Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1960-09-11

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complex era Of the 1870s and
the earlier decades Of the
new century.
( No doubt our grandparents
and great-aunts had all the
inner problems people have
today. But they didn't use
Freud and his successors as
excuses for everything from
casual morals to murder.
They may have been prudish,
reluctant to admit much that
existed. But who can say they
didn't get as much out Of life
as we do? Who can say they
didn't get more?
Louis Auchincloss is one of
our better novelists, highly
skillful, as his eight previous
novels attest.
Aunt Gussie Looks Back
In 1.-THE House of Five Tai
ents" he writes of q great
New York family he calls
Millander. The chronicler is
Augusta (Gussie) Millander,
who as a spinster Of rs in
1913 looks back on her life
and that Of her family since
her earliest recollections.
If you think Aunt Gussie
Is q naive survival Of Victo-
rian elegance, you're in for a
surprise. She's as sharp as
they come, doesn't miss a
thing and writes unsparjngly
Of the Millanders' traits, their
achievements and failures.
She lived long enough to alb
serb the Freudian cliches, but
she prefers simpler, more old
fashioned terms for the
strange things some members
OF her clan did.
Julius Millander, a migrant
from Germany in his youth,
married to a Connecticut girl,
founded the vast family for
tune. Grandpa Millander
= was considered socially "im-
possible" not because he was
crude or rude but because he
had no social side. His de-
scendants were destined to
dominate New York society
= for decades.
How the Rich Lived
Gussie'S early memories
were of the conventional
things the rich did in the
los and eos. They had man
sions on Fifth avenue, enor-
nous cottages" at Newport.
They went to Europe regu-
larry. and some, like Gussie's
mother (Grandpa Milan
der's daughter Eliza) col
lected art.
Early in her story Gussie
expresses her opinion Of
I those ulemoirists who wrote
the usual platitudes about
the life in those dim days
when q person could keep
what he earned or at least
Z wrested from arena Of trade,
when he could even leave his
money intact to designated
heirs.
= Thus there is a minimum
Of passages describing the
= coming-out parties, dinners
and lawn parties Of the great
= families Of that era. Instead
Gussie shrewdly dissects her
brothers and sisters, nephews
and nieces, cousins and those
who became tied to the fam
, lily by marriage.
Hidden Skeletons
GuSsie's one romance, her
love for Lancey, the young
architect, was thwarted be-
: cause she was convinced that
: Lancey had asked her to
marry him only because his
: mother on her deathbed had
requested this. Lancey, Gus
: sic well knew, was still in
e love with her sister Cora,
who had married Prince
Antoine de Cont, supposed
q to be an heir to the vanished
: Bourbon throne. Of France.
Cora, too, was actuated by
some rash promise, a sense
: of obligation which still
bound people in those less
complex times.
The Millanders, for all
their conventional ways, had
their own private, we'll
hidden skeletons. Even Gus
sizes father, Cyrus, strayed
from the domestic pasture to
take up with an actress.
There was a divorce great
scandal in those days-and
Papa married the actress,
many years younger than he,
but not oblivious to the fact
that she was marrying into
q great fortune.
Later in her life Gussie
centered her attention on
Lydig, her favorite nephew.
But there was disappoint-
ment and Illustration there,
too.