The New York herald., 1922-12-17
CHRONICLE AND

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L,ROM time to time in this department
there has been discussion, provoked
by the appearance of this or that volume
of "reminiscences, of various aspects OF
the literary London of the ninet1es.
Katherine lyman, in the course of "The
Wandering Years." recently published by
the Houghton, Mifiin Company, dismisses
the period scathingly, finding the politi-
cal talk of the present more wholesome
and breezy than the literary shop talk of
the past. at used to be In special way
shop talk" she says. "The nineties had
given me, a surfeit of it; prices per thou
sand and biggest calculations, and all the
crowded rooms shrieking like the parrot
houses at the zoo, and the gist of it the
making of books and the prices to be OBJ
tained for them Flesh and blood was
only matter for books, and the veins of
these literary men and women ran ink
instead of blood. l am not saying, OF
course, that there were not people who
loved literature for it's own sake: 1 am
only talking of literary criticism of the
nineties, and the queer unpleasant things
that came out of it."
I N 1920 Katherine lyman paid VISIT
Il to the Dunsanys. Dunsany had just
returned from America and was enthusi-
astic about the country. ut was the last
country in the world one would have ex-
peeted him to be enthusiastic about if
he had not visited it. But apparently the
Americans know how to welcome and
speed their honored guests as we do not,
and despite some little difficulties it had
been roses, roses all the way for the Dun
sanys. At the moment their late dis
tinguished guest held the Americans to
be the people of the world. The memory
of how the Americans had honored art
and literature made him intolerant of his
comfortable neighbors to the mass of
whom such things would count for moth
ing. The country of rich grazing lands
and rich graziers would have cared as
little for 'Bainting and Boedry' as the
first Hanoverian King of England Lord
Dunsany was out to avenge Keats on the
country of Francis Ledwidge and himself,
moved thereto by the memory of how
America honored the distinguished
stranger"
sc A E." George William Russell) ap-
"A. pears many times in the course
of '"The Wandering Years." and he is also
the subject of chapter in St. John G.
Ervine's "Some Impressions of My Ell
ders" tthe Macmillan Company. When
he was in America Mr.. Ervine was i'm
pressed by the number of Americans who
asked him to tell them something of "a.
E." It was Sir Horace Plunkett, Mr. Err
vine tells us, who. returning from long
stay in the United States to begin the
cooperative movement, found, in Dublin
shop, keeping accounts for tea mer-
chant, poet and a painter mystic who
was also an economist, with the capacity,
as 1t afterward proved, to become the
ablest journalist IN ireland. "This man
of multiple energies was George William
Russell, who was born in Lurgan, in the
county Of Armagh, on April 10, 1867. He
is two years younger than Mr. Yeats,
eleven years younger than Mr. Shaw and
fifteen years younger than Mr.. Moore"
ct HE order of these births is sig
nificant." says Mr.. Ervine "Ob-
serve how an aloof artist has been sue
ceeded by a furious economist Mr..
Moore, who began life as a realist after
the manner, but not after the style. of
a1 hooI