People and Places
THESE handsome and imposing volumes each contain some sixteen coloured plates, 160 full-page black-and-white illustrations, and about 450 pages of text printed in two columns. The illustrations— with the exception of some of the present-day photographs—are well-chosen; the Victorian portraits, though familiar, are particularly good. Powerful teams of contributors have laboured over the text, and some agreeable hours may be spent in browsing over the short life-stories contained in People, or the descriptions of scenery and setting which make up Places. If, however, anyone should ask what is the purpose of these volumes, and what kind of reader might be advised to spend two guineas a time in acquiring them, it is difficult indeed to answer. The editors reject with scorn the idea that their work might be con- sidered as books of reference, and indeed the arbitrary choice of contents makes them quite useless for the purpose. if volumes of this kind do not aim at completeness, their value can only be in the principles on which they are compiled.
century ambition has allowed the editors, Geoffrey Grigson and C. 14. Gibbs-Smith, to back their personal fancies with abandon— to include Pugin, but not Vanbrugh or Wren; Henry Moore, but not David, Rodin or Maillot ; Gide, but not Racine or Maupassant; Leigh-Mallory, the Everest climber, but not Pizarro or Cortes. The choice of names is largely, therefore, an expression of editorial Preferences and educational backgrounds—certain periods being favoured, certain activities esteemed, and others disregarded. In compensation for their lack of universality, the books are given what the authors engagingly call a 'less neutral' approach. On its better side, this means that the short sections are frequently written with animation and enthusiasm; on its weaker side it permits a self- licensed irresponsibility which writes up W. H. Auden :
As though he were an artesian well in the desert or a geyser in the rock, poetry of most kinds has welled up through this writer of our time, without caution or fear,
While Byron, for example, is decried with a casual flippancy:
His life was a Gothic Folly, and she [his mother] laid the foun- dations.
Though many of the notes are stimulating, there are times when the determined pursuit of brightness leads to verbose inanity:
Kafka was Jewish, but not a Jew. He was Czech, yet not a Czech .... He was a novelist, yet not a novelist .... He had a love affair, yet it was not a love affair,
and so on. One expects something better than this of books which claim to be written 'in language which is straightforward, scholarly and concise.'
of The companion volume, Places, is described as 'an adventure in World knowledge.' If any reader wishes to know what places are to onn the subject of his adventure, the answer is decided. The choice has been arbitrary, In part, it must be admitted, it is an editor's choice of those enjoyable places in the world they have been able to visit themselves (a very small number) and those (so great a number) they would enjoy if only there were life enough and time....
A study of this volume discloses that the editors have visited, or Would like to visit, the Lake District but not Lapland, Goa but not Galway, Anyang but not Antofagasta. Information of more general interest can also be prised out of this compendium of geographical marginalia by anyone with, as the editors put it, 'life enough and time.' Such a reader should not be put off by an occasional flaccid utterance: How vast the Colosseum is by moonlight, cavernous, yawning, pockmarked; we cannot resist the obvious reflections....
Many of the photographs in Places are commonplace, but good landscape photographs are rarer than good portraits. The colour photographs, in general, are unpleasing, but there are several charm- mg coloured drawings by English water-colourists, none of whom, incidentally, receives any mention among People. Two further volumes are promised under the titles Ideas and Things. There should then exist an almost complete record of who, What and where in the world appeared interesting to two persons of Wide knowledge, if rather limited interests, in the middle of the twentieth century.
TOM HOPKINSON
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