Literary Life

Germany. To most of its U. S. readers, Gone With the Wind is straight historical romance. Foreigners like it almost as much, but judge it differently. Now published in 14 countries, with sales reaching 184,000 in England, 6,000 in Hungary, 4,750 in Chile, it has made its biggest sensation outside the U. S. in Nazi Germany, which has bought 134,000 copies. Nazi highbrows, calling it irresistible, found it an attack on "plundering mercantile Yankee capitalism" and on democracy. Said Das Innere Reich, leading Nazi literary journal, "We see the fall and death of the old aristocrats, the rise of the parvenus, the uncultured, and the Negroes, hitherto wisely controlled." Her German publishers send Margaret Mitchell regular royalty statements but pay her no cash.

England. Twenty years ago a genial Englishman named John Collings Squire, parodist, poet and expert cricketer, launched The London Mercury. Its main aim was to publish poetry, especially the work of his friends, Robert Bridges, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon. Well-printed, heavy, smooth, The Mercury was appreciated by poets because Editor Squire, if badgered awhile, paid real money for poems. The Mercury's eminence grew with well-phrased reviews, contributions by Hardy, Conrad, Shaw, Chesterton, essays on town planning, transport, education. But its circulation stayed around 4,000, disappointing Editor Squire, who once gave his credo:

For me I never cared for fame;

Solvency was my only aim.

In 1934 Editor Squire (knighted the year before) retired to live the life of a squire in fact. New literary blood was brought into the magazine in the form of contributions by Auden, Spender, et al. By January 1938, when the price was doubled from 1 s. to 2 s., circulation had climbed to 6,000. Readers of the current (April) issue read a stiff-upper-lip editorial announcing that it would be the last. The London Mercury was broke. Reason: A catastrophic slump in subscribers and advertisers due to "political and economic tempests of the last year."

Kansas. Outside Hollywood, only one U. S. literary man appeared in the Treasury Department's list of 1937's highest salaried citizens: Dr. Arthur Hertzler, author of the bucolic, best-selling tribute to the struggling country physician, The Horse and Buggy Doctor. Highest salaried man in Kansas in 1937, Dr. Hertzler was president of the Halstead Hospital Association, got $75,782.

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