Evening star., 1925-05-23
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY THE BOOKLOyER

Life Is love and life is work. With
out love work soon becomes a mere
grind and without work love soon
pals The story of "Soundings," by
A. Hamilton Gibbs. illustrates this by
no means new philosophy. James
Hawthorne, r. A, loses his wife. Nan,
his beloved companion and fellow
artist, just at the moment when they
have found a perfect home in a
matched. honeysuckle-covered cottage
at Brimble, village strung out along
the ledge halfway up the great hill
where the ancient D-uids had carved
a mighty cross into the chalky face
of the earth" He loses her just at
the moment, too, when long-desired
child has come to them. In frenzy
of despair, over the debacle in his life,
Jim fees to the Continent, where he
wanders about restlessly, seeking to
weary himself to the point where
thought will be deadened. Finally he
Is able bitterly to think out his future
and his conclusion is: "All l know is
that I'm here and likely to be here for
some time, because of the instinct of
self-preservation, which won't let me
snuff myself out without a struggle.
suppose I've got to do something,
otherwise time will seem so damned
long" Thus he turns to work as his
salvation from grief and reaches out
to his art, because it was the only
thing that he knew" He has hitherto
had Indifferent success but soon he is
surprised to find that his pictures, are
being talked about. Gradually fame
comes and he finds it good. When
his daughter Is about years old
he awakes to her existence and love
again enters his life. When Nancy
is 20, fate involves him in another
tragedy. He Is run down by an auto
mobile and when he comes back from
the hospital to his cottage on the
hilly lane 1t is to spend the rest of
his days in a wheel chair. BY this
time he has become philosopher and
his despair is brief. Soon he remem-
bers to rejoice that his arms are left
to him, that he can still work at his
art, and, thankful for this, he almost
forgives the brutal chauffeur who
knocked him down and hadn't even
stopped to see if the poor devil were
dead or not"
Nancy's life is sheltered, serene and
happy, passed in the drowsy country
where every flower in her garden
every bird outside the window, the
pool of the river where she swims
and the green turf and shadowy
woods of the Druid Hill where she
wanders. all give her ecstatic joy.
Her fathers love and companionship
and the alteration of fat Mrs. Weeks,
who does for the 'Awthornes," sat
isfy all her human needs. But when
she Is 20 she meets Bob and the
cyclone hits her" Happiness ends.
for Bob Is "yellow"-a "rotter''-or
as his best friend Lloyd Evans tells
him, "a damned outsider, a low-down
scut, a cad of the first water" Then
after she recovers little from the
stunning hurt she has received, Nancy
too, learns the value of work as
refuge from sorrow. Under her
fathers delicate, concealed guidance
she paints pictures-pictures that are
good. When Jim casually suggests:
Its almost time that you had an ex-
hibition at the Gainsborough Gal
leries," she is suspicious. After think
ing it over she asks: Look here
dad-did you suggest an exhibition
and-and all the rest of it. as real
possibility, or We're you Offering the
moon TO a sick child?" Jim means it,
the Exhibition of Water Colors by
Miss Nancy Hawthorn takes place
and soon Nancy is making a good
yearly income from her art. Lovers
of romance are glad. however, that
Nancy's life is not filled with work
only. that love comes when she has
almost given up hope of finding it.
T + *
The University of Virginia has be-
gun the publication of The Virginia
Quarterly Review, the first number of
which has recently appeared The
prospectus variously describes the
purpose of the quarterly as a national
journal of discussion, published in the
South, an organ of liberal opinion
and a journal of Independent thought
in the field of society, politics and lit
erature. Contributors are by no
means confined to the university
| circle. The initial number includes
articles by Gamaliel Bradford on
Dolly Madison; by Archibald Hen
derson on Civilization and Progress
by Luigi Pirandello. who confesses
why and how he wrote six Charac-
ters in Search of an Author: by Sen
ator William Cabell Bruce on The
Democratic Party: by President Ed
win A. Alderman on Edgar Allan
Poe and the University of Virginia =;
| by Joseph Cullns on "Anatole
France" together with other articles,
poems and book reviews. The quar-
| teriv is handsomely printed, recalling
in this respect the Yale Review and
| in general starts off we'll.
The Sanger family in "The Constant
| Nymph." by Margaret Kennedy. is in
the jargon of reviewers delightfully."-
unconventional" Albert Sanger, a
| musical genius but an unsatisfactory
family man, lived with his children
and an ever-changing group of mu-
| sical friends at the karindehutte, an
overgrown &alet in the Austria n
| Tyrol. Few people could recollect
h4,, ol,;
supposed to have got, but there all
| ways seemed to be a good many and
| they were most shockingly brought
up. They were, in their own orbit,
known collectively as "Sanger's Cir
GUS nickname earned for them by
their wandering existence, their vul-
garity, their conspicuous brilliance,
the noise they made and the kind Of
naphtha-flare genius which illumi-
mated everything they said or did.
Their father had given them a good,
sound musical training and nothing
else" The two eldest, Caryl and
Kate, were the children of Sanger's
first wife, the long-suffering Vera who
had endured Sanger's infidelities until
she had finally died begging him not
to marry her latest rival, Evelyn
Antonia, Sebastian, Theresa and Pau
lima were the children of Evelyn,
Sangers second wife, who had be-
longed to a highly connected English
family and had been able to stand
the vicissitudes of her life with
Sanger for only six years. dying on
the eve of her 30th birthday" In
a multitude of disasters she revealed
a constant fortitude, and to the end,
| though a little battered by Ill fortune,
she never quite lost the carriage of a
gentlewoman." Susan, years old,
"a wholesome. plebeian-looking brat,
pink and formleSS as a wax doll,