The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20
AMERICAN NOVEL Is PRAISED BY BARRIE Tells How It Feels to
 Drown RECOMMENDS "QUEED" Gandillot Got Rich Over Another Mans Broken Ankle-Munday Likes Drowning Feeling, But
 Swinburne Did Not
RECOMMENDS "QUEED"

London, October ls-tspecialo- o--Henry Sydnor Harrison, who wrote 'Queed.' may be interested to hear that the ad- mirers of his novel on this side of the Atlantic-and their names appear to be legion--include no less a person than J. M. Barrie. The authority for this state ment is Lady Tree, the wife of the fla nous actor-manager and an ardent book lover, who told friend the other day that Barrie recommended "Queed' to her describing it as the most delightful book he had read in recent years. She added. moreover, that thjs recommendation had been seconded with warmth by Forbes Rohertson the actor, another acknowl- edged judge of what is good in literature The friend who told me of this met Lady Tree at Robertsbridge. in Sussex. where she had been holiday making, and left her deep In "Queed and "'frghtfully keen on it. to use her own expression.
 It is rather interesting to learn that Barrie reads American novels. He is just back in town after a couple. of months at Amhuinnsuidh. his castle in the Hebrides, where. during part of the time he had
 
 up his house at Leinster Corner, overlook ing Kensfngton Gardens, a year or so ago, Barrie has been homeless so far as Lon don is concerned though he has a coun- try place at Burnham Besches, but hear he Is thinking of locating himself in the Adelph the quiet little region just off the Strand. where he would have as a neighbor his friend George Bernard Shaw, IAp lives at No. 13 Adephi Ter race nor S mention Joseph Pennell, who is close by in Buckingham street. There seems to be absolutely nothing doing in the book line so far as Barrie is con cerned, but he brought back with him to London the manuscript of his new one act play, "Rosalind," which Charles Frohman will stage as item of a triple bill, the other items being one-act pieces by Pinero and Shaw. They are to be done here about the middle of the present month and will be seen in Amer ica shortly after, doubt.
 Shelley, the poet, who was drowned off the coast of Italy, is probably the most famous of the literary men who have met their deaths in this fashion and, needless to say the author of Queen Nab left no description of his final sen satons Now, however, we have the i'm pressons'' of two British writers. a world
  on the subject of how 1t feels to be drowning. One of these is Luther Mon. day, whose springhtly book of reminis- cences of Wilde, Whistler and many more celebrities was published recently, the other no one else than the late Charles Algernon Swinburne.
 Munday twice came within an ace of being drowned In the Thames. and says he found the sensation rather pleasant. Swinburne, whom some folk rank with Shelley, came near meeting a similar fate to his brother poets while bathing at Etretat, and according to his friend, Edmund Gosse. to whom the bard de scvribed his thoughts when he believed himself booked for a watery grave. his principal feeling was annoyance.
 Swnburnes own story of his narrow escape from death never has been told in detail before, and is related by Gosse in the current number of ''Cornhll" Etretat. of course Is close to St. Malo, and Swim burne told Gosse that he plunged into the sea from the Porte d'Amont forget full of the strong tide though fishermen had warned him that he should not ba the without taking 1t into consideration. As 1t was, he soon found himself in the grip of an undercurrent and being carried out to sea through a rocky archway At first, according to his own account. he fought to get out of the tide, and then. realizing the hopelessness of this. he set
 
 friend that the sound of his voice, in that stiffness of racing water, struck him as very strange and dreadful. Then he was suddenly aware that in few minutes he would be dead. for the possibility of his being saved did not occur to him.
 "I asked him what he thought about in s that dreadful contingency writes Gosse. 'and he replied that he had no experience of what people often profess to witness the concentrated panorama of past life hurrying across the memory. H did not reflect on the past at all. He was filled with annoyance that he had not finished his Son Before Sunrise and then with satisfaction that@so much of it ready for the press. and that Mag zin would be pleased with him. And then he continued: I reflected with res gnaton that 1 was exactly the same age as Shelley was when he was drowned (This, however, was not the case; Swinburne had reached that age in March 1867; but this was part of a curious delusion of Swinburne's that he was younger by two or three years than his real age)
 Then, when he began to be, suppose, little renumbed by the water, his thoughts fixed on the clothes he had left or the beach. and he worried his cloud ing brain about some unfinished verses in the pocket of his coat. I suppose that he then tainted for he could not recollect being reached by a fishing smack or lift ed aboard"
 It would be rather interesting to take the true story of the career of Leon C&ndillot, the French playwright. who died this week, and make novel out of it. and then see what the critics had to say on the score of it's probability. With out doubt the supposed romance would be ''roasted to death, particularly the chief incident therein. which would show how the hero owed his astonishing suc- cess as a dramatist largely to another mans breaking ankle. Yet such trivial mshap really proved the mak- ing of Leon Gandilot. whose queer story probably has parallel in stage annals