Evening star., 1935-08-04
By Mary.C0rter Roberts.
f11cy GAYHEART. BY Villa Gather

IN THIS latest novel of hers MISS
Gather tells story OF love anu
death She tells it with her usual
Il lovely uuietude, casting ner great
themes on a small and unherolc stage
and softening them appropriately IN
color and intensity. The result Is q
piece of mood writing Which III us
serene and meditative sadness ntts
its characters above their relatlVe nu-
mility and invests them with Iastlng
veritv. Lucy Gayheart' is not a
great book; one cannot think that MISS
Gather meant it to be. It Is however,
well-nigh perfect. And as between
greatness and perfection, choice can
be left to taste.
The story runs quietly along ike a
email melody written in a minor key.
It Is the tale of the love between a
young girl of provincial American
BACKGROUND and an older man OF IN
ternational fame as singer ne
passion is wholly romantic. To the
pirl if is beauty and awakening, and
also retreat from the encroachlng neeo
to become matter -of-tact ana as otner
people. To the man it IS boon
youchsafed against the loss OF youth
and human faith. 1t is planleSS. form-
less thing, only slightly communicated
between them, clearly impossible to be
continued or regulated. 1t comes to
an end with the singers sudden deatn.
Against this somber idyll is the
realistic desire of LucyS glrlnood
sweetheart. whose quiXotic wounded
pride is peculiarly poignant under MISS
Gathers wise delineation. Only ne
of the trio survives to an old age. He
Is a banker, he is the successful man.
At the end he can do nothing with
his life but buy Lucy's old home where,
IN a block of the concrete walk, are
Embedded three of her childish foot
prints.
So. Miss Gather seems to ask. what Is
real in life anyway? Or, perhaps, what
Is more precious? The solid proud
facts Of demonstrable achievement?
Or the dream that cannot be told?
She is too wise to frame the question.
She is too wise ever to do more than
tell her story. She writes as the sun
shines or the rain falls. She leaves one,
in the present book, with the emotion
that sometimes is felt when one comes
on a country graveyard set in a grass
grown field, apart from any church.
submissive to the elements, but not
obliterated by them. speaking of ma
ture and mortality with one voice, as
one thing, inseparable-an emotion
that Is not wholly melancholy. nor
resignation. nor a sense of things be-
yond, but that partakes of all three
and comes as near as human percep-
tions may to being understanding.
MEMOIRS OF COUNT APPONYI.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
THE author of this book. Hunga-
rian nobleman of the old AUstro-
Hungarian empire, telling of his fam
lily. makes, on his very first page,
somewhat startling statement. The
first ancestor of the Apponyis," he
remarks, lis mentioned as descend
ant of one of the hundred and seven
families who according to tradition,
took part in the migration from Asia"
While we are accustomed to speak
ing of the Asiatic strain in certain
Eastern European peoples, We do not
usually think of it as being present
with such traceable definiteness.
Count Apponyi was member of his
country's Parliament for ever so years.
He represented Hungary at the YER
sailles Peace Conference. Subsequent
ly he was his country's delegate in
the League of Nations To think of
him as deriving directly from the dim
days of Asiatic migration is to try to
assimilate, in twinkllng, centuries
of racial orientation.
This is not possible, OF course, and
yet it must be done if one is to appre-
ciate the implications of the present
work. For Count Apponyi, it would
seem, represented, in his various ac-
complishments, the genius of his peo-
pie fairly completely. II is that fact,
rather than the actual content of his
book, which gives it significance.
1t is not an autobiography in the
conventional sense of the word. The
author, who composed the work in his
e6th year, has instead devoted va
rious chapters to certain favorite
memoirs. He writes OF his early
youth, in which he was the favorite
of grandmother who had been con-
temporary with Marie Antolnette. He
tells of two visits to Egypt. separated
by so years. He devoJes a reverent
chapter to memories of List and
Wagner, both of whom he knew. Mvs-
tically he writes of Rome the seat
of his religion. Ana he remembers
three visits to the United States, scat
tered over 20 years.
OF greatest interest perhaps is his
chapter on the Versailles Peace Con-
ference, to which the delegates went
in despair, and from whicn Budapest
welcomed them home by hanging its
streets everywhere with black flags.
His observations on the future of the
League of Nations are surprisingly
hopeful.
1t Is a curious personality that
emerges from these pages-one per
feet in the technique of urbane living
and at the same time amazingly naive
Perhaps in his mingling Ut old racial
strains and cultures Count Apponvj
has rounded out the circle-the circle
in which sophistication anc simplicity
meet and are no less different but
become indistinguishable to all save
very adept eyes. At any rate, he has
written an individual book. ANY one
valuing the flavor of personality
should read it.
LIFE WITH FATHER. BY Clarence
Day. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
THE Father" of this book has be-
come fairly well known to the
reading public through stories which
have appeared in various magazines
during past months. Harpers' has
carried some of these accounts of
the tempers, humors, shouts and roars
of the authors tempestuous parent:
so have the New Yorker and the New
Republic.