Liverpool. Painted by J. Hamilton Hay. Described by Dixon Scott.
(A. and C. Black. 6s.)—It is altogether in harmony with the fact 'that this volume belongs to a series of what may be called "Picture Books" that the name of the painter should precede on the title-page the name of the describer. But Mr. Scott is much more ambitious than his collaborator, Mr. Hay's pencil-pictures have now and then a certain touch of impression- ism (as in "Overhead Railway from James Street"), but they are, on the whole, straightforward and quite adequate attempts to represent the city, the docks, the landing-stage, and the other features of Liverpool as they strike the eye of an observer. Mr. Scott's pen-pictures, on the other hand, are of an unusual kind. He is by no means content with putting things in an ordinary way. Here is a characteristic passage about the river :—" As a controller of physique, for instance, slowly reconciling disparities, its effect must be incalculably potent. It is a reservoir of tonic airs ; it screens and revivifies the common atmosphere; it sets a crisp brine-tang in the heart of every inhalation. Some kind of mental and physical conformitY, not easily to be defined, but still remark- able, that democratic sting quite conceivably creates; and some kind of subtle solidarity, too, must certainly result from the constant, unforgettable presence of a piece of outor Nature possessing so large a share of unremitting loveliness." There is meaning in this. The Mersey dominates Liverpool in a way to which the Thames and London present no kind of parallel ; but we do not admire this mode of putting the matter. The book is somewhat fatiguing. Sometimes, too, it lapses into something that a hostile observer might call silliness. There is the fun made on pp. 103-9 of the name "Bootle." An address is imagined, as White Nights, Bootle, and then we are told that "clearly, note-paper could affect no address from the most stately to the most charming that it would not instantly 'convert to screaming farce." There is a seaside village in Cumberland of the name. Did any one ever connect the suggestion of inextinguishable laughter with it ? The writer of this notice knows both Booties, and they never moved him to mirth. But if the term is ludicrous, why should it not save itself' by assuming its lawful ' addition of "cum Linacre" ? Liverpool is an uncommon place, though hundreds of thousands of people pass through it, and even live in it, without discovering that fact, and may well be written about in a style out of the common. But Mr. Dixon Scott, though he is, it may be beckuse he' is, appreciative of the genius loci, passes all bounds.
Previous page
