The sun. [volume], March 23, 1919, Section 5 Books and the Book World, Page 11, Image 47

About The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920

Image provided by: The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation

                
11
Frank Swinnerton's Delightful "Shops and Houses"
THE ; SUN, SUNDAY, MAECII 23, 1919.
By HARRY ESTY DOUNCE.
I HIS account of Mr. Frank Swinner-
ton's Shops and Houses will em
body no vision anent Mr. Swinnerton's
earlier 'work, the ripening of his method
and such like. With shame and regret
your reporter confesses that "although
there are four earlier Swinncrtons, and
one at least is fairly celebrated, the new
one is the only one he has read. Before
turning its tenth page, however, he was
joyfully determined to get all the others
as .soon as might be and never to miss a
Swinncrton again.
For by the time the author's quiet cer
tainty of his material, his resources and
hinielf had made that plcasantcst of first
impressions whereunder you trust your
author not to tell you more than ho knows
and not to undertake more than he can
manage. And it was seeming as if this
particular author knew and could manage
virtually anything.
Bores are forever advising new writers
to prepare by Seeing Life as if it could
be done deliberately, like seeing the Aquar
ium. In common with every other fictional
expositor of human character worth no
tice, Mr. Swimmcrton evidently was see
ing life at 3 and not only seeing ii,
but seeing into it. Indications are not
wanting that he is judiciously read in
what Bernard Shaw might style the human-natural
historians. But his data of
natural history arc his own; he got them
at first hand and by virtue of a most pen
etrating insight. No amount of mere as
similation of other men's ideas could ever
have prepared him, for instance, to write
the remarkable interplay between young
Louis Vechantor and the younger Daun
ton boy, where the latter confides in the
former his love affair vs. apron strings
predicament, and Mr. and Mrs. Vechan
tor's son, secretly in a like position more
or les3, brightens and expands as he" urges
Mrs. Daunton's son to cut free.
Stops and Houses is a victorious hy
brid, meaning thatx without loss of power
and grip it goes half its length as ono
kind of thing and there becomes another
kind, radically different. It begins as a
eool and clever exploration, non-sympathetic
but by no means clinical, of the in
side of a suburb of Loridon, an old, in
grown village for the right American
counterpart of the special parochialism of
which we should probably look among the
suburbs of Boston. This village Mr. Swin
ncrton demonstrates for you from the
Vechantors the Magnificent Vcehantors,
Mr. Tarkington, who will like the book,
might call them through the Church of
England minister and the news and scan
dalmongers and the designing mammas
with their impalpable joint domination,
down to the green grocer and the servants.
With a simple stroke that opens no end
of attractive possibilities he turns tho
grocer out of business' to make place for
a second household of Vechantors, rela
tives of a long lost low caste branch, who
by pure chance and to the mutual dismay
of the two families, open shop in Beck
with. Tho Magnificent Vechantors have
a son at whom all local caps are set. The
grocer Vechantors have a daughter. Tho
son, Louis, his senstive Individualism res
tive as he supposes under the bondage of
"Steep Trails"
By GEORGE GORDON.
MU., JOHN BURliOUOHS once
urged Mr. Hamlin Garland to
undertake the Life of John Muir. At the
time it was impossible; and now . . .
John Muir wrote with difficulty, grunt
ing and groaning in the travail of labor.
Hi3 notes scrawled in the open, upon somo
elbow of rock oerlooking tho Yosemite,
beside some desert pool, collected with the
years and in ago lay thick around him
like leaves about some autumn oak; yet
he dreaded and everlastingly procrasti
nated in the work of revision. When
forced to write he tore the meat of thought
from out the carcass of past experience
with a desperation that, seemingly of ut
ter need, was born of the impatience of
ono who, used to trying his strength be
fore tho blizzard, is set against his will to
the performance of some ridiculously
clerkly task.
And yet John Muir wrote most wonder
fully well. Not loudly, as was tho habit
with CoL Roosevelt when he told of the
West, but clearly as one whose authority
needs no emphasis; not fluently as a lec
turer addressing the ignorant, but with a
gentle charm that bore in every sentence
the impress of the man a man who had
looked with open eyes upon the miracles
of God; not minutely, numbering the days
and hours spent in communion with na
ture, but carefully, as one who fears
through inadvertence to bear false witness
against a friend.
For it was as a friend that he spoko of
every living thing upon the mountains
the huge trees of California, the snow
flowers, the prospectors, trappers, In
dians, the mountain sheep, tho mountain
lions. It was as a friend that he en
countered life upon the Steep TraUt that
wind about Mount Shasta, that skirt the
shores of Puget Sound, that fare through
the forests of Nevada along the rivers of
Oregon, to halt above the Grand Canon of
the Colorado.
But perhaps the most valuablo con
tribution is his vivid testimony concern
ing the work of God. He neither scoffed,
nor, when ho heard the voice that breathed
o'er Eden whispering along the grass, was
he afraid with any amazement. He walked
humbly, straightly, before God. To travel
with him is to come upon n world that
everywhere, untouched by time, unhin
dered by man, displays the clay fresh
from creation's hand. He recognized the
Creator in the strength and beauty of na
ture, in trailing vine, in rushing torrent,
in furrowed valley. And his heart was
glad. For him, as for King David, the
hills stood up and clapped, the fields re
joiced to praise the Lord.
TEEP TBATL8. Bt Joror Munv. Hough
toa Mifflin Company. $3.
"The Untamed"
READING The Untamed means get
ting to know Whistling Dan Barry,
who had a yellowish glare and a peculiar
soft whistle that resembled the sound
made by the wind playfully blowing the
leaves of trees. His companions were
Satin, the wild horse of the range, and
Black Bart, a wolf-dog who protected
and revered his master. The Untamed, it
will be seen, is a character study; not only
of a man, but of a horse and dog as well.
The Untamed is a Western story with
somo distinction about it. Whistling
Dan's love affairs and his somewhat primi
tive and wild habits arc told about with
skill. Dan's fights are many, and on his
part clean ; he was quick on the draw and
had an unusual instinct of danger.
Dan had been brought up as a peaceful
citizen of the West, taught not to harm
1 any one and to avoid quarrelling. But he
came in contact with an outlaw named
Jim Silent. There was a fight, and when
blood, his own blood, trickling down his
forehead, thick, red and salty, had wetted
hia lips, then Dan knew he must "get"
Jim Silent. You can bet ho did. There
is a love story, sure.
THE UNTAMED. Br Mai Bkai.-d. G. P.
Putnam's Sons. $1.50.
"A Little Gray
Home in France"
HELEN DAVENPORT GIBBONS
has- not been outside of France
since the declaration of war. She has dur
ing these years devoted herself to relief
work of various kinds, organizing among
other things "Sauvons les Bebes," which
provided layettes for nearly 5,000 new
bor Parisians. In A Little Gray Home
in France she has endeavored to put the
American doughboy on paper, to tell what
he thinks of France, what he thinks of
the war and most of all, it would seem,
what he thinks of Helen Davenport Gib
bons, her Little Gray Home and her four
children.
There is no doubt that the soldiers with
whom Mrs. Gibbons has come in contact
have been treated with most generous hos
pitality and consideration (we have her
own word for it), and it may be that what
she has to say will touch other hearts
mon? nearly than it has ours. We have
striven in vain to put down the feeling
that tills record of her merciful work
might have been made more gracefully by
other hands than her own. One tiling is
remarkable for it absence. There is no
record of a single soldiers having uttered
the immortal words "Oh, Boy!" Other
wise the doughboy's conversation is
normal.
Beckwith's codified prudery and snobbery
and under the designs of the enterprising
sisters Hughes, but actually this unob
trusive suggestion is very fine under the
home subservience that galls him, goes
out of his way to be decent to his grocer
cousins. The girl cousin resents it as
patronage, bnt her resentment, itself only
snobbery, is readily allayed.
So far, splendid. What a priceless sitr
nation I At just this point, however,
comes the aforementioned change of the
book. With all his knowledge and skill
Mr. Swinnerton must, in a way, be young.
He falls head over heels in love with the
girl, shifts interest to her from tho care
fully developed character of Louis and
throws his situation out the window.
Henceforth Shops and Houses is to rely
for the reader's approval on the principle
that all the world loves a lover's idealiza
tion of his beloved. Dorothy, the girl,
has become such an idealization albeit
the one Mr. Swinncrton sets forth is hers
of Louis. Her emotions cease to convince
you as being the genuine article studied
from nature. They impress you as being
tho emotions with which the imagination
of a nice, shy young man in lore with her
would fondly endow her-as directed npon
Itimself. And Mr. Swinnerton is that nice
young man.
Such a cataclysm ought to smash up
any novel; therefore let me hastily affirm
that it does not and that its failure to do
so and the success of tho remaining chap
ters in carrying the reader on with en
thusiasm unabated arc an astonishing
proof of Mr. Swinnerton's native power.
For he is a good lover, as potent therein
as he was fascinating in analysis. Ho docs
no sentimental counterfeiting and if he
chooses to throw away all his intriguing
preparations and fling himself at
Dorothy's feet, he is able to compel you
to do likewise. It plays .ducks and drakes
a dozen times with the probabilities but
do not expeet to stop reading and file
objections! The day after finishing
Shops and Houses you are likely to
chuckle at every one concerned, yourself
included. You are equally likely to wait
with impatience for the author's next.
So long as she remains a real girl the
worst point to be made against Dorothy,
and one which places her well below
Veronica Hughes, although the latter is a
deliberate study of a certain disagreeable
constitution, is the fact that Dorothy h&3
too manj- advantages. It is all right for
the grocer's daughter to triumph over
Veronica and score ff Beckwith in gen
era, but this grocers daughters victory
is too cheap. She could hardly mi-s it.
Not only is she the strongest and Jinc3t
of the young women and the ablest; she
is also the most cultivated might be an
Ambassadors daughter. How she came
by her cultivation is perfectly accounted
for. But why not have left her without
it? Then there tcoiild have been some
fun in her position. a Ixniis's honest
heart's desire among the caste-blinded
snobs and the frustrational prudes of
Beckwith that is, there would, if Mr.
Swinnerton had kept his head and made
the most of his original idea.
The Hughes girls merit almost unmeas
ured praise. The eldest of them, Adela,
is of the kind of a woman whose ado
lescence was early and eager and whose
virgin maturity is hysterical and pseudo
sanctified. She is near the Beckwith
dead line of hopeless old maidenhood and
ihe is feebly competing with the savage
Veronica for Louis. The episode in
which she wrcckB her pathetic chance by
flaring out at him over a most delicate
discussion of "a certain class" of plays,
which he defends, and then flying to her
room to cry, is novel so far as your re
porter's reading goes. It could not be
better imagined from observation or bet
ter managed.
As for Veronica, it may be that Mr.
Swinnerton is a trifle ovcrinclined to at
tribute her Vcronicism to Beckwith, the
truth being that she was bom with it and
would have been the same in London or
Paris. But that is a rather metaphysical
and captious issue to raise. However,
die is accounted for, the whole of Veron
ica is uown in Diacx ana wnitc and is
superb a cruel-passional, predatory
young primitive, who can't use her lures
on the man she wants without scoffing and
bickering at him, can't outjockey poor
Adela in his presence without repeatedly
betraying viciousness, and finally must
imply explode her whole game by be
rating Louis in the matter of Dorothy
without the least ground or any claim
npon him, and then later break down into
slander and open fury at the girl to whom
her own behavior .has done a great deal
to consign him.
SHOPS AND HOUSES. Bv Funk Swik
nebton. George H. Doran Company. $L50.
SMBPHBsHBSBBBm
JVot only
WHO
hutC
Howr
1 1
MYSTERY
the 13FLOOR
By LEE THAYER
A double twitted myitery story, set in New
York Gty, -with a fascinating lore theme
that k really a part of the story. The prob
lem is, not only who killed Lawyer Stone
as he sat in his office within a few feet of
clerks and stenographer, but how could
he hare been killed at all under the
circumstances. The mystery challenges
the most ingenious and resourceful reader
to scire in advance of the conclusion.
3rd )
Edition
"A capital tUrj."PSadtlphia Udtr
"Om of t&a best njtlexy oovelj of the year."
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"It thi21 sad thrill agnln." Phladtlphia JVj
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Price $1.S0. Bay it today.
And nd a copy to somtbody.
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A LITTLE GKAY HOME IN FRANCE.
Bt Hzixk Davenport Gibbons. The Cen
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