New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1922-07-02
Books of Yesteryear'

or Virginia nam. And II Mr.. Ezra
Pound has conquered two worlds with
name like a character out Of J. c..
Lincoln, what could he not have done
as Raoul Root, the nominal domino
under which, in frilled shirt, velvet
jacket and little Vandyck beard, he
made his beautiful entrance into Mrs
van Spless's drawing room, raised two
fingers TO Mr.. John Cowper Powys and
wonderfully asked "Qu'est-ce que c'est
que l'art"?
Mr.. Pounds prime. at least for
prose, was over in the eyes Of a young
man with a negligible nose-the edi-
tor Of Crash" and presumably the
pre-Tyronian Wyndham Lewis-but
women, even the divinities of aes-
thetic circles, even posthumous chill
dren Of Oscar and Rosetti left on
Raoul Roots doorstep, are we'll known
to be insensitive in such matters. Our
hero saw through her technique per
fectly, but he couldn't resist even
pose 81, from Learn From the
Swan" She might be the solution Of
the sops to the flesh, the running away
and trying to live, and not being able
to because part Of his life was left
out, and grew thin and weak and quer-
ulous, cut off in that way from spirit
and mind. Edward and Mr.. wilkinson
had apparently not read their jung
completes and ectoplasms in 1915. Ed
schizophrenic splitting Of the psyche.
RUT, like so many other men, Edward
A. desired to marry the transatlantic
divinity, not only to heal his schizo-
nh nj hr,t bo CT
of making her over into the kind Of
girl he could have found drinking tea
on any tennis lawn. The feminine, hap
PLY, was too eternal for him: his
weeks engagement was only petard to
hoist Mr.. Ezra Pound into "The Morn
ing Post" and registry office. Any
kind-hearted person must rejoice that
Edward was so fortunately dished, but
that, after all, is no matter: despite
his pre-Freudian phraseology and the
pre-Leninian sociology Of Mr.. Powyss
lecture, Mr.. Wilkinson is far too mod
ern to ask his readers to be wrought up
even over the Falstaffian demise Of Mr..
Powys, who somehow manages to be-
come protagonist in book whereof he
is not the hero. The characters are
the point-Reggie Tryers, who invari-
ably became religious when he failed
as sinner; George Forrest, who felt
it his duty to rouse poor Edward into
abandoning the Oxford manner al
though he was at Cambridge-and be-
coming something like Colonel Roose-
Welt or the Bishop CT London; Theorite
Wordsworth, who could wink at the nat
ural infrmities of sinners, though sim
full takers put his back up; Mrs.
Raynes, relict of the late vicar, and
gluttonously maternal, the Reverend
Hubert Reeves, of Sydney, beautiful
spirit. The characters--and the style,
which comes Of being at Radley and
Cambridge, even if Cambridge men new
er really attain the Oxonian art Of
being frivolous and wise at the same
time and which must make all Amer
leans, except six, decide that they wrote
their last line yesterday.
But the most abusive reviewers have
not sounded drums or even funeral
notes for this charmingly civilized buff
foon; Mr.. Haywood Broun himself has
not mentioned that it will never sue
coed "The Vicar Of Wakefield" between
the hands Of young persons being In
Quoted into the English language. And
Mr.. Van Vechten has not-yet--got
around to lamenting, con brio, that it
has attained neither the commercial
apotheosis Of going into the reprints
nor the literary accolade of inclusion
in Mrs. Knopf's Borzoi first editions Of
great price.
FRANCES NEWMAN.
45 West Eleventh Street, Atlanta, Ca