Evening star., 1934-09-30
In the World of Books
CONTINUED From Fourth Page.)

CONTINUED From Fourth Page)
Sharing" which consists of confess
ing to relatives, friends and acquaint-
ances all unethical acts in the past
| which concern them, and especially
all thoughts regarding them which
have previously been concealed in the
interest of conventional politeness,
would seem to offer the greatest
temptation to outsiders to join the
movement, and provides Ted Baines'
recruits with their primary satisfac-
ton. The climax OF all the amusing
complications is reached when, on an
auto-bus excursion into the high noun
tains. the whole company is kidnapped
by Basque peasants acting on behalf
of the parents Of M. Josef. 1t is re-
vealed that the Josefs are the possess
ors of two extremely plain daughters
| who would not be a good advertise
ment for their beauty business, and
that these daughters have been in
| sufficiently paid for in the care Of
their peasant grandparents and are
now, moreover, in need of large dow
| cries in order to secure husbands. The
English have been kidnapped with the
Josefs in order to provide forceful
public opinion in the furtherance Of
extortion plans. After several days
| of detention, during which the vari-
| Gus captives behave entirely in char
! acter, the Josefs succumb and the
members Of the party are released, to
find their way as best they can down
the mountain.
ROMAN SPRING. Memoirs. BY Mrs.
Winthrop Chanler. Illustrated.
Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
MRS. CHANLER. half-sister of r.
A'A Marion Crawford and niece Of
Julia Ward Howe. was brought up in
Rome in the Palazzo Odescalchi,
which was an important center Of the
artistic and literary colony. Her
father, Luther Terry was a painter of
large canvases Of religious and ale
gorical subjects and spent most of his
! long life in Rome. Though Mrs.
Chanler has lived in many places, her
! "reminiscences show Enthusiastically that
Rome has always been not only the
i city Of her Spring. but also OF her life
| long love. Her chief girlhood COM
panions we're the three Crawford chill
dren Of her mothers first marriage
Marion, to whom she was always de-
voted; Mimoli, whom she loved, and
| Annie, whose disturbing disposition
made much trouble for the family
When Annie married Prussian junker
the whole family spent some time at
his West Prussian estate, where also
Julia Ward Howe and her daughter
Maud visited them shortly after the
death of DIR. Samuel Gridley Howe.
Mrs. Chanler's first visit to America
was made with her mother when she
was IT. and in spite Of delightful stays
in New York. Newport and California
| it seemed an exile" from Italy.
| Shortly after her return to Italy she
became a Roman Catholic. and her
correspondence on the subject with
her brother, Marion Crawford, who
had preceded her in accepting that
faith. is most interesting.
| When barely out of girlhood, Mar
garet Terry was married to her cousin,
| Winthrop Chanler, of one branch of
| the Astor family, and went to live in
his family home, Rokeby on the Hud-
son. He had many brothers and sis
tiers and some of them looked askance
at the new member Of the family be-
| cause she was a Catholic. Residence
in Washington followed, where among
the friends of the Chanlers were the
Henry Cabot Lodges, the Theodore
Roosevelts. Cecil Spring Rice, Mary
Letter, afterward Lady Curzon, and
Amelie Rives, who was later married
to Winthrop Chanler's brother. Sew
eral Winters in New York society,
where an established place did not
compensate for the loss of Roman
freedom and artistic associations, were
succeeded by a home in Tuxedo Park.
which Mrs. Chanler never liked. Rome
again atoned for all that America
| lacked. But after the deaths of her
parents. and with a growing family of
her own. Mrs. Chanler decided that
America was, after all. her logical home
Her "reminiscences are written with
, frankness and informality and will be
enjoyed by many who have lived
through her period and many others
who, like her, love Italy.
THE QUEST FOR CORVO. An Ex-
pertinent in Biography. BY A. J. A.
Symons. New York: The Macmil-
Ian Co.
INOT few biographies depend for
their interest on the writer spirit
and method far more than on the
subject. It is probable that not many
people know a great deal about Fred
erick Rolfe, Self-styled Baron Corvo
author of the novel "Hadrian the
Seventh" yet Mr. Symons so studies
| and interprets his personality as to
force considerable interest in a most
eccentric being. Mr.. Symons, director
of the First Edition Club of London
| first discovered the existence of the
quarrelsome, experimental individual
who was Baron Corvo through his
friend Christopher Millard, another
eccentric scholar, when they were
lazily conversing in Millard's little gar
den about books which had missed
their Just reward of fame. Millard
mentioned "Hadrian the Seventh" and
at the end of the afternoon Symons
was on the trail of the book and its
| author.
| Frederick Rolfe was not an easy
man to discover, and Symons spent
eight years in constructing the story
of his tortuous career He searched
for Rolfe's unpublished manuscripts
and wrote innumerable letters to all
whom he could discover who had
known Rolfe. This biography takes
the reader with the author on his
search, which led to a gondola in
Venice and the Scots College in Rome,
from which Rolfe was expelled. Born
in Cheapside in 1860, into q family
whose members had been piano manu-
facturers since the eighteenth CEN
tury, family Of Dissenters, Rolfe left
school at IS, idled for time as an
unattached student at oxford, became
a convert to Catholicism, a candidate
| for the priesthood, painter, writer.