Evening star., 1935-04-07

SOlIOA du ShiCiy AAOl
reputed a Merry Walter and Robin
Goodfellow," with also touch of Don
Quixote. He Stunned fashionable re-
sorts like San Sebastian, which are
too blase for q minstrel" and
tramped the country roads, stopping
and flddling for his dinner In the
small towns. When he smelled the
tantalizing odor Of roasting meat and
onions issuing from some peasant
home he dropped in and offered to
share the meal, which he always fol-
lowed with the toothpick and the
siesta. He considers that refined aver
sion to the toothpick is altogether un-
justiflable and that If the inhabitants
Of Northern nations indulged in sies-
tas they would have less dyspepsia.
As in his Hungarian wanderings,
DR.. Starkie occasionally abandoned
hts tramp's garb and became for a
brief space an intellectual, while he
visited some literary friends or COL
leagues. but when he went to see the
painter Zuloaga in his home at Zu-
maya, he went hot, dusty and un-
shaven from the road, because "Zulo-
aga is the great friend Of the gypsies."
Once. from Bilbao to Miranda, he
travelled by train, third class, because
the best way to see the common life
Of Spain is on kilometric ticket. But
he was glad to get back to the road
He was entertained often and Law
ishly by the gypsies, saw a Basque
sword dance and a bullfight at Villa
franca, took part in a musical contest
between Celtic and Galician music
with Tio Anselmo at Bilbao, visited a
witch. serenaded Paquita, visited the
house of Ignatius Loyola and talked
with a sad young Jesuit about the
fate Of the monastic orders in Spain
of today, and Joined a pilgrimage to
to see the apparitions Of the Virgin.
Spanish Raggle-Taggle" Is an un-
usually delightful book of travel, with
none OF the conventional descriptions,
full Of the fresh experiences of an
enthusiast.
HE SENT FORTH A RAVEN. BY
Elizabeth MADDOX Roberts. New
York: The Viking Press.
IT is difficult to believe that in the
years Immediately preceding the
World War such man as Stoner
Drake could have existed In the
United States. even in an isolated
rural community. Yet from time to
time authentic stories of murders
caused by a belief in witchcraft. in
sections not far removed from busy
centers of modern life, appear in the
press. SO perhaps Stone brakes vow
was not impossible. When his second
wife, to whom he had been briefly
but happily married, lay at the point
OF death he vowed that If she died
he would never set his foot on Gods
earth again." as If he would revenge
himself on God. Joan died. He was
As at the time and he kept his VOW
until his death, long after his memory
had grown dim about the circum-
stances, and he sometimes thought
that he had taken the VOW on the
death of his first wife, Helen. From
an upper porch of his house and a
bridge which he had built between
the house and the barn he directed
all the work of his large farm, calling
the members Of his family and his
servants by means of blasts on a
horn. and making himself, of course,
a trial to every one.
The mania Of Stoner brakes VOW is
the obvious theme of Miss Roberts
very subtle story, but other impIca-
tions are many and deep. Two women
shared brakes life, his daughter
Martha, whose incipient happiness he
shattered and left her a blighted
human being, and his granddaughter
Jocelle, who won from him as much
affection as he had to give any
one, and. with her husband, q county
farm expert. remained to reconstruct
the diminished farm after the war.
brakes nephew Walter. who tar
niShed Jocelle's youth, illustrates the
brutalizing effect of war fear, even
before actual experience. Two minor
characters, both eccentrics, are Wig
orously drawn: Dickon, the literary
carpenter, author of 1.-The Cosmo-
graph" a book in which he reduced
man to an infinitesimal nothing in
the universe; and Briggs, the timer
ant preacher, who enjoyed brakes
bountiful meals and timidly tried to
show him the error of his ways. The
scene of "He Sent Forth a Raven" is,
as in her other novels, Miss Roberta
own Kentucky. 1t will rank with "The
Great Meadow" MY Heart and My
Flesh" and THE Time of Man" as
Rctioy, ~ ,,p,,cuoI Joott of v,,a, ,,;rr
and delicacy of style.
THE SON OF RICHARD GARDEN.
BY Neil Bell. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co.
A LISTER, the son of Richard Car
den, is not born until page 149,
and, like Sterne's Tristram Shandy,
is not then the principal character
of the book named for him. Alister,
in fact, remains slight and shadowy,
the object of his fathers fantastic,
but by no means self-sacriflcing, de-
votion, and one medium employed by
Richard Garden for demonstrating
himself. THE Son of Richard Car
den" Is, then, the autobiography of
Richard Garden himself, in which
he conceals nothing to his own detri-
ment and makes no attempt to prove
himself fine fellow. As character
study, 1t is Neil Bells finest piece Of
work, so mastery in its realism that
we despise Richard Garden as If we
knew him in flesh and blood. The
rotten spot that Is in Richard in