Reviewed by Eugene Wood
N Y Call p10 My 2 ’20 1250w
“Whether he reaches any conclusion or what that conclusion is if he does reach it, is so obscured in the mass of words—a quagmire of pseudo-science and queer speculation—that the average reader will find himself either buried alive or insane before he reaches the end.”
− N Y Times 25:81 F 8 ’20 440w Review 2:184 F 21 ’20
FORTESCUE, SIR SEYMOUR JOHN. Looking back. il *$7.50 (*21s) Longmans
20–9644
“It must fall to the lot of few naval men to have a career so varied in incident and so full of contrast as has been that of Sir Seymour Fortescue. During his twenty-one years of duty afloat, he not only served on the Mediterranean and China stations, and took part in the Egyptian war of 1882 and the Sudan campaign of 1885, but had his first experience of attendance on royalty in the Surprise and the Victoria and Albert. During the succeeding seventeen years, he was on the staff of King Edward VII, as equerry, and took his regular turn in waiting, but even then he managed to put in some sea time during the manœuvres of 1895 as commander of the Theseus, to spend six months as A.D.C. to Lord Roberts on the Headquarters staff in South Africa, and to pay a visit to the nitrate fields in Chile in 1907. Dovetailed between these diversified engagements, yacht sailing and horseracing, shooting and fishing, the opera and the theatre, with other forms of sport and pastime, made interludes, so that as a spectator of events from many viewpoints the present Serjeant-at-arms in the House of lords had exceptional opportunities, and it is not surprising that he should publish reminiscences so kaleidoscopic in colour and change.”—The Times [London] Lit Sup
“Sir Seymour Fortescue writes so well that one wishes he could have steered a more venturesome course. A little more latitude, and a good deal less longitude, would have made a more entertaining volume.”
+ − Sat R 129:563 Je 19 ’20 1550w