New-York tribune., 1922-09-10

Suukht was DeauEy. SaaYlDE aHla up
each treasure in the heaven of memory,
he adventured eagerly afresh on the
seven seas, proving wharves In OUT
landish places, battling bare-hsted
with thugs and drunken longshoremen
ii thieves den and on sinister, moon
lit docks, fighting with Mexican BAN
dts, digging for gold, encountering
strange, eccentric and interesting
characters. All that the most fertile
of romantic fictionists have imagined
on paper Mr.. Mason has experienced in
life. And remarkably~--for men of ac-
tion are seldom able to express them
selves felicitiously in words--he has
recorded his adventures in style so
fresh, naive, lucid and melodic that
the book stands as an important
contribution to literature. 1t is the
autobiography of vagrant, impress
sionable, irrepressihle, courageous,
humorous Irishman whose imaginative
and romantic bent took him to sea as a
boy and who came to shore when youth
was gone and discovered almost acci-
dentally that he could relate what he
BAD experienced. "And so l yarn
along" he says, ''and think of past
things and write them downV partly as
a sailor who knew all that was hard
and rough and partly as man recently
come TO writing who is intoxicated
with the new-found use of words to
evoke old scenes" A. man who has so
fine sense of words and so acute an
ear for cadence as that promises (does
he not?) an unusual pleasure from his
narrative. The book is almost lyric;
it has a singing vibrancy. And-but
listen to this: "My story is, believe,
not lacking in excitement, but it shall
be told simply and as swiftly and
l., h.
ing the paper--crowding, as they have
crowded my youth away, and the de-
sire for adventure. There may be
glued leaves in the volume OF my life,
but ! shall steam them apart, trying
to piece out pattern that is not as
much smudged as the background
would lead one to believe. There will
be in the pattern success and failure;
heart-cheer and heart-break, as in all
our lives-such philosophy, too, as
would result from the thinking my life
has led me to do. But that there is
love to the very end, and will be, as
me (for if ever any one knows the
rough and tumble of life should know
it) as it does for human nature"
This is the best picturesque confes-
sion ! have read since "The Auto
biography of Super Tramp" by w. H.
Davies. And it has inspired Mr.. Nc
Fee to the most beautiful bit of writ
ing he has yet achieved, a sympathetic
analytical preface and salutation to
the work of fellow seafarer, who is
gifted and articulate.
AUGUST 81
They told me in the local room last
night that w. III. Hudson was dead,
that he had died in England on Au-
gust 18, but that the news had just
been made public. The obituaries and
the editorials his death evoked will
give a new impetus, l hope, to the
curiosity concerning Hudsons writings
and lead new readers to one of the
finest literary artists Of our time. To
Hudson fame came pathetically late.
But, true artist that he was, he wrote
out of an inner necessity and bothered
not whether his audience was large or
small. A few steadfast admirers-John
Galsworthy, Cunninghame Graham,
Joseph Conrad among them-lent the
prestige Of their names in enthusiastic
and appreciative encomnia on Hudson's s
work; sporadically some courageous
publisher would venture his money on
Hudson's books against the stakes Of
public favor, a few reviewers here and
there would shout his name loudly but
terest, and the book would die, the
corpse stretched out in awful lengths
on the shelves of the publishers ware
house, chilling reminder that a pub
Usher who would eat had better not
indulge too recklessly his personal
tastes in literature Then came new
edition of "Green Mansions" at an
opportune moment; it received good
notices; the public bought and liked
it. Older books were unearthed and
brought out in new and attractive for
mats; Hudson was urged to, piece to-
gether his notebooks as naturalist;
appreciation came just not too late
| to the man who wrote one of the finest
in "El Ombu' (from "Tales Of the
] Pampas"), fine Utopian fancy, edged
1 with satire, in the Crystal Age" an
,unearthly beautiful idyll in "Green
| Mansions" and superb descriptions in
"The Purple Land" Hudson's style
was flexible vehicle, adapted always
! to the material at hand, changing in
| cadence and tempo in accordance with
the subject. Thus he escaped a mono
tony of manner and the danger of man
nerisms to which Pater, James and
Meredith, for instance, were frequent
victims.
SEPTEMBER l
In review by Cuthbert Wright, in
the Freeman" to-day l encountered
the following lines: "That is MIR.
CabelPs fatal weakness-the poetical
passages. 1t is exactly like the
coloratura passages in Italian opera,
and by the abuse of this mannerism
Mr.. Cabell is occasionally as trying as
Madame Tetrazzini indulging in a
bravura ten minutes in duration" This
is, certainly, queer squeak, coming
as it does from man who, until he re-
Gently got a new horse, borrowed Mr..
! CabelPs 'mannerism" and rode it to
death.
/! Books which have most interested me
during the week are: Beasts, Men and
Gods" by Ferdinand Ossendowski, a
bland record of an astounding series of
adventures in Russia, Mongolia, Tibet
and the city of Urga, where lives the
Living Buddha, His Holiness Djebtsung
Danba Hutukto Khan, Pontiff of Ia
Kure, Emperor of Mongolia, the present
reincarnation of the immortal Buddha--
! a cunning, fat old drunkard with
I shrewd but bleary eyes, sensual lips
and habit of going into frances and
talking intimately with the gods at the
most inappropriate and unexpected mo-
ments; Babel" by John Cournos, a
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