Chapter 103

20–5659

George Bubb Dodington was a prominent political and social figure in the reigns of George I and George II on whom Lord Chesterfield bestowed the sobriquet of “blest coxcomb,” on account of his supreme conceit and ostentation, but who nevertheless had some compensating qualities of sincerity, capacity for friendship, and courage. His notorious diary has made him a historical figure and the present account of his life is a picture of the England of his day. Contents: Dodington’s ancestry; The youth of George Bubb; George Bubb, plenipotentiary; The seizure of Sardinia; Dodington and Walpole; Eastbury; A prince and a duke; From Walpole to Pelham; Frederick, Prince of Wales; La Trappe; Henry Pelham; The duke of Newcastle; Chaos; The end of the reign; Dodington’s last years. There are illustrations.

“Mr Lloyd Sanders puts with ease what the usual maker of research states heavily, and the confusions of politics for forty years up to 1762 become almost agreeable in his animated narrative.”

“Casual references to Dodington abound in the political histories and studies of social life of the eighteenth century. It must have been a source of regret to those who study this period that no intimate material regarding Dodington has been procurable. Mr Sanders’s volume fulfills this want. Besides, a man that Robert Browning parlayed with for more than 300 lines is well worth attention.”

“If it be easier, as Mr Lytton Strachy assures us, to live a good life than to write one, Mr Lloyd Sanders deserves not only praise but gratitude for presenting us with his admirable monograph on Bubb Dodington. If we have a complaint to make of Mr Sanders it is that he repeats the common saying that Bubb was a wit, but gives us no specimens.”

“A good biography of a second-rate man often throws more light on the period in which he lived than a biography of a great man, who is necessarily exceptional and abnormal. We should recommend any one interested in the early Georgian era to read Mr Lloyd Sanders’s witty and scholarly memoir of George Bubb Dodington, who was a typical eighteenth-century politician.”

“Bubb’s biographer is not biassed in his favour. He makes a cold, exhaustive investigation of the career of a place-hunter when Walpole ruled the roost and every man had his price, and he is successful in every respect save one. He cannot make a picturesque ill-doer of his hero. His story constitutes not so much a page of eccentric biography as a quaint footlight to the rather squalid politics of George the Second.”

SANDES, EDWARD WARREN CAULFEILD.[2]In Kut and captivity with the Sixth Indian division. il *$10 Dutton (*24s Murray) 940.472

(Eng ed 20–656)

“Major Sandes has written an interesting book on the earlier phase of the war in Mesopotamia. Major Sandes was attached to the Sixth Indian division, under General Townshend, which formed the main portion of Sir John Nixon’s expeditionary force. He was in charge of the bridging train which followed the army up the Tigris. He describes the capture of Kurna, the rapid advance up to Amarah, the battle of Es Sin, where the Turks offered a strenuous resistance, the occupation of Kut, and the fatal advance upon Baghdad which ended at Ctesiphon. He gives a full narrative of the retreat, which was most skilfully conducted, and relates the history of the five months’ siege of Kut. After the surrender in April, 1916, he was taken to Asia Minor, and remained at Yozgad till Turkey capitulated a year ago.”—Spec

“It is likely to remain for some time a classic on the heroic stand of the Kut garrison and the awful sufferings they subsequently endured.” R. C. T.

“Depressing as it must needs be, the undauntable spirit which it shows, the endurance, simplicity, modesty, lift this book into the class of great siege narratives and give it high place among the first-hand records of great military disasters. And so, for all its unconscious concreteness and scattered masses of detail, it gives in the end that purging of the spirit which Aristotle assigned to high tragedy.”

“Major Sandes is rigidly objective; he sets down plain facts and leaves his readers to rely on their own imaginations. We are not sure, all the same, that his story of Kut is not rendered more remarkable by his resolute avoidance of fine writing.”

“The story of the siege of Kut is well told by Major Sandes.”

SANDWICH, EDWARD GEORGE HENRY MONTAGUE, 8th earl of. Memoirs of Edward, Earl of Sandwich, 1839–1916. il *$7 Dutton

(Eng ed 20–442)

“The ‘Memoirs of Edward, eighth earl of Sandwich, 1839–1916,’ have been edited by Mrs Steuart Erskine from the material which Lord Sandwich himself collected from old diaries with the object of publishing his autobiography. Besides the intimate pictures provided of society at home and abroad, of state visits to Berlin and St Petersburg, of missions to Fez, and travels in many lands, the story is told of his experiences in spiritual healing and other psychical phenomena which became his dominant interest towards the end of his life.”—Boston Transcript

“Such material as is found in these selections from the diary not only furnish valuable matter for the historian, but it reveals the personality of the diarist, and thus makes very interesting and enjoyable reading for those who delight in following the movements, personal and social, of human beings.” F. W. C.

“So varied a life clearly presented opportunities for an interesting book. We cannot say, however, that Mrs Steuart Erskine has been altogether fortunate in her materials. Lord Sandwich’s wit in conversation vanishes when he tries to commit it to paper. He intended to write his biography, but here we only get it in the raw, so to speak.”

“The value of these memoirs lies in the picture they afford of a typical representative of a long-established order now apparently in the throes of dissolution.”

SANGER, MARGARET H.[2]Woman and the new race. *$2 (4½c) Brentano’s 176

20–15159

In his preface to this book Havelock Ellis says that its contents are already as familiar as A B C to the few who think, but to the millions and to the handful of superior persons whom the millions elect to rule them, they are not familiar, yet it is a matter of vital importance to the race that they should be. The reason why is clearly set forth in the book which is a plea for a free and voluntary motherhood. The chapters are: Woman’s error and her debt; Woman’s struggle for freedom; The material of the new race; Two classes of women; The wickedness of creating large families; Cries of despair; When should a woman avoid having children? Birth control—a parents’ problem or woman’s? Continence—is it practicable or desirable? Contraceptives or abortion? Are preventive means certain? Will birth control help the cause of labor? Battalions of unwanted babies the cause of war; Woman and the new morality; Legislating woman’s morals; Why not birth control clinics in America? Progress we have made; The goal.

“Calm, temperate, informed, sound, and winning book.”

“While Mrs Sanger’s book contains nothing new to students of the subject, it is an excellent summary of the arguments for voluntary motherhood. In several instances, however, she overstates her case.” B. L.

SANGER, WILLIAM CARY, jr.Verse. *$1.50 Putnam 811

20–10004

The poems of this volume are arranged under the headings Tides of commerce (Verse of the railroad); The city of toil and dreams; Miscellaneous poems; With the armies of France; Additional war poems, 1918: In the land of the harvest. Most of the poems are reprinted from earlier volumes by the author and the original prefaces to these volumes appear in an appendix.

Reviewed by R. M. Weaver

SANTAYANA, GEORGE.[2]Character and opinion in the United States; with reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and academic life in America. *$3.50 Scribner 304

20–26993

“Mr Santayana, who was professor of philosophy at Harvard, has now come to live in Europe. In this book he looks back with intimate knowledge and complete detachment at the intellectual life which he has left. He is, he says, an American only by long association.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “The book is a keen, kindly analysis of American life, particularly of the more subtle mental attitudes. It seems to centralize around a conception of the American character as vigorous, hopeful, good, somewhat childish; hampered intellectually by conventional prohibitions and compulsions; and devoted to a liberty based on cooperation and the spirit of live and let live.” (Booklist)

“In ‘Character and opinion in the United States,’ Professor Santayana has written what one is inclined to believe will become the classic essays on William James and Josiah Royce.... What must he think of America? On the whole, his answer to this question is an extraordinarily kindly one. When he is most perceptive, he gives his generalizations amiably rather than scornfully.” Harold Stearns

Reviewed by Alvin Johnson

“A compelling, stimulating, and essentially a significant book. The book itself is a unique essay in interpretation, an attempt to evaluate American character under the play of the ideas which it has projected and by which, in turn, it has been influenced.” L. R. Morris

“On the whole he is eminently fair, if not more than fair, in his judgments. It is another question whether there is much profit in such an attempt as he has made to analyze the temper of a people.”

“Professor Santayana has written one of the most fascinating books imaginable.”

“The book is a very original one; indeed, the two chapters on William James and Josiah Royce belong to a new genre of literature. They are character-studies of philosophers, studies of the reaction between character and philosophy, which ought to be dull but are as amusing as if he were talking scandal about the manners and habits of fashionable ladies. His book is one of the best he has written.”

SANTAYANA, GEORGE.Little essays, drawn from the writings of the author by Logan Pearsall Smith, with the collaboration of the author. *$3 Scribner 814

20–26891

“Mr Pearsall Smith explains in his preface that this book owes its genesis to his habit of copying out such passages as particularly interested him in the writings of Santayana. He came to see, however, that these extracts ‘were bound up with, and dependent upon, a definite philosophy, a rational conception of the world and man’s allotted place in it, which gave them a unity of interest and an importance far beyond that of any mere utterances of miscellaneous appreciation—any mere “adventures of the soul.”’ He therefore persuaded Mr Santayana to arrange these extracts in such a way as to preserve their original connection as far as possible.”—Ath

“We confess that we are agreeably surprised at the result. The masterful and inclusive vision of the author of the ‘Life of reason’ appears here broken and disconnected, but not betrayed.” J. W. N. S.

“Contains a vast amount of interesting material distilled from profound scholarship and meditation.”

“Any one who has a taste for short essays will find a good feast provided for him. While the essays can well hold their own as detached disquisitions on special subjects, they form a catena of thought which hangs logically together, exposing a rational philosophy. Indeed it has been said that George Santayana has imperiled the recognition of his philosophy by the fine robes in which he has consistently presented it.” Robert Bridges

“A new immortal book.” P. L.

“I believe that this publication will accomplish two things: it will establish Mr Santayana’s reputation as one of the foremost masters of English prose now living, and it will persuade many readers to buy the complete works from which these essays are drawn.” W: L. Phelps

“It is a notable book. Professor Santayana possesses charm of style; that merit must be accorded to him by his worst enemy, if enemy he has. His culture is broad, and his mind is discursive, touching in its range many points of metaphysics and art and literature and morals.”

“Short though the pieces may be, they are, as a rule, brief only through extreme compression, and the great beauty of the style in which they are written links them together rather than divides them. Hidden in the book there lurks the exposition of a theory of life.”

“Even if his philosophy does not satisfy us, we must enjoy his art. If we cannot believe that he tells us the truth about the nature of the universe, he tells us many incidental truths about the nature of man.”

SARETT, LEW R.Many many moons; a book of wilderness poems. *$1.50 Holt 811

20–6453

Of these poems on Indian themes the author says that they “are in no sense literal translations of original utterances of aboriginal song and council-talk; they are, rather, very free, broad interpretations ... in the light of Indian symbolism and mysticism, of the mythology and superstition involved, and of the attendant ceremonies.” (Preface) This is especially true of Parts I and III of the poems, and an appendix of expository comments has been added to make them clearer to the reader. Part II consists of nature poems giving the atmosphere of the Indian’s environment. The book has an introduction by Carl Sandburg and the three parts are: Flying moccasins; Lone fires; Chippewa monologues.

“A book of beautiful, rugged verse.”

“Mr Sarett makes one understand the Indian. We understand the Indian in relation to his thoughts, moods, his customs, his legends, his symbolism, his natural mysticism. With the poet’s full equipment, he has psychologically become an Indian and thus his interpreter to the outside world. ‘Many many moons’ is a remarkable book!” W: S. Braithwaite

“Noise clearly is his forte; heap big Indian talk is his best line. The pale-face stanzas which attempt quieter and tenderer sorts of interpretation are vacant and over-facile in their faith.” M. V. D.

“He does not prettify the wilderness. Especially good are ‘The granite mountain’ and ‘God is at the anvil’ and ‘Of these four things I cannot write.’”

“When Mr Sarett writes of nature he is writing with genuine feeling of something he really knows. He has been in the wilderness.” M. Wilkinson

SAROLEA, CHARLES.Europe and the league of nations. *$2.50 Macmillan 341.1

“This book by Professor Sarolea of the University of Edinburgh is, as its title implies, devoted principally to the league of nations, although there are chapters of interest on other subjects. The author warmly supports the league as a panacea for the ailing world.” (N Y Times Mr 14) “He takes up a number of problems growing out of the treaty of peace and out of the league covenant such as The status of small nations within the covenant, America within the league, The trial of the kaiser, The future of Poland, Germany’s political reconstruction. The author expresses great dissatisfaction with the economic terms of the treaty.” (N Y Times Ap 18)

“Dr Sarolea’s book is excellent in temper and spirit, but its sentimental idealism is unrestrained by the realities of present-day politics.”

“‘Europe and the league of nations’ cannot be described as a weighty book, but it is fluently and brightly written.”

SASSOON, SIEGFRIED.Picture-show. *$1.50 Dutton 821

20–3705

“The contents of the volume, in spite of its suggestive title, are not wholly given over to the sidelights, fevers and fantasms of modern warfare. Almost one third of the book is a record of those passages of love which verge from the physical to the metaphysical; reflections of an emotion that is half-celebrated, half-stifled.”—New Repub

“Every last utterance of Siegfried Sassoon’s makes a farce out of the deeds of the romantic soldier-poet the world has worshipped during the last five years.” W. S. B.

Reviewed by Malcolm Cowley

“He knows the secret of the clean pentameter, he is distinct and clever and casual; yet there exists no feelable personality behind his lines. It is not required that he have intellectual drive or spiritual mounting-power: it merely is required that he show some sort of intellectual edge and awareness. He does that nowhere in ‘Picture show.’” M. V. D.

“Now we have ‘Picture show,’ a vigorous answer to those who feared that Sassoon had ‘written himself out’ or had begun to burn away in his own fire. The same outrage and loathing of war is in the new poems but a darker restraint is here; an emotion remembered not so much in tranquility as in irony. One of the most rousing of his recent poems. Aftermath, might well be the title of this volume, so firmly does it balance and round off his trilogy.” L: Untermeyer

“There is a mass of the verse that is heavy and halting—far too large a mass for so small a book. More careful pruning hereafter will lift the worth of his collections amazingly.” Clement Wood

“In this book Mr Sassoon describes warfare just as he did in his two earlier books. But the last lyric in ‘Picture-show,’ [Every one sang,] is, perhaps, the very loveliest of all the songs written to welcome peace.”

“Mr Sassoon sometimes is as shaken in his expressions as in his emotion, and then he is apt to write as though art could not contain him. But every poet must learn that no man feels too deeply or too quickly to write well.... At its best here is a proud, tender poetry, indignant often but magnanimous always, the creation of a loving and aristocratic art.” J: Drinkwater

“When it comes to sheer poetry, I find in Mr Sassoon but two outstanding merits, a feeling for phrase and a sense of the occult, both present in the degree which redeems verse from insignificance without lifting it to distinction.” O. W. Firkins

SAUNDERS, CHARLES FRANCIS.Useful wild plants of the United States and Canada. il *$3 McBride 581.6

20–26546

The purpose of the book is to call attention to certain useful wild plants, growing in the woods, waters and open country of the United States, that have in the past formed an important element in the diet of the aborigines and that could be both interesting and useful to dwellers in rural districts, to campers, vacationists and nature students. It is copiously illustrated by photographs and line drawings and the contents are: Wild plants with edible tubers, bulbs or roots; Wild seeds of food value and how they have been utilized; The acorn as human food and some other wild nuts; Some little regarded wild fruits and berries; Wild plants with edible stems and leaves; Beverage plants of field and wood; Vegetable substitutes for soap; Some medicinal wildings worth knowing; Miscellaneous uses of wild plants; A cautionary chapter on certain poisonous plants; Regional index and general index.

SAUNDERS, MARSHALL.Bonnie Prince Fetlar. *$2 (2½c) Doran

20–18408

The hero of this new story by the author of “Beautiful Joe” is a Shetland pony, and there are many other characters, both animal and human. The scene is a Canadian farm to which the pony and his master, a delicate boy with over-strung nerves, are sent. Neither likes the strange, wild country at first but in time both come to love it, the young master’s health is restored, he makes new friends with a family of six lively Canadian children and in the end the mother he had believed dead returns to him. All this story is told in the words of the pony.

“The author of ‘Beautiful Joe’ has written a horse story which friends of Beautiful Joe will be disappointed in. But after all, comparisons are unnecessary—and ‘Bonnie Prince Fetlar,’ left to itself, is an attractive book, full of incident and interest.”

“It is hardly necessary to say that here is an offering which any healthy boy or girl must enjoy, but to this it may be added that also it makes a strong appeal to grown-ups.”

SAVI, ETHEL WINIFRED.When the blood burns. *$2 (1½c) Putnam

20–22037

Marcelle was a typist in a London office. Her beauty attracted her employer and his charming personality easily persuaded the inexperienced girl that she loved him; also—since he was married to a much older woman who would not hear of divorce—that it was right for her to go away with him to India. The monotony of the life there soon palled on David and he is glad, eventually, of the summons back to England. Marcelle, left behind, suffers untold miseries and excruciating experiences, and is finally rescued by the one friend who has stood by her from the first and who takes her home as his wife. The interesting feature of the story is its description of life in India.

“It is a very old situation upon which E. W. Savi bases her story. She gives it no new twist, but she infuses into it so vital a sense of reality that it draws us and holds us keenly interested in its developments. She possesses the story-telling art in a very marked degree, and her story is full of both the beauty and strangeness of genuine romance.” D. L. M.

“The author hero has been content to tell a plain, somewhat sordid, tale of illicit love, with its inevitable penalties, which has little more color than can be found in the records of the average divorce suit. None of the characters commands much sympathy. As a whole, the offering may be called just a passable novel.”

“The scenes which pass in India are much the most interesting.”

“The story has a certain sympathetic charm with a moral that cannot be missed.”

“Despite a great deal of burning talk about love and passion, the story leaves one quite cold.”

SAWYER, RUTH (MRS ALBERT C. DURAND).Leerie. il *$1.75 (2½c) Harper

20–13146

“Leerie” was what the patients at the “San” lovingly called their nurse Sheila O’Leary, and like Stevenson’s “Leerie,” she brought light into the lives of her charges as no other nurse could. Especially to Peter Brooks, she brought light which they both felt could never die out. Then just on the very eve of her marriage to him, she felt the call to go to France, and went. But she did not leave him behind for he too found his place over there. There, after her period of service which offered experiences both bitter and sweet, they were reunited, “glad they had both paid their utmost for the love and happiness that she knew was theirs now for all time.”

“Somewhat sentimentalized and improbable, but women and girls will like it.”

“The book contains the correct philosophy of life throughout, showing that happiness comes from making others happy, from giving freely.”

“A vivacious story, with plenty of sentimental appeal and written with a good deal of cleverness and ingenuity, Ruth Sawyer’s new novel springs lightly out of the conventional lines of fiction and goes its own gait.”

SAYLER, OLIVER M.Russia white or red. il *$2.50 Little 947

19–18648

For descriptive note see Annual for 1919.

“The author took with him his best gifts as critic—a quick eye, ready critical discernment, and an easy pen. He added to these gifts something of the historian’s grasp of the unity of events. The result is a quite unusual freshness and lucidity in the view we get of the Russian theatre.” T: H. Dickinson

“The value of his account is in its freedom from political interest. Without prejudice toward either white or red but with sympathy for the struggles and sufferings of both sides, he simply relates what he observed of the surface and common movement of things.”

“‘Russia white or red’ is free of any taint of propaganda, and among a torrent of writings full of distorted pictures of revolutionary Russia, it stands out as a truthful and honest if by no means profound contribution.” M. J. Olgin

“Altogether, the book reveals a sympathetic understanding of the Russian masses, and an appreciation of their yearnings for freedom and peace. It does not pretend, however, to be a serious treatise on the fundamental changes which have come about since the revolution.” Alexander Trachtenberg

“It is neither a complete record nor an interpretation of events, and will appeal primarily to those who may still be interested in getting the background of revolutionary events and vivid glimpses of daily living during the first months of the Bolshevist régime.” Reed Lewis

SAYLER, OLIVER M.Russian theatre under the revolution. il *$2.50 (3½c) Little 792

20–692

The author chose the winter of 1917–1918, while the Bolshevik revolution was in progress, for a study of the Russian theatre. It was a time when the theatre had not significantly survived either in England or France or even in neutral New York and war had revealed it as being only too clearly a luxury, a pastime and an industry. But the Russian theatre is one of profound introspection and inspiration. “Out of their sorrows the Russians have builded all their art. And in the days of their profoundest gloom, they return to it for the consolation which nothing else affords.” In Moscow and Petrograd, the author testifies, the modern theatre has been carried to its finest achievement. Among the contents are: Plays within a play; The world’s first theatre; The plays of Tchehoff at the Art theatre; From Turgenieff to Gorky at the Art theatre; The Russian ballet in its own home; The deeper roots of the Russian theatre; The Kamerny, a theatre of revolt; Meyerhold and the theatre theatrical; Yevreynoff and monodrama; Russian theories of the theatre. There are numerous illustrations and an index.

“Interesting and remarkable book. It is a valuable contribution to the literature of the theatre.” N. H. D.

“A book so eager, so cordial, so intelligent, so frankly the expression of a personal appetite that one would like to think of it as typical of a new dispensation.”

“He seems overstimulated by the shock of strangeness and the pervading atmosphere of idealism and experiment so different from the atmosphere of Broadway. Nevertheless, his book is tonic for the knowledge it brings us of theatrical theories, experiments and striking achievements in a land which is far ahead of ours so far as the theater is concerned.” W. P. Eaton

“The author presents his material in such a way that not only will those interested in the theatre be attracted to it, but also those who are drawn to the puzzling topic of the Russian revolution.”

“His sincerity is unquestionable but his temper runs to hyperbole. In spite of all doubts and deductions, Mr Sayler’s book should be read by all students of contemporary drama. If it is not a striking history, it is a spirited and curious novel.”

“A comprehensive and graphic account.” Reed Lewis

“It cannot be recommended too highly when considered merely as a source of knowledge and inspiration to those who are organizing our theatre guilds, Greenwich Village theatres, arts and crafts playhouses, and other steps toward a native art theatre. The casual reader will find the chapters absorbing with a human appeal quite lacking in most books about the theatre; but the same reader will meet something of a jolt when he reaches the last chapter—for here are gathered in concentrated form (and often in darkly philosophical terms) the most recent of revolutionary theories of the stage. A handful of Americans will find these few chapters worth more than all the rest of the book together—worth more, too, than scores of the usual superficial books of criticism.”

SCHAEFER, CLEMENS T.Motor truck design and construction. il *$2.50 Van Nostrand 629.2

20–991

“This volume has been written to fill a pressing want; to give a practical discussion of the gasoline propelled commercial car of the present type, and to present this subject in the plainest possible manner by the use of numerous illustrations.” (Preface) A chapter on the general layout of the chassis is followed by chapters devoted to the various details, engine, cooling system, carburetion, ignition systems, etc. The illustrations number 292, consisting largely of figures in the text. There is an index.

SCHAUFFLER, ROBERT HAVEN.Fiddler’s luck. *$1.90 (3½c) Houghton

20–9475

Being “the gay adventures of a musical amateur.” (Sub-title) The young son of a family in which the flute was hereditary finds a cello in the garret and sets about to teach himself. He is sent to a musical cousin for his education and returning, as a fairly well equipped fiddler, has a falling out with his puppy love, Priscilla, because her progress on the piano has not kept pace with his, and she plays an ear-splitting fortissimo for his accompaniment. After many musical vicissitudes in the army he comes unexpectedly on Priscilla in Paris. She no longer strums but is a finished pianist and the harmony is now complete.

“One of the most thoroly enjoyable books—whether you are a musician or not—that you have read in a long, long while.”

“‘Fiddler’s luck’ is full of love, laughter, music and good drink. It is worth a ton of best sellers and ‘serious studies’ in these melancholy days that are upon us.” B. De C.

“‘Fiddler’s luck’ is a charming series of war sketches that Mr Schauffler tries to make impersonal, but his own engaging personality sparkles through the sketches.”

“A cheerful vein of optimism is in evidence continually, and its influence on the reader will be anything but depressing.”

SCHAUFFLER, ROBERT HAVEN.[2]White comrade; and other poems. *$1.50 Houghton 811

Back to Index Next