Part 2

In fine, a bigger man than any of his books. One of the greatest reporters the press has ever had, one of the half-dozen—if so many—best masters of descriptive writing now alive. A chap who suffered nervous breakdowns prior to 1914 and who turned to iron in the moment of crisis. A militant pacifist because he has really seen war waged. A lover and fighter for justice, and a preacher of mercy. There is about him, despite the abolition of miracle and the rapid transformation of the world into a factory and a machine, some of that lost radiance of a day when men set forth to conquer in the name of their faith, or to spread a gospel which might redeem the world.

BOOKS BY PHILIP GIBBS

FICTION:

1908 _The Individualist_ 1908 _The Spirit of Revolt_ 1909 _The Street of Adventure_ 1910 _Intellectual Mansions, S. W._ 1911 _Oliver’s Kind Women_ 1912 _Helen of Lancaster Gate_ 1913 _A Master of Life_ 1914 _Beauty and Nick_ In England: _The Custody of the Child_ 1920 _Wounded Souls_ In England: _Back to Life_ 1922 _Venetian Lovers_ 1923 _The Middle of the Road_ 1924 _Heirs Apparent_ 1924 _Little Novels of Nowadays_

HISTORICAL:

1899 _Founders of the Empire_ 1906 _The Romance of Empire_ 1906 _Men and Women of the French Revolution_ 1908 _The Romance of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham_ 1909 _King’s Favorite_ 1912 _Adventures of War with Cross and Crescent_ 1915 _The Soul of the War_ 1917 _The Battles of the Somme_ 1918 _The Struggle in Flanders_ First title: _From Bapaume to Passchendaele_ 1919 _The Way to Victory_ In England: _Open Warfare_ 1920 _Now It Can Be Told_ In England: _Realities of War_ 1920 _People of Destiny_ 1921 _More That Must Be Told_ In England: _The Hope of Europe_ 1924 _Adventures in Journalism_

ESSAYS:

1903 _Knowledge Is Power_ 1905 _Facts and Ideas_ 1913 _The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married Life_ 1913 _The New Man: A Portrait of the Latest Type_

SOURCES ON PHILIP GIBBS

His _Adventures in Journalism_ is autobiographical in the best sense of the word, and only needs to be supplemented by the formal particulars in _Who’s Who_ (England). There are interesting references in Cosmo Hamilton’s _Unwritten History_. For a not wholly friendly reference, see Clement K. Shorter’s page in _The Sphere_, London, for 6 October 1923. Mr. Shorter was one of a few who believed themselves libelled in _The Street of Adventure_, and he has had various literary feuds.

Address: Sir Philip Gibbs, Ladygate, Punch Bowl Lane, Dorking, England.

2. The Trail Blazers

i

These paths are strange and exciting. One leads into the midst of wild beasts, another into the depths of the sea. A third goes laboriously some few feet underground and erases three thousand years in three months. One or two, keeping to the present, are sources of innocent merriment; several employ the mode of fiction to vivify fact; and at least one is a continuous pageant in colors of the American West.

There is no order in which these paths are to be taken; you may go half across the world to follow one, or you may begin by merely stepping outside your door. America or Arabia, ferns or fishes, dogs or diggings, history, hunting ... outdoor books are the best of indoor sports.

The alphabet is an immense convenience and I start with Adventurousness and America. For some time Joseph Lewis French has been busy selecting from various American authors the best accounts of the discovery of gold in California, the days of the pony express and the stage coach, the cowboy, the trapper, the guide, the bad man, and other phases of our history. He has drawn upon the works of Francis Parkman, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Hamlin Garland, Bayard Taylor, General George A. Custer, Owen Wister, Theodore Roosevelt, Emerson Hough and a good many others in the task. Mr. French calls his book _The Pioneer West: Narratives of the Westward March of Empire_, and Hamlin Garland has written a foreword for it. Also Remington Schuyler has done illustrations in color. As an anthology, the volume has no exact parallel in my knowledge. The nuggets it contains are otherwise for the most part found with considerable difficulty in half a hundred somewhat inaccessible places. It is, for example, not easy to find what you want in either Parkman or Roosevelt without risking a long hunt; and books by other earlier writers, even one so perfectly well-known as Bayard Taylor, are often hard to come by. It is no wonder that Mr. Garland calls _The Pioneer West_ a real service in recovery. Mr. French spreads a satisfactory panorama before the reader, for his selected narratives run from the time of Lewis’s and Clark’s discovery of Oregon down to the last of the Indian uprisings.

A projected alliance between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Russian American Fur Company led, in 1867, to a great piece of foolishness on the part of an American Secretary of State. Congress was induced to pay some millions of dollars to purchase a fancy refrigerator and everyone was scornful of “Seward’s folly.” Edison Marshall has taken the phrase for the title of his new novel dealing with that period in Alaskan history. _Seward’s Folly_ relates how Major Jefferson Sharp, late of the army of the Confederate States of America, was sent to Sitka by Seward. Major Sharp liked an aristocratic society, and he found it in Sitka where Russians, Englishmen, Americans and Indians were colorfully combined. He also encountered, in Molly Forest and her uncle, two Americans undisturbed by any doubts as to the superiority of American character and the value of American ideas of liberty and opportunity.

The fact that Major Sharp was still loyal to the spirit of the Confederacy and had no intention of serving the Union did not tend to simplify matters. He was, however, no scoundrel; and he came to recognize, beneath the glitter of Alaskan surfaces, much that his nature could not countenance. Mr. Marshall has managed an extremely good story. But he has brightened a portion of history in doing so.

William Patterson White’s _The Twisted Foot_ and B. M. Bower’s _The Bellehelen Mine_ are novels of the cattle rancher and the miner, respectively. Mr. White’s story has almost every ingredient of an exciting yarn—a love interest, an independent young woman who doesn’t believe in explanations, a mystery, an open enemy, a set of foes whose methods are mean and underhanded, and a couple of young men who think quick and shoot quick. The impetuous Buff Warren, cowboy, is sent to drive off the range a family of “nesters.” He finds that the father is blind and that the family is making a very brave fight against severe odds. He also meets Gillian Fair. Instead of putting the Fairs off the range, Buff takes them under his protection. This means the loss of his job, and when, by a trick, he gets himself made deputy sheriff, his state of mind is not helped by the fact that all clues to a bandit who is terrorizing the region seem to lead to Gillian Fair.

B. M. Bower tells of a silver mine named by a prospector after his two baby daughters, one of whom, grown to womanhood, is the heroine of _The Bellehelen Mine_. Helen Strong, left alone to carry out plans that she and her father had made together, returns to Goldfield and assembles a crew from among her father’s old miners. It is the beginning of an unanticipated battle, for the Western Consolidated is determined to make Helen Strong sell out.

_The Bellehelen Mine_ is to an extent a departure from the author’s previous books, a story of mine-working and not of ranch life. But it should be realized that B. M. Bower, or Mrs. Cowan, has been for some years a mine owner and manager. It would be surprising if she did not use this phase of her experiences in her fiction. She lives at El Picacho Mine, Las Vegas, Nevada; and after twenty years of writing Western fiction it is high time she gave us a mining story.

B. M. Bower is a woman but by no means a tenderfoot. Mary Roberts Rinehart’s account of her tenderfootage, in _The Out Trail_, is the most amusing record of a woman in the West on my shelf of recent books. But the most amusing record of America in general is, I think, _Cobb’s America Guyed Books_, that series of small volumes with drawings by John T. McCutcheon, a book to each State. These attach themselves with a burr-like tenacity to the memory in a series of epigrams. You remember that Irvin S. Cobb said of New York City: “So far as I know, General U. S. Grant is the only permanent resident,” and of Indiana: “Intellectually, she rolls her own,” and of Kansas: “A trifle shy on natural beauties, but plenty of moral Alps and mental Himalayas.” Such priceless remarks are more to be cherished—and are more cherished—than State mottoes; but the _Guyed Books_ have a claim to respect as well as affection. Each presents, along with various State demerits, partly humorous and partly real, the honest claim of the people of one section to be considered as individual, characterizable, with a personality not lost in the American mass. And Mr. Cobb has not failed to give the people of each State credit for State achievement.

Yet, because they contain humor, the _Guyed Books_ will always be classed as works of humor. A little leaven is a dangerous thing. On the other hand, a little knowledge leaveneth the whole lump. Donald Ogden Stewart has that little knowledge, and the result is the perfection of his new work, _Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad_. It is the fault of authors of books of family life that they almost always know too much. Mr. Stewart (as reviewers say) has avoided this shortcoming. And in fiction, as in any other game, the element of surprise is invaluable. Surprise, conjecture, suspicion—especially suspicion! It was because she was above suspicion that Caesar’s wife was not well received in the best Roman circles. _Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad_ would have helped her.... But, all seriousness for once aside, Mr. Stewart’s treatise on the American family unit is masterly. It will give Americans a new status in Paris. There are many irrelevances and illustrations throughout the book.

ii

Five—usually five and a fraction—per cent. of the people in any community are confirmed fishermen. The greatest living authority on fishes is David Starr Jordan, for so many years president of Leland Stanford Junior University. He is the author of the most important book on its subject, a piscatorial Bible, in fact, which now appears in a new revised edition. It has forty-six chapters, and 673 illustrations, of which eighteen are full-page plates in color. It is by Dr. Jordan, now a man past seventy. Its title is _Fishes_. It has no other title, and no subtitle. It needs none.

This marvellous book makes the heart leap as the trout leaps. Nothing so delightful or complete is found elsewhere. One may know nothing about fishes—I don’t—and yet turn these pages in a perfect enchantment. I suppose, in a way, it is the emotion of a first youthful visit to the Aquarium, but an emotion incredibly magnified. Dr. Jordan speaks of his volume with what must seem to the reader a ridiculous modesty. He says it is a non-technical book that may still be valuable to those who are interested in the study of fishes as science. He says his chief aim has been “to make it interesting to nature-lovers and anglers, and instructive to all who open its pages. The fishes used as food and those caught by anglers in America are treated fully, and proportionate attention is paid to all the existing as well as all extinct families of fishes.” This may be true, but it no more explains the book than a conjuror’s account explains his magic.

Beginning with the fish as a form of life, Dr. Jordan goes through every attribute of fishes and then, in an incomparable sequence, tells what we know of each species. There are chapters like that on the distribution of fishes which seem to transform the world in somewhat the fashion in which Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo transformed it; other chapters, like that on the fish as food, are of vital importance; and such a chapter as that on the mythology of fishes (including the sea serpent) have a charm irresistible and without equal. At length one plunges into the sea, swimming through a myriad of sea creatures whose very names—elasmobranchii or shark-like fishes, the salmonidae, the mailed-cheek fishes, the dactyloscopidae—are as curious and as evocative as those strange shapes that float in green water behind aquarium glass.

Dr. James A. Henshall’s _Book of the Black Bass_, an acknowledged masterpiece, is practically a new book as the result of rewriting and enlargement. Nearly all the illustrations, including those in color, are new. In addition to a complete scientific and life history of the fish, Dr. Henshall gives the last word regarding tools and tackle for catching what is “inch for inch and pound for pound the gamest fish that swims.”

Let us continue for a little with the authorities on these very special subjects of sport. Dr. William A. Bruette is one on dogs. He is well-known as the editor of Forest and Stream, and various particular books on the dog—or perhaps I should say, on particular dogs—preceded _The Complete Dog Book_. There is not an opportunity for anything of its sort to follow it unless some one may be moved to write a canine encyclopædia in some number of volumes. For _The Complete Dog Book_—illustrated with photographs, of course—describes the dogs of the world and very fully describes all the breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club. It is, throughout, a carefully comparative description, giving the standards for judging each breed and the good and bad points of each. The care of dogs in health and their treatment in disease, as well as their training and general management are gone over in detail; but Dr. Bruette’s prime service is his wisdom on the subject of buying puppies. Here are the pages which will save the reader most, both in dollars and disappointment.

Birds are hard to learn, not easy to observe, and must be taken largely on trust for an acquaintance. On the other hand, if you will take George Henry Tilton’s _The Fern Lover’s Companion_ with its 188 illustrations, go over it carefully, use its glossary of terms and keep an eye about you in your walks, you may learn the names and the chief characteristics of our most common ferns in a single season. There is about ferns something of the fascination there is in fishes—a great variety of form, and forms of exquisite coloration and beauty of pattern. Mr. Tilton’s handbook is progressive; if consulted attentively, it can be followed from beginning to end without confusion or the need of going again over the same ground. Ground in the book, I mean!

When it comes to covering ground, Charles C. Stoddard’s _Shanks’ Mare_ is a superior article. This book about walking—really, about the joys of walking—moves without haste and with an easy rhythm of prose and sentiment. It is one of the few books that have the impelling quality of fine spring weather. As Stewart Edward White said: “That is the main thing—to get ’em out.” The remark occurred in a letter to Dr. Claude P. Fordyce, a letter which forms the introduction to Dr. Fordyce’s capital book on _Trail Craft_. “I am glad you are publishing the book,” wrote Mr. White. “All your articles on the out-of-doors life have seemed to me practical, sensible, and the product of much experience, plus some discriminative thought.” He followed his words about getting people out of doors with: “If, in addition, you can give them hints that will, through their interest or comfort, keep ’em out, the job is complete.” _Trail Craft_ will do a finished job for a good many who read it. Dr. Fordyce has the considerable advantage of knowing American wildernesses; he writes with equal knowledge of practical mountaineering and desert journeys; tenting, motor camping, the use of balloon silk in camp, camera hunting, medical improvization, even the possibilities of leather working for the outdoor man are included in _Trail Craft_.

What percentage of American vacations are now accomplished with the aid of the automobile must be left for the census of 1930 to determine; but it is large, and will be larger then. In fact, motor camping is a distinct department of a magazine like Outers’ Recreation, attended to along with other editorial duties by F. E. Brimmer, whose _Autocamping_ is rather more necessary than the Blue Book. For a missed road is remediable, but a non-existent hotel isn’t. Besides, a hotel isn’t camping.

Having lived outdoors with his family, including small children, for as long as five consecutive months, Mr. Brimmer has met most of the contingencies you will have to meet. _Autocamping_ is the difference between a vacation and a disaster.

Here are two short works of fiction by one of the best living storytellers whose subjects are drawn from sport. _A Wedding Gift_, by John Taintor Foote, is annotated by its subtitle, “A Fishing Story.” Mr. Foote’s _Pocono Shot_ needs no recommendation to those who know his fine dog story, _Dumb-Bell of Brookfield_. _A Wedding Gift_ is the tale of a confirmed fisherman, aged forty, who marries a young and beautiful girl. The story is told by a friend whose wedding gift to the pair consisted of hand-painted fish plates each with a picture of a trout rising to take a fly. The bride had packed three trunks with frilly clothes in expectation of a honeymoon at Narragansett. She was wrong. She was taken to the Maine woods.

The narrative of what followed is of such a character that the fisherman’s friend, having heard him out and remembering the dozen plates, each with a trout painted on it, does not wait to meet the bride.

_A Wedding Gift_ is pure amusement, if you like, but _Pocono Shot_ is written with an emotion that the reader feels whether he cares for dogs or not. It has also—owing, perhaps, to its being told in the first person—an accent of reality. The dog of the story is a black and white setter, the best bird dog in the Pocono Hills, and better on a scent than any hound in the country round about. It was this aptitude which got Pocono Shot into trouble; tracking a man who had caused the death of a girl, the setter received a terrible axe wound from the fugitive’s father. The dog is marked by a great shoulder scar. We make acquaintance with his history at this point, step back for a little to learn his career, go with him in the field and find out for ourselves his extraordinary qualities, and then follow him to his reunion with the master who had shot to kill when the setter’s life was imperilled.

iii

Surely the most exciting trail blazed in our day was the short and obscure one leading a few feet underground which took Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon into Tut-Ankh-Amen’s royal chamber. The second volume of Howard Carter’s and A. C. Mace’s _The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen_, now impending, will round out the record of a discovery which exists, and is likely to remain, without parallel. The odds against a similar find are too great for anyone but a mathematician to calculate, and would be meaningless in any calculation. The first volume of _The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen_ surpassed most other official and authentic records of its sort simply because the authors forgot they were archæologists and—told the story. In the presence of that priceless gift of fortune, standing where they had stood and breaching a blank wall to find it the threshold of the inner chamber with its nested gold shrines, who could have thought of anything but the supreme human and dramatic values of that scene and fateful moment? Not Howard Carter, certainly. He remembered then the six long and barren years of unrewarded searching, the first faint hint that he might be on the right track, the mounting excitement chilled at regular intervals by the worry of doubt and the littleness of disappointed hopes. Yet here lay a king of Egypt, his body cased in gold and his tomb and its seals protected by his gods. It was a story that could not be told except in all its simplicity. One could no more dress it up in lore and learning than permit the excesses of emotional description. _The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen_ is the modern romance of the conquistador.

While we are on the path of adventure in strange lands I want to draw attention to a book which transcends the interests of sportsmen. A fourteen-year-old boy, a circus trainer of animals, Dr. W. T. Hornaday, of the New York Zoo, Courtney Ryley Cooper, the novelist, and in fact persons of all ages and occupations will find themselves utterly absorbed in the pages of A. Blayney Percival’s _A Game Ranger’s Note Book_. This handsome book, illustrated with photographs, has been arranged and edited by E. D. Cuming from the great mass of observations, both written and verbal, made by Mr. Percival during nearly thirty years spent in Africa, of which about twenty-two were passed in the Game Department of what is now the Kenya Colony. It opens with seven chapters on the lion, followed by one or more chapters apiece on the leopard; cheetah, serval and caracal (one chapter); hunting dogs; hyænas; elephant; rhinoceros; hippopotamus; buffalo; giraffe; swine; zebra, and antelope. Most of Mr. Percival’s material about the antelope has had to be reserved for a separate volume, so copious is it. The book closes with chapters on hunting and photographing big game. It is utterly untechnical, extremely modest, occasionally humorous, and as meaty with thrills as with information about animal characteristics and habits. _A Game Ranger’s Note Book_ deserves as a pendant in reading Fred L. M. Moir’s _After Livingstone_, a story of adventure and hunting when big game were more numerous than now. The story is told by one of two brothers, business men who were pioneer traders in Africa. It has plenty of bush fighting and Mr. Moir witnessed scenes of savage life that will probably never come within the experience of white men again.

GOING OUT?

_Birds of America_, edited by T. Gilbert Pearson, John Burroughs, Herbert K. Job and others. Three volumes. Describes and pictures 1,000 species. Over 300 species shown in color from New York State Museum drawings. Eggs of 100 species in actual size and colors.

_The Outdoorsman’s Handbook_, by H. S. Watson and Capt. Paul A. Curtis, Jr. Tested wisdom on hunting, camping, fishing and woodcraft. Indexed.

_Lake and Stream Game Fishing_, by Dixie Carroll. The author was at the time of his death recently probably the best known fisherman in the United States.

_Goin’ Fishin’_, by Dixie Carroll. Pungently written and especially good on the subject of baits. Equally interesting to the expert and the occasional angler.

_Streamcraft: An Angling Manual_, by Dr. George Parker Holden. Endorsed by Stewart Edward White and pronounced by Henry van Dyke “the best of all modern books on the science of trout-fishing.”

_Casting Tackle and Methods_, by O. W. Smith. Forty years’ experience condensed by the fishing editor of Outdoor Life and author of _Trout Lore_.

_The Salt Water Angler_, by Leonard Hulit, is an invaluable and complete compendium of information for salt water fishermen.

_In the Alaska-Yukon Gamelands_, by J. A. McGuire. The story of an expedition to gather museum specimens far off the beaten routes. Probably the best authority on the game resources of the territory.

_Fishing with a Boy_, by Leonard Hulit. The tale of a city man in search of health with, incidentally, much about the ways of the humbler fishes.

_Jist Huntin’_, by Ozark Ripley. Stories told by an expert guide who has fished and hunted from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico.