A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
United States .. £2,000 France .. • • k560 Canada .. £800 Belgium .. • £300 Irish Free State .. £360 Australia .. .. £825 On this showing the k600 which members of the House of Commons are to receive henceforth is neither niggardly nor excessive.
* * * *
Whatever Sir James Barrie was he was unlike anyone else. There was in contemporary life no other shy, retiring, whimsical personality like his. His novels, it is true, could be classed roughly with Crockett's and Ian Maclaren's as belonging to the kailyard school, but The Little Minister was entirely distinctive ; and so was Margaret Ogilvy ; so was Sentimental Tommy. The novels, I suppose, are very largely forgotten, though I re-read The Little Minister with a good deal of pleasure a month or two ago. But they date back close on fifty years, and south of the border, at any rate, it was by his plays that Barrie was known. Some of them date ; What Every Woman Knows would seem strangely old-time stuff today. But Dear Brutus stands revival well, and The Admirable Crichton fairly. Peter Pan, of course, is perennial. The Boy David, I suppose, will hardly be seen again. It was written for Miss Bergner, and it was all wrong, for with her it was Bergner, not David ; without her it would be nothing at all, or very little. But I wish someone would put on The Professor's Love Story and Mary Rose again. For them there should be still a public.
* * * * The disappearance of the Epstein figures from the Rhodesian Government offices in the Strand is likely to break few hearts except Mr. Epstein's. But the figures are historic in relation to the development of public taste. Most Epstein sculptures you either like or dislike on aesthetic and artistic grounds ; but nothing of that figured in the great controversy of thirty years ago, when the building in question belonged to the British Medical Association, and the sculptures, representing the naked human form, as it is displayed in any gallery containing replicas of classical statuary, were installed. It was nothing that the figures were some twenty or thirty feet from the ground. There they were, flaunting their nudity and corrupting the morals of an outraged (or too little outraged) city. Now they are to go, not because anyone objects to them any longer—more wholesome distinctions between what is decent and what is not have gained acceptance since 1908—but because they are beginning to go to pieces and fall on people's heads. With them goes a social landmark. The post-War genera- tion would find it hard to believe that people thought and spoke about those statues as they did in the first decade of the century.
• *
Mr. John Burns is a diligent book-buyer, as instructed Londoners of the elder generation know. He has just had a piece of remarkable good fortune. Hasted's Kent is one of the most highly-reputed of county histories, and like all fine books of the kind it makes a first-rate foundation for the Grangerising process of expansion. Mr. Burns has just become the owner of a Grangerised Hasted that can hardly have a peer in England. It is a superb example, carried out in every chapter to the last detail of craftsmanship. The additional illustrations include lithographs, fine mezzotints, steel engravings, woodcuts, autographs, and every other form of embellishment that the Grangeriser who understands his business lays under contribution. There are fifteen volumes nobly bound in morocco; the Canterbury volume may be cited as an example of an achievement which comes very near perfection in every part. * * * * On Wednesday morning decisions were being taken that might make peace or war in Europe. I went out to lunch wondering what the evening paper posters would have to say of Herr Hitler's acts or intentions, or Signor Mussolini's. I need not have speculated. Two great men were featured on all the posters, but they were not the dictators. One was named Louis, the other Braddock, and I gathered (what subsequent investigation confirmed) that Mr. Braddock, who had on Tuesday explained convincingly in one of the journals in question why he could not lose, was explaining on Wednesday "Why I Lost." Mr. Braddock having lost, Mr. Louis is left heavy-weight champion of the world, a fact which will hardly have political or social significance, even in the United States, but did send an exultant thrill through Harlem and "the solid South." Any conspicuous defeat of a white man by a negro has some repercussions.
* * * * If an archdeacon is a person who discharges archidiaconal functions a dean may no doubt properly be defined as a person who discharges decanal functions—and, the Arch- bishop of Canterbury would certainly add in one case at least, sticks to them. Dr. Hewlett Johnson, the Dean of Canterbury, whom the Archbishop says pointedly he could not remove from his office even if he would, was given that office by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald iii 1931. He had till then been Dean of Manchester, also through the gift of Mr. Mac- Donald, for seven years. He is an ardent supporter of the Douglas Credit scheme and more recently an ardent supporter of the Spanish Government. The trouble is that abroad, where their relationship is not understood, his uncom- promising views do seriously compromise the Archbishop.
* * * * In his Story of My Life, which I happened to be reading this week, that distinguished lawyer and politician, Sir Edward Clarke, comments on the astonishing literary output of one of the decades of his youth, 1850-1860, when Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Lytton, Trollope, and others were all publishing some of their best work. In his list of notable books and poems which first saw the light in those years he includes one; Tamerton Church Tower, of which neither I nor various literary authorities I have consulted have ever heard. Can anyone throw light on it ? jANI:S.
Previous page
