Books: Fairy Tale Among Factories*

Fairy Tale Among Factories*

THE WATER GIPSIES—A. P. Herbert— Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Jane was sensible, but she was pretty. It was lucky she was sensible, for her station was low, poverty-ridden: she lived with her ne’er-do-well father, her shiftless sister, on a derelict barge in the Thames, in the heart of London; worked all day as a housemaid. It was too bad she was pretty, for otherwise rich young Artist Bryan might never have noticed her.

Two men were in love with Jane: solid Fred, radical Ernest. Fred could not read or write but knew all there was to know about handling a canal barge. (If you think little technique is required in Fred’s profession. Author Herbert’s account of a trip up the “Cut” from London to Birmingham will teach you better.) Fred was honest and capable, but gave Jane nary a thrill. Ernest was a bright one, talked socialism at her 16 to the dozen; when he paused for breath took liberties. Jane did not really like him but he did excite her. But when handsome, aristocratic Artist Bryan gave her an absent-minded kiss, got her to pose for him in the nude, Jane lost her heart to him.

Jane’s sister Lily refused to degrade herself by working, instead became the mistress of a Jewish gambler, enjoyed her self no end. Jane envied her, hoped to be seduced by Bryan, but had no luck. He went away, and the wily Ernest got her. Jane did the sensible thing, married Er nest, regretted it when Bryan came back. She was glad when Ernest was drowned. Bryan was kind to her, liked her, but be came alarmed when he discovered she was determined to be had. Wisely he went away forever, leaving Jane, sorrowing but sensible, to marry faithful Fred.

Author Herbert has written a mildly humorous, mildly sentimental, very entertaining book. The Water Gipsies is really a fairy story with a realistic background.

The Author. Alan Patrick Herbert, 40, was a Wykehamist (went to school at Winchester), so he naturally went on to New College, Oxford, where he “took a first” in Jurisprudence. During the War he served with the Royal Naval Division, was mentioned in despatches at Gallipoli, wounded in France. After the War he was called to the bar but never practiced, instead joined the staff of Punch (London so-called humorous weekly), whose “darling child” he has been dubbed. With Versifier Owen Seaman, Artist George Frederick Arthur Belcher, Herbert supplies what humor still persists in that otherwise respectable Tory sheet. Herbert is married, has one son, three daughters. With a quizzical expression, bright eyes, a beaked nose, he looks like what he is: an intelligent humorist. Other books: The House-by-the-River, Plain Jane, She Shanties, The Trials of Topsy, Misleading Cases.

Kingdom of Heaven

THE AMERICAN RICH—Hoffman Nickerson—Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Hoffman Nickerson is rich, an Anglo-Catholic, has doubtless heard the opinion that it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. It is not Heaven, however, but the U. S. which draws Mr. Nickerson’s fire. A dogmatist, an authoritarian, who chose “aristocratic Harvard” rather than “comparatively rough-&;-ready Yale,” he believes in the divine right of landed aristocracy (but not of business tycoons), thinks the U. S. should and will be led by a land-owning leisure class, hints that a monarchy might not be a bad thing, says that the coming aristocratic autocracy will segregate “jews” (sic), Negroes. “What is wanted is … a restoration of the triple-class system normal to our blood and to our instincts.”

In this commercialized day a Gentleman, according to Mr. Nickerson, can still enter the Army or the Church, might even go into politics, journalism or the arts. But business, never.

The Author. Hoffman Nickerson, 41, was born in aristocratic Paterson, N. J. He has lent himself to politics (onetime member of the Republican County Committee, New York County), to the Army (as Captain in the Ordnance Dept. during the War), to statesmanship (member of U. S. Section, Interallied Armistice Commission), to letters (The Inquisition, a Political & Military Study of Its Establishment). He wears mustaches, a commanding expression, has a large stomach, a large income.

Hot Mamma

BABE GORDON—Mae West—Macanlay ($2).

It used to be Elinor Glyn, now it’s Mae West. Publisher Macaulay blurbs her as “a daring, unsentimental champion of Sex. It is her belief that where there is life, there is Sex, and one might as well make the best of it.” Miss West’s best is not very good, but it is interesting, significant of the kind of adolescent morality that makes little girls, little gangsters leave home.

Babe Gordon is a Manhattan girl whose racket is to hang around prizefights, cultivate promising pugs, whom she then deprives of manhood and the possibility of winning championships. Like most girls of fiction she is young (19), beautiful, fatally alluring. Babe sees “Bearcat” Delaney in action, covets him, gets him, even marries him for a while. When the money is gone she leaves him flat, goes back to Harlem and joins the dope-peddling racket. After hours she has a high old time with “Money” Johnson, Negro gambling tycoon, then with Wayne Bald win, Manhattan socialite. She tricks all her three steadies almost simultaneously, is the cause of Baldwin’s shooting Johnson, gets Bearcat to take the blame, goes to Paris with Millionaire Baldwin.

Mae West writes crudely, theatrically, about crude, theatric, low-life types; is crudely effective. She seems to know her Harlem, her thieves’ argot, her underworld women.

Last month Publisher Macaulay, not satisfied with the title Babe Gordon, offered $100 for the best suggestion, to be used on possible later editions, as probable title of a play version. Titles already dis carded: Pleasure Woman, Hell’s Belle.

The Author. Of indefinite age but of immediately perceptible dimensions, Mae West resembles her prototype, the over stuffed houri of the ’90s. On the stage since she was eight, she has been a hoofer, singer, weightlifter, can still support 500 Ibs. She writes her own plays, casts, stages, directs them, plays the star roles. When admitting to 27 years she wrote her first play, Sex, for which she was arrested and served ten days on Manhattan’s Welfare Island. Of her other plays, Pleasure Man was closed by the police after 3 days’ run in Manhattan. The Drag never reached Manhattan. Her most famed play, most famed part was Diamond Lil.

Frenzied Finance

THROUGH TRAFFIC—Russell Davenport —Doubleday, Doran ($1).

They laughed when Joe Herd announced he would ruin his uncle, but before long they were laughing out of the wrong side of their mouths. Their skepticism was justifiable. Joe had flunked out of several schools, failed to graduate from two colleges. Lazy, sardonic, secretive, he was apparently good only at football. What started Joe on his destructive career as Manhattan real-estate tycoon was his stepsister’s engagement to Delaney, his mother’s onetime lover, his uncle’s partner, a snake-in-the-grass if Joe ever saw one. More. Joe was intending to marry his step-sister himself. With a knowledge of politicians, stockmarket operators, financial in-tricacies really astounding in one so young, with a determination and capacity for money-machinations almost titanic, Joe fought his uncle’s shady real-estate scheme, got him in a tight corner, smashed him. Delaney fled the country; his uncle went bankrupt only as a corporation, not as an individual; Joe married the girl.

Author Davenport writes of such intricate financial trickery that many a lay reader will not follow all the fine points of his plot. But you cannot miss the air of big doings, of far from latent excitement with which the story rushes to its not implausible conclusion.

The Author. Russell Davenport, 30, Yaleman, writes for FORTUNE. Through Traffic is his first novel; he has a poem in the forthcoming American Caravan. Author Davenport believes writing needs new metaphors, thinks the old “literary” ones archaic, wants to get new ones from modern business, modern life. Through Traffic, which utilizes the speech, action, motivation of modern business, is a first attempt to show the way.

Busch Biography

21 AMERICANS—Niven Busch Jr.— Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Many a full-length, Strachey-like, scholarly biography has less to recommend it than this collection of 21 thumbnail sketches of famed U. S. Citizens. Originally appearing as “Profiles”‘ in Manhattan’s New Yorker, they deserved a wider audience, should now get it.

Author Busch, no society portraitist, takes it for granted that his subjects are human. That this is really a rather revolutionary attitude for a biographer emerges as you read. Henry Ford, Adolph Zukor, David Belasco, Louis Henry (“Lou”) Gehrig, Paul Whiteman, 16 others—none emerges from this apparently careless, always good-humored scrutiny any larger than life; they have all shrunk (or expanded ) to recognizably human proportions. Author Busch writes quietly, flares no inflamed verbs at you, marshals neat squads of well-drilled adjectives, supple metaphors.

Henry Ford is “chilled by the cold of some interior winter.”

Paul Whiteman is “a bladderish man … a man flabby, virile, quick, coarse, untidy and sleek, with a hard core of shrewdness in an envelope of sentimentalism, striped ties, perspiration and fine musical instincts.”

The late great racehorse trainer Samuel Hildreth’s “short, white mustache covered his mouth like a flap over a pocket.”

Author Busch understands understatement. He describes the vagrants at Mr. Zero’s Manhattan canteen: “They could have their bowls filled as often as they liked. They did not spill anything. They ate intensely and without haste. They did not look at each other.”

Profiler Busch explains his method: “Usually I get some friend of the proposed subject to tell a few stories. Then I get some enemy of my subject to do the same . . . then I ask [the subject] a list of routine questions that would draw the truth out of a stone. When that is over I ask . . . the story of his life. While he is telling it I take a nap. . . .”

With an air of candor, of complete impartiality, Author Busch puts down his easy sentences, his easy paragraphs. Para-doxologist Gilbert Keith Chesterton once remarked that the only trouble with the candid friend is that he is not candid. Author Busch looks like an exception.

The Author. Niven Busch Jr., 27, was born with a pencil in his mouth, wrote good English before he could talk sense. Famed as a Princeton undergraduate for his versifying facility, like many literary Princetonians he never graduated, left college to write for TIME, of whose staff he is still a member. He also writes for The New Yorker under a thin disguise. Sandy-haired, slow-moving, slangy, like many a worse writer, like few better, he talks newspaper jargon.

21 Americans is to be syndicated, serialized for eastern newspaper readers.

Pretty Pictures

MAD MAN’S DRUM—Lynd Ward—Cape & Smith ($3).

Woodcutter Lynd Ward’s first “novel” in woodcuts, Gods’ Man (TIME, Nov. 25, 1929), was first of its kind in the U. S.,— became a minor collectors’ item. Mad Man’s Drum’s story is simple in outline, but Artist-Author Ward this time makes some of his sequences unnecessarily obscure. As before, he is decorative, eerily suggestive, reminiscent of morbid cinema.

The story: a seafaring man, a slaver, makes a last good voyage, establishes his wife and son in comfort. He wants his son to be different from himself, to have nothing to do with his father’s brutal activity, but to lead a purely intellectual life. The son obeys; as he grows there grow on him the habits of a bookish life. His power of action atrophies, and disaster dogs him. His wife runs away with an-other man, his two daughters come to grief because he does not know how to help them, does not notice till too late that they need his help. Left finally alone, he goes mad, sits fingering the old African drum his father brought back from the bloody jungle.

*But not abroad. Belgian Franz Masereel has made many a ”woodcut novel.”