Evening star., 1938-02-13
HARVEST COMEDY. BY Frank
Swinnerton. Garden City: Double
day Doran 6s Co.

HARVEST COMEDY. BY Frank
Swinnerton. Garden City: Double
day Doran & Co.
Mr. sw1NNERToN Is in his best
vein in this novel. sentimental
without being too sentimental, whim-
sical without being too whimsical.
troubled not at all about problems or
theses. but concerned only to tell .
mild little story entertainingly. WHAT
pity that more novelists do not use
this amiab.e formula! What q pity
that he does not use 1t himself more
steadily!
Harvest Comedy" however. is ex-
emplary. 1t is the story of three lives
entangled from the time Of their pos
SCISSORS youth to old age. the lives
Of three boys who grow up in the same
village and later 60 their ways, schem-
ing, planning and loving. The village
IS not one which you will ind any,
where In the world; it is instead . viii
lage OF Mr.. Swinnerton's own fertile
imagination. a sleepy little town inhab-
ited by picturesque and extraordinary
characters. visited by wild doings at
times and full enough Of intrigue, in
spite Of being sleepy, to keep 4 Curl
GUS mind necessarily lively. Murders
take place there and seductions,
hatreds lie waiting for opportunity to
strike, the groceryman is a seething
well OF ambition. And so on. Mr..
Swinnerton does not make it impos-
sible; he simply lifts his story into an
other world. Where fantasy is con-
cerned he falls about midway between
Charles Dickens and William j. Locke,
but he has real gift for such writing.
His story then takes his boys up to
London, where. grown, they engage IN
finance, politics. journalism and more
love making. Bye and bye the wicked
one of the three is punished, the stupid
one is shown his stupidity and the good
one reaps the reward Of virtue. And
there we are. All very pleasant, all
perfectly entertaining. A novel, in
short, to be recommended. There is
not, indeed, social problem" q pro
letarian upsurge" in it from cover to
cover.
RUDYARD KIPLING'S VERMONT
FEUD. BY Frederic F. Van De
Water. New York: Reynal h
Hitchcock.
THIS is the story of that fabulous
quarrel which cost America Kip
ling. For. Is Mr.. Van De Water
makes clear. there Is reason to sup
pose that. If the poets residence in
Vermont had been pleasant, he would
have made his home there a perma-
nent one. But the residence did not
turn out to be tolerable. and Kipling
fed our shores. More than that, he
took with him hatred Of America
and American things which never left
him. In his last book. his auto
biography, written shortly before he
died and published posthumously. he
devoted several passages to excoriating
this country and those sentences were
lyrical with hatred. Plainly a quarrel
which caused 50 deep an emotion
must have been q strange one and
there has been considerable specula-
ton about the truth of the matter
before now. Admittedly. at the time
of the trouble. the newspapers pub
lished much that was not true, and
so their accounts have not been con-
sidered reliable sources. Now Mr..
Van De Water tells the story as he
had it from the other principal, Kip
lng's brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier.
BY Beatty's word, it Is the first time
the history Of the famous difference
has passed his lips.
The tale is too long to tell in re-
view here, but the gist of it would
seem to be that kipling made the In