Harry Lauder " Off "
Roamin' in the Gloamin'. By Sir Harry Lauder. (Hutchinson, illustrated. 21s.) De la reclaim, encore de la reclante, et toujours de la reelame !
• And why not ? Sir Harry Lauder has always made thousands of people laugh and none blush. If now he chooses to write a book about it all; one may reflect that myriads of books have been issued with infinitely less justification.
Sir Harry's justification, if any were needed, is that he is in his own mode a great artist, with a life-history of hard struggle I behind-him which he describes well and movingly, and that -he possesses in addition the gift of a simple vein of self- ilepreciatory humour which never fails of success. Even of his reputed stinginess (which is probably only the Scottish quality of thrift that makes Scottish generosity possible) he can make artful use. Stories of that side of his character " I began to invent myself and encouraged other people to invent them " as " a battery of the very finest free advertisements any stage personality could have wished for ! . . If I am ever stumped for a story or a subject in this book, I can always turn on the money-making tap. It will never fail me."
But in the book, as on the boards, stories in all sorts of other veins fairly bubble out of him, and most of them are amusing. It is often said that. Harry Lauder has no vogue in Scotland, but such was not the opinion of a Perthshire gamekeeper who observed of one of the comedian's entertainments, 4' There's been nothing like it in the country since Queen -.)rictoria's funeral." s
The first part of the book contains an' account of Sir Harry's struggle against poverty, how the author worked as a golf- caddie (" twopence a round and an extra penny if no balls were lost ") ; as a half-timer in a flaxmill for a weekly wage of 2s. id., being savagely flogged by an old Scottish dominie between whiles ; and finally, before singing claimed him professionally, how he rose to almost affluence as a Lanarkshire collier. His father's sudden death had left a young mother with seven children, Harry, the eldest of them, a lad of twelve years of age, and his responsibilities were great. He met them fully.
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