conceivable brand of circumvention in innumerable small ways has been exercised— in paternal love—upon these children, one and all, -till they are reduced, with one exception, to a pretty sorry level of lethargy, disgust, fail- ure. Yet, on the outside, they look much like many another family, getting along somehow. Now, about that close. Maybe it is the new era of youth out-breaking. Maybe not. But, no matter, since that topic will be on the carpet for many a long year to come. The last-minute lift of the story comes when Carlotta, the littlest ome, runs away—but that would make another romance, maybe another tragedy. It shows, however, that the case was a bad one when the youngest child’s elopement, all by her- self, imparts to it a single gleam of hope. Such admirable work! Knowing and intimate, held back where often the drive is forward, tem- pered and yet colorful with the -very dyes of family life under the familiar mode of manag- ing this institution. “The Waters Under the Earth” is the choice of the Book League for November, And Martha Ostenso is just about to become a “full-fledged” American citizen. Five good novels already to her account. A Nordic by blood. A welcome lady, this one, to her new home on this side. Decidedly that! Booij eceived WILD WIND. By Temple Bailey, author of “Silver Slippers,” etc. Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Co. JENNY HEYSTEN'S CAREER. By Jo Van Ammers Kuller, author of “The Rebel Gen- eration,” etc. New York: E. P, Dutton & Co. GAMBLER'S THROW. By Eustace L. Adams. New York: The Dial Press. INNOCENT MADAME. By Eleanore Browne. New York: Barse & Co. MORALS FOR MODERNS. By Elmer Davis. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. REPENTANCE AT LEISURE. By Oliver Moore, author of “Celestial Seraglio.” New York: Harper & Bros. THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD BUY IT. By Dorothy Walworth Carman, author of “Pride of the Town,” etc. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. . LOVE'S LADY, By Margaret Lyon Smith. New York: Edward J. Clode, Inc. MISCELLANEOUS. SOME VALUE FOR TODAY. Thomas Olson. Introduction by Bishop William Fraser MeDowell. New York: The Abingdon Press. LET-US SAY GRACE. By Mary Sture-Vasa. Boston: The Christopher Publishing House. THE FISHERMEN'’S SAINT. By Sir Wilfred Grenfell. New York: Charles Scribner’s By Sam Hellman “Be that as in May,” shrugs Ira. “It's a nice place, don't you think?” © “Yeh,” says I, “but may I offer a sug- gestion?” “Shoot,” he invites. . : “If I were you, heaven forbid,” says I, “I'd have the kitchen floored over. I imagine you'd find it annoying to have the cook falling into the basement all the time.” “Sure,” interjects Joe, “and you ought to have walls put into your room. It's a modern- istic note, but, after all, unless you have walls it'll be rather difficult to say you have a room. . . . How much is this job of work to set you back?” “Thirty grand,” answers Ira, “and I don’t mind telling you the contractor’s losing money on the deal. He told me so himself.” . “I know,” nods Davis. “In my time I've talked to 800 painters, 623 tuck pointers and 718 roofers, and out of the whole smear only one guy told me he expected to break as good as even; and he was able to do that on account of getting wonderful breaks in the weather, a carload of material for nothing through a mistake, and by having his wife and five chil- dren help him. At that, he said he'd have lost money if he’d counted wages for himself.” “HOW .much are you losing on the job2" I asks of the boss plumber, who’s watch- ing another guy watching a couple of ap- prentices lose tools. “Not much,” he answers, cheerful. “Last week I figured I'd drop 500, but the way things stack right now I ought to get out only 300 in the red.” p “Isn’t-it wonderful,” I remarks to Joe, “how prosperous you can get on losings in this building game? How about you?” I inquires of a laborer out in front shoveling sand. “You're not losing anything on your work, are you?” “No?” he growls. “I'm only getting $3 a day and I've only been here,two days. Yesterday I busted a shovel that cost we seven bucks.” < AR