Evening star. [volume], March 06, 1937, Page B-2, Image 16

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

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•KIPLING IN HIS OWN MIRROR
v* - — -
Master of Beauty, in Prose, Offers Life Story in Recognized Style,
Which Only a Golden Few Have Ever Equaled—Somerset
Maugham Appears at His Gayest.
By Mat y-Carter Roberts.
SOMETHING OF MYSELF. By Rud
£*. yard Kipling. Garden City: Double
day, Doran & Co.
HIS la his autobiography.
He began it. so he tells us.
when he was 70. He made no
_ -announcements” of the un
dertaking. No one knew of the manu
acript during his lifetime. From certain
form* of phrase In the last chapter
tbe inference must needs be made that
"He did not intend himself to see it ap
pear in print. There is something sad
dening about taking up any work pro
duced with such a reservation.
It is about what one familiar with
Mm would expect. It is a simple, per
fectly written statement.
It is a writer’s story, not a man’s, and
that, of course, is as it should be. For
the world knew him as a writer, and
he, for his part, knew the world simply
as writers’ stuff. His art was objec
tivity. As a man he avoided and re
fused as far as possible any public
manner of existence.
He has less need of ‘’interpreters”
than any modern writer who comes to
mind. But ‘'interpreters" there will be.
without a doubt, even as there have
already been. His death a year ago
called forth a brief rash of them in the
press, and such was their accomplish
ment that one was forced to conclude
that few had read any work of his ex
cept “The Jungle Book," “Recessional”
and “The Widow at Windsor.” Even
while he lay in state there was a gen
eral grudging unwillingness to refer to
the incomparable beauty of his prose,
and a corresponding insistence on the
orthodox sentiment of his poetry.
The reviewer, observing these things,
was put in mind of a time when she
asked a learned man why, in general,
the English were hated by the rest of
the peoples of Europe and the learned
man replied: “In general, because they
are successful and happy.” Kipling
was successful as few writers have
been in the entire history of the world.
And he was, until the last years of his
life, by his own confession, happy. The
moral needs no pointing. It is to be
expected, human nature being what it
Is, that “interpreting” will continue, for
some years at least.
But here we have his own word for
himself, forestalling literary opportun
ists to some degree at least. Here he
writes of how he came to be the writer
that he was. One remembers, as one
reads his work, the repeated refer
' ences that were made in his last years
to his ■ failing powers.” He never wrote
better than in this brief book. It is
prose to be dreamed of.
■J-IE BEGINS with his very early
childhood in Lahore, when, as he
records, he thought and dreamed ir
the vernacular, and spoke English only
when summoned to the presence of his
parents, and then with difficulty. (A
great deal of “Kim” is here.) He goes
on from this to his young boyhood in
England, where he was left in the
charge of a woman who made a busi
ness of boarding—and an art of tortur
ing—the children of officers stationed
in India. (See “Baa, Baa. Black
Sheep” and the first of "The Light
That Failed.") Then came his school
days, when “Stalky and Company” was
a reality in his life. and. contrary to the
experience of the opposition, he found
not only innocent friendships but
sound education. Then, at 16, he re
turned to India to become “fifty per
cent of the staff” of a small white
newspaper, at which work, he says, he
spent “seven years hard"—seven years,
that is, writing every day for task
masters of the most exacting stand
ards. He was sick much of the time,
but. he writes, “I learned that a man
can work with a temperature of 104,
even though next day he has to ask the
office who wTote the article .. . From
the modern point of view I suppose
the life was not fit for a dog, but my
world was filled with boys but a few’
years older than I who lived utterly
alone, and died from typhoid mostly
at the regulation age of 22.”
At the end oi tms period ne soia nis
“Plain Tales Prom the Hills” for 50
pounds, the collected stories which he
had contributed to his paper for 200,
end “Departmental Ditties” for an
amount which he subsequently forgot,
and turned his face to the conquest of
England. It is history that, before he
was 25, he was one of the most |
spectacular successes of which literary '
history has any record.
Of this intoxicating triumph he
writes sweetly enough. "I was plenti-;
ruily assured,” he says, “vive voce and
in the press cuttings—which is a drug
that I do not recommend to the young
—that ‘nothing since Dickens’ com
pared with my ‘meteoric rise to fame,’
etc. (But I was more or less inocu
lated, if not immune to the coarser
sorts of print.) And there was my
portrait to be painted for the Royal j
Academy as a notoriety. (But I had
a Muhammedan's objection to having
my face taken, as likely to draw the
evil eye. So I was not too puffed up.)
And there were letters and letters of
all sorts of tendencies. (But if I
answered them all I might as well be
back at my old table.) And there
were proposals from ‘certain people of
Importance,' insistent and unscru
pulous as horse-copers, telling me
how ‘the ball was at my feet’ and that
I had only to kick it—by repeating
the notes I had already struck and
trailing characters I had already
•created’ through impossible scenes—
to achieve all sorts of desirable things.
But I had seen men as well as horses
foundered in my lost world behind
me. One thing only stood fast through
this welter. I was making money—
much more than four hundred rupees
a month—and when my bank book
told me I had one thousand whole
pounds saved, the Strand was hardly
wide enough for my triumph. I had
Intended a book ‘to take advantage of
the market.’ This I had just sense
enough to countermand.”
pROM this point on the book is
"*■ largely an account of travels and
homes, with mention from time to
time of the genesis of an idea which
later became a story or a poem. He
writes of his years in Vermont in the
nineties and makes it plain that he dis
likes—even hates—America. He de
velops this a bit later when he tells
of a trip he made to Canada in 1906—
"And always the marvel... was that
on one side of an imaginary line should
be Safety, Law, Honor and Obedience,
And on the other frank, brutal de
civilization; and that, despite this.
Canada should be impressed by any
Aspect whatever of the United 8tates."
He writes of his home in South
Africa, whither he went every Winter
from 1902 to 1907, and pays his compli
ments to the Boers as follows: “The
racial twist of the Dutch was to ex
ploit everything they could which was
RUDYARD KIPLING,
Whose autobiography, “Some
thing of Myself, for My Friends
Known and Unknown,” has
just been published by Double
day Doran.
being done for them, to put even’
obstacle in the way ol any sort ol de
velopment and to take all the cash
they could squeeze out of it. In which
respect they were no better and no
worse than many of their brethren."
It was Bateman’s, his home in
Sussex, that claimed his Anal and
complete aSection, and to his
archeological researches on his land
there (which resulted in "Puck of
Pook's Hill” and "Rewards and
Fairies”) he gives a detailed and lov
ing passage.
He writes little of literary con
temporaries, but accords passing men
tion to current tendencies in biography
I under the name of the “Higher Can
j nibalism” or “the exhumation of
i scarcely cold notorieties, defenseless
females for choice, and tricking them
( out with sprightly inferences and
! 'sex’ deductions to suit the mood of
| the market.” He also speaks of the
modern novels, as contrasted with
the "old three-decker;” they are,
he says, "quivering to their own power,
overloaded with b»ars. ball rooms and
insistent chromium plumbing, hellishly
noisy from the sports deck to the
barber shop; but serving their genera
tion as the old craft served theirs.
The young men were already laying
down the lines for them, fondly be
lieving that the old laws for design
and construction were for them abro
gated.”
\ ND he mentions reviewers and
critics—“As I got to know literary
circles and their critical output, I
was struck by the slenderness of some
of the writers’ equipment. I could not
see how they got along with so casual
a knowledge of French work and, ap
parently. of much English grounding
that I had supposed indispensable.
Their stuff seemed to be a day-to-day
traffic in generalities, hedged by trade
considerations . . . making my own
tests, I would ask simple questions,
misquote or misattribute my quota
tions; or (once or twice) invent an
author. The result did not increase
my reverence. Had they been news
paper men in a hurry, I should have
understood; but the gentlemen were
presented to me as Priests and Pon
tiffs." And he adds, "I would not
today recommend any author to con
cern himself overly with reviews.”
The gentle words "log rolling” do not
come into his discourse on this sub
ject, but the meaning is plainly in
his mind. And who should know, if
he did not?
The tremendous quotability of cer
tain of his works astonished him, and
he comments on it, as he does on the
fact that the Moulmein pagoda does
not overlook the Bay of Bengal, by
way of pointing out that he never
said that it did. That he was the
ancestor of “Tarzan of the Apes” he
admits, but without shame, for, he
remarks, the author "was reported to
have said that he wanted to find out
how bad a book he could write and
‘get away with.’ ” And that, says Rud
yard Kipling “is a legitimate ambi
tion.”
And so he continues, giving an ac
count of the outside of his life and
saying simply of its inside that he was
happy and that “It is the greatest of
my many blessings that I was given
grace to know them at the time, in
stead of having them brought to my
remorseful notice too late.” The core
of this happiness was his family—the
love between himself and his parents,
and that deep affection which bound
his own domestic circle so privately
and felicitously together.
The work ends abruptly on a breath
tightening phrase. He is writing of
his study and mentions that two
globes stood always beside his table.
On one of these, he wrote, “a great
airman had once outlined in w'hite
paint those air-routes to the east and
Australia which were well in use be
fore my death.”
That death had to be mourned a
year ago. No one today is writing
better. Only a golden few have ever
written as well.
THEATRE. By Somerset Maugham.
Garden City: Doubleday Doran
& Co.
CINCE it is understood that Somer
^ set Maugham never writes with
superficial badness, the only Job left
for a critic to do when one of his
works appears is to decide whether or
not its goodness is of superficial va
riety. It has been that way sometimes
in the past, as no one can know better
than Mr. Maugham himself. He has
written more than once with, as it
were, his left hand, with one eye shut
and the other fixed on the market.
On such occasions he has turned out
the best pot boilers that you could
possibly buy. But it must always be
remembered that he is a man who
wrote a Book. too. And when a man
has written one Book, why, he may
write another, although it will not
always follow that he does so.
"Theatre," however, turns out to be
about midway between. It is better
than a pot boiler. It Is better than
"Cakes and Ale,” for example, which
was not a pot boiler. It does not need
to be said 'hat it is good reading. It
Is absolutely delightful reading. It is
Somerset Maugham at his gayest. It
is perfectly grand fun.
It Is the story of a woman of genius,
established, when the book opens, as
the greatest English actress. She is
In her late 40s at this time: she Is
married and has been, without a
lapse, a virtuous wife. The book de
scribes her sudden entrance Into extra
marital adventures.
The adventures themselves are noth
ing arresting. They have been written
up before—the middle-aging woman
and the young man. They have
usually been treated with solemn por
tentousness, and when the young man
inevitably falls In lovewwith a girl
of his own age. the plight of the older
woman Is painted u sad. sad Indeed.
Writers doing this kind ot thing gen
erally tell you that they are probing
their heroine’s soul, or something
similar.
Somerset Maugham performs no
such banal trick. He keeps close
enough to the old outline, but fills
it with sparkling new stuff. His
heroine gets her jilting, but goes into
no mauve passage because of it. The
story is nothing but an exposition of
h' - will to triumph, and triumph she
does, gayly, unscrupulously and very
thoroughly. In taking this line Mr.
Maugham is doing what the writers
referred to have claimed to do. That
is. he probes the heroine’s soul, but
he also does what they for the most
part do not do—that is, he endows her
with a soul to probe efore he under
takes the operation. In other words,
he has written of a woman as an
individual and not as Woman with a
great gloomy symbolic capital W. It
is about time somebody did it, the
dear Lord knows.
Well, and as has been said.
“Theatre” is great fun. You must
have a copy.
THE OLIVE TREE By Aldous Hux
ley. New York: Harper & Bros.
A RATHER pedestrian collection of
essays this, considering that It
comes from the pen of Aldous Huxley.
Good enough it would be If it ap
peared under the name of an un
known writer, to arrest attention. But
it does not meet the expectations that
Mr. Huxley's name has come to
arouse With the exception of three
long pieces, "Writers and Readers,”
“T. H. Huxley as a Literary Man,”
and “D. H. Lawrence," it seems to be
little more than jottings from a writ
er's notebook. Mr. Huxley's notebook,
of course, would be an interesting one.
But jottings, one fears, are jottings
still. They are personal vices, of
which it is well known that every
man prefers his own to another’s.
The three pieces named have been
published previously. "Writers and
Readers" appeared, at least in part, in
Harper's Magazine last Summer. “T.
H. Huxley as a Literary Man” was de
livered as the Huxley memorial lec
ture in 1932, and the Lawrence thing
appeared as the introduction to "The
Letters of D. H. Lawrence." None of
them is particularly noteworthy.
They reveal their author as a careful
gatherer of facts, rather than as a
critic and thinker. They are, in fact,
dangerously near being dull. No. they
are more than that. They are dull.
It may as well be written.
The rest of the collection is made
up of shorter pieces on a wide variety
of subjects—the art of Crebillon fils,
Christmas. school examinations,
snobbery, fetishism and the like. They
are worth readuig without being in
any way memorable. That is about as
much as one can say of them.
A SOUTHERN TREASURY OF LIFE
AND LITERATURE. By Stark
Young. New York: Charles Scrib
ner’s Sons.
rPHE reviewer has never quite been
able to understand the reasoning
back of the custom of mixing geog
raphy and literature, but nevertheless
she goes on record here as saying that,
if you can admit the habit, you will
find as satisfactory a collection of
works in this volume as has been put
out in a long time. Mr. Young, in his
preface, gives an eloquent and. one
must admit, a reasonable-seeming de
fense of the geographical basis of lit
erary criticism, pointing out that since
other sections of the country have
adopted it, the South may as well do
likewise to keep her credit.
He then goes on to say that the
writers of New England were in their
day popular because they followed the
popular trend of imitating the English,
while contrarily in the South literary
men and women were developing, in
obscurity, a truly American school of
WTiting. With the eventual shift of
critical values, the works of these pio
neers have come into the credit which
they deserve, while dust seems to be
settling more and more thickly over
Longfellow. Whittier and Bryant.
Mr. Young has endeavored, in his
present anthology, to give & cross-sec
tion of Southern letters, prose and
poetry, from the earliest time* to the
present. One has to admit that while
the study value of his volume is con
siderable, there Ja much in it that is
worth having on the grounds of merit
alone.
It is impossible here to list the writ
ers whose works are represented. They
begin with Cabeza de Vava (1490
1557), and end with such moderns as
James Branch Cabe'.i and Henry
Mencken. They take in 120 names
and several collections of anonymous
ballads. To give a few, there are
works by Daniel Boone, Francis Scott
Key, George Washington, Thomas Jef-1
ferson, Patrick Hem,, David Crockett,
John James Audubon, Edgar Allan
Poe, Jefferson Davis, Joel Chandler
Harris, Woodrow Wilson, Cora Harris,
Roark Bradford, John Peale Bishop,
Conrad Aiken, Alice Hegan Rice and
Mark Twain.
PORTRAIT OF MEXICO. By Diego
Rivera and Bertram D. Wolfe. New
York: Covicl Priede.
'T'HIS book purports to be a history
of Mexico, as Mexico's history
has been Interpreted by that artist of
appalling genius, Diego Rivera. It
contains 249 reproductions of Rivera's
work, taken from the frescoes of the
Education Building, the Agricultural
School, the Palace of Cortez at Cuer
navaca, murals of the National Pal
ace and Health Buildings, the origi
nal Hotel Reforma carnival paint
ings (these have recently been muti
lated by the proprietor in the latest
of perennial Rivera squabbles) and
includes 102 easel paintings selected
by Rivera to make a series called “The
Land and the People.”
The text is devoted almost wholly
to political history, to the subjection
of the unhappy country to repeated
tyrants, to Its endless struggles for
liberation and its regularly recurring
disappointment. This sequence, as
the writer puts It. began with Cortez,
who “provided the first pattern for
many military cuartelazoa that have
succeeded each other with mo
notonous regularity in the history of
Mexico, colonial, independent and
‘revolutionary’; a phenomenon so
common that the shrewd Gen. Obre
gon was once moved to declare,
‘There is no Mexican general that
can withstand a canonazo (bombard
ment) of 60,000 pesos.”* But what
Gen. Obregon thought ef Mexican
W SOMERSET MAUGHAM,
Author of "Theatre" <Doubleday Doran).
i---1
I . Brief Reviews of Books
_
non-fiction.
PLUTARCH Selected Essay*. Edited ;
by C. B Robinson, jr. New j
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Nine essays, edited and arranged
for common reading
THE AMERICAN SINGER. By Oscar
Thompson. New York: The Dial j
Press.
The biographies of our great singers i
since the beginning of opera in
America. With 100 portraits.
IF INFLATION COMES. By Roger j
W. Babson. New York: Frederick
A. Stokes Co.
Well, there you are. If inflation
comes. This is what you can do
about it.
THE GLADIOLUS. 1937 Boston:
The New England Gladiolus So
ciety.
A very complete work on the va
rieties and cultivation of this flower
THE ART OF CONVERSATION. By
Milton Wright. New York: Whit- l
telsey House.
One of those books on how to be a
"success" through talking. The "art"
of conversation, indeed.
HEALTH QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
By W. W. Bauer. Indianapolis: 1
Bobbs Merrill Co.
The director of the bureau of health
and public instruction of the Ameri
can Medical Association asks and an
swers common questions on health
matters.
THE INTIMATE SIDE OF A WOM
AN'S LIFE. By Leona W. Chalm
ers. New York: Pioneer Publi
cations, Inc.
Feminine hygiene.
FICTION.
FRAGILE ARMOUR. Bv Diana Pat
rick. New York: E. P. Dutton
Co.
The evergreen Miss Patrick writes j
another love story.
WOMEN ARE BORN TO LISTEN, j
By Norah C. James. New York:
The Macaulay Co.
Girl triumphs over hardships.
SOME FIND A DAWN.. By Maide
O'Heeron. Aurora: Burney Broth
er*.
Love story based on C. C. C.
THE DOOR BETWEEN By Melanie
Harrison. Aurora: Burney Broth
ers.
Love story
MYSTERIES.
NINE DOCTORS AND A MADMAN.
By Elizabeth Curtiss. New York:
Simon k Schuster.
Mystery in a madhouse. Solved by
a psychologist.
THE CASE IS CLOSED By Patricia
Wentworth. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Co.
Heroine solves murder, thereby sav
ing her innocent friend.
THE CAMERA CLUE. By George
Harmon Coxe. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf. Inc.
Murder, robbery and kidnaping—all
solved by "ace photographer." (What
has happened to the cynical reporter?
one wonders).
ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT By
Leslie Ford. New York: Farrar
k Rhinehart.
Murder on the Eastern Shore.
Solved by Col. Primrose.
POETRY.
ENCOUNTER IN APRIL. By Mary
Sarton. Boston: Houghton Mif
flin Co.
A collection of very good sonnets.
THEY SAY THE FORTIES By
Howard Mumford Jones. New
York: Henry’ Holt k Co.
A collection of very good sonnets.
THE EMPEROR HEART. By Law
rence Whistler. Decorated by Rex
Whistler. New York: The Mac
millan Co.
A collection of very good poems.
8:20 A M. By Ruth Evelyn Hender
son. Boston: Bruce Humphries.
A collection of acceptable poems.
MONTICELLO AND OTHER POEMS
By Lawrence Lee. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.
A collection of acceptable poems.
THE MAD LOVER. By Edna Dum
mer Drake. Boston: Christopher
Publish ing Co.
Doggerel.
PRAIRIE TRAILS. By Sophie Molk.
Boston: Christopher Publishing
Co.
Doggerel.
officers may be applied to Mexican
civil servants, Mr. Wolfe duly adds.
An accompanying political pattern
Is likewise sketched by the author of
this work—the pattern of the promise
of distribution of land. In 1875 and
1883. he records, laws were passed
offering idle land to those who would
survey it. By this provision enter
prising men built up immense estates
which they operated by peon labor.
In 1910. when revolution broke out,
the land hunger of the peons was the
motive behind the revolt, and it was
those revolutionary leaders who were
shrewd enough to recognize this as a
political platform who succeeded.
Land distribution was once again pro
claimed, this time to be accomplished
by the confiscation of the estates of
the rich. The proclamation worked.
But, says the author, “despite the
oonstant uprising of an outraged peas
antry and the grandiloquent phrases
of agrarian programs that remain
largely, though not entirely, on paper,
it is this (the old feudal) ‘culture’
that comprises In its areas the bulk
of the Mexican land and people.”
Of the widely advertised program
of the agrarians, he says, ‘‘a lesser
rural area ... is characterized by
fairly widespread distribution of small
parcels of poorly watered and infer
tile land and village commons.” The
income from these tracts, he remarks,
is generally sufficient for life, but no
more than that.
It will oe seen tnat u is a cymcai
work in so far as it deals with Mex
lco’s history, but It? cynicism Is based
on fact and not on passion. It ac
cords wen with the Rivera pictures
which show the unhappy past of the
land. When it comes to dealing with
the future, it asks questions—how long
wiU the people, “promise-crammed
and phrase-fed,” endure? With the
introduction of capitalistic Industry,
will there not be a corresponding labor
movement, which will, in time, over
throw the very industries which have
given it birth? The reader, full of
the history which previous chapters
have presented, will probably counter
this with the question as to how the
capital-labor situation is to differ
l
I1I
MAY SARTON,
Author of “Encounter in April”
(Houghton Mifflin Co.).
from the already existing patron-peon
set-up.
With the development of labor or
ganization, the author says, there will
be a “new situation in Mexico.” But
this is only his closing statement. All
the rest of his work goes to show that
a “new situation” is what Mexicans
have never succeeded in bringing
about. They have had one situation,
politically speaking, since the white
man arrived, and they still have it,
by the author’s own confession, de
spite the millions of lives that have
been poured out to change it. His
book is not optimistic reading. It
makes the glorious vision which the
paintei has set down as Mexico’s
future less real, somehow, than the
dreadful pictures which he has painted
of her past.
PIE IN THE SKY. By Arthur Calder
Marshall. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons.
'T'HE author of this novel is avi
1 dently an admirer of Aldous Hux
ley, but his admiration Is more con
\,
IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINES
Scribners Presents a New Parlor Game to Test "Sophistication.”
Trotzky Writes of Russia in the American Mercury—Other
Noteworthy Examples of Periodical Literature.
By M.-C. R.
SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE con
tinues to make patient bids
for what is known u popu
larity, and shows a fair enter
prise in its manner of doing so. It
has already taken up the cause of civil
service reform, which with the ever
growing army of Government em
ployes (one person out of six being
supported by some manner of public
money, according to Mr. Stuart Chase
about a year ago) Is a subject which,
theoretically at least, ought to Inter
est the Nation. It has likewise held a
sort of forum on the condition of the
American male in a civilization which
(according to one school of thought)
is tending distinctly toward matri
archy. And that too, of course, was
a bid for a controversy.
In its March number it continues
the process by offering a questionnaire
on "How Sophisticated Are You?” The
game Is to ask a question and allow
the reader his choice of four or five
answers for checking. Your pick of
these answers reveals whether or not
you have arrived at that enviable con
dition (made known to the Nation via
Hollywood) called “sophistication."
Here are some samples:
‘ If a man who had once given von
a dirty deal in a business proposition
should start to shoot himself in front
of you, should you:
‘‘Let him go ahead without inter
ference?
‘ Ask him please to use another of
fice?
"Snatch the gun out of his hands?
"Call the police and struggle with
him? .
• Tell him to be sure he has enough
bullets?"
And, for women to answer, such
queries as this:
"If you were a girl of brilliant mind
and possessed a Ph. D. in the literary
field, but were falling in love with an
uneducated truck driver, should you:
"Marry him, and forget your train
ing’
"Turn him down because he was not
your equal?
"Be with him as much as possible
for several months to see how you got
along? .
‘‘Take a position, marry him and
send him to college?
'Bury yourself in your work and
i erase love from your life?"
I Who knows—it m«y start a new
parlor game. OuUlde the restrictions
! of publication, some very lively ques
tion* might be thought up.
CCRIBNER S also starts a new fea
ture this month called "American
Painters Series." This consist* of a
HOWARD MUMFORD JONES,
Author of “They Say the
Forties-"
monthly reproduction in color of a
picture by a leading American artist,
the reproduction being printed on ; pe
dal paper suitable for framing.
The present offering is •'Fall Plow
ing,'’ by John Costigan. Accompany
ing is a brief biography of the artist.
AND before leaving this periodical
it may be as well to remark on
its custom of publishing each month a
story by a new writer. The reviewer
has kept no record of these, since the
practice was begun last Fall, out re
members distinctly that in that time
there has been at least one story by a
convict, while the present one is on
hill-billies.
Apparently the editors of Scribner's
are taking no chances.
IN THE March American Mercury’,
and not mentioned last week for
lack of space, is an article by Leon
Trotzky called "The Real Soviet Rus
sia.” In many ways it is sad reading,
■ but there are also elements of humor
in it which cannot fail to strike the
observant reader.
Mr. Trotzky moans, in effect. ‘ But
I never knew it was going to be like
this!” He is shocked to the soul when
he looks at his Russia and sees that it
is, as he puts it, “far closer to a back
ward capitalism than to communism”
—even though he did bring it a nice
communistic revolution. Keen and
penetrating as his mind reveals itself
to be. his spirit shows like that of a
disappointed weeping child. Such ill
balanced mixtures of naivete and pre
loclousness have usually characterized
the revolutionist, as history is wit
ness. Reading Mr. Trotzky’s piece.
•>ne cannot help being sorry for him.
He wails so forlornly 1
'THE importance of the child who
I may be England's second Queen
Elizabeth is described in an article m
the current Liberty called "Coronation
Secrets." The author is Frederick L.
Collins.
'Since there is now no Prince of
Wales," he writes, "the first to ap
proach the throne and offer homage
to the new-crowned King will be the •
next in line, the most colorful indi
vidual in the new royal entourage,
II -year-old Princess Elizabeth, dear to
the hearts of loyal Britons as •elf
styled Lillybet.
“If this reign is to achieve the suc
cess of George V s, or the popularity
that was promised by Edward Vlll't.
it will be partly, at least, because of
the impact of this girls personality
on the home-loving, f&mily-loving
British heart and mind. This spintf .
little girl, who looks like her grand
mother, beloved Queen Mary, and be
haves—within limits, of course—like
her uncle, beloved and departed David,
will do much to reconcile the average
Englishman to the overnight trans
formation of his national idol into a
national ghost.”
One wonders just where George V'
comes into the picture. He seems
monarch curiously without glory.
rrHE reviewer has lost count of the
A number of "digests" which are
being published, but they, unhappily,
have not lost track of the reviewer.
Earh week a new one or two pops out
of the mail, brash and innocent. The
addition to the family this week is
another of that least moral kind of
them all—the “book digest." It is
called "Books in Brief” and offers you
on the salver of its pages the hearts
of 12 hapless slaughtered books. And
all for a quarter of a dollar!
Appropos of this current degeneracy
in reading habits, the reviewer offer
this: Placidly eating her dinner in a
restaurant the other evening, was sud
denly brought to a state of profes
sional consciousness by ihe intent ex
pect of her fellow-diners. At eight
tables in a row eight heads were bent ,
over a small pamphlet of familiar
form. It seemed to merit a stroll of
investigation and the reviewer made
It. Her fears were realized. Every
one of the eight persons was reading '
away for dear life in a "digest." A
clerk, it should be pointed out, can
“digest” an article. It requires a
writer to write one.
spicuous than his achievement. He
j has done a book in the "impression
* istic" manner of which Huxley has
been the moet finished master; he has j
used with competence the formal and
exterior qualities of that manner. But |
he does not have those qualities of
mind with which his model lifted 1m- |
pressionistic writing to the level of |
lasting literary art; he does not have
Huxley's fantastic humor nor the tre- j
mendou* erudition which he poured
into that humor, nor does Mr. Calder- |
Marshall possess the quality of angry |
pity which informed even the most
savage of Huxley's works, giving their j
savagery its apology. Consequently, |
| -Pie in the Sky,” although competent.
1 lacks life. It is all carefully planned
, body. and. without spirit, a carefully
planned body is apt to look remark- ;
ably like one that is merely ready ;
made.
This is too bad, for “Fie in the Sky”
has not been written, one suspects,
with pot-boiler intent, but seriously.
Yet that very seriousness makes men
tion of its shortcoming imperative.
It is a story of modern England,
with characters selected from various
levels of the population, but all alike
in that they are affected by economic
conditions. It lacks a connected “plot,”
and the reader feels that the author
I is describing his own purpose when
he puts into the mouth of one of hxs
characters the following description
of what a novel should be: “• • ’a
wire cable is made of a lot of strands of
wire twisted together. The novelist
like Dickens picks out one strand
and says, 'Here's this man's life.' What
I want to do is to cut the cable and
shew all the strands interrelated.” ,
SO IUS Story is cunueriieu »
considerable number of groups and
individuals whose interrelation is ar
bitrary and imposed on them from
the outside. These groups and indi
viduals take in a wealthy factory
owner and his sons, a Communist
leader and his satellites, a school
teacher, a mill hand turned tramp
and various other London types. They
are all concerned with a "search for
happiness" or, as the author interprets
that time - honored, ink - spattered
quest, “pie in the sky.”
The feeble and frightened ones
turn to communism, and the book
leaves the more naive of them finding
comfort in the love of their girl com
rades and interminable discussions of
Marx, while those a shade more un-1
scrupulous plan to operate a Com- ;
munist newsstand—based on the profit
motive. The school teacher takes up
the Communist principle of free love—
and loses her job. The hardier souls
solve their problems—or try to—in- j
dividually, without reference to "sys- I
terns." These are the two poles of socl-,
ety. in Mr. Calder-Marshall’s de- :
signing. One is the factory owner, an
old pirate of dubious morals, whether '
considered publicly or privately, but a
man of ready sentimentality and gen
erous with his plunder. The other is 1
the mill hand who has worked for !
him for years, only to lose his job at
last. After thinking it over some \
months, the millhand quietly decides
to kill his former boss. The plan fails. |
however, and thanks to the boss'
slightly senile sentimentality the i
workman is given a job. A happy end
ing, in other words, although dutifully
mocked by this determinedly Hux
leian author
The book has all the elements,
somehow, but it lacks virtuosity in
handling. That is all that one can
say of it.
THE VIRGIN AND THE SWINE. By
Evangeline Walton. Willett, Clark
ft Co., Chicago and New York,
publishers.
/~\NE of the ancient folk tales of
^ Wales, with its setting in the
druidic, magic day* of early Britain,
when various Anglo-Saxon tribes stiU
fought for domination, is the founda
tion for this fascinating work of
Evangeline Walton.
To history and folk lore of those
days, the author adds her own color
and a fill-in of plot here and there
to complete the story of Math, aon of
Mathonwy, aged, ancient bearded King
and High-God of Gwynedd, who had
f
magic powers, and his nephew and
heir, Gwydion, who inherited Maths
magic.
Into the story is woven the change
in the marital life of the Anglo
Saxon peoples on the British Isles. In
Gwynedd the Pietish custom of mother
right still prevailed. A man seldom,
if ever, was able to identify his father
The rights of the mother were su
preme. She could change men as she
wished. The Celtic invaders brought
marriage with them into the isles, and
circumstances over which Gwydion
had no control gradually contributed
to bringing the marriage custom into
Gwynedd.
The magic that Gwydion learned
from his uncle brought war to Gwyn
edd. when Gwydion used his powers
to secure from Pryderi, King of Dvved,
some of the first pigs that had been
brought to the British Isles. The war
ended when Gwydion killed the famous
king in battle. Thus pigs were brought
to Gwynedd.
The story is filled with the adven
tures and vicissitudes of Gwydion.
his brother, Gilvaethwy; their sister,
Arianhrod: Llew. the son whom
Gwydion created, and Blodeuwedd,
Llew's wife, who was made for him
by Gwydion and Math because of
Arianhrod's curse upon Llew—that he
could never have a mortal woman for
his wife.
Except for some jaw-breaking
names, for which the Welsh lan
guage is famous. "The Virgin and the
Swine" gets off to a good start with
the loves of Gilvaethwy. whose desire
for Math’s virgin footholder leads him
and Gwydion astray. As for the novel
itself, we recommend it. R. A. E.
THE SISTERS. Myron Brmig. Farrar
and Rinehart, Inc. New’ York.
1LXERE we have a book that is genu
11 ine, a book that is sincere and
true to life in both character and
scene, yet, unlike many books that
have these undoubted virtues, is read
able and swift enough in action to
hold the reader's attention to the
very end. Like books of lighter fic
tion that depend entirely on plot, it
calls one to finish it for the sake
of finding out what next.
The three sisters, Louise, Grace and
Helen, daughters of a mining town
druggist, are individuals who reflect
clearly in thought and action their
blending of heredity and the op
posing forces of their environment,
the conventional, middle class, honest
home, and the unruly, wide-open, racy
life of Silver Bow. Mont., in the early
years of the century.
Louise is the eldest, the most beau
tiful, and has the most character.
Life brings to her an elopement with
a newspaper man of insufficient
strength to conquer himself, life in
San Francisco during the height of
that city’s growth and glory, desertion,
new love and unwed life with a
Jewish merchant, together with many
more and exciting vicissitudes.
Grace is the sister who stayed home.
In her, too, one can forecast the
woman from the girl. Less beautiful
than either of her sisters, more prac
tical than Louise, less mercenary than
Helen, she finds life as intense for
her kind of personality in Silver Bow
as her sisters do in San Francisco
and New York, respectively. Helen
is the flashy beauty, whose body is
a snare for men. In another era
and another environment, she might
have been a courtesan. In her own
age, she becomes the wife of a mil
lionaire 30 years older than herself,
brings color and youth and gaiety
into his life, and without giving him
faithfulness, which he probably does
not know, enriches his last few years.
Having started a second liaison even
before her husband's death, after his
death, she goes from one to another,
sometimes married and sometimes
not, but always, gaily, successfully
and with an air.
As a record of a period and a place,
"The Sisters” might almost be con
sidered historically valuable. The de
scriptions of the cities, especially Sil
ver Bow, of the homes, of the women’s
clothes, are photographically correct.
Nor is there the covert sneering at
the furnishings of the recent past
*
which mars other descriptions of the m
same period. One feels that these are
places and scenes for which the author
had a sympathy that sprang from his
own identification with the locations
and times. He loved them because
he knew them with the unreasoning
acceptance of a child for his own
home and folks. R R T.
-•
Plant Explorers Active.
A MONG the less heralded but highly
important activities of the Fed
eral Government is the constant
search of plant explorers for new types
or new strains of plant life whirh
might prove of value to the United
States.
Two such Department of Agricul
ture 'explorers, H. L. Westover and Dr.
F. L. Wellman, are now scouring the
valleys of the Old World looking for
seed for experimental purposes.
A more or less primitive agricul
ture still exists in the broad stretch
of land between the Mediterranean
and Black Seas. It isn't so thickly
populated as it was 3.000 or 4,000
years ago. Neither is it so closely
cultivated.
On the broad plateaus of the in
terior. however, where grasses, forage
and cereals are important crops. West
over and Wellman found clovers, al
falfa and other legumes growing under
climatic conditions similar to senu
arid areas of the United States.
Grazing is an important industry
and thousands of years of natural
selection and acclimating have de
veloped in this section of Asia culti
vated crops that will grow, although
the average rainfall ranges only from
8 to 14 inches annually. Most of the
moisture falls in the late Autumn,
Winter and Spring, and Turkish
farmers utilize the age-old Summer
fa' ow to retain the little moisture
that falls.
inese crops were or parucuiar in
terest to Westover, a forage specialist.
who has made previous foreign ex
ploration trips to the interior of Soviet
Russia and Turkestan in search of
similar species and strains of forage
crops which might prove resistant to
disease and drought.
Dr. Wellman, horticulturist, was
interested particularly in fruits, vege
tables and ornamentals of possible
value from a disease-resistant stand
point. The two scientists spent about
eight months in Asiatic Turkey, and
in this short time collected about
3.500 samples of seeds and bulbs.
Included were varieties and strains
of clover, alfalfa, vetches, beans, corn,
wheat, rye, many vegetables, fruits
and ornamentals.
BEST SELLERS FOR WEEK •
ENDING FEBRUARY 27.
Fiction.
Drums Along the Mohawk. Ed
munds. Little Brown & Co
Sea of Grass. Richter. Alfred
A. Knopf.
The Street of the Fishing Cat.
Foldes. Farrar & Rinehart.
Busman’s Honeymoon. Sayers.
Harcourt Brace & Co,
Gone With the Wind. Mitchell.
Macmillan.
The Late George Apley. Mar
quand. Little Brown & Co.
Non-Fiction.
Nine Old Men. Person and Al
len. Doubleday Doran.
The Hundred Years. Guedalla.
Doubleday Doran.
The Golden Fleece. Harding.
Bobbs-Merrill.
We or They. Armstrong. Mac
millan.
Beloved Friend. Bowen Sc Van
Meek. Random House.
Something of Myself. Kipling.
Doubleday Doran.
MANUSCRIPTS WANTED
for book publication. Send
return postage. Dept. A-12
House of Field, 521 Fifth
Avenue, New York City.