Evening star., 1925-04-04
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY THE BOOKLOvER.

Revisiting the scenes of youth after
many years Is not usually very
cheerful business. In one of her let
ters Jane Welsh Carlyle tells Of such
a visit to her girlhood home at Had
dington, on the Scotch border, after
an absence of 23 years. She went
"incC gnito" in order to avoid the pain
of meeting former acquanitances,
now grown old, who remembered her
dead father and mother; but the in
cognito proved of little use. From
the cross-llne train which stopped at
Haddington she was taken in a dusty
little omnibus to the George Inn,
where a sleepy landlord and waiter
showed her to the best room, looking
out on the Fore street. Gazing from
the window, she commented that 1t
was "the same street the same
houses, but so silent, dead, petrified!
1t looked the old place, just as
had seen II at Chelsea In my dreams,
only more dreamlike" After hastily
swallowing tea, she sent for the
keeper of the keys of the church and
allowed herself to be guided about
the familiar old churchyard, where
she found her fathers gravestone
surrounded by nettles and the IN
scription moss-covered, then into the
church, where "our pew looked to
have never been new-lined since we
occupied 1t: the green cloth was become
all but white from age! l looked at II
in the dim twilight till I almost fancied
I saw my beautiful mother in her old
corner, and myself, a bright-looktng
GIRL In the other" AS she was leaving
her guide she asked where he lived and
he told her next door to the house that
was DR.. Welsh's cher fathers), and
added: Excuse me, me m. for mention
ing 1t, but the minute ! set eyes on ye
at the George, l taioosed it was her we
all looked after whenever she went up
or doun." SO the incognito was of no
avail. She walked alone "up the water
side" and about THE Haugh. Dodds'
Gardens and Babbie's Butts, the GUS
tomary evening walk in my teens and
looked through the spared door of her
fathers old coach house and into the
garden of Sunny Bank, her godmother's
home, all the while feeling like her own
ghost.
y X x X
The next morning, after a restless
night, she arose at half after 8. climbed
the locked church yard gate, and with
pearl-handled button hook scraped the
moss from her fathers gravestone. Ihen
she haunted her old home. where the
occupants still slept. Passing the VII
lage schoolhouse she observed the door
ajar, walked in and sat In her old seat,
"to the manifest astonishment of de-
cent woman who was sweeping the
floor" and recalled the time when at 7
in the morning her teacher found her
asleep at her desk over a great atlas
after she had been there for two hours.
She commented on the degeneracy of
the present time, when only the clean
ing woman had arrived at s o'clock.
Finally, on her way back to the inn, she
became courageous enough TO enter the
garden gate of Sunny Bank and to in
quire at the back door for the health Of
her godmother and her two sisters. She
had hoped that only the servants would
be about so early, but she found that
Miss Jess" and Miss Catherine were
downstairs, and that her godmother was
Ill. So, moved by an uncomfortable de-
sire to see these old friends, she flung
''the responsibility on Providence and
went around to the front Of the house,
where she was admitted by the same
maid servant whom she had interviewed
at the back door. Then the incognito
was finally abandoned, and at her meet
ing with the three old sisters came all
the sad recoilections and the tears which
she had dreaded when she had first
planned to visit Haddington. The story
of this visit is told in Letters and
Memorials OF Jane Welsh Carlyle" pre-.
pared for publication after her death by.
her husband. Thomas Carlyle. This is,
OF course, not a new book.
y xa + X
A modern combination of ..Gulli-
ver's Travels" and Robinson Crusoe"
is .Rose Macaulay's novel, Orphan
Island" Charlotte Smith, a mid-Vic-
torian maiden lady of philanthropic
phans and with a doctor, a nurse and
crew sails around Cape Horn, bound
for San Francisco, for what reason is
not quite clear. But that does not
matter, for the ship never reaches
San Francisco. 1t is wrecked and all
on board are cast away on the con-
ventional tropical island, in the South
Seas There are the usual tropical
fruits, shellfish and game which sup
ply the table bountifully and deli
cately and, of course, the climate is
so balmy as to make clothing and
shelter immaterial. Miss Smith Is
not; like Gulliver and Robinson Cru
soc, anxious to get away, and no ship
happens along soon to take her. She
remains and POUNDS a community. AS
first step she marries O'Malley, the
ships doctor, and has 10 children.
These children and their offspring
island; the orphans and their Off
spring are the common people, After
the birth Of the 10 children O'Nalley
| reveals to Miss Smith that he was al
ready married before leaving Eng
land, SO her children are illegitimate.
| He is shortly afterward eaten by a
| shark. A situation thus arises in
which there is an aristocracy based
| on illegitimacy; compare William the
EnnnTarnr III
| at all crushed by either O'MaIley's
| perfidy or his death, Miss Smith con-
tinues to develop her commonwealth,
| in which she becomes q sort of Queen
Victoria, vigorously upholding all the
Victorian ideals All the machinery
of government is established-a par
| lament, state church, law courts
| and, of course, laws, police, prisons
and capital punishment. Then there
is a rebellion and the rebels migrate
to another island called Hibernia.
The shipwreck has taken place in
1856. In 1923, after considerable de-
| lay, It would seem, which is, how
| ever, plausibly explained, rescue
| party comes from England to the
| island. The shock which occurs to
both sides when the moderns Of 1928
and the Victorians of Orphan Island
come in contact is the climax of Miss
Macaulay's clever satire. She init
mates also that the shock would be
equally great if three-quarters of a
century later the people of the year
5000 should come in contact with
| those of 1928.
| i: = X
"The Letters of James Boswell
collected and edited by Chauncey B
Tinker, have recently been published
/ in two volumes. That Boswell never
doubted the greatness of his Life
of Johnson is shown by this extrac,