1931-10-21 — Page 11

BOOKS and READERS

·LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS

NEW NOVEL BY MAR- GARET KENNEDY.

HONG KONG DAILY PRESS, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1931.

"THE VICTORIAN, IDEA, 7% The Victorian idea of science as acurely compartmouted means towards inhour-saving with no op nection with morality must now disappear. Traditional morality gives very little help in the mo dern world. A rich man may was humanly shocked when she plunge millions into destitution by of the Reign of Georg Buw her son-in-law stripped of his some act which not even tho sover: orders and gorgeous uniform on est Catholic confessor would con- Fyre and Spottiswoode,"

his wedding night, and when Her-sider sinful, while he will need vey soothingly remarked that hus, absolution for a trivial. sexual THE SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK. | bands and wives, however bonuti aberration which at the worst has Bertrand Russell, George All grew blind to one another wasted an hour that might have

been more usefully employed." "

Lord Russell picturos a world in which nationality has disappeared and the healthy minsson are controll-

lon and Unwin, 78. 6d.

RETURN I DARE NOT.

#3 volk

Margaret Kennedy, Heinemann, 78. od:

JULIAN PROBERT.

Susan Ertz, Hodder Stoughton. 78. 0.

D'ANNUNZIO,

and

looks, she replied, "but there is gront difference, as long : ONO sees, in the manner of puffs game blind."

It is almost her only lapas froined by a specially-bred controlling her own notions

of ruyalty as it must be andured..

The Queen was so “ungiving" in this material sense that she allow ed the wretched 'Lord Lifford and his sister, who were more con F. Nardelli and Á, Livingston.stantly in waiting than the pages of the back stair," to be in such poverty that they "could not afford the common decency of elenn elo thus," but, as queen, to the king she could give unfailing patience and devotion. She would have liked to know learned and gifted people and to read, but she resign

Jonathan Cape.12%, 08.

"It was as if Pompeil were opened to us," Thackeray wrote of Lord Hervey's memoirs, when they were first published in 1848, but portions of them had been with held as being too gross for the

still are.

The eponymous hero is a boy wh in driven almost to suicide by the unhappiness of his elders, his fa ther being in love win utter of-fact young woman novelist while his mother is a miserablo. bigot who ought to have married a wife beater. But they are a dull lot to come from the pen of the di thor of "Now East New West."

D'ANNUNZIO,

A biography of D'Annunzio" by his friend Signor Nardelli and Mr. Arthur Livingston is enough to make any reviewer swear never to complain of the improbability of any charactor in fiction again For who would have dared invent this man, this mall bald man who continued to impress himself as a great poet on the world white, writing gossip for Romih now. papers, this man who married a duke's daughter, who, gone off in middle age to his medieval adven ture in Fiume after becoming a flying officer in the war, and who now lives in Byzantine splendour in a palace with guns in its' tur rets ?

class, cons of whose chief duties it will be to keep the masses from be coming bored in their tame and may lives. "For though men have a ways sought "security more avidly than they have ever sought any thing else, they may should this acientific state coms into being. think it not worth the price they pay."

This is a diverting piece of There is no cockmaroness about work. The authors do not claim

to bo making an estimate of those prophecies. ·

D'Annunzio. They Just tell you about him--but there is art and Most purpose in their method. English people inve to take D'An- runzio's worth as a poet on trust, for his work usually appears to be the gaudies, bosh in translation, but as a human being he com- mands attention.

· Lord "Russell 'suggests that in the next grent war Europa will go to pieces, leaving America and per-

general public, as bits of Pompeiied these plensures since. the Kinshups China to establish a new poli- never read and boasted that eveutical world, but he also suggests as a child he had hated reading that the task may be too great, and and learning, not as other child that many centuries may then clapse ren do because they entailed con before civilisation gets back to the finement, but because he felt they level of in-day. were mean and below him,"

Now however, the complete me moirs are, for the first time pal lished, the gaps in Croker's edition being filled from a copy of the original manuscript, made when these passages were burned as h ing permanently mifit for publica tion.

A "FAT VENUS."

When she had some bad pictures Hervey was no mere envesdrop taken away from Kensington Pa per or gossipmonger. What he set lace and Vandykes hung in their down was what he netually heard stead, he was furious. He would and saw, and after he finally re-

not have those "three" nasty little signed his intimacy with the Prince children" (his description of the of Wales (they had shared a mis- Children of Charles 11. "tress) to ally himself with Kingwhich visitors to Windsor now do George and Queen Caroline in their light)-and demanded that his fat Venus" should be reinstated. fierce antagonism to their son, he

Queen Caroline had better taste, stayed about them an the most con-

but she remained calm, idential terms.

No student of contemporary poli- ties can afford to neglect Hervey, for his interests were not frivolous, but this new edition will bring him a host of new readers enger to absorb au authentic picture of early eighteenth century royal fami ly life.

AN AUTHOR'S PICTURE. Hervey had a broad feminine streak which stirred bitter jibes from Pope in the satira referring to him as

ergi

Latin davours, such as no desi criptive guide book ever conveys,

are to be found in the many ae In conclusion be warns all scien-counts in this book of the Italian reactions to D'Annunzio's gestures. tific manipulators of society that The authors deny the story that even more important than know the poet spent Duse's fortune. In fact she was still rich at the time terlige is the life of the emotions. of the separation, and Was im- world without delight and with poverished by the collapse of Ger out affection is a world destitute man securities during the war. of value." Which is, after "all, an- other way of saying that there may be a good deal of human happiness during these new dark ages should they come to pass! Nobody will: the faintest intellectual curiosity should mies this masterly "d provocative survey.

A King may please himself pictures He must

MARGARET KENNEDY. about please himself about his mistros- scs, ng, she will have Lady Suffolk

Miss Margaret Kennedy's. néw at Court and arrange quarters for book is a delightful feat perform. the possible arrival of Madame

a graceful competence Walmoden from Hanover. Whewed with she implores him from her death

which must inspiro even the non- bed, of which Hervey screens none of the horrors, to marry again, writng reader with that painless and he gives between his sobs the envy one has in watching a Chin- famous reply "Nou, j'aurais des

esa juggler or the flying leaps of nitreanes, she makes no other reply than 4h, man Dicut ceina ballet dancer..

empeche pas." Even Hervey is She draws to a perfectly convinc- here a little shocked. "I know, he writes, "this episode will hard-ng great country house a perfect- week-end party. this bug with gilded wings.ly he credited, but it is literally ly convincing This painted child of dirt that true.".

Every member of it is interesting, stinks and sings,"

and though nothing in the least fantastic happens the book is given

This new edition has a wise and but it made him a mere competent graceful preface by Mr. Romney observer and a less reticent chroni-Sedgwick. It comes in a three eler than a more completely mas-volume set which is easy to rend culino courtier might have been, and pleasant to handle. The limit and one follows him through the ed number of 600 sets should not

be enough to go round. for parlours at Richmond and the gar dens at Hampton Court with a English library could be perfect positive sense of intrusion.

ly equipped without one.

A SCIENTIFIC STATE.

יד

no

a memorable shape and purpose because the week-end becomes, still. quite naturally, and without all the others being aware of it, a turning point in each of their lives.

.

Those who like that kind of thing will bare a lot of fun in put- ting real names to most of the characters-especially to the wilful aristocratic Lady Aggie, whose he auty is already legendary so that

out:

What a hateful, limited world the royalties made for themselves in their conviction that roy

different froni alties were as

To leap from Hervey a world, in other

and mien

Women As which Kensingto. Palace was from queen bees, are

drones sometimes almost isolated because This is most strikingly shown in of the muddiness of the road be when people looked at her, when the development of the hatred be tween it and London, and where she looked at herself in the glass. tween the King and Queen and the George and Caroline felt divinely it was this silvery aura of legend Princo of Wales. The rela entitled to rule England while that they saw," and to Hugo, tile tions between the wearers of quite heartily disliking the coun-young man who has three plays crowns and heira-apparent are try and the people, to Lord Rus-ruuning and is nearly worn" traditionally difficult. Some gulf sell's projection of a scientific on the joint treadmill of succeso Rooms necessary. There is evidence state, is a isconcerting feat of and publicity. of this in all the folk tales of mental gymnastics. Lord Russel! Two young girls are beautifully wandering eldest sons, and one seen is the least dreary of scientific done. Miss Kennedy knows all the ghost of the thing dramatised observers of society, and he writes about that gulf between the very at the opening of Parliament, well that the least scientific of young woman looking gravely at when the Prince of Wales in left lay readers can go along with him, life and, the, so little older woman behind on the dais and has to wait fascinated and informed, without who is already making a mess of to be called for by his own little flagging, and now and then he es it. "A passage describing one of livens the way by personal com these girls soothing her terror of procession.

fidence such as: "I think the uni being grown up by washing a dog verse in all spöte and jumps, within a stable yard which Sunday out unity, without continuity afternoon has made into a sanctu without coherence or, orderline i orary is unforgettable in its perver any of the other properties thation and charm. governesses love," or "It is ouato. It is through this girl that Hugo mary amongst a certain school of finds courage to break out from sociologists to minimise the id his mank as a Successful Young portance of intelligence, and to at Man and go to find a life which tribute all great events to large seems more definitely to belong t Impersonal causes. I believe this him.Bot praiud descrip to be an option delusion. I ption of this novel sedm super lieve that if a hundred men of Auous, sinen it is sure of za many the seventeenth century gad been readers as "The Constant Nymph." killed in infancy, the modarn world would not exist. And those hunded Galile is the chief.*

Queen Caroline would have been as shocked 'ge any of us, perhaps, by lack of tenderness between an everyday mother and son, but as Queen the could look at the Crown Prince as he crossed the palace yard and say, "There he goes--that wretch, that villaim I wish the ground would open this moment and ink the monster to the lowest hole in hell".

A QUEEN SHOCKED. She could disscuss with Lord Hervey the probabilities of her son's impotence, and, in great do tail, the possibilities of the Prin CCES of Wales being put in the-way of producing a false heira little Hervey, for example-without be ing AwATO of its falsoness. She reporta calmly enough that her daughter the Princess Royal is not deflected from her purpose of mat rying the Prince of Orange by des- criptions of His unpleasing appear, ane

*

JULIAN PRO

PROBERT."

He reminds us of how recently, The people in Misa Busan Ertz's science has affected society in Julian Probert suffer from com. general ("One hundred and flyparison with Miss Kennedy A brigh years of science have proved more ter creaturen Miss Erte tells us explosive than five thousand years about thom-rather than puts.rs of pre-scientific culture") and of among them and now and then they how increasingly rapid is gelence's behave incredibly. When, for ox progress. Pavlof's important indumple, a predatory baggage, eng ings, which have brought psychoaged to a man who thinks her hon logy into the scientific field, grow est, is confronted in, his prosence (Hie Drenth," ricord, Heront of date before he can get time. by the coarse fellow who has kept vay characteristically, was more to publish theil tidfly. There will her for months she procroda in offensive that it is possible for never again be monumental works credibly, after scarcely a moment' those who have not heen offended like Newton's "Principia" or Dar confusion, to give a long remital by it to imagine") and says, "If win's "Origin of Species to of her real life history, much ne it was a monkey, she would marry stand for a generation of hungry Miss Ertz, might have told, is her.

Foelt. him,

Butteren Quecht Caroline minds to bite on..

3

2

YEAR GUARANTEE

YEAR EASY PAYMENT

A

GAIN General Electric makes refrigeration history with its announcement of an unparalleled 3-Year Guarantee on the General Electric Monitor Top..

4』་”

This the broadest warranty ever offered with an electric refri gerator-means that for at least three years you are protected against service expenses on the mechanism of the Monitor Top. General Electric offers you the widest range of refrigerating service ice cubes, four different zones of temperature, sliding shelves that give easy access to all food, small operating and a score of other advantages.

WRITE OR CALL FOR FULL PARTICULARS

GENERAL

ELECTRIC

ALL-STEEL REFRIGERATOR

On View at

Hong Kong Electric Company, Ltd. General Electric Company (China), Ltd, Andersen, Meyer & Company, Ltd.

DAVID HOUSE.

Corporations Spending Millions Pay Tribute to Value of News- paper Space

Read What Expert Advertisers Say

Newspaper

About

No.

1

B

Advertising

F. GOODRICH COMPANY: "The B

F. Goodrich Rubber Company has spent

hundreds of thousands of dollars in newspaper advertising, This investment was justified by the fact that in our r opinion newspaper advertising is the best action advertis- ing available. We know from experience that newspaper advertising hurries merchandise from the dealers shelves into the hands of consumers when right appeal is used, We shall continue the daily newspaper to carry the brunt of our sales attack at the height of the tire-selling season.”—P. J. Kelly, advertising manager.

DAILY PRESS advertising gets results where

PRvertising

other advertising fails. Profit by the ex- perience of the leading advertisers of the world.