Evening star., 1933-10-15
FLUSH: A BIOGRAPHY BY Virginia Woolf.
New York: Harcourt, Brace g. Co.


LIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING'S
cocker spaniel, Flush, was at least
l. Virginia Woolf interprets him, very
subtle person. 1t would be a slur to
call him almost human, because he
was so much more intuitve and dis
eliminating than most human beings, and so
much more loyal. His biography IS one Of the
best products of Mrs. Woolfs distinctive art.
In it are combined the slight narrative which
is all she ever allows her novels and her most
delicate and abusive essay style. She belongs
to no school of writer's and has no successful
imitators in her fine analytical method and
her seemingly simple but extremely humanistic
style. Restrained feeling she permits. but
never sentimentality. Nature and civilization
meet in her work without clashing. For the
style alone, there is temptation to quote lndef-
initely from Flush" Mr.. Milford is described
as like Apollo until guttony and inte1n-
perance changed Apollo into Bacchus.' While
Flush still country dog, at Three Mile
Cross near Reading, and rushing about the
fields after hare rabbit and fox, Love blazed
her torch in his eyes; he heard the hunting
horn of Venus Before he was well out OF his
puppyhood, Flush was father
Flush originally belong to Miss Milford, who,
poor as she was, would not sell him but thought
him fitting gift for her dear invalid friend,
England's great poetess, Elizabeth Barrett. So
Flush went to London and Wimpole street,
and gave up the fields of Three Mile Cross fer
the stuffy, curtaned bed room of Miss Barrett,
at the foot of whose sofa he lay and observed
all that went on in that mausoleum-like house.
He "pure-bred cocker of the red variety"
and when he looked at himself in the mirror,
after walk in the London streets had given
him opportunity to observe other dogs, Miss
Barrett thought "he a philosopher .
meditating the difference between appearance
and reality. On the contrary he was an aris-
tocrat considering his points"
n
of Flush. In the country there was the subtlest
combination which thrilled his nostrs-"strong
smells of earth, sweet smells of flowers, name
less smells of leaf and brambe; sour smells as
they crossed the road; pungent smells they
entered bean fields. But suddenly down the
wind came tearing a smell sharper, stronger,
more lacerating than any-a smell that ripped
across his brain stirring thousand instincts,
releasing a million memories-the smell of
hare the smell of fox" In Wimpole street,
up the funnel of the staircase came warm
whiffs of joints roasting, of fowls basting, of
soups simmering-ravishing almost as food
itself to the nostrils used to the meager SAVIOUR
of Kerenhappock's penuriouS frys and hashes
cat Miss Mitford's)." Then when he went to
Italy, there were dazzling smells. They
came from moldy old walls and dark stone
corners and from torches, laurels, incense,
roses, wax candles, leather garlic, baking bread,
wine. When for the first time he smelled a
-s sweet, dusky smell waited in clouds from be-
hind a swinging black curtain and pushed
beneath the curtain to investigate it, Wilson
jerked him back with an exclamation of horror.
Flush had his opinions about all the visitors
to the darkened bed room in Wimpole street.
He noticed that before Mr.. Barrett came in
the evening Miss Barrett hurriedly fed to her
always hungry spaniel the chicken wings and
rice pudding with clotted cream which had
come on her dinner tray; but that after that
hooded man called Mr.. Browning had called.
Aicc Porr ofo oil 1oro cIoi cln
pudding. When the Browning baby was bonn
in Italy, Flush sulked for at least six months,
estimated by dog time. Then the baby rode
on his back and pulled his ears and he was its
slave. Flush died in the drawing room at Casa
Guidi, at good old age. His odd resemblance
to Mrs Browning was always noticeable. Her
face with its wide mouth and its great eyes
and its heavy curls still oddly like his.
Broken aSunder, yet made in the same mold,
each, perhaps, completed what was dormant in
the other. But she woman: he was dog"
ONE MORE RIVER. BY John Galsworthy.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
NNNY CHERRELL is such an attractive
- heroine that we are glad Mr.. Galsworthy,
before his death in January, bestowed happi-
ness upon her in this last Of the three volumes
of the Cherren saga. Dinny is old-fashioned
girl trying to be modern. In Maid in Watt
ing' and "F1owering Wilderness" she is gentle,
quietly humorous, ready with self-sacrifce,
rather futile, not very discriminating. Her
love for the second-rate poet and frst-rate
iconoclast, Wilfrid Desert, though it leaves the
reader uncomprehending, is of course, perfectly
in the realm Of probability; but her offer to be-
come his mistress, when his morbid mental
outlook makes him adverse to marrying her, is
out of line with the rest Of her character. In
lone More River" it is a satisfaction to see
her married to a progressive M. p, who has
all the fine qualities lacked by Wilfrid. will
frid has been conveniently drowned in Siam.)
If Dinny does not soon forget her past, which
she feels to be the deepest thing" she will ever
know, learn to appreciate Eustace Dornford
and to enter into the rich life he offers her,