New-York tribune., 1922-10-15


:: s.: +; J;
under which this volume may
! be slipped save that which shelters
Miss Amanda Wheatiey's ''By-paths in
Iceland" and G. Preston Thackerwait's
1 Little Glimpsed Bolivia" tthe one, YOU
Will remember, contained an accurate
tally OF the lcelandic valleys; the other,
you may no tremember, listed exhaus-
lively the varieties of Bolivian floral.
Mr.. Douglas competes with neither the
valley collector nor the botanist; but
| his table OF contents is list of mere
geographical designations; at the
places listed he paused, and about them.
presumably, he has written: so his
| volume is, perforce, travel book"
and onto the same shelf with the least
! literary disciples OF Baedeker It goes.
There should be, of course, special
name to describe books like Alone"
books like Mr.. Hergesheimer's "San
Cristobal de la Habana." Or perhaps a
mathematical formula on "travel book"
| jackets would serve to guide the pros
pective reader: 1t would run 40 per
cent author, 10 per cent travel" or
| "S5 per cent travel, 15 per cent author"
On the basis of experience | would
| choose only those volumes in which
the travel" did not exceed the cur
rent legal percentage for alcohol. Lists
| of towns, villages and hamlets grow
| wearisome; famous monuments sit un-
| impressively, as q rule, between book
covers; hills in the earth are not bad,
in print one hill is much like another;
| rivers are very nice on a warm day,
| but descriptions of them which emu
late their winding courses are hardly
cooling.
We are always grateful to an author
who tells us which is the hest hotel
in any town, but our gratitude is ill.,
founded on mnemonic optimism; we
| should, no doubt, put up at the very
worst if we ever followed in his foot
steps. Yes the only satisfactory
kind of travel book is the kind that
Mr.. Douglas has written in "Alone."
He tells US that he visited certain
places, and that there he met certain
people and thought certain thoughts,
| but it doesn't matter hang where he
met his people or where he did his
thinking.
When he expresses an idea 1t Is i'm
material whether it was suggested by
the woods of Viareggio or the night
ingales of Olevano; it is the idea, or,
even more frequently, the anecdote
that matters. He does not shove places
and their peculiarites down ones
throat. Baedeker insisted, even in 1886,
that the larger hotels III Mentone "have
| stairs, ETC., and send omnibuses to the
station" Douglas has chapter en-
titled Mentone, but he never mentions
lifts, nor discourses on the convenience
and cherish in our memories the por-
trait of his priceless landlady.
What VIC do find in this record OF
| wartime wandering in Italy is VOL
ume that satisfies Mr.. Douglass own
conception of good travel literature.
| He is writing Of book by Ramage
| tof whom more anon) and he COM
ments: "His book, unassuming as it is,
comes up to my test Of what such
| literature should be. 1t reveals per-
| sonality. 1t contains philosophy of
| life" Certainly "Alone" reveals per-
sonality, indeed, more than one Gin a
final footnote the author writes: "The
title Alone strikes me, on reflection,
Let it standby, and there is no doubt
a philosophy of life, if ono believes
in such things, discoverable in the au-
thor's diverse and numerous comments
on men and things Herein we find Mr..
Douglas following In the steps of Max
as a champion Of Cuida; WI read u
note on Nietzsche, who "like all
Ireacher-poets is anthropocen-
tric"; we discover-gratefully or not,
depending upon our previous percep-
tiveness-an explanation Of the plot
of South Wind" written for those
reviewers who refused to believe that
the book possessed one; we encounter
some remarks on the press which
"crctinizes the public mind; we ap-
prove the comment 9on Gautier and
baudelaire that If they no longer pro-
vide the thrill that they once did, "it
may we'll be that we have absorbed
their spirit so thoroughly into our sys-
tenn that we forget whence we drew