LAND & WATER 
December 7, 1916 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
OF all living poets, William Watson stands most 
surely in the central stream of national achieve- 
ment. He has never been content with slip-shod 
expression or mistaken fervency for inspiration. 
Here, as one would expect, his interesting essay in literary 
criticism. Pencraft (John Lane, 3s. 6d.), is " A Plea for 
the Older Ways," a plea for the normal, for the perfect 
expression as well as the impassioned thought. His con- 
fession of literary faith may be given in his own words, in 
■which he argues against Browning's " less is more " 
doctrine as apphed to art. " Art is not morals, in which 
the will may sometimes count for more than the deed, 
and the widow's mite may overtop the rich man's 
munificence ; nor is it a relapsing in which even faith 
without works may perhaps be allowed some measure 
of spiritual efficiency." Works impassioned by faith, 
irradiated by truth, but above all, consummated by 
power, are its only stepping stones to salvation." 
pressions it receives. In these " Further Pages " we 
have impressions, equally vivid, of his childhood and of 
such comparatively recent events as the death of King 
Edward vH. Very often they record an emotion so 
very personal that one reads of it with a sense of caves- 
dropping. Besides the author, one meets in the book 
such interesting persons as General Gordon, F. W. 
Robertson, the great preacher, Henry Boyd Carpenter, 
his poet-brother, and John Henry Shorthouse, the 
novelist. But the study which will attract most interest 
is that of the Emperor William, who evidently set himself 
with all his powers of fascination to show his best 
nature to the Bishop. He certainly made him believe, 
at any rate up to the time of the last interview in June 
1913. when the Bishop detected signs of a growing fear 
in his Imperial friend, that he wished to go down to history 
as a Keeper of Peace. Dr. Boyd Carpenter writes of his 
" bitter disappointment " in a frank, interesting way. 
" The man who never broke his word." In these 
words J. M. Barrie introduces his friend and " producer " 
in the Appreciation which he contributes to Charles 
Frofnnan : Manager and Man, by Isaac F. Maccosson 
and Daniel Frohman (John I^ne, 12s. 6d. net). He 
might equally well have called him in a phrase which he 
and, as we gather from this book, Frohman between 
them have made familiar in every home in England and 
the United States, " the boy who would not grow up." 
For it is as a great lovable boy with an overmastering 
passion for the stage that Charles Frohman appeals to us 
throughout this astopishing and fascinating chronicle of 
his theatrical enterprises. His love of sweet things, his 
joy of spending, the naivete of his tastes and ambitions, 
his fondness for a practical joke, his shyness and his 
simplicity, all tell the same tale. At the end, when tliis 
" hyphenated " American, who loved England, was 
smilingly awaiting the death to which his German cousins 
sent him on the Lusitania, his sense of kinship with Peter 
Pan evidently inspired his last words : " Why fear 
death ? It is the most beautiful adventure of life." 
There is, I think, in one of the Roundahoid Papers, a 
passage in which Thackeray describes his fondness for 
' The Play," and expresses indignation with the lack of 
understanding which anyone would show who should 
ask : " What play ? " trohman, with all his knowledge 
of its more sordid aspects and with the kind of intimacy 
that is supposed to prevent a valet from regarding his 
master as a hero, ever seemed to be inspired in a sub- 
limated fashion with this romantic spirit of the stage. 
There are many people who have a sufficient share of 
this feeling to enjoy a \'isit to a theatre for its own sake, 
quite apart from what they are likely to see there, and 
to all wlio thus love " The Play," this intimate account of 
the English and American stage for the last twenty 
years or so will have a strong appeal. It may come as a 
shock to some English playgoers to know that r6les which 
they associate particularly with English actors and 
actresses are in other peoples' eyes more properly associated 
with American performers. First impressions count for 
so much on the stage. But, persons apart, the book is so 
full of theatrical adventure, theatrical lore and theatrical 
anecdote that it cannot fail to be a delight to those who 
are or who have been stage-struck. They will make the 
engaging acriuaintanceship of Charles Frohman, the least 
advertised of the great advertisers of the age. 
Dr. W. Boyd Carpenter's Further Par/s of mv Life 
(Williams and Mor^ate, los. 6d.), is a miscellany of 
experiences, chiefly in friendships and acquaintanceship, 
garnered from a .life particularly rich in such spiritual 
adventures. Dr. Boyd Carpenter has an impressionable 
natuie of the kind that can retain and reproduce the im- 
Those who would know anything of the soul of a 
people must learn something of its songs. Florence 
Randal Livesay's translations of the folk-songs of Little 
Russia under the title of Songs of Ukrainia (J. M. Dent 
and Sons, 3s. 6d. net), give us an opportunity of learning 
something of the inner thoughts and aspirations of the 
purely Slav population of Ukrainia and Ruthenia. 
Though it is not easy to appraise the value of these 
translated verses as literature, it is possible to reahse 
from them the justice of Mr. Paul Crath's claim that 
" the singing of the Ukrainian is a precious pearl in the 
common treasury of mankind." There is the history of 
an ever-oppressed but ever free-souled people in these 
songs — many of which appear to have been collected 
from self-exiled Ukrainians in America. 
Among the many young men of promise who have 
laid down their lives for their country during the last 
two years, William Noel Hodgson is bound to leave a 
bright and particular memory behind him. There is a 
dramatic completeness about the story of his twenty- 
three years which must appeal to the least imaginative. 
A happy and hopeful educational career was broken 
short when he left Oxford at the outbreak of war to take 
up his commission in the Dcvons. In October 1915 
he was awarded the Military Cross and received pro- 
motion. On July ist of this Vear he was killed. Three 
days previously he had written his little Litany, " Before 
Action," of which the last verse runs; 
" I, that on my familiar hill 
Saw with uncomprehending eyes 
A hundred of Thy servants spill 
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice. 
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword 
Must say good-bye to all of this : — 
By all delights that I shall miss 
Help me to die, Lord." 
Now all that remains of him here is this slender volume 
Verse and Prose in Peace and War (Smith, Elder and Co., 
2s. 6d. net), of which I would not willingly spare a line, 
so vividly does it seem to express Young England called 
from sport to graver things, and meeting the call with a 
joyous faith and a courage that endures even unto death. 
How many of those to whom the Claimant, Arlhut 
Orton, Old Bogle, and Dr. Kcncaly were once household 
names could now give a connected account of the great 
cause celihrc of the Sixties ? A generation that knew 
not the pseudo Sir Roger Tichbornc or the Magna Charta 
Society, which gave to Dr. Kcnealy for a time a polit- 
ical importance even greater than Mr. Pembcrton 
Bilhng's, has only learnt from those who were con- 
temporary with the events, a very garbled and frag- 
mentary version of the great affair. ^Yet it forms not 
[Coniinued on page 42) 
