| There
is one question in which the Canadian reading public
and the Canadian writer have a common interest, that
is the art of bookmaking in Canada. Every one knows
what the Canadian book of a few years ago was like.
I have had something to do with the publication of a
few Canadian books, and I know with what a pained surprise
the suggestion that the old-fashioned Canadian book
was not a perfect example of the art was received by
one of our publishers. "What!" he exclaimed,
"do you want anything better than that?" at
the same time producing a copy of somebody or other's
speeches bound in that peculiar cloth that seems to
have broken out into goose pimples. The cover was warped
and fitted the pages like a charity coat, and it was
labelled like a grocer's cannister, but to the astonished
publisher it was a sample of the best he could do, and
he was satisfied with it. But there has of late years
been great improvement in the art of bookmaking in Canada,
and although there is room yet for advancement I hope
it will not be long before we can show as well made
a book as our neighbors. Not that I would advise our
publishers to take American books as models of what
books should be. The Americans, it is true, print attractive
books, and occasionally beautiful ones, but they are
too fond of what is merely pretty, and often the attractiveness
of their work wears off speedily and leaves one with
a sense of the commonness of the design. Their ordinary
work will not compare with English work of the same
class, and the best English work remains unrivalled
in the world. There is a style about the issues of a
good English house that one can see nowhere else. It
is the result of experiment and experience since the
fifteenth century; and it is not to be wondered at,
when one thinks of the thousands of handicraftsmen who
have been trained during these centuries, that English
books are the best in the world. So it is rather to
England that our publisher should look for his models;
it is from them that he should study the nice distinction
which governs the way in which the type should be set
upon the page, the balance of margins, the manner of
lettering and all of the many nice points which go to
make a perfect book. The use of cloths for binding which
have smooth surfaces and pleasant tints, and papers
which are neither hard nor brittle, will add much to
the pleasure of a lover of books. It is a pleasure to
own a book whose cover will not scream owing to its
roughness as you take it down from your shelves, and
whose print will not appear after a half an hour's reading
to be so many points of sand pricking the eyes and fatiguing
the brain.
S.
New
Zealand appears to be the paradise of the philosopher
and the poor man. It is said that there are no rich
men there, and no poor, and the laboring man is king.
They have a prime minister, Mr. Ballance, who is taking
every measure possible to confirm and perpetuate this
admirable state of things. The sale of public land has
been stopped, and it is law that no more of it shall
pass from the public ownership forever. It may be let
only upon leases of short duration. The premier is endeavoring
to carry a land bill under which no man may possess
more than 2,000 acres of land, under penalty of five
years' imprisonment for false declaration. "With
the exception of a short line from Wellington to Palmerston,
all the New Zealand railways are in the hands of the
government, and it is the premier's ambition to see
the state in possession of all mines, factories and
steam transit lines." Of the two houses of parliament,
the lower is purely democratic, the members being elected
on the "one man one vote" principle. The upper
house is the only place where the plutocrat holds any
vestige of power, and Mr. Ballance is taking measures
to "fix" that by getting some stout democrats
and workingmen added to the present number. On the whole,
what with land acts, coal mine acts, factories acts,
lands income assessment acts and many more acts, it
seems to be rather difficult in New Zealand for a man
to line his pocket with very much "unearned increment."
I think we had better emigrate. The continent of America
is getting too full of practical politicians and railway
magnates to be a fit place for any simple and honest
man to live in.
L.
In
Miss L. Munroe's Chicago letter to The New York Critic,
she mentions the following amusing and also pathetic
condition of things in connection with the selection
by the local committee of pictures for the fair:—
"The
fact that seven-eighths of the paintings submitted were
rejected foretold a large amount of discontent, but,
for the most part, the disappointed have remained discreetly
silent. A large proportion of them hailed from small
western towns, where the opportunities for study are
somewhat restricted, and I am told that great was the
merriment of the jury during its three-days' session.
Ambitious farmers' daughters sent in their greatest
efforts, painted entirely by hand, and teachers of drawing
in Podunk contributed landscapes which had been the
admiration of despair of their pupils. There is a touch
of pathos, which Mary Wilkins alone has probed, in these
restricted lives—hopeful, industrious, ambitious,
plodding along in ignorance of the fact that their labor
is fruitless. If they would only be content with the
applause of their neighbors, the average of happiness
in the world might be a trifle higher.
"From
a ranch in Texas comes a picture which showed a genuine
honest endeavor on the part of the painter to reproduce
something that he knew and loved. A note accompanied
it, in which the man wrote that he had never had the
opportunity for instruction, but that he had worked
conscientiously for many years in the hope of achieving
an end worthy of the effort. But this picture fell below
the standard, and the plucky Texan will have to endure
rejection. Another case which appeals less forcibly
to one's sympathy is that of a man who has the true
American push. He sent in a picture 20 feet long of
the capitol at Washington, painted from a photograph,
as the creator of this masterpiece has never seen the
building. His modesty also commends him to our admiration,
for he valued this amount of paint at the meagre sum
of $10,000.
"The
most amusing phase of the controversy resulting from
the selections connects itself with a prominent Chicago
painter who was on the jury. No less than six of his
works were among those accepted, and no other artist,
with the exception of one from Minneapolis, who was
also a member of the jury, approaches this number. When
asked for an explanation of the discrepancy, the Chicagoan
replied that 'the members of the jury were of course
exempt'—exempt, with their laurels still to win—exempt
and not ashamed to take advantage of the privilege!
Naturally it is only the small men of the jury who would
lay themselves open to such a suspicion, but it leads
one to ask why men of that calibre should be honored
with such a responsibility."
Though we
may smile at such a picture, the facts of the case go
to show that no matter how crude the standards may be
in the rural west, there is a strong impetus toward
culture of some kind, which will blossom some day into
something worthy of the new world. Miss Munroe's letter
is a clever one, and interesting, though her remarks
on Mr. Field's new volume of verse savors perhaps too
much of the critical for a correspondence column.
Turning to
the London (England) letter in the same periodical,
we also get another picture. This time it is contemporary
literary conditions across the water. The picture is
drawn by Mr. Arthur Waugh, who appears as London correspondent
for the first time, and shows, indeed, if it be a true
one, but a sorry outlook for English literature of the
near future. He says:—
"It is
proverbially easy to deal in paradoxes, and proverbially
futile. Yet, at the risk of being accused of facile
futility, I firmly believe that the winter from which
the literary world is just emerging has been at once
as stagnant and as suggestive as a student of development
could desire. Little has happened, but much is astir.
'A storm is coming, though the woods are still.' The
books of the season have been uninspiring enough. No
great creative work of fiction has been issued for months;
readers who, during the corresponding weeks of 1891-2,
were indulged by three vastly engrossing novels, 'Tess
of the D'Urbervilles,' 'The Little Minister' and 'David
Grieve,' have been forced to content their imaginations
with captivities in the Mahdi's camp, or jogging journeys
through Connemara in a governess cart—things good
enough in their way, but still not literature.
"The
fact is that the whole field of literary activity has
been paralyzed by the death of Tennyson. Authors themselves
are probably unconscious of the cause of their want
of alacrity; but the cause is there all the same. Literature
is left leaderless; there is a sort of restless discomfort
in the air; we have not yet settled down after the blow.
Memory and attention are still centred on the loss which
the world of letters has sustained. Throughout the winter
the demand for Tennyson's work has kept printers and
booksellers busy; the monthly bulletins of a certain
literary journal show that the interest of the reading
public has been almost entirely retrospective—every
one has been opening once more the familiar green covers
to whose contents the final "Finis" has been
written. For a few weeks after the laureate's death
the air was full of suppressed excitement and animation;
it seemed as though the prospect of a change in the
literary kingship were to give a new impetus to poetry.
But the moment passed; no new laureate was appointed;
a calm followed, but it was the calm of stagnation.
Literature seemed at a standstill, and a new home rule
bill was far more interesting to the man in the street
than the reminiscences of a country squire or a rural
dean. I recently saw a letter from one of our leading
publishers, complaining that during the week in which
Mr. Gladstone moved his bill the sale of books declined
to one-third of its normal quantity. Small wonder, then,
that the book of the season was the confession of a
political spy.
"And
yet, I think, it has been a suggestive season, if a
stagnant one. Literary activity must be fed by current
events; if the home life is dull and inanimate the inspiration
is certain to be sought abroad. And so the past winter
has found English literature turning to the continent
for aid, and the latest movement is, I think, rather
ominously un-English.
"When
shall we hear an English song again?"
says
one of our youngest singers, and something may, perhaps,
be urged in support of this rather querulous complaint."
Mr. Waugh
goes on to say that "the minor poets have been
full of movement." "But their tone is so imitatively
French that they can scarcely be regarded as a phase
of English literature at all."
C.
Mr.
Gilbert Parker has had a most gratifying success in
the United States with his novel, "The Chief Factor."
Over 30,000 copies were sold in three weeks. His new
novel, "Mrs. Falchion," which will shortly
be published, will have a similar success, to judge
from the interest which is being taken in its issue.
S.
People
are generally a good deal interested in the habits of
famous authors as regards the act of composition, and
almost every writer has some peculiar trick of method
in composing which a biographer has studiously recorded.
We are told that Addison, in the old days, wrote as
he paced up and down a long room, where there was a
decanter of wine at each end, and the decanter may perhaps
account for the liquid mellowness and abundant good
humor of some of his pleasant passages. Wordsworth made
verses as he walked, and particularly as he paced the
length of a secluded path near his house at Rydal. Many
of his lines and stanzas must certainly have taken form
out of doors, for no indoor atmosphere could have inspired
their magical freshness and sunny purity of vision.
Tennyson did some work in his rambles, but probably
more as he sat with his pipe over the fire. He was sometimes
too lazy to write down what he composed, and many things
that might well have been preserved slipped from his
memory and were forgotten. "Many thousand fine
lines," he declared to a friend, "go up the
chimney." Poe, when the verse-making fit was upon
him—and it did seize him like a sort of convulsion—roamed
about his house biting his nails, muttering half aloud,
and fretting like a caged beast. Keats wrote easily,
without much exertion, and generally, if it was summer,
in the open air, lying upon a grassy bank or sitting
under a tree. I do not know whether it is really possible
for a man to sit squarely down to a table with a sheet
of paper before him and write poetry, but I have never
heard of anyone who was in the habit of doing it. The
commonest habit with imaginative writers of all kinds
is that of pacing backward and forward like Wordsworth
or Addison—minus the decanters. The gentle exercise
of walking relieves the restlessness of the nerves and
enables the imagination to concentrate itself upon its
subject.
L.
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