Evening Star Newspaper, January 8, 1933, Page 73

SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY 8, 1933. COOA POETS LAUREATE. HAUCER, called by Dryden “the father of English poetry,” is usually considered the first poet laureate. He was granted a pension by Ed- ward IIT, but seems never to have received an official appointment as poet of the nation. In his “Poets Laureate ol England,” Hamilton recognizes a group of “vol- unteer laureates” in which he includes Chaucer, Gower, Kay, Andrew Bernard, Skelton, Robert Whittington, Richard Edwards, Spenser and Samuel Daniel. Under the Stuarts there was greater approximation to a position of official poet, in the favor shown to Ben Jonson, accom- panied by his two pensions. After the Restora- tion William Davenant received a pension and was lcoked upon as the official poet. Probably the first English poet to reccive the title of laureate, by royal letters patcnt, was John Dryden, in 1670. Some of his succassors have been approved by popular acclaim; some have heen almost unknown before the awarding of the honor. Robert Bridges, for example, was known to few, at least in this country, when he was made laureate, but his subtle and polished poem, “The Testament of Beauty,” published in 1929, brought him recognition as a poet of reai merit. From Dryden’s time, the poets laureate have been: Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Laurence Eusden, Colly Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Wharton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, William Words- worth, Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Austin, Robert Bridg=s and the present Laureate. John Mase- field. Scott refused the laureateship, because he felt that it might involve a measure of sac- rifice of his independence, John Masefield, present poet laureate of Eng- land, who will lecture in Washington this week, had a well-established poetic reputation before his official appointment in May, 1930. He had demonstrated his power in tragic drama In “The Tragedy of Nan,” “The Everlasting Mercy,” and “The Widow in the Bye-Street.” “Dauber” and “The Daffodil Fields” had been accorded high praise as narrative poems of un- usual human sympathy, which also show Mase- field’s love of the sea and of the English coun- tryside. ‘“‘Salt Water Ballads,” containing some of his best shorter poems, had already ap- peared. Since his appointment as poet laureate, Masefield has written “The Wanderer of Liver- Ppool,” a prose and verse biography of an old sailing ship, and “Minnie Maylow's Story,” a collection of short poems which make use_of degend and ballad material. Two very recent books are “Jim Davis” (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons), a prose tale of adventure for boys, and “A Tale of Troy” (New York: The Macmillan Co.), a collection of short poems on the Homeric subject of the capture of Helen by Paris and the consequent siege of Troy. MEN AGAINST DEATH. By Paul De Kruif. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. ROPING, groping, groping. That describes the method of all the scientists, the men fighting against death on behalf of all human beings, whose experiments and successes Mr. De Kruif writes about so enthusiastically. He has written about others of this fighting band be- fore, many of them scientists in the United States Department of Agriculture and Public Health Service, in his books “Microbe Hunters” and “Hunger Fighters.” A quotation from Charles F. Kettering on the title page forms a text for the book: “The doctors tell us there are certain diseases that are incurable. Do you know what an incurable disease is? It is one that the doctors don’t know anything about. '!;llxe disease has no objection to being cured at Some of the diseases which in very recent years have had no objection to being cured are diabetes, which insulin at least holds in check; pernicious anemia, which takes to flight be- fore copious administrations of liver; spotted fever, carried by ticks and cured by a tick vac- cine, and undulant fever, which never bothers any one who drink: only pasteurized milk. Twelve death-fighters and their modest, grop- ing work are celebrated in this book: Sem- melweis, who discovered why blood-poisoning carried off s0 many mothers at childbirth; Banting, who discovered insulin: Minot, who discovered the liver treatment for pernicious anemia; Spencer, who found out the relation between ticks and spotted fever; Evans, a woman, who gave good reasons why milk pas- teurization was necessary; McCoy, who strug- gled alone with sick parrots, trying to find how they gave parrot fever to human beings; Fin- sen, who applied the sun’s rays to the treat- ment of skin diseases; Rollier, who “showed the folly of men spending millions to get themselves well when with free Doctor Sun they'd neveig start to be sick,” and Strandberg, who made use of Finsen’s “machine sun” for the treat- ment of tuberculosis. Paul De Kruif was trained as a bacteriologist nnd was at one time assistant professor of bac- teriology at the University of Michigan. Dur- ing t}_m World War he was a Sanitary Corps C&Pla_m and afterward was for two years an a.s_socmte in pathology in the Rockefeller In- stitute. He goes to original sources for his ma- terial, the men themselves if they are living. He has a gift of dramatic writing, but it is to be regretted that in this book he has carried it rarfl)er than in his previous books—has, in fact, “jazzed” things up a trifle too much.l TWENTY-FIVE IN IRELAND. : By John J. O’Connor. New York: 4 Brent Knold Press. HIS “first literary indiscretion,” so he calls : it, by a Washington author, brings back to us some of our own hanpy wanderings in about «the :Lakes of Killarney Glen- .VY England’s Poets Laurcaic Through the Cen- turies—MWide Varicty of Midwinter Books—T1he Story gariff, Galway, the Aran Islands, Westport, Enniskillen (the Interlaken of Ireland), Dublin of course, Londonderry and Belfast, and Malin Head, the northernmost point of Ireland. There are 18 brief essays of travel and observation, all enlivened by humor and refreshing because of the keen enjoyment that is part of being 25. The “Items” interspersed assist the pleasant informality of the style, as “If you pass a man working in the field, you should say ‘God bless the work” When you enter a cottage, the proper salutation is ‘God bless all here.’” Mr. O’Connor is instructor in history in George- town University, TWILIGHT OF ROYALTY. By Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia. New York: Ray Long & Richard Smith, Inc. IN these days of democracy triumphant, it is a novelty to find some one who frankly thinks none too well of it. Naturally, the Grand Duke Alexander is not a lover of democTracy, since he has been a victim of too much of it. He says: “The more T see of democracy, the less I am inclined to believe that its contribution to human progress contains anything startlingly new or makes the return of absolutism impossible. There is very little indeed in the practice of wae modern republican rulers which could be con- sidered an improvement on the system created by the Czars, the Kaisers and the Caesars ol the Holy Roman Empire.” The Grand Duke'’s former book, “Once a Grand Duke,” was his autobiography; this one gives his views on present-day royalty and its chances of sur- viving the next quarter century. He asks: “Are royalty people?” and thinks the opinion has too much prevailed that “a sovereign has no right to be human or honest.” Anecdotes of the former Kaiser, the former Czar, former King Alfonso—so many “formers”—and of King George of England are from personal ex- perience. King Alfonso occupies the largest part of the volume. The Grand Duke believes that love is responsible for many of the cas- ualties among royalty—love of wives more than love of mistresses. Marie Antoinette “led her husband to the scaffold”; the downfall of the last Czar was brought about by the fact that he was a devoted, an ideal husband. The last of the four parts of the book, “The Art of Riding the Storm,” discusses the meth- ods employed by the remaining European sov- ereigns to keep their thrones. One group, in which are Queen Wilhelmina of Holland and King Albert of Belgium, practices enlightened paternalism. Another group, including Alex- ander I of Yugoslavia, Boris III of Bulgaria and Carol II of Rumania, is actuated by the motive of upholding Balkan absolutism. King George of England and Victor Emmanuel HI of Italy are, respectively, “the great British enigma and the outstanding paradox of the Fascist state.” “The Twilight of Royalty” is written in an easy conversational style, with a fluent and varied vocabulary. MISSING MEN. By Capt. John H: Ayers and Caro}l Bird. Foreword by Alfred E. Smith. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, HE title, “Missing Men,” is arresting; the book is a collection of real detective stories which many will find more spectacular than most of the manufactured tales of the same type. They are drawn from the records of the Missing Persons Bureau of the New York Police Lepartment, of which Capt. Ayers has been in command for 15 years. Carol Bird, his assist- ant in this book, is an experienced journalist. Not all of the “missing men” are men; some are women. Not all are “missing”; some are suicides or fake suicides; some are insane; some are victims of extortion or murder; some are juvenile delinquents. It is an assemblage of sordid, tragic.cases, lightened, however, by the intelligent, sympathetic handling of Capt, Ayers, who is a psychologist and a humani- tarian as well as a detective. MARY LINCOLN: WIFE AND WIDOW. By Carl Sandburg New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. HILE writing his “Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years,” Carl Sandburg carried on eager researcin into documents, interviewed everyone he thought could tell him anything about Lincoln, and visited the places in Ken- tucky and Illinois connected with Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln. It is fair to imagine that from the surplus material thus collected has grown this biography—rather an interpretation than a narrative of bare fact—af Mary Lincoln. The spirit of the interpretation is entirely mod- ern, not that of Mrs. Lincoln’s own time. The prblogue gives a pathetic picture of her in 1882, the year in which she died, in the same house where, nearly 40 years before, she had been married to Abraham Lincoln. Much ot the time in those last days, dressed in the deepest mourning, she sat alone “in a room ot shadows where a single candle burned.” Her doctor attempted to persuade her to go out into the Springtime, where the fresh air, the daily warmer sun, and the singing birds would be cortain to shbthe hew tense néfvae, bt “for her i« of Mary Lincoln. the outside world was a lost world. She had seen enough of it.” By this time the gossip about her had nearly exhausted itself and peo- ple remembered the words of the United States Senator from Massachusetts, who told his col- leagues: “He (Lincoln) had all her love.” They were also saying that the great shock of her husband’s assassination, beside her in the theater, probably accounted for her queerness in recent years. Modern medical opinion has suggested that “her sudden tempests and her troublesome vagaries were written in the tissues of the brain early in her life.” The childhood of Mary Todd in Kentucky seems normal and pleasant enough. There were large, airy rooms in the large house, a big vard to play in, a fond grandmother next door, good food, whose cooking and serving were considered an art, and on at least one oc- casion sheer embroidered pink muslin from France for a new frock. She had her schooling in a private academy and a boarding school, learned French, music and dancing and mem- orized many lines of classical poetry. All the social diversions of the well-te-do of the time and place were hers. Then, when she was 21, she went to Springfield, Ill., to live with a mar- ried sister, and there, in 1840, she met Abraham Lincoln. The rather sad story of the reiuctant ~ courtship, with its mterruptions, is well known. That it ended in marriage was perhaps unfar- tunate for both, but who can tell? As a girl Mary had said that she wanted to be a great lady. She became the First Lady of the Land. But she was a First Lady in a tragic period. Some happiness undoubtedly came .in her mar- ried life, but more sorrow. The loss of children preceded the tragedy of her widowhood. An unhappy woman, cursed by her own tempera- ment and hardly equal to being the wife of a great man, who was also a moody man—such 1s the final verdict. The almost poetic prose of Carl Sandburg in which his “Lincoln” was written also adds to the literary value of “Mary Lincoln.” Part II of the book consists of let- ters, documents, and appendix, by Paul M. Angle. THE BLACK PRINCE. Sedgwick. Indianapolis: rill Co. HE Black Prince was Edward, eldest son of King Edward III of England. In telling the story and vivifying the personality of the 15-year-old hero of the Battle of Crecy, Mr. Sedgwick has made use of tae contemporary chronicles of Froissart, Chandos and Cuvelier and, relying on their substance, has framea speeches for the Prince. In romance: and mar- tial glory the Black Prince holds a place in the imagination of Englishmen only second to *that of Richard Coeur de Lion or that of Henry V. One popular theory attributes his title to his habit of wearing black armor. The French whom he defeated at Crecy probably thought of the epithet “Black” as having a deeper sig- nificance. As a warrior the Prince was neith- er genial nor moderate. He believed in blood- shed, booty and devastation. His life story is one of battles—Crecy, Calais, Poitiers, Najera, Navarette. Longevity was not common in the fourteentn century, especially among fighting men. The Black Prince died at the age of 46, but he had begun to live early and had passed no empty days. He suffered greatly in his last illness, but the chronicler tells us that “he bore it all so patiently that he was never heard to breathe a word of complaint against God.” His son, 9 years old at the time of the Prince’s death, became king as Richard II. The tomb of thq Black Prince, in the Chapel of St. Thomas in the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, shows an effigy of the Prince in life size, clad in com- plete armor. Above the tomb are hung memen- toes of his heroic deeds—a faded surcoat, with quarterings of golden lions passant gardant on a red ground; a helmet with gilded leopard as crest, a worn scabbard and belt. By Henry Dwight The Bobbs-Mer- LIFE BEGINS AT FORTY. By Walter B. Pit- kin. New York: Whittlesey House. HE author is a professor in journalism in Columbia University and perhaps has kind- ly written this book to cheer the middle-aged and to show them that the world is not tor thé young only. Of course, every one Knows that women begin to grow young at 40 and to apply themselves eagerly to club, civic and so- cial activities, to pay more attention to dress and discreet aids to beautification. But Mr. Pitkin shows that for men also 40 marks the beginning of a long period of pleasant occupa- tions, "to which matured minds may be applied. Perhaps his picture is a trifle too optimistic when he says: “For the world is still to be civillzed, and in your day this supreme process will begin.” He declares that nobody under 17 knows anything, ever has a clear thought, ever converses interestingly. A little later the dreary business—for some—of earning a living begins, and from then until the magic age'ot 40 is reached life is a long, hard pull. At 40 we begin to have time for all th: reading, music, travel, friends, gardens and other fruits of leisure for which we have been longing. A very heartening book, if we are able to believe d@t all.oolignti st =il of HIMTEOT AW % WingeIC i ELLEN TERRY'S MEMOIRS. With a preface, notes and additional biographical chapteis by Edith Craig and Christopher St. John. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. HERE have been many Terry books of late, one or two more concerned with George Bernard Shaw than with Ellen Terry. The first autobiographical work of the famous actress, “The Story of My Life,” was published 20 years before her death; the story has now been comn- pleted under the direction of her daught:~, Edith Craig. Although primarily a child of the stage, Ellen Terry was also a most interesting woman, as this book and the Shaw-Terry cor- respondence show. During her stage career she found time for many other interests and many friends, and after her retirement she eageriy” enjoyed travel, writing and philanthropy. Christopher St. John says: “Ellen Terry did not retire from the theater. The theater re- tired from her. Perhaps this was the penalty of her infidelities to it in the past.” In 1919 she played the part of the nurse in “Romeo anid Juliet,” the last of her Shakespearean parts, and in it “her genius flamed up for the last time.” When she married again, at the age of 59, she said that it was her “own affair,” but her present biographer suggests that it was “to a certain extent the affair also of the na- tion to which she was ‘a great religion,” and of her children, both some years older than h(x third husbafid.” A very readable, intimate biography. THE FORTRESS. By Hugh Walpole. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc. HIS is the third volume of the chronicles of the Herries family of Cumberland. “Rogue Herries” began with Francis Herries, called the “Rogue” for many good reasons, who was born in 1700; “Judith Paris” carried on the story from the death of the Rogue, on the night when his daughter Judith was born, wuntil Judith had reached middle age. “The Fortress” ends with Judith’s 100th birthday celebration. The fourth and last volume of the series, to be called “Vanessa,” will be published in the Au- tumn. Judith, who combines the love of power common to most of the Herrieses with a wilde . strain inherited from her gypsy mother, Mira- bell Starr, dominates *The Fortress” as she did “Judith Paris.” In spite of some episodes In her past, she has come to be recognized, both in Cumberland and in London, as the head ot the clan. Her illegitimate son, Adam, like his mother in many ways, yields to her always in strength of character. He does succeed In making his break for freedom when he leaves the home at Uldale, ruled by his mother, and goes to London, but fate brings him back again. Next to Judith, the two persons who divide our interest in “The Fortress” are Adam Paris and John Herries, son of Judith’s nephew Francis. In John the fear, not quite cowardice, which appears in some of the Herries makes for tragedy. He is an appealing character, as he recognizes his own weakness and struggles against it. At the end, his son, Benjamin, who worries all the family because of his lawless- ness, is entering manhood with the prospect of being quite different from his father—Iless finc perhaps, but better able to meet the world. “I do like to fight,” he says. “I think it’s stupia to do things just because other people do them.” He is to be one of the chief persons in “Van- essa.” The others will be Vanessa, daughter ot Adam, and Ellis, son of the old age of Wil Herries, who is a grandson of the Rogue. Both Benjamin and Ellis love Vanessa, so something in the nature of conflict will happen. The chronicle style of Hugh Walpole employed in the earlier novels is continued in “The Fortress™ » and the atmosphere of the English lake region, if not quite as vivid as in “Rogue Herries,” is still capable of stirring memory and imagina- tion. ¢ Books Recerved BIOGRAPHICAL. MR. GLADSTONE. By Walter Phelps Hall. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. HINDENBURG —PEACE-WAR-AFTERMATH. By Gerhard Schultze-Pfaelzer, Translated by Christopher R. Turner. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. ENGLAND'S GREATEST STATESMAN—A LIFE OF WILLIAM PITT. By E. Keble Chatterton. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Mer- rill Co. ROUSSEAU, THE CHILD OF NATURE. By John Charpentier., New York: The Dial Press. MARIE ADELAIDE—GRAND DUCHESS OF LUXEMBURG. By Edith O’Shaughnessy. New York: Harrison Smith. JOHN SLIDELL AND THE CONFEDERATES IN PARIS. By Beckles Willson. New York: Minton, Balch & Co. JAMES A. GARFIELD. By Robert Granville Caldwell. New_York: Dodd, Mead & Co. SIR OLIVER LODGE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Past Years. By Sir Oliver Lodge. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LYDIA E. PINK- HAM. By Robert Collyer Washburn. New York: &G. P. Putnam’s Sons. X THE LADY OF GODEY'S—SARAH JOSEPHA HALE. By Ruth I. Finley. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. CARLYLE. By Louis Cazamian. New York: The Macmillan Co. & ELLEN TERRY AND HER SECRET SELF. By gl ¥ el o o Continued on ThirfeeniW ' Pages ' T