Evening star., 1937-12-12

merciless savagery toward servants
who displeased her, and 80 on.
It Is plain that the two women
peeress mother and grandmother
Pepita-have obsessed the author
with the magic Of their personalities
and that she has felt forced to write
OF them. Unhappily for the reader,
the magic which lay in their living
beauty does not come out In the writ
ten record, and the two seem In
credibly selfish. naean-minded and
vain rs they are set down here. But
the evidence that they did fascinate
Is indHputable. It seems to hive
been . rniracle-one of those things
that Oscar Wilde called "the triumph
Of matter over mind"
HATH NOT THE POTTER. BY Max
ence van der Meersch. Translated
from the French by Gerald Hop
kins. New York: The Viking
Press.
THIS novel was the winner Of the
1896 Goncourt Prize, but it seems
to the reviewer very slight to have
been given the honor. It Is beauti-
fully written-even in translation its
beauty Is apparent. But the scope Is
small, the characters are moved about
arbitrarily and the action is discon-
tinuous. The only considerable merit
Of the work would seem to lie in
its beauty Of description. When the
author writes of the fiat Flemish
scenery which is his story's back
ground, when he describes the colors,
sights and smells Of Belgian cities,
and particularly when he writes Of
the sea, he holds his reader by the
power Of his own sensuous sympathy
with his subjects. But his men and
women are neither very interesting
nor convincing.
The story is that Of two women
aunt and niece-who happen to love
the same man. The man Is the
aunt's husband, successful play
wright. After many years of happi-
ness together, the pair return to the
wife's home: there the niece, q young
girl, reminds her uncle that when
she was a child he once promised her
happiness. He renews the promise.
The niece then marries-for no par
ticular reason-a man of her neigh
borhood who is quiet, steady fellow,
carpenter. No sooner has the mar
riage taken place than, again for no
particular reason, the husband changes
character completely and becomes q
violent roisterer and head of a gang
of smugglerS. The niece fees from
an unbearable situation to her uncle's
home, falls in love with him and bears
him a child. The two husbands are
then eliminated by death and the two
women left to their feud. Eventually
they make it up out Of mutual affec-
tion for the baby
This extremely well-worn plot is
not handled with skill or conviction
There are great gaps in the continuity,
much of the action takes place, as it
were, of stage and the violent changes
In character are not credible. How
ever, the beauty Of the writing is there
and is sufficient to offset the faults.
to some degree at least.
HEYDAY IN A VANISHED WORLD.
BY Stephen Bonsal. New York:
w. w. Norton.
WHY did Mr.. Stephen Bonsal, who
writes so gaily and trenchantly,
choose this year for publication of his
autobiography? This year, which has
already seen more than q dozep au-
tobiographies by men of Mr.. Bonsars
professionalism is, the profession of
reporter? Why, indeed, did all these
writer's have to come out In the same
twelve month? How they have wronged
one another by so doing! For any one
OF their books would be good, but all
OF them suffer by the number in
which they have almost simultaneous
ly appeared. For, obviously, nobody is
going to read dozen reporters life
histories in a comparatively short
time. 1t seems too bad that there was
not some sort of agreement among
the authors in advance. They all would
have proflted by it.
Mr. Bonsal, however, has something
to of1er which few of the works of
his colleagues nave possessed. His
title Is indicative of it-he writes not
OF League Of Nations conferences and
armistice nights in Paris, but of a
vanished world"-a world which ex-
Sted when John L. Sullivan WAS
champion Of the United States and
Edward VII was still Prince of Wales
He was foreign correspondent for the
New York Herald and be contrived to
get around.
He interviewed Parnell, he wrote the
classic account of Sullivan,s battle
with Charlie Mitchell, he watched
Boulanger's unhappy effort to become
olctator OF France, he interviewed an
Austrian prime minister and that was
something which no one had ever
done before. He was then sent into
the Balkans, where he covered the
Bulgarian and Macedonian revolts and
atrocities, earning for himself at the
age OF % the nickname of "Bonsal of
the Balkans" He came back to New
York and was promptly fired by Ben
nett for having sold to Harper's maya
zine an article which Bennett claimed
had been written on Herald time. He
was reinstated when he was able to
prove that Flynn, BENEFITS editor.
had turned his story down, clubbing it
"gibberish." Well, he had a full life.
q dangerous one and amusing. He
writes Of it with sparkle, swiftness and
polish. It is hard, reading his story,
not to think that the writer is still q
young man.
The reviewer can say of the book.
as she has said of so many of these
newsmen's memoirs, that it is worth
reading. If your appetite for such
autobiographies has not been utterly
sated you should get it. But certainly
there have been lots Of these this
year!
AMERICA SOUTH. BY Carleton
BealS. >Philadelphia: J. q. Iipnfn.