The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-09-29

D0luer ana tle most Respectable inquire IN
Mr.. Weiss novel. After the death by
drowning of Arthur and Dolly the care of
Joan and Peter devolved, as it first ap-
peared, upon two silly-ass aunts. Aunt
Phyllis was merely silly, but Aunt Phoebe
wrote weird radical things which might
have added peoples brains had they been
comprehensive too. Oswald was third
guardian and Lady Charlotte Sydenham
! a fourth.
Mr.. Wells's Woman of Straw.
Naturally in describing Lady Charlotte
Mr. Wells is at his happiest, for he en-
bodies in her everything he most hates
county famiIyism, Anglican culture,
Queen Victoria worship, the slanderous
tongue, Toryism, Sir Edward Carsonism,
&C., &c. He says with much felicity: "She
had early mastered the simple arts of
county family intercourse. Her style in
contradiction was very good, her insults
were frequently witty, she could pretend
to love horses, there was no need for her
to pretend to despise and hate tradesmen
and working people, and she kept herself
well-infoTmed upon the domestic details
of the large and spreading family of the
Dear Queen She was very good at tax
ing down impertinent people, and most
people struck her as impairment"
Tt is memorable portrait, but it is
a portrait Of woman of straw whom Mr..
Wells can buffet with the utmost saw
ageness. Talk about the exaggeration and
caricature of Dickens! 1t never ex-
ceeded the delineation of Lady Charlotte,
though Dickens kept himself rather more
out of it than Wells does; in fact the ere
ator of Lady Charlotte makes his detesta-
ton so plain as somewhat to defeat his
purpose; the reader really doubts occa-
sionally If Wells can be trusted to por-
tray the lady at all. How representative
figure Wells makes of her can't be
asked; she isn't representative, she's ale
gorical. Yet for his boys school a Ia
Dickens Wells does claim a certain rep
resentativeness. High Cross School, from
which Peter ran away, "was, perhaps, a
bad specimen of an English private
school, but it was a specimen. There were
worse as well as better among the schools
of England" This place of more or less
dirty youngsters-cowards, DULLES and
what not-with its brutal masters scarcely
better than old Squeers, is not England in
1880 or $780, but England in the TWEEN
tieth century.
Once or Twice Upon a Time.
Once or twice upon time Mr. Wells
has given US essentially the same young
man and pretty much the same young
woman that we get in Peter and his fos-
fer sister. Once or twice upon time he
has mentioned the subject in a manner
that indicated his intense desire to have
every boy and girl of, say, fourteen,
seated firmly in facing chair and In
structed in All the Things They
Ought to Know. Old Oswald shirks this
and when Peter, at about sixteen, gives
casual indication of understanding a
thing or two, the solemn old fool stops
shaving to nod his head and soliloquize:
Its all right with the boy. 1 think it's
all right. No nonsense about it anyhow.
But what tortuous, untraceable business
the coming of knowledge ISL And he
goes on: "Facts are Clean" uttering, says
Wells, "the essential faith with which
science has faced vice and priestcraft,
magic and muddle and fear and mystery,
the world over" Then why, Oswald, not
supply the factsF Why, Mr.. Wells, not
write book that will supersede Sylvanus
StalPsf
Whether or not facts are clean Peter
went ahead and soiled himself rather ex-
tensively. Or, if you don't believe in
Free VIII, Mr.. Wells goes ahead and soils
Peter. Peter becomes an aviator and is
disabled for flying in his very first flight;
is then made kite balloon observer and
gets shot down by q German airman and