New-York tribune., 1919-07-05
The Gay Dombeys
English Novel Fails
AS a Dickens Sequel
THE GAY DOMBEys py Sir Harry
Johnson Published by The Macmil-
Ian Company. Price S1.75.
By Alexander Woollcott

1t may be a source of considerable
irritation to Sir Harry Johnston, the
explorer and student. of African prob
lens, but feature Of his "Thc Gay
Dombcys" which has little or nothing
to do with its quality or appeal as a
novel is likely, nevertheless, to prove
lis best advertisement and it's sole
claim to fame. MINDED to write a
study OF the expanding empire of the
eighties and nineties. he has amused
himself by capriciously tracing down
to the days of the great war the
characters who were left strewn about
when Dickens wrote the last chapter
of "Dombcy e. Son" BY crowding his
stage with persons named Dombcy and
FcnniX and Morfn and Chick (some-
what arbitrarily so named), by in
Producing new and mild hammered
Sir Mulberry Hawk, by having, a
theatrical company run by man
named Swiveler and livery stable
run by man named Weller-by all
such means Sir Harry has contrived a
certain adventitious interest for his
story, much as he might have done had
page inserted upside down. That, too.
would have been novel and arrestng.
And it would have left the story pretty
much unaffected.
SO, after many years, you meet new
Paul Dombey, Florence and Walters
boy, the same youngs.er we left trot-
ting at his grandfather's side but
now head Of the resuscitatcd house of
Dombey G. Son. We find him keeping
mistress in New Orleans, acquiring
another in q Russian wagon-lit, spon-
1,,|i. /.
mother Of his natural son and in gen
eral behaving in q manner that Mr..
Dickens himself would have left un-
chronicled. You note with mild in
terest that old Mr.. Dombey's grand
children, in their superior twentieth
century manner, realize that in his
unfortunate experience with the sec
ond Mrs Dombey both he and she suf-
fered chiefly from lack of sense Of
humor. You note with mild surprise
that the union between the alniable Mr..
Toots and the inefable Susan Nipper
gave rise to substantial and high
stepping family that has made off wi h
many social honors under the resound-
ing patronymic OF knipper But
as you read on you feel a little as
though you were undergoing the
strain of visit from a gossipy party
from your old home town, which you
have not revisited in forty ycars-a
person who rattlcs on and on about
people and families whose very exist
ence you had quite abominahly for
gotten.
A true sequel to "Dombcy G. Son."
Of course, it IS not. Nor would such a
thing be possible. That is because it
is not easy to think of the Dickens
folk as aging, dying. developing
through generations. Perhaps that, in
turn, is because, as Mr.. Chcsterton has
said, Dickens was a writer of fairy
stories, a teller Of tales peopled with
beings who not 6nly did not ever die,
but could not ever change. So Ches-
terton, if in proper mood he were to
drop into an ut-of-the-way English
inn some night, might encounter a
Pickwick there, but it would not be
Samuel's grandson. 1t would be Sam
uel himself, spectacles, CATERS and all.
That, probably, is why Sir Harry's
Dombeys do not seem quite real.
There is about them the same caprice
and the same bogus quality which char
acterizcd a portrait Harry Furncss
did of hashy and bcwhskered old
gentleman, and named "David Copper
field at g."