Evening star., 1932-03-22
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
I. C.. NJ.

L u. ". m.
EvERYMAN REMEMBERS. Ernest
Rhys. New York: COSMOPOLITAN
y Book Corporation.
Not "everyman" remembers. Because
the most OF US, you see, have nothing
to remember. Nothing much. Since,
away back. when the days and years
for packing memory chests came along.
we, nightly prodded and pressed by
life clamoring. beside and within us.
grabbed hurriedly of the top of things,
crowding them down. hit miss. into
the record chests so coolly waiting either
to accept or reject as the Indifferent
moment might decide. In they 60
passing incidents. empty episodes. dim
experiences. small personal feelings,
precepts never really followed lessons
urable thinking. no reading OF account.
Too busy, too busy with being alive
to pack trunks for any sort of future.
The personal life, alongside, much too
clamorous IN its solicitations and seduc-
tons
Then the days begin to lengthen.
Leisure, insidiouS but unacceptable. be-
gins to shoulder out the strenuous time
Of doing, achieving, new strivings.
Once, certain day. turned Of its
own slightly loose accord toward my
own kit of rememberings, so negligibly
stocked and then left unminded during
the ardent years of action. And little
glow warmed me. I made a pleasant
picture loafing long hours un-
der the trees whose LEAKAGE sprinkled
my lap with sunshine. Or sitting in the
lamplight beside the fire in a cozy
room. In either picture the treasure box
was at my feet. and mine the antici-
patory joy Of opening this kit of re-
memberings for the rich experiences
they must hold, for the ripe fruitage
Of a personal life which, now. l was to
relive in happiness and, maybe, in a
glimmer of pride.
And so I freed the lock and lifted
the cover. A little cloud Of dust A few
floating fragments that. released, flut-
tered like vagrant butterflies. settling
and crumbling simultaneously into other
little clouds of dust In effect, I was
looking into an empty chest
No, "everyman" does not remember
Instead, it takes the few men, and
women. to remember for the rest of US.
Since these have things that are worth
remembering, that are worth bestowing.
Therefore, in widely separated now
and then We come upon q man or
woman fun enough to live twice, the
second time as gift to the unfor-
tunate commonalty that through no
fault Of It's own has nothing worth
while to remember.
Memoirs, autcbiographies, that whole
class Of personal revelation which
right now Is becoming an ample and
efficient first aid to readers, stand in
the front row for many a weakened
reader to meet Tffe simple ones are
best. The ones that are least self
conscious are the ones to stock us with
many a thing that We, heedlessly,
missed on our own way up. A book
like "Everyman Remembers" is of the
right sort. As If Ernest Rhys, stand
ing outside himself and looking in, saw
there young fellow with a story that
in the main was much like the story
Of any other young man stepping out
into the thick of things. The fellow
looked interesting to him. He might
prove to be interesting to us. He has.
He had nerve. to set out with. Else
he would not have dared to take
hand with London, so big and gloomy,
SO soaked in historic brews, so sure of
itself and all that it connotes, so-well,
London! But down from the North
Ernest RhyS came, not bit of equip
ment, SO far as one can see, for the
rash adventure Of becoming a writer
in London That is, no equipment
save only Ernest Rhys himself.
Quite a reach. this, from that first
step to the assured place where Ernest
Rhys now delivers himself as original
writer, critic, editor of Everyman's Lii
brary. And along the way increasing
public honors serve to justify the cour-
age and self-ccnfidence of that young
man from the North coming down to
try himself out on the big city by the
Thames.
OF those early days he talks much
as If he we're telling the story to
friend. Certainly not once is there
anything to indicate success calculated
TO turn young fellows head. To be
sure, o great editor, Edmund Gosse, did
give him book to review, as friendly
gesture toward striving youth. But the
review was rejected, and In something
Ike o personal regret we hurry along
to the day, say, when young Rhys saw
Tennyson, actually saw Tennyson, in
long black cloak and broad hat, walk
ing near Burlington House. Or to that
matinee performance Of The Cenci,"
where he saw Browning. seated
In state m box. in sort ''of burly
dignity which, somehow, fell short of
what young Rhys had made in his own
mind .as the pattern of Browning.
But the rejected review, the passing
long to the beginning days of Rhys in
London. An energetic young fellow,
who, edging and walking and running
in this direction or that, wherever his
kind of work showed its head, he IN nc
very long time-no, no. nothing like
the capture of London Instead q very
diligent pursuit Of the clues to author
ship. pressed by the hardest kind of
grind, this the program by which the
young man began 30 get around the
town.
Besides, his own many trials and slow
successes are not the point of the mat
ter In hand. Rather, to let readers
see, as he saw them, figures about
from period to period Of London lit
erary life shone and dimmed and faded.
in the measure Of intrinsic genius or
gift.
No London picture Of the immediate
past would be accepted without Oscar
WILDE and James McNeill Whistler
And here they are, sympathetically ap-
praised and, at the same time. pro-
jected IN the slightly spectacular role
without which either would have felt
himself quite indecently nude. And
now the celebrities Of London author
ship come thick and fast. And London
itself relives in its popular literary pur-
lieus In the Embankment and Chelsea
and the River and the Bridges, in club
and salon and studio.
From Tennyson to Bernard Shaw
with no forgetting of any name that
connoteS worthy contribution to Eng
lish letters, from the early to the late
does this budget of memory open in
orderly and illuminating fashion before
the reader. This reader has, no doubt,
an acquaintance, of sorts, with Hardy
and Meredith and Kipling and Conrad
and Galsworthy, and others Of the
English novelists. He knows, a little,
the group of new poets and artists and
social philoSophers-but this is a quite
different matter, this meeting with them
out OF medium such as "Everyman