The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-03-03

pany has been classed among the innumer
able cheap concerns which are all the time
springing up and hoping to rise into fame
| without doing so. But the fact Is, it IS a
woman, and a well bred, well educated, re-
fined English woman with an ideal to de-
monstrate. 1t is now well on toward a year
since she first arrived at our publishing CEN
tire and opened helslittle office, and she has
published ten Or a dozen books, which have
had a fair sale considering the times.
She was an English woman, and thought
with Walter Besant, whose friend she was,
that an honest publishing house in that hot
bed of piracy, America, would be appreci-
ated. But she confesses now that only OBJ
stinste persistency has kept her at it SO long,
or her late issues .sThe Malachite Cross"
| written by Frank Norton, a journalist of
the New York Herald, is, perhaps, the best.
Sh has also recently brought out a re-
ligious novel by Alan st. Aubyn, two or
three books by F. c. Phillips, a journalist,
and one by Alan Dale, who figures in
| the New York World. Up to the time
of her venture she had read few novels,
though she was well acquainted with a far
better class of literature las things go to-
day., and it is to be presumed that she
would not nave chosen to read the class of
books she has printed. Bnt she took the best
she could get, and her pluck is greatly to be
admired The latest of her issues is 'The
Philosophy of Love-" translated from the
French of a world famous scholar. Whether
she will succeed in the end is perhaps not yet
quite clear. But she has certainly a
made many friends by her venture, and all
who know it is a woman who has such pluck
and persistency will wish her the best of
fortune.
The latest English writer to come into
especial NOTICE is Francis Thompson, some of
whose books have recently been imported by
the Scribners for Collectors and it may be
remarked, by the way, that those English
poets know how to make money out of their
verse, by printing small, limited editions, for
which collectors are crazy. Thompson is
about ~thirty-two, and has had a remarkable
career. For six years past his verse has ap-
peared in the London magazine, WerTte
England, whose editor, Wilfrid Meynall, is
his friend. s'Dream Tryst" was the first
poem to come to this editor. 1t was written
on the blue back of a bill with a pencil, and
was very slovenly in appearance. The adj
dress given was that of a druggist. Week
after the editor pulled out this dirty piece of
paper Inc found the wonderful verses,
but the man was not to be
found at the address given. When the poem
was published it called forth from the au-
thor an irate letter, and on search Mr.. Mey-
nall found his new poet selling matches and
holding horses in the Strand. He was the
son of a physician at a fashionable seaside
resort, but had taken to the opium Qike De
Quincey), and had fallen thus low. He was
the graduate of a Catholic College, and had
studied medicine. But all that had awaited
nothing. Now he is living quietly at the
Franciscan Monastery of Pantasaph, in
Wales, and in two leading January reviews
are articles on his poetry by such eminent
critics as Coventry Patmore and H. D..
Trail.
A little information has just come to us
concerning the personality of Mrs. Clermont.
author of "Keynotes," who calls herself
George Egerton." She is the daughter of a
Dublin Academician, whose home is in the
North of Ireland, but she is a Catholic. Ev-
identity her friends are not literary people,
for "Keynotes, " she first sent to I. P. O'Con-
nor for advice in his "Friends in Council
column in the London Weekly Sun. He adj
vised her to send the stories to Richard LIE
Gallienne, who commended them to Mat
thews and Lane, the well known publishers
of elegant books, and they brought the little
book out.
The London Literary World tells the story
that Mr.. Houghton, of Houghton, Mitfiin &
Co., went to Dickens and told him that
though there was no international copyright
he would pay hin a certain loyalty on the
sales of his books. Dickens replied, 81 don't
want any of your dirty money. 1t isn't
worth anything, anyhow" lit was at a time
of depreciation of paper). Mr.. Houghton
revenged himself by keeping an account of
the amount he would have paid the ungra-
cious author, and he found it to be fifty
thousand dollars.
Norman Gale, who may be associated with
Francis Thompson as one of the new poets, is
coming to America in the autumn, they say,
and hopes to find an American publisher.
He is six feet tall, a devout athlete, and like
a child in his fondness for all sorts of games
from poker to pitch and toss.
The new novel just starting in the New