Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 July 1946 — Page 5

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Y 10, 1946

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A Regular Wednesday THE FIRST READER . . .

Stutfy Days of

With Irony, But No Malice

“THE SCARLET TREE." By Sir Brown. $3.50.

SIR OSBERT SITWELL

ed gentry of England, but the wholesale massacre of little rabbits by so-called sportsmen never has appealed to him. His grandmother was the daughter of the heir to the Plantagenet dynasty, and his father inherited a vast fortune, which, says Sir Osbert, “with zest he set himself to dis-

perse.” But back in Sir Osbert’s memory is a picture of his boyhood in solid English country houses, of school days so

he lost all love for learning, and of glowing days in Italy, that he relished. Just another-yarn about ant English boyhood would hardly hold us unless its author loved to put words together.. The Scarlet Tree, _ the second of the books in which Sir Osbert recalls his youth, gains by its author's capacity to let himself go. © There are passages touched with irony, but never with malice; there are descriptions of places, vistas, moods, that are delightfully turned

A » . A PERSONAL revelation that be-| comes a history of manners, as well, it demands no intimate knowledge of the Sitwells for sym-| pathetic reading. Sir Osbert can make even the right formalities of the Victorian | twilight vivid, and as he describes | these British. aristocrats with their plays, their formal attendance on| chureh, their constant changing of | clothes, we seem to be in at the death of a period, the fading of Paice that had become musclebound. " » - * : THE EDWARDIAN period—time of Edward VII—as seen by the landed gentry rolls before us as Sir Osbert describes the Christmas holidays at Blankney, his uncles solid English country home, “a dead weight in the snow.” Here were many guests, come ¢hiefly to hunt, and Sir Osbert re- | members with’ amazement “the | quantity of creatures killed every, ‘day, and the comfort in which the | sportsmen went to the massacre. “They fed, even when out shooting, as though = preparing strength for armed combat against fa mortal foe.” » - td THERE WAS a “passion for dogs” and a cult of horses; on Sundays “we attended the stables, as we attended church, in our best clothes, thereby no doubt showing the degree of respect due to horses, no less than to the Deity.” To that huge, icy place came governesses, past and present, for the Christmas festivals: “None of these old ladies of assorted nationalities ever went home to their own countries to live; they preferred to exist in subsidized, rather angry retirement in the suburbs, where, out of the faded splendor

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10, 1946

Sir Osbert Sitwell Recalls

| the door; | appearance of the

their |

Ca &

Feature of The Times

By Harry Hansen

Edward VII

Osbert Sitwell. Boston, Little,

is a descendant of the land-

of their anecdotes, they peered unseeingly at their neighbors, as fish in glass cases look at you from their background of dried grasses.”

$re 8, WHEN the family went to church, through a path that had been swept. for them, “the grooms and estate workers were also dressed with a sort of smothering respectability.” They wor€, beneath their bowler hats and protruding bangs of hair upon their forehgads, a look of oxeyed and almost aggressive unwatchfulness and they | walked with a special, slow, Sunday | gait.” : | The women's dresses in the Ed-| wardian period were silks and" velvets, with huge puffed sleeves; there were wreaths, flowers, jewels, furs, fans, fringes and puffs, Favorite colors were mauve, violet and rose. “The waist alone had to

{be slim, the body must jut out in in Hollywood, so the story moves |

front and behind.

” ~ » “THE DRESSES must Be cut very

low, while on the contrary the white columnist, is the No. 1 suspect and

kid gloves without which at dinner the women would have deemed

themselves naked, and which could be worn only once, must reach as ‘high as possible above the elbow. “One object along might have given them a vision of civilization falling to chaos, and of the cities they loved, laid to waste; the motor which sometimes tinnily vibrated and steamed in the frost outside for this was the first internal-com-bustion engine which was: to destroy them.” » o ” SENSITIVE to the on a landscape, the colors of a garden, the vistas on journeys into the English country and into Italy, Sir Osbert enjoys describing what he has seen. Smells and sounds interest him. The pyramids of Yorkshire apricots on a fruit vendor's stand; the fish,

scent of methylated spirits and hot irons that perfumed the whole

of tuberoses.” , .. » . ” ARRIVED at San Remo, Italy; he rhapsodizes: “Here there was no necessity to struggle for breath with an encompassing and enveloping fog; here was serene and aromatic air, scented on the mountains with herbs, and in the valleys by orange blossoms; here was not the * occasional, savage polar light of the north, .but light that was hyaline and yet varied. . . . Since every stone glittered as though it were of gold, and every patch of lichen, even, swam in almost husk green or rose, the vege-

green, so as to afford contrast to

the flowering skies and to the Mediterranean, with .its tessella-

copper. . . .”

YET THE ecstacy of youth did not last. “Only once have I been

but a trivial and fussy shelter for the sick and the elderly. The whole landscape had disappeared behind

Blass, . . . But The Scarlet Tree, read behind glass or out of doors, is the chronicle of an intelligent, discerning man still in love with

living.

Current to Publish Book About Gliders

Terence Horsley’s “Soaring Flight:

Al The Art of Gliding,” described as

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A 8? Spit en . WHODUNITS— . Two Hoosiers’ Prove Point

With Thriller

Two Hoosiers Prove Point With Thriller

"BLOOD RUNS COLD." By Lois Eby-John C. Fleming. Now York, E. P.,Dutton & Co. 2 “THE AFFAIR OF THE CORPSE ESCORT." By Clifford Knight. Philadelphia, David McKay Co. $2. "WITH BATED BREATH." By Alice Campbell. New York, Random House. $2. "THE CORPSE IS INDIGNANT." By Douglas Stapleton-Helen A. Carey. New York, FiveStar Mystery, 25 Cents,

By DONNA MIKELS

— THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES . Writers Discuss Manuscripts

{ROCKING CHAIR FAD—

Button Hobby

Inspires Book

"MAINE CHARM STRING." By Binor Graham. New York, | Macmillan. $2.50.

I MAKE NO apology for shifting the conversation from atomic bombs to buttons, Such subjects are discussed in books, and this is the place to bring ‘them up. ° Elinor Graham, who wrote “Maine Charm String” —books about Maine are always in season—brings up the subject of button collecting. It can't be as momentous as Bikini, but, doggone if I don't think it would be | better for human beings if it were. ~ » » SINCE Elinor Graham came to write , an entertaining book about Maine folk because she started colifecting buttons, the hobby is. justifled. She bought a home at Flying Point, Me.,, and sifted the dirt in the garden, ! There she found a button from

ws W

- -

Deft Study of Army ‘Ca Is Given in Novel By Vi

"WILLIWAW."" A novel. By Gore Vidal, New York, Dute ton. $2.50, :

By HENRY BUTLER THE CRITICAL

subject in a difficult setting.

Against a grim Aleutian islands background (evidently the abomination of desolation) the story, sim-

ple enough, takes place. Skipper Evans, a warrant officer, under of-| Keen-sighted novelist . , . Gore ‘4 ficial pressure takes his 300-ton Vidal. 3 army boat on a hazardous trip to " far-off Arunga island during bad feelings reaches, m one case, mur-

weather conditions. The boat is hit and nearly wrecked by a “wiliwaw"”

acclaim which has greeted “Willlwaw" is not mere. ly a surprised tribute to its 20-| year-old author's mature outlook, It is rather a tribute to firstrate fiction-writing on a difficult

ur. A fo

derous intensity. Without sentiment, and with a

(Aleutian term for sudden wind-| .inimum of comment, Mr. Vidal storm), Evans finally_makes port with a badly damaged oat and one|®VeAls the limitations of his char-

crew member lost,

acters—thelr vanities, their pettiness. Maj. (later Lt. Col) Barki-

IF ANYBODY can write a good mystery better than a Hoosier, it's two Hoosiers. The proof of this is “Blood Runs, Gold,” a well-spiced whodunit wtitten by twe Hoosier cousins, Lois Eby, formerly of Wabash, and John OC: Fleming, an| Elkhart ‘product. ‘ The cousins, collaborated by.mail

+ Local writers at Bloomington , . 6133 Evanston ave, Indianapolis, and Mry. George W. E. Smith (right),

. Miss Margaret M. Way (left),

the coat of a Revolutionary soldier. Then she began talking about buttons with neighbors and learned all about the charm strings people used { to make with buttons Boon she found out that buttoncollecting went on all over the | Uni ted States.

could be di-|

. w THE BLEAK intensity of the ex(ternal drama is matched by the ruggedness of the internal drama in the characters. For here are a group of men, lonely and womanhungry, each one abraded by recol(lections of a better life and by | maddenifig - personality-clashes on shipbgard. The sting of minor de-

and army career man, imagining he looks like the Duke of Wellington, loves to strike attitudes and talk about the “war of attrition.” The portrait of Barkison is a remarkable study in the psychology = of army rank-conscioushess.

son, for example, a West Pointer

| | Writings of Robert Louis Steven- |

play of light!

“finished with patent leather,” on a hawker's cart; “the combined

room, absorbing even the strong] fragrance of an enormous bunch!

tation was darker, more gray than|’

tions of wine color and azure and |

back to San Remo, and I found it|

and the cousins, having collaborated by mail’ and become so successful they moved to Los Angeles to go into partnership, have produced one of the best mysteries we've puzaled through in many a day. In a Hollywood setting, a natural | spot for working in enough “ker- | rickters” to keep the story amusing, they kill off a gossip columnist who happens to work blackmail in| with her muckraking.

program to be held next Sunday.

Random House Plans

Stevenson Edition

Random House will add a onevolume edition of “The Selected |

o ¥ ” NATURALLY there are more {persons with reasons for the murder

than there are loud sport shirts | 500" to its Lifetime Library series

early next year,

| Running to 1100 pages, the book will include representative novels, | short stories, essays, travel works] and poems, all complete

{along at a lively pace. | To add to the interest, one of the | principal suspects, another female

{her wise-cracking police reporter {boy friend is the amateur sleuth English literature, turned amateur who runs rings around detectives, | detective. “Blood Runs Cold” is as hot a whodunit as we've read in many a day.

" ~ ” “THE AFFAIR of the Corpse Escort” also has a Hollywood setting. The movie town apparently is a good place to kill people off— at least as far as mystery writers are concerned. In “Corpse Escort” a publicity stunt involving the shipment of a corpse backfires, with the result that corpses of a mad murderer's victims pop up with alarming regu{larity through 305 of the 309 pages. It’s all solved, of course, by the | precise deduction of a professor of

nr n =

old English mansion. An Ameri-| can girl, who takes a job as nurse |

and walks into a series of murders, | prit in this offering.

Judge Massie mystery. The rustic

attorney spends his time hunting

had reason to kill

between killings.

| | |

| |

For a dramatic change this summer, ‘make up with “Pan-Cake” in a glamorous sun tan shade ...see how it adds new interest and attraction to your beauty. And remember, there is only one Pan-Cake Make-Up, the original, created by Max Factor Hollywood for Technicolor

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Intriguing

: Crochet Book

3208 ‘ College “ave, talk over their; manuscripts with Prof, Cecilia Hendricks, member of Indiana university's current writer's conference committee. In the competition for tuitional scholarship~te the 1946 conference, Miss Way received hemorable mention for her manuscript on children’s literature, The I. U.' conference extends through July 20. Prof. Hendricks. is chairman of the Indiana Author's day

“THE COMPLETE BOOK OF CROCHET." By Elizabeth L.

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The needlework enthusiayed will go wild about this profusely illustrated book of crochet lessons and designs. For women who don't understand

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helps Scotland yard find the cul- [on what to crochet. The experts will find themselves “The Corpse Is Indignant” is al. pe to “pick out” the pattern]

|after a glance at the excellent |

down the murderer of a psychiatrist, | Photographs of crocheted things for, whom everyone in town apparently {the home and woman. There aré| It's a good bet |also chapters on baby clothes, toys, for the fans who like their villain- (gifts, as well as featured instrucchasers to spout homey philosophies tions on the pineapple design Irish and filet crochet.

pictures, the screen stare and you.

PAN-CAKE MAKE-UP

M9 IRCISIIVE PORTIA PROTECTED IY B. 5. Pat, HOS

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ART SCHOOL OF MAKE-UP . . . STREET FLOOR

BUTTON collectors vided between sheep and wolves. The wolves knew what they wanted | and went after it. Mrs. Graham | describes many types of button | collectors, among them Mrs. Alexnder Conder whose *“knoy ge of buttons was so vast she refused to purchase any button that could not be authenticated as having come direct from a New Hampshire, Vermont or Maine attic. For a good button known to have come from a dress worn by Marth Washington or Deborah

plissé crepe. Sizes 12 to 20. Pin

feats In repartee or of inferidrity

Frankiln, her purse was open snd) her enterprise knéw no bounds. | She would travel halfway across the conynent to" view such a prize.

\company actor in civilian - life, whose light-hearted humor annoys

amiable character on board. Cer-

" .

I am not going on at length about tainly he seems less embittered by

Mrs. Graham's hobby, except to add that she has written an enjoyable book about Maine life, almost as good as her earlier one, “Our Way For those who find Maine especially interesting at this lor any season, Mrs. Graham's new |is insight in explaining human be-

Down East.

book is recommended.—H. H.

THe feminine fliny of rifles

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personal inadequacies.

is a skillful treatment of frustratiop and its effects. In that sense, it has elements of greatness. For one of the marks of great fiction

havior.

prety

>» v CR

Our housecoat designed by Dorian in Pacific Mills

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pd RA .

L » ¥ . i FIRST MATE MARTIN, a stock + -

the skipper, is possibly the most

—- On the human side, “Williwaw"’