Unwritten History*

The Story. An inoffensively egotistic account of a writing man's career, which has included more than the usual measure of downs and ups. Cosmo Hamilton, brother of Sir Philip Gibbs, was early consumed with an ambition to make his name "known wherever English readers lived, or be busted, and therefore, in a spirit of youthful independence, he had lopped off from the end of it his father's patronymic."

Eventually the first outpourings of his unknown and youthful pen arrived before the public eye. By degrees he worked himself up the literary ladder, grew to know and to be known. Practically all the contemporary British literary and dramatic world is to be met within his pages. There is George Bernard Shaw, "the enfant terrible of London, always in the highest spirits and the strangest clothes, that might quite easily have been made at home, bilious in colour, and in pattern vegetarian like his diet"; Beerbohm Tree, who could never quite memorize his lines and, therefore, "with the most fertile invention posted prompters under tables, behind rocks or ancient oaks, so that the elusive word might be whispered to him as he moved in well disguised anguish from cache to cache,--a curious floating method not unlike that of ectoplasm"; lovable, whimsical Barrie, the little master of Thrums, of whom the story is told that once, wandering over to Bernard Shaw's table in the coffee room of his club and seeing the remarkable mess upon which Shaw was browsing, he asked in an alarmed and Scottish whisper: "Oh tell me, Shaw. Ha' ye eaten that, or are ye going to?"; and G. K. Chesterton, sitting at a table in Paddington Station "in a black sombrero and an enormous cloak, a cup of tea in one hand and a glass of port wine in the other, and looking, even in those utterly English surroundings, like a Dutch burgomaster just released from Rembrandt's studio after a long sitting."

In an ebullient chapter on the British lecturer in America, Mr. Hamilton tries to trace the origin of the myth that authors are also necessarily speakers--"but for the good natured curiosity of American audiences to see British authors in the flesh, I doubt whether a single one of us would have ventured ever to get on his hind legs and stumble through a speech."

There is his brother Philip Gibbs--whom he admires tremendously--who, when forced upon a lecture platform, always looks like a "frightfully tired Savonarola who is speaking in a trance." And there are Hamilton's own sensations on such occasions, when he always gives impromptu speeches. There is his visit to America where he met John Drew, the "Squire of Easthampton and the gardenia of the American stage"; his meeting with the "wistful Charlie Chaplin, who hides the soul of Punchinello beneath the comic rags of slapstick"; and that "delightful, naive and unconceited man, Will Rogers, who will never recover from his surprise and amazement at having been able to put over his rope-twisting chats upon a sophisticated audience."

The Significance. The book is another outbreak, amid the general epidemic, of sketches of a much-written-about generation. While highly colored (as is inevitable in this type of account) with the author's personal predilections and prejudices, it is nevertheless readable, frank, humorous, and not, perhaps, more egotistical than need be.

The Author. Cosmo Hamilton was born in London, one of four brothers, of whom three are writers: Sir Philip Gibbs, famed War correspondent and subsequent novelist, Arthur Hamilton Gibbs, who wrote Gun Fodder, and Cosmo, author of plays and novels, among which are The Belle of Mayfair, The Blindness of Virtue, The Blue Room, Scandal, The Silver Fox, The New Poor.

*UNWRITTEN HISTOIY--Cosmo Hamilton-- Little, Brown ($4.00).