The New York herald., 1922-12-01
THE REVIEWING STAND
By Alexander Woollcott

or an exile died without the consola-
tions of a funeral grafton, there was
an inexhaustible we'll of reyerberating
prose at Hauteville House. in which
little groups of hearers could see re-
fiected the broad and beating wings of
human effort as il strove upward
toward the fixed stars of an eternal
republic.
Or listen to him on Saint Arnaud,
the General who handled the bribe
money counted on to move the troops
during the coup d'etdt. Saint
Arnaud,' says Guedella. "sent his or
ders for the troops to move before
dawn. and then che was a desperate
man of SO, but he had once been on
the stage) he yielded to the conven-
tions of French drama and wrote elo-
quently to his mother"
But it is, curiously enough, not these
more ironic and more characteristic
passages that best illustrate what
there is in Guedella as a writer to
stir the envy of ink stained wretches
far from Fleet Street. Listen to him
telling of Louis Napoleon's childhood
at Malmaison. where a smiling lady
with sad eyes let them run riot among
the flowers and gave them the most
exciting presents. while their mother
was taking tho waters among all the
fine gentlemen at AK. The little Louis,
dressed in the costume which delights
the admirers of Miss Kate Green
81, Ial; 20 ~.
come the favorite. and his health was
carefully preserved by the precaution
of a governess who. when he watered
the flowers, filled the watering can
with warm water In the years OF the
empires decline a small boy, who was
to see little more Of France until he
returned to rule it, was walking in the
woods around Malmaison or drilling
the big grenaders Of the guard. who
stood sentry at his grandmother's
door, and rewarding them shyly with
a furtive biscuit"
But you will SAVIOR him best If you
read his chapter on the defeat of Carl
baldi-Garibaldi, whom he cannot quite
find it in his heart to deride. 1t is true
that Guedalla, being given to fine writ
ing, can at times he caught caressing
his words as he parts with them. 1t is
true that he becomes a very addict to
certain verbal sounds, using the word
faint" and the word gesture" until
they become afflictions. And one could
wish that his puppets could, from time
to time, hit upon some other means of
also be true that after several more
such cakes we shall want to go back
to the bread and butter of a Trevelyan.
But Guedalla has the gift Of portraiture
as Strachey has it, achieving a more
vivid and more convincing likeness In
four paragraphs than pedestrian his
torian like Beveridge, for instance, can
manage in four volumes.
And the man can write. Hear him
on the republican retreat from Rome:
"Garabaldi went in his white cloak,
and Anita rode with him, and the
wagons and a great herd of bulls had
an air of the Rio Grande as they came
down to San Morinos under the Italian
sun. In an August night he rode out
again, and the Austrians were close be-
hind. Then he came down to the sea
and put out in the moonlight. The
Austrian fleet took some of his ships
at sea, but he ran for the shore, and
where the waves break along the sand
hills by Cesenatico he waded through
the surf with a dying woman in his
arms. There was a little farm by
great mere. and It's windows looked
across to the long forest of sad pines
by Ravenna. On bed there in his
arms Anita died. and Garibaldi was
left alone In Italy. The hunt was after
him, but he hid and wandered and
marched once more across the noun
put out to Elba with a loud cry of
Viva pItalia.' In Rome the French
marched in, and Mr.. Clough, who had
been at Rugby under Arnold. COM
mented unfavorably OH the rivdndieres.
Mazzini and Garibaldi had helped the
young men of Italy to dream a great
dream. But the Pope had come over
to his own again, and the French
bugles sounded the diane down the long
Italian streets until a day in August OF
1870. when the red trousers marched
away to the sea and the great guns
were booming above Metz. The siege
of Rome was the prelude of the Second
Empire, and In it's queer melody one
may catch the roll Of the last move
ment."