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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 4 (July 1, 1937)

[section]

Only a few years ago New Zealand literary critics freely used the word “urigrammatical” as descriptive of the prose of one of our own writers. To-day the same critics write of the same writer's “masterly prose.” Recently in a page review of a novel by C. J. Powys, whose books are accounted as having sufficient enduring quality to be quoted in the first edition catalogues of leading booksellers, Richard Church wrote as follows:—

“It is no wonder that such an over-simulated nervous literary picture should result in a prose style guilty of every possible fault. It is ungram-matical, swollen and incongruous, a distorting medium that multiplies the ineptitudes of a distorted fancy.” I hold no brief for Powys. I do not like his work. I offer my introductory observations and later quotation as a measure of consolation to those writers who may feel hurt over criticisms hurled at their heads over alleged grammatical errors or lack of style. Literary criticism is often a one man opinion. Old Bancroft has it that “the public is wiser than the wisest critic.” Look to your public therefore for judgment.

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In the pages of a very old book I purchased the other day I found a few sheets of paper ornamented with that glorious flowing copperplate that our grandfathers and great grandfathers used to write. The context of the message, which is as follows, should be of value to book and print collectors, for it is headed “Process for Removing Spots from Books and Prints”:—

“After having gently warmed the paper stained with grease, wax oil, or any fat body whatever, take out as much as possible by means of blotting paper, having first scraped off with a blunt knife what was not sunk in and gently warm the stained part. Then dip a small brush in well rectified spirits of turpentine, heated almost to ebullition (for when cold it acts very weakly) and draw it gently over both sides of the paper, which must be carefully kept warm. This operation must be repeated as many times as the quantity of the fat body imbibed by the paper, or the thickness of the paper may render it necessary. When the grease is entirely removed, recourse may be had to the following method to restore the paper to its former whiteness, which is not completely restored by the first process. Dip another brush in alcohol, and draw it, in like manner, over the place which was stained, and particularly round the edges, to remove the border that would still present a stain. By employing these means with proper caution, the spot will totally disappear, and the paper assumes its original whiteness if the process has been employed upon a part written on with common ink, it will experience no alteration.”

The page also contained another interesting process of value to bibliophiles. This I will include on this page next issue.

* * *

I met a book collector the other day who is surely in the final stages of bibliomania. He was showing me a beautiful Noel Douglas replica of Keats' first volume of verse.

“Why, you have not even cut the pages!” I exclaimed as I seized a knife to examine the title page.

My friend rushed at me with a hoarse cry of anguish and snatched the paper knife from my hand.

“For heaven's sake,” he cried, “do not spoil the book.”

“But,” I replied, “you can't read the book with its pages uncut.”

“Man! don't you understand,” he said, “if you cut the pages the book loses some of its value as a collectors' item.”

Regarding him more in sorrow than in anger, I did not pursue the subject further.

* * *

At least a few New Zealand printers have displayed in their typography and format an artistic appreciation of the prose and poetry of our best writers. A recent example of sympathetic association between printer and poet is to be found in Johannes C. Andersen's “Tura And the Fairies,” and “The Overworlds and Tu.” These two lengthy poems, which are based on Maori legendry lore, are sung in music of stately measure. The printer, Harry Tombs, of Wellington, has been imbued as it were with the lordly language of the poet and has given the verse a truly artistic typographical setting.

* * *

We were talking about printers' errors. An old “Post” scribe told us of one in his paper a quarter of a century ago. A mighty gale struck Wellington and the big black heading over the vivid story ran:

Wild Dogs In The City.

Of course, the writer of the article was referring to days and not dogs.

* * *

Coming so close on the sensational disclosures in Robert Sherard's book on Oscar Wilde and his denunciation of Frank Harris, the following letter written to a Dunedin resident by G.B.S. re Harris's biography of Shaw, makes particularly interesting reading:

“The truth is that F.H. was very badly qualified to write a life of me. He did not want to do it…. but the publishers demanded a book on Shaw. He being at the end of his resources, had to comply; but, as he had read nothing of mine since he edited the Saturday Review in the ‘nineties, and never to the end of his life understood why such a fuss was made about me and was besides so ignorant of the circumstances of my life that he had to invent them with all the wildest unsuccess, he made such a hopeless mess of the job that publication was impossible until I took it in hand myself. He never read the page 40 result; for he died before I got to work on it. I cannot tell you how much of the work is mine and how much Harris's because I destroyed the evidence so completely, and I amused myself so often by imitating Frank's style and being more Harrisian than Harris, that I could not now tell with any exactness which was which.”

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