The New York herald., 1922-04-09

story, and, while his characters talk
more, we seldom know quite clearly
what they think AS a picture of the
social speed limit in these hectic
days of the Eighteenth Amendment,
1t is, doubtless, true enough. But,
artistically, it is overdone. The rev.
elry, the ubiquitous cocktails, the
maudlin discussions and silly quar-
rels. the insistent, endlessly reiter-
ated note of drunken depravity fills
SO large portion of the pages that
its effect becomes dulled. Now, the
main issue of the story turns upon
the theme HAS a young man in
these democratic days the right to
insist upon remaining one of the idle
rich?'. On this point the hero and his
uncle. a strait laced reformer,
with as many prejudices as he has
millions, sharply take issue. 1t IS
foregone conclusion that if that uncle
should ever see just one of those end
loss cocktail parties he would
promptly make new will. We see
the uncle just once or twice, in The
early chapters, and then we more or
less forget about him through some
two hundred pages of tinkling glasses
and befuddled wit. And then at last,
when the old man does happen IN at
an unfortunate hour and does make
new will, the net effect is surpris-
ingly undramatic. We had almost
forgotten about the uncle, we were
satiated with the nephew and the
whole episode was something OF an
anti-climax. The new will, to be sure,
is broken later-but we learn of all
this at second hand; we never get
even peep inside the court room.
Mr.. Fitzgerald tries TO compensate
us with a sardonic picture of his
hero's mental collapse, the price ex-
acted by outraged nature.
VIII.
By timely coincidence Mr..
Hergesheimer, one of the very few
writer's of to-day with real sense OF
proportion, has shown in "Cutherea"
how the seductive tinkle of ice in
the forbidden glass may be used
throughout a book, like a recurrent
Ieitmotif, insistent yet subdued, so
that it's effect does not pail. Mr.
Hergesheimer is too big to waste his
uncommon powers on relatively
cheap themes. 1t seems almost q
pity that the same hand that pro-
duced 1.-The Three Black Pennys" and
Java Head" should descend to the
sordid commonplaceness of the pres
ent day divorce habit. Yet he largely
disarms criticism by his odd sym
bolism and new angle of approach.
OF course the doll, which his hero
names Cytherea, and sets up as a
bizarre little idol to worship in secret,
is simply a symbol of the dream
woman who sums up all the at
tributes that are missing from the
prosaic domesticity of the average
menage. The real art in "Cutherea"
lies in taking an apparently happy
couple after years of married life,
showing us the wife, Fannie, as a
model of domestic virtue, patient.
uncomplaining, living solely to meet
her husbands whims. and all the
while seeing him slowly slipping
from her, firing of her, restlessly
seeking elsewhere. simply because he
is a male and wants the unattain
able-and all the while, even while
verbally insisting that the woman is
In the right and the man utterly in
the wrong, Mr.. Hergesheimer mirac-
ulously wins all our sympathy for
the husband and leaves not an atom
for the wife. 1t must be admitted
that the book drops sadly midway.
When the man meets the living
replica of his Cytherea in the person
Of the emotionally starved wife of a
New York millionaire, and when this
neurotic lady finds herself alone with
him and voices her long repressed
primitive desires with an outspoken-
ness which it would be indecorous to
reprint here, the author becomes, for
at least once in his life, unconsciously
grotesque. But later he retrieves
himself with a climax worthy of a