Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-09-07

honorable house by choice, personal
qualities the individuality of the hui
man being himself. Rich in the mellow
glow of wisdom attained, ripe with the subtlety
Of age-old diplomacies, diSturbingy reminiscent
Of wide exploringS and hardy adventures. softly
provocative with its half-vsions of courtly ways,
of beauty and love, of sorrow, of tragedy. An
ancent house of unchanging tradition, of house,
hold ways crystallized to unvarying formantieS,
to class loyalties to a fine benefcience of spirit
and bearing. That is the way the poet, now
and then, an ancient castle But, If the
poet chance to be q romancer also he must m
deed trim his lowered imaginings TO the fact
that the most of us, of his readers, are OF q de-
cidedly prose composition to whom the GUITAR
ings of a poet making up things about mere
house would get nowhere at all: that is, not in
the way of many readers So, OF necessity, such
an one must provide a flesh and-blood hero for
his tale And this is the way of THE Ed
wardians" Chevron is the great figure of this
story. Chevron and its ways An DID, old
castle, gray and turreted, gift from Eliza
beth herself, it is said to her lord treasurer.
And on the walls the pictured great men
who from that time have built and held the
tradition of Cheyron. world in itself where,
from lord to attendant, there is a complete
and unchanging ritual of attitude and behavior.
Chevron, said to be- matter of fact, Knole,
the ancestral home of v. Sackville-WeSt. Gen.
trial figure as the great estate so clearly is here
It becomes the background against which moves
the representatives of Edwardian England.
The average reader must have men, and women,
as actors-not walls and orders and customs
and British fealties and durabilities. Young
Sebastian, English the first King, is this
hero. Handsome, self-contained restless, but
never uneasy about the rightness of England,
never at odds with the righteousness of class.
A brilliant group surrounds the heir at
Chevron. His mother, his sister. comprises the
family group Around them is a circle Of
their own kind and order. One outsider pro-
hp Of
ment and comment.
This surface novel, the that we prose
nteralistS read with so much of pleasure Is q
waywise picture of social life at the tip-top Of
English social achievement. And this, take it.
Is but a little step below the celestial height
itself. ". Sackville-West is so much at home
here. IS so suave, discerning, knows the
human nature Of this group to be pretty much
what it is elsewhere, as her smoothly humorous
half-disclosures make plain. Exceedingly good
company you are in now. Delightful pictures
come and go of daily ceremonial and rite that
are representative of one side, of very i'm
portant side. of English life Possibly we do
fully estimate the value of this kind of book
from just this source. If it were other than
novel We should hear such words as authentic"
original sources of information" and so on.
And though it be a novel these terms still
hold as strictly applicable. The Literary Guild
has chosen The Edwardians" for its Septem-
Der iSsue-and certainly it is compact of deeply
and beauty.
END OF ROAMING. BY Alexander LAing.
New York: Farrar &c Rinehart.
I TITLE boy, adolescent youngster. emergent
manhood Wait a minute. I know what
you going to say. I agree with you. Stories
Of adolescence are piffie, hokum, bunk. Right
you are. just said, Wait minute" while
remind you that the most of these have been
0nada hU t1niVo
fessors- And il there is any order of creation
Vhat knows less about youth really, and Is
more scared to tell the little it does know, that
IS the order Of the pedagogue.
This is something different. It's primary
quality is a double extract Of sincerity and
simplicity. No beating about the bush No
lying in the interest of "decency." No hunt
ing out Of obScurities or non-esSentials for the
sake of seeming up TO the minute of modernity.
Nothing of any of this waste material droSs.
Instead-here Is a boy, Richard Melville.
Much like other little boys shade more re-
mote maybe, because the world that he makes
every day is an absorbing place. Father and
mother much after the usual pattern. Father
prosperous and q moral support in the COM
munity. Mother. lovely and sane. Not quite
enough of mother, but no matter. Dickie used
now and then, TO lie. That's what father
called it. as he spanked the love of truth into
the boy. He wasn't lying. Then one day
Uncle Robert came TO live with them. Uncle
Robert was q derelict-so father said Got
drunk now and then. How father hated and
despised him. Father was a good Christian,
20 Of course he would hate Uncle Robert. But
Dickie loved him. The forts they built on that
height above the Hudson. The wars they
waged. Then, victory won, such stories as
Uncle Robert could tell of far places and
strange people. And the friendlineSs of the
two-but 1t was use. Uncle Robert was too
bad. He had to go away. once letter came
from him to Dickie-and that was the last