Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1909-12-11
Augustus Thomas. author of Tho
W:tching Hour"

! Augustus Thomas. author of The
W!tching Hour"
The Princess Trouhetzkoy, Amelie
Itives. who, with her husband the
Prince TroubetE,oy. arrived In this
! country from Europe n few days ago.
has gone 10 her Virginia home. Castle
Hlll. at Gotham. Albcmarle county.
The princess is said 20 be at work upon
new manuscript. Her latest story.
"TriN and OrcT-thc-NI Noon" was pub
lished by the Harpers less than month
ago.
Those posthumous opinions of George
Meredith concerning Thnckeray. whose
note was too moHotonous. but whose
Great Hoggarty Diamond next to
Vanity Fair was likely to live" be
cause 1T was full of excellent foolIng, -
and concerning Dickens. who was the
incarnation of Cockneydom Il
caricaturlst who aped the moralist."
and concerning William Black, whose
novels had nothing In them but fishing
and sunsets" are probably not what he
rad always thought. but what he
thought he thought at the moment the
interviewer asked him. At the best they
are not very fine or apt criticisms. THE
Luck of Barry Lyndon" is far beyond
amongst Thackeray's shorter stories.
and Vanity Fair IS not his best long
story. In such books OF Blacks as
"Madcap Violet" and Macleod of
Dare" there is much besides fishing and
sunsets. there is clever observation, II
not dlvinatlon. of women. AS for Dick
ems. in his Mans Land there is
great deal of human nature, and he is
so often true in spite OF his false con-
f....
attribute the hold of his fiction upon
his contemporarlcs to "some possible
element of fun meaningless to posterl-
ty."
We should be the last to quarrel with
Merelth's disgust for the modern his
torlcal novel," which he could not
stomach" any more than novels three
fourths dialect" The dialect novels
may be better or worse. but all his
torlcal novels are bad. with a few signal
exceptions. When you have said
Chartreuse dc Parme" by Stendhal, and
War and Peace" by Tolstoy. and II
promessi Sposi" by Manzoni, and Tho
Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's
Court" by Mark Twain, and possibly
two OF three of Scotts, you can get
them all on a shelf, which need not
be more than five inches long 0f they
are printed on India paper). let alone
five feet We will allow anybody else
20 add some very great favorite to
these we should ourselves add Theodor
MuSge's "Afraja," but we should begin
very soon to draw the line afterward
What mostly greves us in those post
mortem deliveries of the last novelist
is that he should have permitted HIM
self the personalities he Is said to have
INDUCED concerning that grand anima,
George Eliot. who so toweirngly over
topped all her generation In fiction. but
of whom he Is said to have said:
George Eliot had tho heart of a Sap
pho. but the face. with its long probos-
els, and the protruding teeth, as Of the
Apocalyptic horse. betrayed animalIty."
One asks oneself. and wishes at once to
ask others, what George Eliot's looks
had TO do with her novels. and ono
asks 1t. from our experience in vain.
Mary r Walters Vermont mountain
story, "The Wood Carver OF 'Lympus."
an established favorltc with American
readers. is winning high praise in Eng
land. even though the London Morning
Post persists in calling the author
miss Walker" A second Little. Brown
& Co.. author, Eliza Calvert Hail. has
taken the English taste with her Aunt
Jane of Kentucky" which is voted such
a story as the best American writer's
have taught us to expect" and is cor
daily welcomed as "a book vivid with
humanity"
Sir Gilbert Parker's reference In the
preface to Northern Lights" his new
book just published by the Harpers. to
the Canadian Northwest Mounted Po-
lice. who first startled the carly nj
oncer and drow him into the quiet cir
Gle OF civic routine and humdrum occu-
patton" gives interest to a change i'm
pending I'm the name OF that body. IT
IS jU1t announced that the king and
the governor general have approved Of
changing the name of tho Northwest
Mounted Police to the Stratcona Horse
The change will go into effect soon.
Hamlin Garland, by reason OF his in