66 LONDON, E.C. AND QUERIES. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER (August 8) CONTAINS— 6 NOTES:-A Source of Massinger's Parliament of Love-Sir John Gilbert, J. F. Smith, and 'The Carne. NOTES ON BOOKS:-'Survey of London: St. Giles-in-the-Fields'-' Book-Auction Records'— THE NUMBER FOR AUGUST 1 CONTAINS— QUERIES:-St. Angus-Cairns Family-Reference Wanted-Seventh Child of a Seventh Child- REPLIES:-Sir Gregory Norton-Bence-Bon Gaultier Ballads'-Registers of Protestant Dissenters JOHN C. FRANCIS and J. EDWARD FRANCIS, Notes and Queries Office, Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane, E.C.; and of all Newsagents. THE LEADING CRITICAL WEEKLY. THE SATURDAY REVIEW Since its foundation, in 1855, the SATURDAY REVIEW has been noted for the vigour of its comments on POLITICS and AFFAIRS OF THE DAY, and for the brilliance. and independence of its criticism of LITERATURE, MUSIC, ART and the DRAMA. Its reviews of the latest books are contributed by critics who are authorities on their subjects, and are always varied and up to date. Signed articles of general interest by writers of the first rank also form a feature of each issue. 50 Illustrations, 6 Maps, 2s. 6d. NORTH DEVON and NORTH CORNWALL. 50 Illustrations, 6 Maps, 2s. 6d. SOUTH DEVON and SOUTH CORNWALL. 1/- THE MOTOR-CAR ROADBOOK and Hotels of the World. Visitors to Edinburgh, Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Worthing, Bournemouth, Exeter. Torquay, Paignton, Sidmouth, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Falmouth, The Lizard, Penzance, Newquay, Clovelly, Ilfracombe, Lynton, Bideford, Wye Valley. Severn Valley, Bath, Weston-super-Mare, Malvern, Cheltenham, Llandrindod Wells, Brecon, Ross, Tintern, Llangollen Aberystwyth, Barmouth, Criccieth, Pwllheli, Llandudno, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay, Bangor, Carnarvon, Beddgelert, nowdon, Bettws-y-Coed, Norwich, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Norfolk Broads, Buxton, Matlock, the Peak, Isle of Wight, and Channel Islands should use Darlington Handbooks, Is. each. Llangollen: DARLINGTON & Co. London: SIMPKIN'S. New York and Paris: BRENTANO'S. RAILWAY BOOKSTALLS AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. RECENT AMERICAN FICTION. A Stepdaughter of the Prairie. By MARGARET LYNN. Crown 8vo, 68. Daily News.-"Miss Lynn's book has something of the insight into the mind of a Ichild which is shown in Mr. Kenneth Grahame's writings, and pages there are that need not fear comparison, for beauty of style and sincerity of outlook, with the stories in The Golden Age. World.- "The feeling for nature throughout the book is that of a true artist, and it is embodied in singularly happy phrases." The Treasure. A Story of the American Home. By KATHLEEN NORRIS, Author of Mother,' &c. Illustrated. Globe 8vo, 48. 6d. net. MACMILLAN & CO., LTD., London. AN AMERICAN GLOSSARY. BY RICHARD H. THORNTON In two volumes. This work is commended to the attention of the custodians of Public Libraries. The price is 30s. net. 'An American Glossary' is not a Slang Dictionary, though of necessity it includes specimens of vulgar diction. The illustrative quotations, which are accurately dated, number 14,000; and of these more than 11,000 belong to the period before the Civil War. In some instances a word or phrase which might be thought purely American is traced to an Elizabethan or Jacobean origin. "The book is unusually well edited" (Spectator). "It will have a permanent value for the student of philology" (Aberdeen Press). "It is the most comprehensive and elaborate work which has yet appeared in its peculiar field" (N.Y. World). "It is an extensive and valuable work of much research" (Times). "It is quite as interesting as a novel, and, in places, as funny as a farce" (Standard). "It must always prove valuable to philologers who recognize the effectiveness of the historical method" (Scotsman). "It is an amazing collection of what are known as 'Yankeeisms"" (Daily Express). "We find throughout dated instances which show clearly the development of language, and give [this] careful and erudite work a status such as is accorded to the New English Dictionary" (Athenæum). FRANCIS & CO., 13, Bream's Buildings, E.C. T. Fisher Unwin's LIST. THE FUTURE OF WORK By L. G. CHIOZZA MONEY, M.P. Demy 8vo, cloth, 68. net. Mr. Chiozza Money's new book, 'The Future of Work,' deals with the present condition and probable future development of British industrial and social conditions. It is an important contribution to the discussion of the problems of labour. An attempt is made to approach economics in the light of the work of physical science, and to demonstrate that the solution of the labour problem is only to be found in national organization to secure the full use of scientific discoveries, and thus to give honourable work and honourable leisure to every capable member of the community. Other chapters deal with the Land Problem, the Minimum Wage, the Rise in Prices, and National and Naval Expenditure in relation to the National Income. THE STORY OF THE NATIONS. Each volume profusely illustrated. Cloth, 58. each. SERVIA. (Ask for THE BALKANS.) By W. MILLER, M.A. AUSTRIA. By SIDNEY WHITMAN. HUNGARY. By ARMINIUS VAMBERY. GERMANY. By S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. 66 DR. PUTNAM has a very good claim to the title (whether it has yet been publicly bestowed we do not know) of America's Complete Bookman." As the head of a publishing house held in honour on both sides of the Atlantic; as the writer of learned works on the history of authorship and publication in ancient and mediæval times; as the author also of several works in general literature which are not merely books of a season; and, not least, as a lifelong labourer in the cause of international copyright reform, he has, it will be owned, associated his name with the world of books past and present in many and honourable ways. It is a little paradoxical, therefore, to have to add that in these earlier memories there are, perhaps, fewer references to books than to any other object of human interest. We are told nothing of the adventures of his youth among the masterpieces of nursery or half-holiday reading, and the initiations of a later time are, for the most part, equally ignored. On his way to school, it is true, he once lost the Sallust which he was grinding up" in the train when the railway accident happened; but without the accident we might never have heard of his Sallust. Another historian, by the way, comes in for mention later, in circumstances less 66 THE ATHENÆUM exciting, but surely more regrettable. When at Göttingen, Dr. Putnam read through Gibbon's Rome' at coffee-time 66 in a beautiful quarto edition, which was big enough to hold on one page my breakfast platter with the cup and roll. This shows how prone to crime is youth, even in the best of men. It shows also, perhaps, the force of evil communications. For we recall that a year or so earlier Dr. Putnam (turned 16) had had for fellow-boarder in Paris a young gentleman from the States who was wont, being transatlantically long of limb, to balance himself on one leg of a chair, "with his feet gracefully poised on the mantelpiece." When Prof. Ollivier (cousin of the more famous Émile), to whom the chair and mantelpiece belonged, vented his anxiety so far as to ask the contortionist what, according to his understanding, the other three legs of the chair were for: Oh, certainly, sir," replied the young man they are to support the chair when nobody is sitting on it." 66 That story, however, occurs far on in the book. The earlier chapters recapitulate the family facts dealt with fully in the writer's memoir of his father, which we noticed with pleasure on November 9th, 1912. Like the rest of his countrymen, Dr. Putnam is an American "all the time," though strict law or international understanding would support the contention that, as a child of American parentage born on British soil, he could only acquire definite nationality by his own choice on coming of age. When Dr. Putnam came of age he was too busy to choose, or (as we rather fear) considered the act unnecessary. Nevertheless, the fact that he is a Londoner born and bred (so far, at least, as his fourth year nothing in the making of the man or the an important period) has not gone for book. It is a great start in life, even for an American citizen, to have Primrose Hill for the scene of earliest recollecyour tions of the open air and a world to play in. There were, no doubt, other ingredients of the dulcedo loci, encountered on exploring further or with the season's changes, the happy result of which is :— 66 The feeling of homelike reminiscence that comes to me in arriving from year to posed to connect with the first whiffs of that year at Euston or at Waterloo, I am diswonderful compound of soot, fog and roast mutton that go to the making of the atmosphere of London, and to the association of these odours with the earliest breathings of my infancy in the paternal cottage in St. John's Wood." Other paternal cottages and the life in them come into the author's record, as do a few of the celebrities seen at his father's receptions. These included the authors of Vanity Fair' and of 'The Wide, Wide World' the latter a popular success which drew tears from an earlier generation. He was taken to Sunnyside, sometimes in a pony-sleigh, to see Washington Irving, who once told him how in 1784, when he was but twelve months old, his nurse had stopped General Washington at the corner of Broadway, 169 and asked him to give his blessing to this little boy who had been named after him. Whereupon the Father of his Country took the little boy on his saddle and blessed him with due seriousness and imposition of hands. On hearing this "I looked up with interest at the head that had been touched by Washington, and then found myself perplexed at Mr. Irving's word that I should not see the spot on which the General's hand had rested. I spoke to my father afterwards about the incident, and he said, 'Why, you stupid, don't you know that Mr. Irving wears a wig?' Mention of Irving will recall to many the splendid way in which he acted when disaster befell the Putnam house in that year of crashes, 1857. The heavy reverse (though not Irving's part in mitigating its effects, which is fully told elsewhere) comes into Dr. Putnam's biography hecause it affected the course of his education and threatened to affect it still more. It thereby gave scope for a display of enterprise on the part of the eldest son of the house that was none the less credit 66 able for being just what you would expect from an American citizen of good promise. This citizen (aged 13) got his father to lease him about an acre of garden attached to the outlying cottage which the hard-hit family had moved into. From this farm, by raising cabbages, &c., with hired help in the form of a brother and sister (and an occasional Irishman for the heavier work), he cleared in two years, after paying rent and wages, $300, to serve as a higher education fund later. Meanwhile his education was proceeding on mutual terms in a good school, Greek to boys of his own age and older, where he taught (inter alia) Latin and managing to keep one lesson ahead of them throughout. There is, indeed, much and schoolmasters, then and later, though that is interesting regarding his schools curiously little about his own reading or impressions of literature. He assumes, to have been influenced by them, and to we fancy, that to have read books and have come for a time under the spell of different interests and studies, is the common experience of educated men, and that there is no need to talk of these things when you have other things to talk about. Certainly Dr. Putnam has things enough to talk about-both things which he has seen and things in which he has taken part. To the former class belong his very interesting reminiscences of the London of his youth (revisited at the age of 7 to inspect the Great Exhibition, and again at 16 as a solitary traveller) and his impressions of the growing political crisis in his own country between 1856 and 1860. In the latter year he was sent to Europe to seek advice in regard to ominous conditions affecting his sight. The Baron von Graefe, at whom he finally arrived in the ascent from expert to expert, seems to have borne out the poet's dictum that natures are not finely touched but to fine issues : 66 Although still a young man, he was at that time at the head of his branch of the profession in Europe. I can recall the impression made upon me by the beauty and piercing quality of his eyes. The whole face was fine, but the eyes and forehead were particularly noble.” 66 6 This was in Berlin. The previous six months had been spent in Paris, with much visiting of galleries and attendance of lectures at the Sorbonne in lieu of bookish study, which had to be sparingly indulged in. Such as was done would, by the straiter sect of Pharisees and fathers, we are afraid, be condemned as indulgence: Les Misérables,' and 'Notre Dame,' and Monte Cristo,' and infandum! Les Mystères de Paris' finished up" indeed! We wonder whether some belated visitings of compunction have caused Dr. Putnam to note at this point "the never-failing interest" of identifying "the streets and squares with the incidents," &c., thus speciously insinuating the idea of a serious purpose in these levities. At any rate, this one substantial confession in regard to reading comes out in a whimsical incident. A young compatriot who had acquired a business interest in a Nevertheless, as things were still going but heavily with the Union cause in the summer of 1862, he got his father to accept his view that the proper place for a fellow of my generation was with the men at the front"-and sailed for home. The men at the front were, for the most part, boys like himself; but this record goes to prove once again that they were boys of whom any fatherland might be proud. Even the almost sterilizing modesty of Dr. Putnam's account wherever he is himself concerned does not keep us from having a consistent impression of a young officer-courageous, cleanhearted, clear-minded, and competent in an unusual degree, even among the picked youth of his kind. Of the war memories which occupy nearly half the book we can only say that they are to be read, since they contain enough that is interesting and important in situation and action to constitute the total experience of a full life. Not the least animated the book Mr. A. F. da Faria, a Portuguese journalist who has made a special study of the Amazon rubber industry on the spot, writes of the atrocities described from his own experience by Mr. Woodroffe : no respecters of race. their own race, Americans, and Europeans In newspaper at home to which he wished and astir with incident is the chapter that my travels over some of the districts tra to contribute, but who knew nothing whatever about France, and almost no French, induced our student to take him about Paris and explain the sights and the sounds, he paying the travelling expenses "for both. The student was bewildered when the connected result appeared presently as a series of letters "From our Paris Correspondent," in which the man who knew no French 66 seemed to have skimmed the surface of Paris society. He gave the on dits of the street, the issues of the Legislative Assembly, the witticisms of the theatre foyer, the banalities of the students in the lobbies of the lecture-rooms, the précis even of the leading editorials, and a very fair survey of the condition of French art. Where it all came from I am still puzzled to remember. I began to feel as if I myself must have been a genius without knowing it. In leaving Paris he thanked me very cordially for my co-operation in journalism.' The chapters upon Dr. Putnam's student-life in Germany, including vacation wanderings as far afield as Prague, are packed with social observation and adventure well worth recording. On the subject of his country's war there was strong partisan feeling even in Göttingen. When he presented his letter of introduction to Ewald, the distinguished scholar opened it to the accompaniment of a savage soliloquy on the impending destruction of "Eure verfluchte Republik"! On the provocative use of an equivalent phrase at a painful moment ("Your damned Republic has gone up!" repeated a tall Englishman, braving a Bostonian's threat of a broken head if he did so, and flourishing his copy of The Times with a false report) there ensued a collective set-to of a whole classroom, in which every Germanic state and most European nations, besides Britons and Americans, were represented. In the upshot Dr. Putnam was fined one thaler by the academic authorities "for the privilege of 6 goes over the ground covered by the Dr. Putnam writes concisely, clearly, with accuracy. SOUTH AMERICA. my own country who had left Portugal only a few years before, left it with the bloom of health on their cheeks, who became physical wrecks, broken in spirit and without the slightest hope of escaping from a system which renders it impossible for them ever to save enough money to take them back home. to warn my fellow-countrymen of what they They have implored me, in the name of God, must expect if ever they venture into that inhospitable region." Mr. Woodroffe pays a heartfelt tribute to Sir Roger Casement and the English members of the Putumayo Commission for rousing him from the lethargy which THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMAZON, had crept over him when he himself had Mr. Woodroffe's unvarnished account of been enmeshed by the peonage system, the eight years which he spent among and encouraging him "to feel almost a the rubber-gatherers of that district, man again," and to break away from the bears the stamp of truth, which is made rather more than less obvious by his lack scene of his degrading servitude. much still remains to be done. Mr. of literary skill. His book is an interest- Woodroffe gives as a typical case that of ing record of the adventures of a "rolling stone,' a marine engineer, engaged by an English and, further, a notable supple-house" whose members are not Englishment to the grave indictment which has already been drawn against the majority of those engaged in the rubber traffic in this region. Its chief importance lies in the fact that it shows that the " peonage system-which is, of course, well known The Upper Reaches of the Amazon. By The Beautiful Rio de Janeiro. By Alured Ecuador: its Ancient and Modern History, be obliged to continue working, more heavily in debt than ever, due to the expenses incurred in capturing him.” He cannot even look for another situation, for the employers are all in a ring, and no one will employ a man who is in debt to another firm. Mr. Woodroffe himself fell into servitude through the failure of the firm which had sent him out to Iquitos against which he had no other complaint to make and through being thus left stranded without money in a very expensive country. His description of his sufferings is written in a vivid though untutored style, which carries conviction to the reader. We should add that his first-hand account of the methods employed for the extraction of Para rubber is both interesting and valuable; we do not remember any other account of the process from the pen of one who has himself worked as a cauchero. From the Upper Amazon to Rio de Janeiro is a far cry, and it is a very different picture of South American civilization which is reflected in Mr. Bell's pages on 'The Beautiful Rio de Janeiro.' He frankly tells us that his handsome volume is in the nature of an advertisement-that it was subsidized by the Brazilian Ministry and by certain magnates, who desired that English readers should be tempted to take the trip to Rio, and there look for themselves at the opportunities for investment. Recent events have passed a criticism on Mr. Bell's assertions of the staid and settled character of Brazilian government which renders it needless for us to say anything about them. But we have no objection to advertisement when it is done openly -as is not always the case in South America or elsewhere and when it is done so well as Mr. Bell and his illustrators have done it. Rio is without doubt one of the most beautiful cities in the world— the present writer's recollection of his first entry into the harbour at sunset remains among his strongest impressions of landscape and it is ably described in this volume with the aid of many coloured reproductions of admirable drawings. No one who goes to see Rio will regret either the trip itself or its culminating effect. But we are not so sure that it is prudent to leave any large sum to fructify within sight of the Sugar Loaf and the Corcovado. In 'The Amazing Argentine' Mr. Fraser gives with vivid truthfulness his impression of the scenery of Rio de Janeiro which we have just mentioned. Many attempts have been made to describe the first sight of a city which might have been built by Sindbad in his Valley of Diamonds, and the greater the endeavour, the more complete has usually been the failure to give in words any idea of the theatrical unreality which is the key-note of its appearance, especially as seen from the harbour. As Mr. Fraser says: "The picture was not like real scenery. It was like the realization of a disordered imagination. The ship dropped anchor, and the front part of Rio town, a tumble of fantastic red and yellow washed houses, was for all the world like a drop curtain to a stage. I felt we had slipped into another world—and I am not given to rhapsody.' Generally, the author, though not given to rhapsody, has a knack of word-painting which stands him and the reader in good stead at many points of his travels in the Argentine " Camp." Against some of his impressions of the city of Buenos Aires we must, however, raise a protesting voice. We ourselves have completely failed to find the "something that is weird in its fascination" which Mr. Fraser appears to have discovered. On the contrary, the newer parts of it at any rate, with their newer parts of it at any rate, with their stucco-plastered modern French and Italian architecture, have always seemed to us to reveal the cosmopolitan spirit of commonplace observable in most new towns all the world over. We must make our protest more loudly still against the assertion that "Buenos Aires is the most immoral city in the world." We have often heard stories-they are old ones of the superlative iniquity of the place. They are not true, and it is to our genuine surprise that we find the above assertion in a book generally full of valuable and accurate information. Though the lower classes, especially at one time, showed considerable ignorance of the advantages of legal matrimony, there is nothing in their moral nature which could be deemed vicious. There is no more vice to be found in Buenos Aires than in any great European city; and such as there is is chiefly of European origin. This tale of the immorality of Buenos Aires, prevalent as it is, must be classed with another, almost as often told, of the existence of a tax on bachelors over a certain age in the Argentine Republic. But while the latter is traceable to a jocular suggestion made many years ago in The (Buenos Aires) Standard, the origin of the former seems beyond discovery. Throughout the book is to be found the record of much that the author has seen with keenly observant eyes, set down in plain, easily readable language; and one can only wish that he had confined his statements to such matters as he saw and could test for himself. Indeed, every slight tendency to exaggeration or other inaccuracy in his pages bears internal evidence of being something which was told to Mr. Fraser, and which he evidently apparent accepted on account of its probability. Of such are his too sweepingly adverse criticisms of the Argentine character, a character which it is difficult for a stranger, and particularly for one of a Northern race, to fathom. The many faults and foibles of the Argentine are so very much, even obtrusively, on the surface that they cannot fail to be observed, while more sterling qualities which underlie the manifestations of his newly developed prosperity are often hidden beneath a superficial extravagance of affectation. Nevertheless, he has a very serviceable ballast of common sense, tempered by a kindly and sympathetic soul. There is, as Mr. Fraser has noticed, very little mañana" about him when he really wants 66 to do a thing, and frequently he shames many Europeans by his readiness to put himself out to render a disinterested service, be it to a friend or a stranger. There are depths of pride and other feelings in him which make it difficult for the Anglo-Saxon to gauge what an Argentine is likely to do in novel circumstances. Mr. Fraser has, however, generally arrived at well-founded conclusions on the present condition and marvellous prospects of "Amazing Argentina," which he deals with in the only way yet possible for the information of the masses of European people that is to say, as an almost newly discovered country. That this should be so is strange. We in England get considerably more than one-third of our grain and meat supplies from Argentina, yet the average man in our streets knows little more about Argentina than he did at the time when he was vaguely aware that it was connected with the Baring crash, and was the country to which Jabez Balfour escaped. There is need, then, for authors like Mr. Fraser to write books containing, as this mostly does, accurate information at first hand on Argentina, and these books should be widely read in view of the importance to the world of a country which is truly "amazing" in its actual production and the wealth of its latent resources. The volume is of handy size, clearly printed, and has a fairly serviceable Index. It includes also many good photographic illustrations. To the student of natural history Ecuador offers exceptional attractions, since, as Mr. Enock says, construct а "had nature designed to of her handiwork might conveniently be model, whereby the varying characteristics displayed within a measurable compass, such a purpose could scarcely have been better exemplified than in that part of the earth's surface embodied in a section taken "" ; across the Republic of Ecuador and in a preceding passage:— "Beneath perpetual snowfields lie fruitful valleys; perennial winter reigns above perpetual spring; the fruits of the tropics hang less than a day's march distant from Arctic plant forms; and the warm seas of the torrid zone bathe shores which slope upwards to the icy páramos.' Further on in the book, however, the reader who is moved to visit Ecuador may be damped by the contemplation of ledge-like mule paths overhanging precipitous declivities and the hotels of those parts in which the climate, while favourable to the lower forms of animal life, discourages the human inhabitants from expending any great amount of energy on such an indirect source of profit as scrupulous cleanliness. These drawbacks must be faced if one wishes to visit Ecuador, whilst, on the other hand, their existence tends to enhance the usefulness of the book under It is rich in valuable consideration. information regarding customs, natural and commercial conditions, and history. |