THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1950.
Talking about morfo
... by REVILLE CARDUS
DAB and FLOUNDER by WALTER
Wagner under
M
the X-ray
ORE than 60 years arship. Ho carries it like a cloak ago a young man em- that conceals a killing rapler. ployed in a Liverpool bank scorned delights and le lived laboriously wrote hugo book on Wagner.
At that time Wagner was regarded a rebel, like Ibsen a disturber of privileged and conventional peace; an im- possible visionary who, like Bernard Shaw, pected-what was worse- of vegetarianism.
Was
In this volume to submalts the Wagner inusle-dramas to the X-ray; or, if you Ice, he holds a post-mortem. But the crittenl purpose is superbly concerned with essentials, and In the end Wagner's stature has not dim- Inished,
•
Assured position
Bus- NE
in
Achievement TEWMAN'S
music-criticism as assured for himself a position in litern- ture in general. If he were a wriler In France he would now bo a member of the Academy, and a "place" would have been Bee ed after him.
Shaw related the "Ring" of Wagner to
Socialism; and we have lived to Wagner discarded by the "Leftists" of the present hour and counted amongst the romantic bour- (a) geoisie, and (b) the pro- on night understand and enjoy, phets of Nazi-ism.
This young man of Liver pool was Ernest Newman, who, now in his 82nd year, has produced another book on Wagner (Wagner Nights, published by Putnam). Is even larger than "Study" of 1899.
It
the
It runs to 764 pages, not including the index, from which we catch a glimpse, in pausing, of the names of Aristotle, Winston Church- ill, Descarten, Dürer, Goethe, Novalis, P. G. Wodehouse and Zeus.
Unburdened IN the earlier book, the work of a student not yet 30, the index ranges from Amiel, Bakunin and Goethe to Taine, Tolstoy, Tennyson and Voltaire.
Bernard Shaw was the first to show how music could be written about in a way a reader of average intelligence and educa- He made a fool of the jargon of the technicians, who "analype"
as though composers many tonal spiders in a vacuum.
te to
Shaw parodied these dullards (they are still at 1) in his
alysis" of Hamlet's "To Do or not to be" soliloquy: "Shake- speare, dispensing with the cus- tomary exordium, nunounces his subject at once in the infra- tive"
Prose as prose
IT would be possible to quote passages from Newman fit lo go into any anthology of English prose, simply as prose.
SWIMMING
Strike my son from Debrett, wrote peer
By SIDNEY RODIN
A BOUT two-thirds of the baronial hails of Britain are now empty of barons.
Nearly a score of German babies join the tree of the Roynt Family in the new Debrett.
They are the progeny of the German branch, and their rela- onstup to the King is recorded for the first tinte.
11
New Books by George Malcolm. Thomson
Scruffy sourpuss
for a hero
X11
but cannot bridge "the gulf of their unlikeners." The truth is Stella is a lady born and quite a sulinble match for Anthony L. M. O'C, who, in the gun-room, Unable to maintain their
ho was an Irish short, ladies'
outsize never forgot disposessed
FIRST STEPS INSIDE THE the estates
aristocrat. ZOO. By John Lodwick, department.
And Yvonne, peers are moving to London
byblow of 95. Gd. 272 Dow's justly puzzled by her
In addition to Stella and her Heinemann. The fathers of some were Ger-
cailor-boy,
deals to live in flats.
Gentian H man officers, but Mr Cyril Han-
pages.
failure to persunde young men with folklore, fairies and such kinson, editor, says: "We don't
(even naval officer) to make like. And what does it all add think they were good Naziz. Gerus is a novel both love to her. Can it be that the up to? man blue-blooda never approved
grave and preposter- child's technique is miscon of Hitler." Four of the chlidren:
It adds up, friend, to Ute kind Its main theme celved? "You can sit down it are descendants of the Duke of
you like, Edinburgh (1844-1000), con of is war, peace and the fate of no charge for consultations."
like," says Dormant. "I make of novel which will probably bo bought by a million people. In Queen Victoria.
nations. But its details For consultations and that it a Ho below Elizabeth hos Goudge's top-noto? Or is that Iow There are now 33 baroneteles trifle divertingly with one's sort of thing-Dormant
And its public plenty of time because, though suspicion nothing but a touch of tho Marxista plot madly all over berl-beri following a diet of rooms of the baronial hall await-uneluimer, compared with 20 credulity.
verges upon the Cote d'Azur. Cassella one polished rice?
The new issue of Debrett's Pecige, to be pubilched in a few weeks, shows that, of 500 peers only about 150 still main iain their hereditary country seats.
Some hold to their ancient addresses by living in a
ing the National Trust to take last year. over at death.
FEWER NAMES
ous.
presentation farce. Broad farce.
of those people who cannot dele-
ELIZABETH GOUDGE was gato responsibility; How light Only in Scotland are the great
It is a tale of modern mis he is not to rely on bormant. born in Wells Somerset, where land owning nobles offering
adventure told by a kind of bad-
her father was principai of the stout rezistance to taxation. The
A man who should have been tempered Eric Linklater, д When the Kussion Colonel college. In 1923 her father was and the Earl of Strathmore slutt 03 years ago, at birth robust, adult and cynical writer Kharitonoff kidnaps a British mode professor of Divinity at Dukes of Buccleuch und Argyll
she taught handi- has at last gained cutry. He who is a fountain of irresponsiblo ndimíral and proposes to spirit Oxford and hold vast estates.
Mir Foster Yelverton, of Hawk's
invention andi squalid him off to Russia disguised as u crafts there for a short time. Now philosophy.
molik, Dormant is given the lives in Devonshire. Bay, New Zealand.
Adrian Dormant, scruffy simple task of intercepting the
AVENUE. station. PRAIRIE
By Fourpuss, but the nearest that party at Nice railway
Arthur Meeker, Michael Lodwiele enn get to a here, is Alas he muffs it so completely
Joseph. 109. Gd, 319 déplorable charge. keeping an eye on the Pyrenees that he gets himself arrested on
Why the Pyrenees? Because,
Fortunately the Russians being one day the Russians may come even worse bunglers than Dor- sweeping over Europe and then mant the Admirat Is saved from HONESTLY done and with few how glad we are going to be Siberia.
M.L. All that Adrian has told about the Pyrenees,
The new Debrett Includes the arms of Lord Adams, ex-iron ore miner, who surprised the Garter King of Arms by choosing
cor emblazoned with shield wheels, supported by the figures of a miner and farm labourer,
HOW TO BE HAPPY
Å
IN COCOALAND
From ERNEST ASHWICK
UNO mission which visited the cocoa land of Togoland told Britain and France today that they must satisfy the people's demand for unification "in the interests of peace and stability."
Togoland, n former German
Africa, in West
wa colony divided between Bellain and France after the 1914 war.
Now they administer it under a UNO trusteeship and UNO
For example, the young man of Liverpool writing more than half a century ago, closed his font out the mission to see what
it book on Wagner this way
1
never
_the_Africans_203.
On the mission were Amerl- cant, Mexicans, Helgians, and Iraqis. They wrote a 42-page re- pori.
"
GOLD COAST
TOGO LAND
IVORY COAST
ASHANTI KUMAS
ACCRA
bis was a brain of the rares and subtlest composition put together cunningly by nature
And of the 300,000 people in as no musiclan's brain has been put together before or since. The cocoa-growing British Toyulanding territories--or by forces of
"They have report says:
a different character from out- muse of poetry seems to have the This was the period Ia dipped her wings into the lucid entire freedom of speech. This is riie.
of commendation
"Because of the small popula- which writers on music, stream of music, disturbing it most worthy,
tion and artificial boundaries of writers, with suggestions of a world it and the people are very appre- especially young
reflected before, cintive. took ?! knowledge for bad
"But," the report goes on, "the British Togoland, It is dimeult to their province. They tried deepening its beauty by closer
ociation
actual people want these Belush and-contemplate its politient and economic development except into the world of men,"
French territories unified. And In in association with French Togo- to bring music
the south this demand has be- Innd or with the neighbouring stream and traffic of life
popular nationalistic
Gold Coast." and ideas. They assumed that great composers had Bomething to contribule to the civilising of human con- sciousness.
And Newman remains, as he began, unburdened by his schol-
་
with the
Such writing gives pleasure to everybody. Churles Lamp would have admired it, though he knew couldn't tell God Save the King
so little about musc that he
from Pop Goes the Weasel.
(World Copyright Reserved. London Express Service.)
coinc mevement.
If this demand for unification
These observations
by the
It has just been proved to 1 a relative of the sixth Viscount Avonmore, whose title has been dormant since he died in 1910.
Mr Yelverton may roon estab- 11sh he is the seventh viscount.
of
names
Aristocrats NTG reducing the number
for their children.
Some of the Tollemache family were given as many as 10, 11 and 10 names at christening. Their latest children have only two, *This in t fashion set by the
stoyal Family Prince Charles takes up only half a fine.
Some peers and baronets in- plore the editer to hide the skeletons in their cupboards.
wrote: "I have cust A peer of my son and refuse to have anything more to do with him. Please strike him from 17 book,"
when the book opens.
n
Follow? Well, never mind.
another matter.
pages.
pretensions, this is a pleura Chicago uppercrust in An all-in slapstick thriller of the
the rumbustious nineties. It sells Lodwick's best job lo dato,
But one small matter. On page how young Nel Ramsey after his 11 Cassell dislikes sweet things, father's financial crash wont to Dormant Is member of the British Secret Service, an Insti- yet on page 107 he eats two live with Uncle Illram and Aunt tution whose fabulous reputation by two doughnuts.
cakes oozing cream, followed Lydin, And how he learned in Lodwick due me that his beautiful aunt's has survived two wars, Whether might clear that up next time attendant gentlemen
were more than just "company". will survive John Lodwick 15 he is near M.1.5.
Also a diet of polished rice Family life in a vanished age, Don't imagine that Dormant is causes beri-beri nat pellagra The curve of the decline and fall (see page six). Spy Ring Slips of Prairie Avenue is traced with inspired by patriotism
of dialectical
affection as well as skill. Up? reasoned dislike materialism. He I an agent because he has to br
*JOUAN LODWICK peruci fu ARTHUR MEEKER Cassell his chief (a man with a Special Battalion during the born in Chicago, Leaving Prince-
weakness
for false beards) war and afterwards wrote the ton and Harvard, he became a knows that
at official story of his actiultics, journalist and free lance writer Arnheim, And Cassell makes a tias since eritten four or five Has travelled widely! Hobbles hobby of black nail.
Lives in the South of are books written in ur about 17th Century France and gramo- phone recorda (WORLD COPYRIGHT RESERVED)
be
deserted
or #
novela:
Others Indiented that they Were it not for this Dormant France and has two children, have come-to-doubt their wives would go on being a sculptor, A GENTIAN HILL, by Eliza-
&culptor in "Lódwick's" fidelity and suspect the legiti-bad
beth Goudge. Hodder and inney of a child. Many ask for
Stoughton. 12s. 6d. 444 adopted children to be entered
pages.
'DON'T TELL'
Elderly peeresses often request that their age should be deleted. One wrote: "I married late in life, and all my friends think I look very much younger than am. I have a small son and don't wish him to know my true age when he grows up."
All there demands are reject ed. To the elderly peeresses tho is not satisfied to some apprect- Americans, Mexicans, Belgians, editor sometimes replies: "Queen able degree, danger of intersilled and tragis will be discussed Mary and Queen Elizabeth never local nationalism reems unavoid by the United Nations Trustee-object to my printing their ages
hip Council in Geneva, "It may be stimulated by nationalistic forces in neighbour-
able.
-(London Express Service)
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
Why shouli you?"
-London Express Service)
// HOW DO YOU LIKE IT? I WALL-PAPERED THE WHOLE ROOM
TODAY!"
opinion.
By the end of chapter one. Chssell has ordered Dormant to the Riviera, to a bigger jub and livelier company. Company that includes!
Fletcher Dow, a rich American dipsomaniac.
A Hungarian barung (Angtos phile by tradition in Russian service by mischance.
gentleman,
NOVEL? Let us think rather
A of something very trail and pretty that has lala folded care- fully away in a drawer between little bars of lavender.
It is a rambling story about a Dia 1 Nelson's navy Mary Anthony Louis Hodder, decayed painter and crook,
O'Connell, It Is the "Mary" that Mrs Hodder no longer in her does it. Unable to endure his tamts any longer, physical prime but "still pretly shipmates formidable to any jeune premier Anthony L. M. O'C makes a boli in a clinch. Or as Dormant puts for shore where he
Stella does not play much with something of Filippo Lippl about
in his arty way, "There was elin Stella.
Somehow her and something of the care the village children.
to her. Sho lessness, the faulty execution, they do not take
over this Tleves and puzzles of Luca Giordano."
•
incets the
LIBRARY LIST
was
By A. The Breck dedition. Volgt Hollis and Carter, 20%, das 958 pages An account of the Com muniet war in Greece which bas not only careful study behind but also feeling and indignation. And why not?
By Part Time is so hort. Cooper. Peter Davies, is, dd, 100 AD agreeable, if light pages story of the Punjab in the inai days
Krite Government
By
of
In the Penal Bettlement- Franz Kafka Becker and War- 599 paces There buts, 60, stories and short prose works by the dimeult writer of pantus make their first appearance in uno volime together.. The book com pletes the Muir translation of Kazka.
The Cry of the Wtad, Dr Swart Bunter. Collins, 102, 60., 354 pages. Story of an ambitious young man in a small community of the Scot tish Lowlands
It Ain't Necessarily So”.
Bo
KEMP
STARRETT
✔ YOU BIG- SO-AND-SO
I'LL...
London Express Service.
• IT AIN'T NECESSARILY
SO THAT IT'S
THE MAN WHO ALWAYS FALLS ASLEEP RIGHT AFTER DINNER EVERY EVENING,
-THAT THE CHINLESS
GUYS ARE AFRAID OF THEIR SHADOWS
OR THAT FAT MEN
ARE
ALWAYS
JOLLY...
AW CHEER UP
THAT A PRETTY GIRL IS ALWAYS DUMB AND WHENEVER, SHE TACKLES
A MAN'S JOB SHE'S SURE TO MAKE A MESS OF IT,
I WON!
"ATTA BOY! WHAT'S MY SHARE
THAT THE BIG BOYS WITH STRONG JAWS ARE STUFFED WITH WILLPOWER.
AND LOTS OF SPUNK.
"ČOIR, IMO BY GENERAL FEATURES
CORF. TMWORLD RIGHTS RESERVED.;
THAT THE OFFICE TYRANT IS A MEEK LITTLE GUY AT HOME.
Силантро
·ÂND THAT THE THIN ONES ARE ALWAYS SOUR AS PICKLES.
OR THAT EVERY MAN GETS BAWLED: OUT WHEN HE STAYS OUT UNTIL -3A.M. PLAYING POKER.
OR THAT YOU ALWAYS WARE UP IN A HOSPITAL WITH A BEAUTIFUL NURSE HOLDING YOUR HAND-