Something stronger than himself had always dominated over Hugh Lelacheur even from infancy. First it was a strong-willed father that interfered with his destiny at the death of his mother. Later a too well disciplined reasonableness always triumphed over his strongest desires to make him give up what he liked best for the second best. The best things came too late and kept his life a lonely one with few high lights and many shadows. The shadow’s turn into bitterness and a hardening of the heart when on a memorable June day, given over to memory and a reliving of his past life, it comes to him that he could offer his unloved wife a measure of spiritual companionship, as the only remaining second best thing that he had so far withheld.
“Reaching us twelve years after its first appearance in England. ‘Many Junes’ reveals the constant quality of Mr Marshall’s genius. It might as well have been written yesterday, as far as internal evidence discloses. To ‘Many Junes,’ therefore, we may turn for the reading of a novel in its writer’s best and most characteristic manner.” E. F. E.
“Archibald Marshall has told the story pleasantly and neatly enough to hold one’s interest; and yet he fortunately does not make one take the book seriously enough to object to some of the incredibilities in the plot.” J. C. L.
“Mr Marshall’s new novel is something of a departure from his customary type of fiction. This new book is in a different vein, one more serious and more sorrowful.”
“The present novel has the same attractiveness with the exception that it lacks that pervading humor which made some of Mr Marshall’s earlier books so delightful.”
“‘Many Junes’ is a rambling, disjointed series or sequence of episodes in the life of an extremely disagreeable Englishman. Hugh Lelacheur is a prig, a snob, and an egotist.” H. W. Boynton
“The characters all are vividly portrayed flesh-and-blood people. Altogether the story is admirably conceived and developed, and will afford agreeable entertainment to Mr Marshall’s readers.”
MARSHALL, ARCHIBALD. Peggy in Toyland. il *$2.50 Dodd
A story about a little English girl and her two favorite dolls, one of them made of wood, one a very handsome person known as Lady Grace. There is a teddy bear too, and one night in her dreams the three of them conduct Peggy to Toyland where she has many strange adventures.
“The illustrations have the charm of the narrative; a child would like both story and pictures.”
MARSHALL, ARCHIBALD. Spring walk in Provence. il *$3.50 (4½c) Dodd 914.4
The original preface to this book is dated August, 1914, but events immediately following that date delayed its publication. In an added word the author says: “I have been over the manuscript again and made a few alterations here and there, but have altered nothing that shows it to have been written five years ago.” Among the chapter titles are: Hills and olives; Flowers and scents; In old Provence; Aix; Les baux; Mistral; Saint-Remy; Avignon; The palace of the popes; Vaucluse; Villeneuve-sur-Avignon; Arles. There are illustrations and an index.
“A volume of finished excellence, written without affectation, but with due regard for the stateliness of English prose.” Margaret Ashmun
“Mr Marshall’s journeyings through Provence inspire us with a desire to follow his footsteps.” E. F. E.
“The accompanying photographs are good.”
“Mr Marshall has produced a book that is interesting and quietly entertaining, but it is not one that will add to his reputation as a writer of finished prose. The book bears the marks of hasty composition, of a haste that has resulted in an occasional slovenliness and a frequent awkwardness of expression.”
MARSHALL, EDISON. Voice of the pack. il *$1.75 (2½c) Little
Dan Failing, the grandson of a frontiersman, has spent all his life in cities. In his twenty-ninth year he finds that he is far gone with tuberculosis and is told that he has but six months to live. He feels a yearning toward the mountain country he has never known except through his grandfather’s stories and he goes out to the Cascades. An old mountaineer who remembers the elder Failing takes him into his home, altho he cannot conceal his disappointment in this weak descendant of a mighty man. But Dan wins his host’s respect almost at once, for he is a natural born woodsman. He regains his health and later wins the love of Lennox’s daughter, a girl called Snowbird. There is much of forest and animal lore in the story.
“Again and again Mr Marshall leaves his commonplace style to indulge in some really good writing, but as often he returns to the dull monotone.”
“The story in the main is merely a woodsman’s idyl, rich in poetic fancy—although stern in its fidelity to the truth as that woodsman sees it—and throbbing with reverent love for nature.”
“Mr Marshall’s story runs close to nature’s heart. Thru a most engrossing and intimate presentation of forest life, develops a fine love drama.” Joseph Mosher
MARSHALL, F. HENRY.[2] Discovery in Greek lands. il *$3.40 Macmillan 913.38
“Mr Marshall has written an attractive sketch of the chief results attained by excavations in Greater Greece since 1870. He treats the subject historically, starting with the age of Knossos and Mycenae, and describing under each period the main sites examined. He gives special chapters to temples, to the famous centres like Delphi and Olympia, and to isolated discoveries like the Sidon sarcophagi or the fine statues dredged up near Cerigotto in 1900–1.”—Spec
“Though so highly compressed as to be little more than a skeleton review, his narrative is not without interest. The illustrations that accompany the text add much to its value.”
“He provides a useful bibliography and a number of good photographs. As an introduction to a large and fascinating subject, the book is much to be commended.”
MARSHALL, ROBERT. Enchanted golf clubs. il *$1 (3½c) Stokes
At the war office he was “Major the Honourable John William Wentworth Gore, 1st Royal light hussars”; to his friends: “There goes good old Jacky Gore, the finest sportsman living!” But he despises golf. The beautiful American widow, Katherine Clendenin Gunter, with a fortune of £2,000,000 sterling, is an enthusiastic golfer. To win her he decides to play a match with a golf champion and enters into a compact with the ghost of a cardinal to use his enchanted clubs. With the ghost’s aid he wins the game, but not the lady.
“Of course what the author describes in his shallow plot could not take place, for the book is admittedly a burlesque. But as a burlesque it is too extravagant to be funny.”
MARTIN, EDWARD SANFORD. Life of Joseph Hodges Choate. 2v il *$10 Scribner
“The reader will promptly discover that this life of Mr Choate is not so much a biography after the manner of Plutarch as a compilation. The chief contributor, by far, is Mr Choate himself, whose writings, public and private, make up four-fifths, or more, of the book.” (Introd.) The first volume opens with Mr Choate’s own story of his boyhood and youth, a fragment of autobiography dictated by him in 1914 while convalescing from an illness. The editor says further, “I have borrowed—whenever it could be done to advantage—from newspapers, commentators, and eulogists. A series of scrap-books, kept for forty odd years and covering more or less Mr Choate’s experiences as ambassador, supplemented the long series of letters which could be drawn upon.” Volume 1 covers the period to the nineties. Volume 2 covers the years of ambassadorship to England and the period of the war, closing with a review of his life. There are interesting illustrations and an index.
“It is a difficult task to cover adequately the many-sidedness of such a man in a biography unless it is systematic and well rounded. The career of Mr Choate merits such a biography. It has not yet been written. When it is, Mr Martin’s interesting and richly filled volumes will be the biographer’s chief source book.” S. L. Cook
“The two volumes are a new thing in biography. They will constitute a classic in editing.”
“This is an ideal method of combining biography with autobiography.” R. R. Bowker
MARTIN, EVERETT DEAN. Behavior of crowds; a psychological study. *$2 Harper 301
The book is somewhat of a critical enlargement on Le Bon’s “The crowd.” Its conclusions are based on the latest research in analytical psychology originated by Freud. The author holds that “as a practical problem, the habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more serious menace to civilization. Events are making it more and more clear that, pressing as are certain economic questions, the forces which threaten society are really psychological.” (Foreword) As a remedy to this menace he suggests re-education along the lines of humanism expounded by such writers as James, Schiller, Dewey and others. Contents: The crowd and the social problem of today; How crowds are formed; The crowd and the unconscious; The egoism of the crowd-mind; The crowd a creature of hate; The absolutism of the crowd-mind; The psychology of revolutionary crowds; The fruits of revolution—new crowd-tyrannies for old; Freedom and government by crowds; Education as a possible cure for crowd-thinking; Index.
MARTIN, GEORGE (MADDEN) (MRS ATTWOOD R. MARTIN). Children in the mist. *$1.75 (3c) Appleton
In a series of eight sketches the writer, who has lived with the negro in Mississippi, in Louisiana, in Florida, the Carolinas and Kentucky, shows him as he is, neither praising him as his over-zealous advocate, nor indulging in race hatred. It is an arraignment of the white race for keeping this primitive people so long in confusion, discouragement and ignorance. The stories cover the period from the emancipation to the present and are arranged in chronological order. The stories are: The flight; The blue handkerchief; An Inskip niggah; Pom; The sleeping sickness; Fire from heaven; Malviney; Sixty years after.
“The stories are very readable.”
“The eight stories in this book are written with a commendable intention, but that intention does not after all extend beyond a limited field and a circumscribed aspect of the negro.” W. S. B.
“Unfortunately, while Mrs Martin writes with the authoritative manner of one who has known the black man intimately, she has, as she concedes, laid no emphasis in her tales upon negroes who have, to use her phrase, forged ahead. The result is an obvious struggle between the complacence which comes of having met coloured people as servants chiefly, and the feeling that it is inconsistent to deny them opportunity and to charge their race with the consequences.” H. J. S.
“Mrs Martin avoids both sentiment and indignation; her tone is warm but quiet; she lets the stern implications arise in their bare and tragic force.”
“They are typical of the kind of studied work in short-story writing which carefully applies principles of preparation, suspense, contributing effect, and climax, and never achieves the dynamic impulsion and the artistic inevitability of a directly told unpremeditated tale.”
“This book will prove her to have advanced in her art. Mrs Martin is too good an artist to let the purpose obtrude itself. It is there, none the less, and it gives her book a permanent value aside from its quality as fiction.” Hildegarde Hawthorne
“A broad vein of humor runs through the tales, but invariably there is a serious note at the ending.”
MARTIN, HELEN REIMENSNYDER (MRS FREDERIC C. MARTIN). Schoolmaster of Hessville. *$1.90 (3c) Doubleday
The schoolmaster of Hessville, a Pennsylvania Dutch village, was John Wimmer, fine and strong of character but with the cravings of youth in his young body. It was flesh calling to flesh that made him love Irene, the glowing beauty with the coarse instincts. She played cat and mouse with him and her wiles were finally responsible for John’s marriage to Minnie, Irene’s opposite. Minnie’s winsomeness never quite compensated John for Irene’s more sensuous charms and when a cruel accident deprives Minnie of her reason leaving John with two motherless children on his hands, the now, on her part, widowed Irene, offers her services as housekeeper and becomes John’s mistress. He has fallen an easy prey but in time his eyes are opened, and when a successful operation restores Minnie to him he blesses her breadth of view that can condone his lapse.
“Not alone are the main characters well drawn, even the most minor minion is unforgettably sketched. The author has studied children and has thoroughly expressed her understanding of them.”
MARTIN, MABEL WOOD. Green god’s pavilion. *$1.90 (1½c) Stokes
This novel of the Philippines shows in almost lurid colors the irreconcilable difference between the East and the West. It is symbolized in the figures of two women, one, Julie, an American of a fair and spiritual beauty who goes out to Manila as a teacher and with the spirit of a crusader. The other, a native woman, Isabel, the “Empress of the East,” with the fierce passion of life that stops not at evil. It is a tragic story of how the East breaks all who come to her with the best of intentions of uplift and improvement, except they miraculously rise from the dead for a second birth. It broke Julie and left her for dead among the plague stricken huts of the natives. It broke Barry McChord, the man with the “Excelsior” face, who fell a victim to the plague after his high hopes were gone. But something selfless in both finally triumphs over all self-deceptions, even over death. Much philosophizing and much gruesome realism are a part of the story.
“Smoothly written and vivid tale of love and faith and hardship.”
“From its opening chapter, the reader’s interest is caught and held. Amy Lowell, herself, has done no more vivid color bits than this author has introduced in descriptions of Manila. Aside from the brilliancy of the local setting, she has woven a tale of exceeding interest and charm, and super-excellent quality in novels of today, its ‘third act’ is most engrossing.” C. K. H.
“‘The green god’s pavilion’ may hardly be termed an extraordinary novel, for it is built too obviously for thrill purposes, but it displays an intimate knowledge of conditions in the Philippines and presents with frequency pictures of native life that are vivid and finely written.”
MARTYN, WYNDHAM. Secret of the silver car. *$1.75 Moffat
Another book of the adventures of Anthony Trent, master criminal. In an indiscreet moment while they were shut in a caved-in dugout in Flanders, expecting death at any moment, Trent had told the story of his life to his unknown and unseen companion. Both escape and with the war over, he sets himself to find this unknown “William Smith” who knows too much about him for his own safety. He meets “William Smith’s” sister, falls in love with her and for her sake resolves to give up his brilliant criminal career. In her service he goes out to the Balkans, becomes involved in international intrigue, has many hairbreadth escapes, but secures the papers that mean so much to Lady Daphne’s father and is rewarded with her hand.
“Nor is this book mere swashbuckling. It is written always adroitly, sometimes humorously, and with the zest of the author’s own enjoyment.”
Reviewed by M. K. Reely
MARVIN, FRANCIS SYDNEY, ed. Recent developments in European thought. *$6.25 Oxford 901
“This volume, which is a sequel to ‘The unity of western civilization’ (1915) and ‘Progress’ (1916), is, like them, the fruit of a course of lectures given at a summer school at Woodbrooke, Birmingham. The addresses composing it were given in August, 1919, and it traces the idea of progress in European history since 1870. Among the contributors, besides the editor, are Mr A. E. Taylor, who writes on ‘Philosophy,’ Dr F. B. Jevons, who writes on ‘Religion,’ Mr A. D. Lindsay, of Balliol, whose subject is ‘Political theory,’ and Mr A. Clutton Brock, who discusses ‘Art.’ Each article is followed by a bibliographical note as a guide to further reading.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup N 11 ’20
“In spite of the difficulties of handling the vast intricate masses of still fluid material, the contributors have given readable and yet valuable summaries of the progress of thought. For the beginner, there could be no better introduction to the essential contributions of man’s recent achievement.” M. J.
“Naturally, the essays by different authors vary in value. The least satisfactory is the first, on philosophy.... The most brilliant essays are those dealing with the fields of thought most intensively cultivated by the last generation.... Compared with the treatment accorded history, the studies here offered of political theory and of economic progress are slightly disappointing.... Taken as a whole, the cumulative impression of these various lectures is greater than that of any one taken separately.” Preserved Smith
“The personality of each of the twelve writers is given full expression. It makes the diversity more interesting than the unity.” H. W. C.
“The aim of the writers is to trace the progress and acquisitions of thought and give a general picture of the results obtained by modern knowledge; and they have succeeded in producing essays that are of a high quality and also thoroughly readable.”
MARX, MAGDELEINE. Woman; tr. by Adele Szold Seltzer. *$1.90 (6c) Seltzer
A translation of a novel that is said to have created a sensation in France. It is a record of emotional moments. The characters have no names, no appearances. They are only personalities. The “woman” of the story loves and marries and bears a child. While still loving her husband she takes a lover and then loses both husband and lover in the war. Out of these experiences she emerges invincible, with an undimmed capacity for life and an indomitable will to live. Henri Barbusse says in his introduction, “In no other book perhaps so markedly as in this has the integrity of an individual been more respected, and never has an imaginary character so consistently warded off whatever is not of itself. You don’t even seem to feel that this ‘woman’ talks or tells a story. You simply know what she knows.”
Reviewed by Theodore Maynard
“To those in search of a well-written book, not to mention a contribution to real literature, Magdeleine Marx has nothing whatever to offer. The style is wordy, pretentious and empty, a disjointed collection of hollow phrases embodying all the platitudes of the so-called revolt of woman.” E. A. Boyd
“The story is frank and sincere and full of isolated perceptions that are both searching and beautiful. But it is also thin and scrappy and disjointed, and the complete shadowiness of all the characters robs its theories of the inner energy of a human content. In a word, Madame Marx has felt very deeply and reflected intensely, and those who agreed with her passionately have taken it for granted that she has written a great book. But that is taking for granted far too much.” Ludwig Lewisohn
“A very great deal of it gives the reader the impression of a mind out-stretching itself, to the point of dislocating all its joints, in order to perceive and express something that nobody else has ever perceived or expressed.”
“The book is written in a resignedly magnanimous strain, and passages occur, which, taken by themselves, might affect us as noble. Yet as a whole its absence of elevation in the midst of calls to elevation is confounding.”
“‘Woman,’ if nothing else, is an interesting psychological study of the type of mind that dwells upon sex and psychoanalysis with a neurasthenic intensity, when the world is full to overflowing with real woman problems.” M. E. Sangster
“It does seem to me that the book might more appropriately have been called ‘A woman.’ For the rest, the book is perfervid in a way that we do not quite like in America, perhaps because we are not wholly acclimated to it. It has pages of unusual beauty, and a high degree of unity and directness.”
MASEFIELD, JOHN. Enslaved. *$2.50 Macmillan 821
The long narrative poem of the title depicts courage born of love and begetting the brotherhood of man even in the untamed. A fair damsel is carried off by a pirate galley into the captivity of a khalif’s harem. Her lover follows into slavery to rescue her. He does so with the aid of a brother slave who must kill a traitor to accomplish their purpose. Recaptured and brought before the khalif they are set free because their tale causes human stirrings in the hawk breast of the latter. The other poems are: The hounds of hell; Cap on head; Sonnets; The passing strange; Animula; The Lemmings; Forget; On growing old; Lyric.
“It seems to us that Mr Masefield’s first business is to regain control of his words; and that he can only do this by deliberately attempting a subject that bristles with psychological nuances, and insisting that his language shall accommodate itself to them. Otherwise we fear he will never succeed in expressing that elusive beauty which he sees, but which at present comes to us only in assertion or in fitful gleams through the interstices of an opaque style.” J. M. M.
“Mr Masefield is the single poet writing in English today who both in popular esteem and by the most exacting critical estimate legitimately belongs to the august line of poets who are among the chief glories of our race: to his greatness no journalistic cavil can add or take away.” R. M. Weaver
“In this poem, [On growing old], as in so many aspects of the other poems in this volume, one feels the shadows of the world, deepened by the tumult of war, settling upon the radiance of a brave visionary spirit. The thrill, the excitement, the adventures of living are all now subdued to this key of sadness, in which the passion and beauty that was once a flame becomes an effable glow.” W. S. B.
“The whole thing seems bookish, remote, unreal. The characters do not become sufficiently interesting: seem, in fact, insufficiently equipped with a back-ground of flesh and blood experience.” J: G. Fletcher
“One of the signs that the times are good in English poetry is the fact that Mr Masefield keeps on writing poems which tell stories.” Mark Van Doren
“In his latest volume there are some serious offenses against rhyming, euphony, and scansion, but in the larger aspects, in the essential substance and indescribable quality of authentic poesy, he is more richly endowed than any other living writer.” Lawrence Mason
“‘Enslaved,’ his latest book of poems, offers a peculiarly fine view of Masefield in all his variety. There is no poet in England, unless we except Hardy, who possesses keener insight into the hearts of men. It is this attitude toward life, this same fatalism that recognizes the worst, yet sees the best behind, that makes John Masefield one of the finest living figures in the whole field of English poetry.”
“A volume which reveals anew the amazing power and versatility of that English poet.”
“‘Enslaved’ is a dramatic adventure tale. But ‘Enslaved’ is likewise a dreamy, semi-lyrical, murmurous, and caressing tale. It is Masefieldian in its power to be both these things at once.” O. W. Firkins
“The book is extraordinarily rich, for it contains beside others, ‘Forget’ and ‘On growing old,’ two of the most beautiful poems that Mr Masefield ever wrote, and in this age of singers Mr Masefield remains our poet of greatest achievements.”
MASEFIELD, JOHN.[2] Right Royal. *$1.75 Macmillan 821
“In ‘Right Royal’ Mr Masefield celebrates in a narrative poem the story of a horse-race. The story of Mr Masefield’s poem is that of a horse with great points and virtues, for speed and endurance, but very undependable, having lost a number of races by going panicky from fear. He was bought by Charles Cothill, who believed that all his potential qualities as a winner could be developed. Cothill backed his own horse to the extent of all his possessions, which created a crisis in his love for the woman he hoped to marry. If he lost, his love was lost. In fact, it was win all or lose all.”—Boston Transcript
“It will be acknowledged that the preliminaries of the race, the discussions in the stables, the professional tips and omens, the catalogue of the entries, are sandy soil for the growth of poetry. The best of the poem has no relation to the worst; the worst might have been sacrificed. Even in the best are imperfections, but we have learnt to swallow Mr Masefield’s longer poems without straining at the gnats.” E. B.
“It is growing very trite to say that Mr Masefield does this thing or that thing better than any contemporary poet. He does the things that nobody else does and is thus in competition with himself. ‘Right Royal’ may not be as fine a poem as ‘Enslaved,’ but no one can dispute that it is the best narrative of a horse-race that has been written by any modern poet.” W: S. Braithwaite
“‘Right Royal’ is a bad poem, both intrinsically and because it fails to satisfy certain necessary expectations. It promised to be as good as ‘Reynard the fox,’ but it is woefully, incredibly worse.” Mark Van Doren
Reviewed by W. B. D. Henderson
Reviewed by R: Le Gallienne
“The feeling that ‘Right Royal’ deserves to be placed below the earlier volume [‘Reynard the fox’] may be purely a matter of individual temperament on the part of the reviewer. In any case, it is a volume which occupies an enviable place in the field of modern poetry.”
Reviewed by G: D. Procter
“The weather—cloud, sun, wind, and shower—is given more prominence and is better conceived in ‘Right Royal’; but to balance this, the unsuccessful passages are decidedly worse than those in ‘Reynard the fox.’ Another fault it seems to the present writer to possess, which the incomparable ‘Reynard the fox’ does not: it is a little monotonous. As a ‘galloping poem,’ however, it is certainly one of the best in English.”
“He piles simile on simile and each simile is beautiful in itself, each is a patch of ornament stuck on, not woven into the fabric. Mr Masefield has told a brave tale bravely. If his courage had been like Right Royal’s, he would have dared to leave undecorated the beauty inherent in the tale.”
MASON, ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY. Summons. *$2 (2c) Doran
Harry Luttrell had a strong sense of military honor and of the necessity for self-discipline. The first drove him to join the army, the second to tear himself away from the woman he loved and accept a post in Egypt. His friend and classmate, Martin Hillyard, had had a chequered career: as a sailor; in a three years’ struggle for existence in the port-towns of Spain; as an Oxford student and successful playwright; and during the war his knowledge of Spain serves him in good stead as a secret service agent. Stella Croyle, Luttrell’s one-time love, in his absence eats her heart out in neurotic, undisciplined longing and occasionally has recourse to the comfort of drugs. While on a leave of absence during the war, Luttrell meets Stella again without experiencing the old-time thrill and at the same time he meets and falls in love with Joan Whitworth. Poor Stella commits suicide under circumstances that throw suspicion on Joan. Through his experiences in the secret service, Hillyard is enabled to clear Joan and smooth the way for her and Luttrell.
“An interesting variant of the modern detective story.”
“It is a splendid story which Mr Mason has written, based upon his experiences in the war, full of dramatic vigor—a real novel in every sense of the word—and permeated with the atmosphere of England, Spain, and Egypt.”
“This novel is an excellent substitute for a modern detective story. Instead of possessing a single, unified plot it is composed of a rosary of minor plots which endows it with somewhat of the character of real life.”
“One cannot help wishing that the important character of Joan Whitworth were less exaggerated and more likable, for she does more than a little to harm the book, but it is easy to forgive this shortcoming when one remembers Martin Hillyard and the picturesque José Medina, the very amusing Sir Chichester Splay, Millie, and several others among the varied figures depicted on Mr Mason’s richly colored canvas.”
“Mr Mason, here as always, has an exciting and unusual story to unfold. This novel is hardly the equal of the ‘Four feathers’ or ‘The broken road,’ for the author attempts to ming a not very successful humorous vein with his natural plot-and-action type of fiction writing.”
“The touch of melodrama in the last section of the book is well conceived and exciting. The best piece of writing in the book is the description of the night passed by Martin Hillyard on the shore of a river in the Sudan. This vivid picture of the life of the game-hunter in wild countries affords a striking contrast to the sophisticated chapters at the beginning of the book.”
“Mr Mason has shown better form than this.”
MASON, ARTHUR. Flying bo’sun. *$1.75 (4c) Holt