More of the "Titanic", Filson Young

8/3/2019 More of the "Titanic", Filson Young

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584 T H E B O O K M A N

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M A R Y A N T I N INE D WA R D E V E R E T T H A L E ' S L I B R A R Y

this Statement, but I can only go on repeating it, since it is the t ru th . Ihad noplan when I began. One day I foundmyself thinking of the t ime I went toschool in Polotzk, and Iwrote about that .Another dayI kept seeing the little girlsI used to play with, and I put them in.Then it was the market-place thathaunted me, or the Dvina gurgled in myears all night, or there came into mymind a tale the women used to tell whilepicking feathers of awinter evening. Iput these things down just as they came,and sogrew thebook. When it came toputt ing these fragments together, I foundthat they fitted wonderfully well, considering their haphazard origin. A little rearrangement of the loose sheets, an in t roductory sentence here, a connectingphrase there, and the story fell intochapters that named themselves. I neverknew what Iwasgoing to do till it wasdone. The only part ofthe book thatwas done consciously, with the sense thatsuch and such matters ought to be included, were the first four cha pters .

These were writ ten last ofall, when Ihad exhausted my unprompted reminiscences. It is the only part ofthe booktha t I worked over . The rest, especiallythe American chapte rs , I dipped up fromthe bottom ofmy inkwell ."

There seems to be no aba tement in theproduc t ion of books about the ill-fatedTitanic and the lessonsMore of the tha t are to be learned"Titanic" from the disaster of lastApr i l . L a s t mon th were fe rred tothe book by Mr. L a w r e n c eBeeseley. A noth er work onthe samesubject has just come from the pen ofMr. Fi lson Young, the exceedingly ta len ted au thor ofThe Sands of Pleasure.Again there isAn Unsinkable Titanic,which is the work of J. Be rna rd Wa lke r .This last named book has an interest inthe fact that the author is the editor ofth e Scientific American. Mr. Wa lke rw as a civil engineer by profession, andentered the field of journalism as the re-


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C H R O N I C L E A N D C O M M E N T 585

J . B E R N A R D W A L K E Rsuit of frequent contributions to technicalmagazines written in leisure hou rs. H ehas been the editor of the ScientificAmerican for the past seventeen years,during which most of the more impor-tant engineering articles appearing in thepublication have been written by him.He has made a special s tudy of navalaitairs, and is a firm believer in the con-trolling influence of sea power in shapingnational destinies. H is writings on thenavy and the merchant marine date from"a special edition of the Scientific Ameri-

ca n on the Navy brought out during theSpanish Am erican W ar. " Nearly halfa million copies of that edition were sold.The present book on the Titanic is dueto the widesp read interest aroused by hisarticles explaining the causes which ledto the loss of the ship. Ma ny personswe think will be surprised to learn fromMr. Walker's book that the Great Eas-tern, possibly the most lamentable fail-ure in the history of ship construction,was nevertheless the safest big ship everbuilt.


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586 T H E B O O K M A N

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M A R Y A U S T I N "

"I shall never write another book dealing with the Westthat is, with theprimitive life of theMary W est," said M ary Au s-Austin tin the othe r day whendiscussing her new workwith a friend. " I feel that the W est w asgenerous to me in material, and I do notmean to say that the primitive life of thedesert has ceased to interest me, butmerely that I have written as muchabou t it as I care to. O th ers will findmaterial in the far West no doubt, foralthough the rough life of the miningcamps and the cattle ranches is alreadytinged with civilisation in almost everylocality there still remains enough thatis pictu resq ue to furnish a library fullof books ." M rs. Au stin went on to explain that she feels that she has foundher field in the more complicated life ofthe cities. Following her book of essays,Christ in Italy, is A Woman of Geniusdescribed as a novel of temperamentrather than one of locality, which is tobe issued this mo nth. In the wo rds of

the au thor , A Woman of Genius is " thestory of the struggle between a geniusfor tragic acting and the daughter of aCounty Clerk, with the social ideal ofTaylorvil le , Ohianna, for the vil la in."

Daz'idee Birot is the sixth novel byRene Bazin to be pubhshed in this country. M . Bazin has beenRene in the Un ited States asBazin one of the Fre nch Com mission to the Cham-plain Terc enten ary. H e is one of thevery few French wri te rs whose worksare brought out in this country at thesame t ime that they appear in France.Davidee Birot is described as a lovestory of a young French girl who becomes a school-teacher in a little town inArdesie through an intense desire to beof service. Th is book deals with the social problems introduced by the prominence of labour unions . Its plot largelydepends upon a str ike of miners whothrong the town in Ardesie , whereDa videe 's school is. M . Bazin was bornin A ngers in 1853. H e was a delicateboy and spent most of his early years onan An gevin farm . As he grew up hestudied and practised law at Angers andfor many years held a professorship ofcriminal law in the universi ty there. H isnatural inclinations were l i terary and hewas driven toward novel writ ing by hisintense feeling that the run of Frenchnovels misrepresented the French people, part ly through their concentrat ion onthe life of Pa ris . H e set himself to reveal the n atur e of th e people , of theFrench provinces,a section of Frenchlife which he felt had been strangelyneglected. H e aimed to show Franc e andthe world that his people had depth andsimplicity of nature, and were at root anintensely moral people. Pa rt ly becauseof this some of his earlier novels turnedmainly on religious questions,and sincehe was a Catholic, a large section of hisAm erican public has been CathoHc. H ehas set forth his literary creed in thesewords: "Our nove l is t s , by occupyingthemselves with this unrepresentativepart too exclusively, have created andspread a conception of our country which


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C H RO xN IC LE A N D C O M M EN T 57

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is not only inadequate, but is also essentially false. If I hav e held myself resolutely aloof from the society novel, whichI might have done, perhaps, as well asanother, it is because I desire to portraysweetness, pu ri ty and beauty of F renchfamily life, and not to perpetuate a grosslibel upo n it. " I am also anx iou s to dispel the illusion that the French are a godless people. If I make a gre at deal ofreligion in my novels it is because rel igion plays an important role in ourl ife ."

True to the spirit shown in her novels.Gene Strat ton-Porter spends her wholelife close to her trees,Gene Stratton- bird s and mo ths. M rs .Porter Po rter ' s home is a t Geneva, Indiana, which ison the edge of the great LimberlostSwamp, of which she has writ ten inFreckles, The Harvester, and A Girl ofthe Limberlost. She spends as much ofher time as she can take from her writing wandering in the woods making morefurred and feathered friends and getting


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:88 THE BOOKMAN

G E N E S T E A T T O N - P O R T E R

better acquainted with the ones she already has made. M rs. Po rter rarelyvisits the big cit ies. M rs. Po rter wasborn close to the Limberlost swamp andlearned to love na tur e from h er father.All of her early work was purely naturewriting, illustrated by her own photographs, but her greatest popularity camewith her novels. In one of the few interviews that she has given she said,"The only way to love nature is to liveclose to it until you have learned its pathless travel, growth and inhabitants as youknow the fields. You must begin at thegate and find your way slowly, else youwill not hear the great secret and see thecompelling vision. How many peopleknow anything about mo ths? The re are

trees you never before have seen, flowersand vines the botanists fail to mention,and such music as your ears cannot heare lsewhere ." Fro m the t ime tha t Mrs.Po rte r mad e her close acquaintance w iththe woods she has always considered themoths the very essence of midsummerthe crow n of the season 's beau ty. InA Girl of the Limberlost she shows thiswhere one of the characters asks theteacher : "Come on, Miss Teacher , whatis the boiled-down, double-destilled essence of Ju ne ? Give i t to us stron g."Th e author m akes the heroine reply, "T hebirth of these big m oths ." "Yo u' l l do,"is the answer, "June is June, not becauseit has bloom, birds, fruit, or flower exclusive to it alone. It 's half Mav a nd


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C H R O N I C L E A N D C O M M E N T 589half July in all of them . Bu t as I figureit, it 's just June when it comes to thesegreat velvet-winged night moths whichsweep its moonlit skies, consummatingtheir scheme of creation and droppinglike a bloomed out Sower."

A good many persons will no doubtbe surprised to see in The Sign at Sixa detective story from"The Sign the pen of Stew art Ed -at S ix" wa rd W hite . ^ As a matter of fact Mr. Whitehas long been keenly interested in thiskind of fiction and possesses a soundknowledge of his Gaboriau and hisDo yle. Seve ral years ago, in collaboration with Samuel Hopkins Adams, hewro te The Mystery, a gruesome and baf-fling story of the sea. Th is does not inthe least imply that Mr. White has forsaken the field that he has made so decidedly his own. The Last Frontier, abook which is the result of his hun tingtrip in Africa a year or so ago, is announced for publication this autu mn . Inthis work he has undertaken to answerthe simplest questions. H ow does Africalook ? What is i t nearest l ikeArizona ?Surra y? Upper New Yo rk? Canada?IMexico? Th e ma jority of read ers, M r.White th inks , want something by whichthey can learn the countrycan associateit with something they know. The LastFrontier is an attempt to meet this want,to tell the reader just how the authorfound Africa.

The fact that The Mystery was a collaboration will probaijly cause mostreaders to regard The Sign at Six asMr. White 's firs t real attempt to compete in the field of what may generallybe described as "de tect ive " fiction. Ifthe departure is merely temporaryitvery probably iswe have only commendation for the book, which is an excellent one of its kind . If, ho we ver, itcould possibly indicate that the author ofThe Silent Place is seriously considering striking out permanently in a newvein, no comment could be harsh enough.As a re laxat ion from more importantw o rk . The Sign at Six is both pardonableand praisew orthy. Bu t there are in this

country to-day a dozen men who canwrite that kind of a book of equal meritand interest. On the other hand, thereare very few, if any, who can maintainthe general high level which has markedMr. White 's work since The BlazedTrail won him a distinctive place in contemporary American l i tera ture .^ It is the province of the literary magazine to give full credit to a book of particular cleverness. It isThe Capture of also such a ma gaz ine'sM. L. G. prov ince to give generou sacknowledgment to anyparticularly effective scheme of literaryexploitation. T he best adve rtised bookof recent years has been Mr. Johnson'sStover at Yale, and throughout the wholecampaign there has never been a linelacking in dignity . Th ere has been agood sound lesson in the advertising oftha t book. It has shown that there isnothing unworthy in exploitation itself,but that the fault lies in using a poorquality and applying unfair methods.Another book that has been advertised,not quite so legitimately, but still withconsiderable cleverness, is To M. L. G.Most of our readers will recall the storythat was sent out broadcast to pave the

way for this book. Th e auth or took theman uscript to a Ldn don publisher. Shewas heavily veiled and generally shroudedherself in m ystery . Th e novel told howa woman, brought up in New York theatrical life, met a British army officerand loved him, but would not marry himuntil he knew all about her life. Th isshe described in a book, rather than aletter, so th af if he read it, and then didnot want her, he need never reply. ToM. L. G. was published last February.Three months afterward,all this is according to the note sent out by theAmerican publisher of the booktheauthor went travelling in Spain. "M . L.G." meanwhile was in another country.He happened to read reviews of the bookin newspapers and magazines, cabled fora copy, read it, and then hastened toEngland, where he had last seen the author, whom he had deeply loved, but whohad refused him without giving him areason. Th e book explained all that he

More of the "Titanic", Filson Young

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