xt7qjq0stw34_2155 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474.dao.xml unknown archival material 1997ms474 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. W. Hugh Peal manuscript collection Edward White of the India House, and a New Portrait of Lamb by Mrs. G. A. Anderson, The Bookman text 43.94 Cubic Feet 86 boxes, 4 oversize boxes, 22 items Poor-Good Peal accession no. 11453. Edward White of the India House, and a New Portrait of Lamb by Mrs. G. A. Anderson, The Bookman 2017 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474/Box_21/Folder_8/Multipage7350.pdf 1924 April 1924 1924 April section false xt7qjq0stw34_2155 xt7qjq0stw34  

APRIL, 1924.]

THE BOOKMAN. l7

 

in as anything of the kind in English poetry. It is
poetry because almost every pulse of its metre is crea-
tive, and helps to reveal an unforgettable character on
his own kindly pilgrimage through time. ” The Child
Musician ” and “ A Gentleman of the Old School” are
two other examples of the same mastery; and, in the
latter of these, there is once again that note of longing
for a simplicity lost by the modern world :

” We read—alas, how much we read !
The jumbled strifes of creed and creed
With endless controversies feed
Our groaning tables ;
His booksgand they sufficed him—were
Cotton’s ‘ Montaigne’, ‘ The Grave’ of Blair,
A ‘ Walton '—much the worse for wear—
And ‘ [Esop’s Fables.’

One more—‘ The Bible.’ Not that he
Had searched its page as deep as we ;
No sophistries could make him see
Its slender credit;
It may be that he could not count
The sires and sons to Jesse’s fount—
He liked ‘ The Sermon on the Mount ’—
And more, he read it.

* * * *

Lie softly, Leisure! Doubtless you

With too serene a conscience drew

Your easy breath, and slumbered through
The gravest issue ;

But we, to whom our age allows

Scarce space to wipe our weary brows,

Look down upon your narrow house,
Old friend, and miss you.”

Of the poems written in the manner of Gay, it is
enough to say here that they are faultless of their kind,
and better than the original models. Taken all to—
gether, with what may be called the critical poems—
including ” The Fables,” “The Prologues and Epilogues,”
” The Varia,” the Memorial Verses, the beautiful tribute
to Tennyson and the delightful little epistles to Mr.
Edmund Gosse and others—they constitute perhaps the
best Ars Poetica in English verse. They have an
insight into the essentials of good writing and a mellow
wisdom that might be of incalculable value to the
present chaotic generation.

\Ve are constantly being told by writers whose
ignorance of their subject is only equalled by their
conceit, that the young poets of to—day are ” sick to
death ” of the set mechanical forms of the great
Victorian poets. If the Victorian poets wrote in set
mechanical forms then they were not “ great.” But
the plain truth of the matter is that the forms of
English poetry were expanded and extended in a
thousand new directions during the Victorian period.
More new metrical forms were invented by Browning
and Swinburne alone than are to be counted in the
whole range of preceding English poetry ; whilst almost
every lyric that Tennyson wrote, from his earliest
juvenilia to “ Crossing the Bar,” had something in its
cadence or movement that was not to be found in
English poetry before him. This is also true of Christina
Rossetti and a dozen other poets. The forms of verse
were not nearly so ” set” as they were when Greece
and Rome expressed themselves in their hexameters and
pentameters. No Victorian of importance was as limited
in his metrical range as some of the most important

poets of the Elizabethan, or indeed of any other period.
It could almost be demonstrated that taken all to—
gether the Victorians invented and used more new
rhythmical movements that all the poets of all former
periods combined. Tennyson’s M and alone has a
range of metrical invention and metrical freedom wider
than that of all the poets combined in many preceding
centuries. The reader who doubts it has only to open
the volume and note the forms which are not to be
found in earlier poets. Even in the academic Matthew
Arnold there are many quite new rhythmical move—
ments, exquisitely free in their musical law, like the
“Songs of Callieles,” or “Dover Beach,” or “In
Utrumque Paratus.” The plain fact is that the modern
“ revolt ” is not against ” set forms,” but against form
itself,—a very different matter—and all too often it
obviously proceeds from the consciousness that the
“ rebel ” cannot hope to compete with his predecessors
unless the standards are lowered. It is a tendency that
is manifest not only in literature, but in all the arts
and throughout the whole of our civilisation, and it is
time that it was met and answered. Curiously enough,
one of the most obvious facts about the outstanding
work of the ”revolting” groups (there are others of
course) is that, with one or two exceptions, it has been
in forms that may justly be called “ set ”—the sonnet,
the stanzas-~~used by Chaucer and \Villiam Morris,
and sometimes quatrains that have been made a little
easier to handle by the simple process of rhyming only
the second and fourth lines, or by accepting various
rough approximations to the end in View. The rest
of the ” revolt " is mere chaos. The revolt against
form, in fact, forbids results in art. It is not a revolt
against Victorianism, but a revolt against order and
proportion and the laws of good writing in all ages.
Worst of all, it is a revolt against the only principle
that can lead to the really valuable new results—the
principle of develop/Haul, the natural evolution of a
great tradition. The present generation is being con—
fused xby its present pastorssssome of them merely
ignorant guides who are striving to turn literature
into a kind of walking race, in which the first duty
is to be “ abreast ” of an age that has almost ceased
to believe in anything but the material rewards for
work badly done. The gospel naturally appeals to
many of the young who desire a quick and easy road
to such rewards; but those who utter the warning
must not be regarded as the enemies of the young or
apostles of reaction; and there could be hardly any
friend more useful, more likely to help the young to
a real appreciation and knowledge of literature than
one who should say, “ Give a certain portion of your
days and nights to the study of the Ars Poetical in
these poems of Austin Dobson. Do this one thing
thoroughly, and with only a little readiness to learn,
and you will then be at least better qualified to express
your own opinions.”

But this part of the work is primarily critical ; and
the essential poetry of Austin Dobson is usually to be
found in the kind which I have indicated earlier.

On more than one occasion, however, the kinds were
united, as when he filled an old French form with his
own human pity and made one of his most perfect
poems, a lyric touched with the light and consecration

 

  

I8 ’ THE BOOKMAN.

[APRIL, 1924.

 

to which he laid no claim. It is time that criticism
Should claim it for him in such work as this :
” In, Angel-court the sunless air
Grows faint and sick; to left and right
The cowering houses shrink from sight
I-Iuddled and hopeless, eyeless, bare.
Misnamed, you say? For surely rare
Must be the angel-shapes that light
In Angel—court.

“ Nay! the Eternities are there.
Death at the doorway stands to smite ;
Life in its garrets leaps to flight;
And Love has climbed the crumbling stair
In Angel-court.”

In the last five lines there are beauty, power of
imagination and high poetry ; and, in themselves, they
would justify an affirmative answer to the question in
the poem that ends his works—” In After Days.”

This last poem has the diamond—like form that makes
for permanence. It is rounded and delicate and whole
as a single drop of dew that can yet reflect the depth
and glory of the sky in its own small lucid mirror.
N0 competent reader can help feeling the poignancy of
its regret for something that our literature is in danger
of losing. There were realms of literature, once, and
there are still (though they are surrounded by a thousand

enemies) in which it would seem small praise to say
of a man that he kept his pen from defilement. But I
cannot help remembering the question asked by a
critic in a leading journal with regard to the dullest,
dirtiest and worst—written book that was ever printed
and suppressedfiH I 1‘ this is 71.02: high mt, what is .9 ”
liV/zat is P It would be easy to give a more imposing
answer ; but it would be quite enough to point to the
brief leave—taking of Austin Dobson and say, to begin
with, and for the reasons I have given above, this :

” In after days, when grasses high
O'er—top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honoured dust,
I shall not question or reply.

” I shall not see the morning sky;
I shall not hear the night-wind sight;
I shall be mute, as all men must
In after days.

“ But yet, now living, fain would I
That someone then should testify,
Saying, ‘ He held his pen in trust
To Art, not serving shame or lust.’
Will none ? Then let my memory die
In after days ! ”

 

EDWARD WHITE OF THE INDIA HOUSE, AND A NEW
PORTRAIT OF LAMB.

BY Mrs. G. A. ANDERSON.

OVERS of Charles Lamb have much to be thankful
for in the fact that both his school and his place
of business were well—known public institutions, with
accurately kept registers of names and dates accessible
to anyone who takes the trouble to inquire after them.
Look, for example, at the end of Lamb’s Will to see
who witnessed it, and you find a solitary name, that of
Vincent Rice, of 3, Rufford’s Row, Islington. (The
fact, by the way, of there being only one witness, made
it necessary for Willis Henry Lowe, of the India House,
to appear before the probate officials a week or two
after Lamb’s death and swear to his signature.) Who
was Vincent Rice P His name is not to be found in the
index of any edition of Lamb’s letters or works ; indeed,
so far as I know, his is never mentioned by Lamb. But
the interested student can quickly discover that he was
both at Christ’s Hospital and at the India House, and
had thus a double claim on Lamb’s acquaintance.

So with many other names mentioned casually by
Lamb in his letters. There is real satisfaction in being
able to place them, either as school—fellows, or as
colleagues, to know their age, their father’s name and
position, what salary they were getting, and when they
retired, or died, or went to China. Some of these
details are nearly always forthcoming with a little
trouble.

Now a name we come across several times is that of
Edward White. The first mention of him by Lamb is
in a letter written in October, 1822, to John Howard
Payne, then living in Paris. Lamb introduces White
(who is going to that city) as “ a friend and fellow-clerk
of mine . . . a good fellow,” and says he “ knows Paris
thoroughly and does not want a guide.”

On looking up the record book at the India Office
we find that White must have been considerably younger
than his friend, since he was not “ placed on the Estab-
lishment,” as they termed it, until April 20th, I804,
twelve years after Lamb’s appointment. He was in
Lamb’s special department, the Accountant’s office,
where most of Lamb’s particular cronies worked, albeit
there were friends of his scattered all over the building——
Rice in the Transfer office, Brook Pulham in the Treasury
office and William Evans in the Baggage Warehouse, to
name only a few.

White remained at the India House for some years
after Lamb was pensioned off (in March, 1825), and
the next news we have of him is a note which Lamb
wrote to him in August, 1827, from his leisured retreat
at Enfield, 0n the subject of a letter ambiguously
addressed to “ Mrs. Hazlitt,” for which there were three
possible claimants. Again, White is mentioned by
Lamb in December of that same year in a letter to
Leigh Hunt, who was in quest of a portrait of Elia
to embellish his forthcoming book ” Lord Byron and
some of his Contemporaries.” “ As to my head,” writes
Lamb, “it is perfectly at your or anyone’s service;
either Meyer’s or Hazlitt’s, which last (done fifteen or
twenty years since) White of the Accountant’s Office
has ; he lives in Kentish Town : I forget where, but is
to be found in Leadenhall daily.” And he adds in a
postscript ”H’s is in a queer dress. M’s would be
preferable ad populum.” Leigh Hunt probably thought
so too, for it was the Meyer portrait which figured in
his book.

This is as much as we can gather about White from
Lamb himself, but in the ”Reminiscences of C. W.

 

  

APRIL, 1924.]

THE BOOKMAN. 19

 

 

Cope, R.A.,” we find
the following:
“ Amongst my early
friends was Edward
White. Harrison and
I first met him in Paris
(September, 1832), and
saw much of him both
at the Louvre and at
our rooms in the Hotel
VVagram. He was an
excellent judge of art,
and a diligent amateur
painter when disen—
gaged from the East
India House. He was
intimate with Charles
Lamb, and at his
weekly soirees he was
a constant guest, and
met there many of the
literary celebrities.”

25;, Such was the extent
of my information
about Edward White,
when one day, delving

 

also thought he could
recollect the name of
the artist. White——
VVhite—he felt pretty
sure the name was
White. “ Oh,” said I
at once, “Lamb’s
friend Edward White
of the India House was
an amateur artist;
could he perhaps be
our man? ” There we
had to leave it, Mr.
Milner promising to try
and recall the exact
name from among the
multitudes that were
crowding his memory.
Sure enough in a few
days I had a letter to
say that he was now
certain that the artist’s
name was Edward
White—Harrison, and
that he probably was
identical with Lamb’s

 

 

among the Lamb trea—
sures at Mr. Spencer’s
book shop in New

Oxford Street, I came ‘ ‘I H
across a pencil portrait, with the name Elia

across the bottom right—hand corner, but obviously

portraying Lamb long before the time had come for the

adoption of his pseudonym. It was executed on rough
drawing paper, bearing every appearance of age, and
was attached to a sheet of thin greenish paper, which
Mr. Spencer told me had been torn out of an album,
but so long ago he could not remember the particulars7
As a matter of fact the portrait had been mislaid for
twenty years or more, and had only just been unearthed
in a search for something else, so that I was the first to
have a sight of it. I was allowed to have it photo—
graphed, and also to take the original to the National
Portrait Gallery. There the Director, Mr. Milner,
whose memory for every drawing that passes through
his hands is prodigious, studied the Lamb sketch care—
fully, pronounced it, from its hard outline, the work of
an amateur, and certainly old, doubted whether it were
from the life, and showed me his reasons. Then he cast
his mind back to other sketches of a similar style in

fact he felt sure they were by the same hand, and

mounted on the same greenish paper——brought to him
for inspection some years ago by Mr. Ernest Leggatt
of the well—known firm in Cheapside. T 1115 Mr. Leggatt
used to make it a hobby, Mr. Milner told me, of buying
at auction sales any drawings which he thought might
be of possible interest for the Portrait Gallery: He
would leave them for Mr. Milner to select from at leisure,
and the rejected ones would then go back into some other
The album in question was among the unwanted
but as he recalled its appearance Mr. Milner

sale.
items,

Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. W. T. Spencer.

friend Edward White.
The hyphenated addi—
tion of Harrison rather
d a sh e d my spirits,
elated with the joy of discovery. But up they
went again when I recalled the fact that the Hazlitt
portrait was for some years in White’s possession. To
anyone who examines the pencil sketch it is clearly more
like the Hazlitt portrait than any other likeness of
Lamb. It is in fact the Hazlitt portrait reversed, and
put into everyday costume. Now what more likely
than that White, with the Hazlitt likeness constantly
before his eyes, and the pencil familiar to his hand,
should amuse himself by basing a sketch of his own upon
it, dressed as he saw Lamb clad every day ?

The drawing may have been put aside for years, but
when Lamb was famous as “Elia,” White would be
pleased to display it in one of his albums, and would
have added the name so that there should be no doubt
as to the identity of the subject. ‘

Of course this is all surmise, but there is enough
probability about it to make the sketch more interesting
than if no guess at the artist’s name were possible, while
the likeness itself, though hard in outline and amateurish
in execution, is pleasing, and emphasises the strength
of character noticeable in Lamb’s face. According to
Lamb’s contemporaries no portrait of him was really
satisfactory. This is always the case with mobile,
expressive faces, which light up in conversation and
settle into a melancholy expression in repose. For all
we know, this pencil sketch is a good representation of
Lamb as he was at thirty years old, and until some
evidence to the contrary is produced I shall continue to
believe that the man who drew it was his friend Edward
White of the India House.

Charles Lamb.

 

  

THE BOOKMAN.

[APRIL, 1924.

 

A PANORAMA OF

GERMAN BOOKS

BY HERMAN GEORGE SCHEFFAUER.

EGARDED as a precipitate of modern German
literature, the German bookshop, with its
astounding plethora of new publications, its revel of
highly individualised books—-—in form, colour and
contentsw-presents a Vision that is kaleidoscopic and,
as a true mirror of the times, chaotic. Yet this welter
of colour and ” book—art,” these countless self—assertive,
challenging new books, units, series and whole categories,
these galleries of art books, these echoes from other
lands in the shape of translations—all this reflects only
the feverish, uncertain groping for new life, for new
truth, for new dispensations. It furnishes an index to
the dualism and discord that gnaw at Germany’s soul
and spirit to—day. Economically the book torrent no
longer cascades over the rocks in the rapids of the
billionfold' paper mark. It now flows swiftly in the
even channels of the stabilised gold mark, and the daily
“ index—multiplicator ” of the Book Exchange has been
put aside like some instrument of nredia'val torture.
Even to the German (and every German is inured to
books far more than to newspapers), the literature of
today is a jungle rather than a garden.
battles or at least battle—fields. Books written in a
vibrant, nervous new variety of German clamour for

Books are

a lrearir g, they show their teeth or their wounds. Books
are .set ringing like bells, hooks send forth signals as
though with flags or torches to mankind, the Universe,
posterity, Eternity! Over it all shimmers the phos‘
plrorescent light of a new mysticism, of “ a searching for
God,” aird through it all goes the pother of fierce,
insistent debates with old institutions and old values
which still stand gibbering beyond Germany’s frontiers
as spectral survivors of the age before the war, brrt
which have become or are becoming atavistic here,
dethroned by the same implacable realities as confront
nation and people themselves.
amazing, the creative spirit it manifests, bewilcleringsw
this Gothic inwardrress and ascension that involves
titanic struggles with vast fragments of the classic and

The phenomenon is

academic spirit, or with plrantasms 0f the future.

Man, his Hr/h;7rsc/rrrrrng, Art as a national and
personal factor, find an inspired esoteric life or revival
in such books as “Deutsche Kunst und Art,” by
E. 1i. liisclrer (Sibyllen Verlag, Dresden), and in the
ample and fascinating work compiled by Ludwig
Benninghof'féJ‘ Gepragte liorm ” (Minted liorm), pub—
lished by the Hanseatische \r’erlag, Hamburg. Here
all that is characteristic in art, folk-lore or literature
is given in extracts, in the potential word and picture as
“ witnesses of our spiritual creative poWer.“

This inward—boring or backward or forward—looking
preoccupation with the spirit, with things abstract or
super—terrestrial, this flight from r rality is visible even
in a crisp, sceptic, collected mind like that of Thomas
Mann, a mind almost pedantic in its precision of
expression, its tortuous searching for the exact word, the
luminous phrase. Mann, who might in his externals
pass for an English MI’. or a youngish major, is lectur—
ing at present upon “ Occultlixperiences ”—77 a dread—
fully detailed yet poignantly disturbing account of an
evening spent at a spiritistic seance at the home of the

famous Count Schrenck—Notzing at Munich—Mann’s
own home. His latest book is the first part of “ The
Confessions of Adventurer Krtill,” a subtle study in
the juvenilra of one of the profiteer types of the time~—
a low (16 force in psychological presentation. Mann is
just completing another book, chiefly in dialogue!
“ The Magic Mountain ”—the study of a sick man in
the environment of an Alpine sanatoriurn.

Gerlrart Hauptmann, resting on royal laurels in his
handsome home at Agnetendorf in the Riesengebirge,
has also yielded, though only in fancy, to the perpetual
lure that coaxes‘ the German southward. He has.
recently published in Die Nam Rmzdsc/mu a long, elegaic
poem in classic measures, pitched in Capri, and called
“ Die Blaue Blume.” It is an adroit performance, but
despite its forced rapture and jocundity, full of con—
ventional echoes and figures, and covered with a patina
of dust even though it be marble dust. Hauptmann
is also being lured to the North, for he is to lecture
upon German literature at Petr ograd. All the news—
papers are full of tributes to Berries von Miinchhausen,
the ballad—writer, whose fiftieth birthday is approaching.
The. University of Breslau is to grant him an honorary
degree.

Arno Holz, the poet, the great leader of the German
naturalist nrovement of the eighties—nineties, recently
celebrated his sixtieth birthday, which brought great
abrrndarrce of honours and gifts upon him. The bleak
heavens compact of clouds of paper marks opened, and
his by no msans uncosy poet’s attic in Sclréineberg—
Berlin was flooded with crates of wine, delicacies, books,
specially dedicated portfolios of drawings by artist
friends. The municipality itself bestowed upon him
a handsome bonus in cash' and one of the universities
an honorary degree. His tinest present, however, was
the offer of a publisher to publish his collected works
in a superb edition. The autfror of “ Das Birch der
Zeit,” “ Die Dafnis—l.-ieder," “ Die Blech~schmiede ”'
(Tin—snrithy), “ lgnorabimus,” etc., sits anchored at
his desk like a recluse, filing away at his gigantic world—
opus, “ Phantasus,” of which many editions have
already appeared, each different. This cyclopearr poem
is written according to Irlolz’s individual verse forms
and arrangements, based upon his aversion to “ rnetrik "
“ rhythnrik,” The lines, long and
short, are all centred upon an axis in exact symmetrical
halves, and the huge folio pages are thus splendcnired
with decorative pat terns like those of vases or trees, each

and his passion for

line being carefully pasted into place on a narrow strip

of paper. l'folz, so little known abroad, is irrdubitably
one of the most remarkable poetic individualities of
our day. 'l‘l'rere are many who regard him as a likely
candidate for the Nobel prize for literature.

Walter von Molo, a fertile and turbulent spirit, >artlr—
bound with a warm VVhitmanian broadness, yet for
ever oscillating between the stars, has become one of the
most popular of Gernran novelists and dramatists. He
is essentially the kind of inspired writer whom the
Germans invest with the ennobling name of Dre/2167',
whether he work in prose or verse. Von Mole as a
writer is full of power and tire. His wonderful mastery