Reviews

Home Life In Norway.
By H. K. Daniels.

(London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.)

Every lover of Norway should read this lively and intimate “life-history” of our cousins across the North Sea. Rather flippant, perhaps, in style it tells us much that nothing but a long and observant residence in the country could teach about the home-life of its people, their pursuits, their pleasures and their food – especially the last. The author brings out very clearly the yeoman character of the people, without an aristocracy or nobility, and the distinct line of cleavage between the Bymand or townsman and the Bonde or peasant, the former comprising the merchants, shopkeepers and their dependent workers in the coastal towns and a few inland centres, the latter, whether sea or land Bönder, practically all the rest. The book confirms the respect and liking which all who know Norway have for that pleasant land.

Ski-ing.
By Arnold Lunn.

(London: Eveleigh Nash. 1913. pp 256. 3s. 6d. net.)

Mr. Lunn’s object in writing this book is to give the beginner some useful lessons in the art, and he is completely successful. He discusses Mr. Caulfield’s book with the freedom of an expert, and his chapters on how to learn the “Stemming Turn,” “Telemarks,” “Christianias” and his own invention – the “Stemmiania”- a portmanteau-word from Stern+Christiania – should be read by anyone who wants to become a ski-runner.

Mr Lunn is a mountaineer, both of the Summer and the Winter, and all his exhortations are conceived with this – the real aim of ski-running – in view. His ski-mountaineering lore is to be found both in the formal pages on the subject and in the fascinating chapters on tours made in the Alps and in Norway. His stories of winter expeditions in Switzerland, including the crossing of the Oberland and ascent of Finsteraarhorn; his delightful time at Easter on Norwegian snows; and not least his plucky return to the snow after a bad accident on a Welsh climb, are full of the true spirit of the climber and show a keen appreciation of natural beauty combined with a wealth of practical common-sense. The chapter on “Where to Ski” gives an unbiased and expert appreciation of all the ski-ing centres now available, but will of course need to be revised as more and more “Winter-sports” places are opened.

The chapter on “Clubs, Competitions and Tests” gives with great fairness one side of the unfortunate dispute between the Ski Club of Great Britain and the British Ski Association. “Tantaene animis coelestibus irae!” The time cannot surely be distant when, so far as tests of style, &c., are necessary at all, there shall be one standard and one authority.

J. J. B.

The Cornish Coast And Moors.
By A. G. Folliott Stokes.

(London: Greening & Co. Ltd. 19l2. pp. 367.)

To the rambler whose brief holidays in Scottish Highlands, Yorkshire Dales, or Cumbrian Hills are so often spoilt by bad weather, this work opens a new and alluring playground. It is a far cry to Penzance – but so it is to Loch Awe; and the long night journey to Bristol has its reward in the if glimpses of “The Golden West” beyond.

Not, indeed, that he could hope to compass in one trip the circuit of the whole Cornish Coast described here, from Marsland in the north to Plymouth in the south. But with the author as his guide he could make himself familiar with some part of it and feel like him the witchery of its iron-bound coast, sunny coves and wind-swept moors.

In the Penwith peninsula, for instance, the “Sanctum sanctorum of the Cornish Celt,” he will find cliff scenery of the finest, with delicate rock climbing of a high order, and wild uplands with a wealth of prehistoric villages, cromlechs and stone circles, all “bound in with the triumphant sea” thundering in from the Atlantic, blue as the blue sky above.

And if, like the author, he makes himself familiar with the dreamy mystic atmosphere that broods over this land of legend and mystery he will catch something of the spirit that still makes Cornwall a thing apart from the rest of England.

The author’s wayside notes on botany and natural history, folk lore and antiquities, are not the least interesting part of this book, and the photographs excellent.

Walking Essays.
By A. H. Sidgwick.

(London: Edward Arnold. 1912,)

Mr. A. H. Sidgwick writes very pleasant English; he has a very pretty whimsical wit; he has read a great many books and remembers them, or the more quotable parts of them, at exactly the proper moments for the illustration of his thoughts. He appears to be fond of walking, and, if one may judge from what he says and the way he says it, and what he doesn’t say, he would be a most charming companion for a walk, whether it were a Sunday tramp in Surrey or a more extended ramble some Easter or Whitsuntide, for he would not only keep silence as you strode along, but at a halt he would rush you into conversation and contradict you flatly, but also, for he has a happy and contentious temper, let you contradict him – and you would want to do so at every sentence – without any loss of friendship. Also, as he knows the Surrey bye-ways very thoroughly, he would take you for a very delightful walk, if you left the leadership to him, and you would take pleasure in seeing a considerable intellect engaged in unravelling the difficulties of the way and illuminating the obscurity of the guide books. Sometimes he would say something which would not in its manner of delivery lose the appearance, perhaps the reality, of authentic truth. We wish that we could stop there and recommend him and his book unreservedly. But he is, and we use the adjective advisedly, a very irritating young person. He knows that the aim, conscious or subconscious, of those who follow any form of sport is “to realize themselves in a fine activity.” But his obtrusive and uncontrolled intellect interferes continually to prevent either realization or amusement, and, like all young intellectuals, he exposes himself at every phrase to the categorical denial. Take a trivial example – “No man’s health or bodily comfort would now be affected in the slightest degree by the presence or absence of a tie.” To which we answer that there is no one who has ever gone through the gamut of a long Alpine day, but knows how the alternate constriction and liberty that comes as the tie is alternately bound up, loosened, discarded, and finally used to make the bearer presentable for the last stage home, if but laughs at an experience gained on Leith Hill in Piccadilly. Then he thinks that “the sixtieth year is like the eighteenth mile – the point at which you settle into your stride for the last stage.” Ye shades of Arthur Wills and many another! Lastly, how comes Mr. Sidgwick, in writing a deal of paradoxical abuse of beer, to make an exception for that turgid decoction of brown sugar that comes from Munich? To be more serious, the present writer has for many years, to the mingled amusement and amazement of friends whose education was completed in eastern and northern counties, sought vainly for a living example of what people call “the Oxford Manner,” to find it here at last. An essayist, and above all one who writes of activities among the wonderful works of nature, must, to win our hearts, have seen far more ugly things, before he can bar those that are lovely, and be more ready to find in his fellow-men things not common or unclean. Numbers of estimable people are stirred by great music, without being afraid, in the proper mood, of the most vulgar braying of the brassiest band. Lots of us have waltzed without losing our sense of refinement, or our ear for the waterfall, and, for myself, I have worn a stiff collar for years, though not when I was taking violent exercise, without either chafing my neck, cramping my motions, or vitiating my skin. Yet we will not part with Mr. Sidgwick on an acrimonious note. Take him at his best, writing an epitaph for his guide-book writer, we reproduce the commas textually, “Continuing on past the Happy Years, take the well-marked track to the right, but at the third clump of asphodel, note a greasy track diverging to the left, and follow this until it leads into an open space covered with amaranth and moly.”

C. S.

The Englishman In The Alps.
Being A Collection Of English Prose And Poetry Relating To The Alps.
Edited By Arnold Lunn.

(Oxford University Press. 1913. pp. xx. & 294. 5s. net.)

It was Macaulay, we think, who protested against the printing of “elegant extracts” from the poets’ Works, torn from their context, under some such title as “Beauties of Shakespeare,” and those who have drunk at large of the streams of Alpine literature, now so copious, may be tempted likewise to look askance at this dainty anthology, comprising over a hundred and fifty extracts from the writings of half as many writers in prose and verse. But it would only be for the moment. True, some of the prose extracts are so short as only to whet the appetite for more, but the greater part are a complete whole and we especially welcome the reprint of some passages not readily come by, like Philemon Holland’s “Hannibal,” Leslie Stephen’s “A Bye-day in the Alps” and Windham’s “Chamounix.” Some passages are informing, all are interesting, and many full of literary charm. As the editor very truly says, “Every sport gets the literature it deserves, so that while pheasant shooting still awaits its Homer, mountaineering has attracted some of the finest literary talent in the country.” The prose extracts range from the far-off narratives of Philemon Holland, Evelyn and Coxe, through the breezy pages of Whymper and Stephen and their compeers, to the ultra-modern introspection of the Oxford mountaineering essayists. The verses give us the best that Byron and Shelley and Wordsworth and Tennyson have sung of the mountains – and it is very good, but not better, says the Editor, and we agree, than what Mr. Geoffrey Young has given us, and we hope still has to give.

We will not say more, for the volume is a small one – nearly as small as a tiny Milton that has been our mascot for twenty summers, and we look to see it pulled out of many a ruck-sack at many a mountain halt, and to hear echoes of its verses as an adornment for many a mountain tale.

Alpine Studies.
By Dr. W. A. B Coolidge.

(London: Longmans, Green &,Co. 1912. pp. xiii. & 307.)

Dr. Coolidge is to be heartily thanked for giving us, in this handy volume, some gleanings from his unsurpassed – and probably unsurpassable – harvest of Alpine writing. Three of the articles are new, including one about the author’s dog Tschingel, whose record of Alpine ascents is not likely to be beaten. The remainder are reprinted from various journals, English and foreign, including one on the Dolomites from our own pages. It is not difficult to gather that the author’s heart is, like the reviewer’s, in the Western and South-Western Alps, the greater part of his climbing as recorded here deals with the Maritimes, the Chambeyron, Monte Viso and Dauphiné. His experiences go back to the early ‘8o’s, and were largely those of a pioneer, but any rambler with energy enough to forsake the common Swiss round will still find these districts uncrowded.

The articles on “The History of the St. Théodule Pass,” “The Early History of Monte Rosa” and “The Matterhorn and its Names” are evidence of the author’s encyclopædic knowledge, and very interesting.

In Praise Of Switzerland:
Being The Alps In Prose And Verse.
By Harold Spender.

(London: Constable & Co., Ltd. 1912. pp. xiii. & 287. 5s. net.)

This anthology of Alpine literature in prose and verse, chiefly the former, unlike Mr. Arnold Lunn’s, is too bulky to carry in the pocket, but will, none the less, be welcomed by the mountaineer, not only for the “purple patches” from writers like Ruskin, Tyndall and Stephen, already familiar, but more especially for the lengthy extracts from authors not so easily come by, such as Albert Smith, Dr. Saussure, Horace Walpole, Livy, Mrs Piozzi, &c.

The Alps are dealt with in Admiration, in Description, in Adventure, in Tragedy, in Comedy, in History and in Fiction, a somewhat fantastic way of treating them, but the subject is great enough to survive it, and we get a kaleidoscopic succession of rhapsodies in prose and verse, well-knit description, epoch-making climbs, both old and recent, tragic happenings, quaint conceits and elegant extracts, which run to nearly three hundred pages, and leave us, who know the fulness of the Alpine storehouse, greedy for more.

For nothing perhaps, will the mountaineer be more thankful than for the reprint of Mr. Godley’s immortal verses beginning “In the steamy stuffy Midlands”

Tramps Through Tyrol.
By Frederick Wolcott Stoddard.

(London: Mills & Boon. 1912. pp. x. & 298. 7s. 6d. net).

This book is not written for climbers, but then Tyrol itself was not built for them either, except for those who specialize on Dolomites; and travel in it is of such a pleasant armchair fashion, after the greater Alps, that a pleasant chatty account of walks and drives among its lovely valleys and beneath its fantastic peaks ought to be welcome at any rate to the rambler, if not also to the mountaineer. Cortina, Bozen, Meran, to name only three of the places described, are of grateful memory and we are glad to have word of them again, whether in word or picture. The pictures, indeed, are very good, and those in colours are so few as to suggest that, for once the have been made for the letterpress and not vice versa.