Books: Downright Down-Easter

NORTHWEST PASSAGE—Kenneth Rob-erts—Doubleday, Doran ($2.75).

Nine years ago Kenneth Roberts was known to Saturday Evening Post readers as a crack correspondent, a downright, factual, lively reporter of events in the U. S., Europe, the Orient. But Kenneth Roberts was not content to be one of the best U. S. journalists. For years he had had an Idea, which crystallized into an Ambition. The Idea: that historians are mainly knaves or fools, have falsified the facts. The Ambition: to become America’s best historical novelist. For years he had been “mousing around for something to write that would have my own sort of people in it.” In 1928 he found it, gave up journalism, went off to Italy to write the first of his Chronicles of Arundel. By last week he had translated his Idea into five historical novels and had come within challenging distance of his Ambition.

Northwest Passage, his latest book, is not another of his Chronicles of Arundel, but like them is based on preRevolutionary U. S. history. Narrator of the tale is one Langdon Towne, whose great ambition is to be an artist and paint pictures of Indians. But the real hero is Major Robert Rogers of Rogers’ Rangers. Langdon was a bright lad and did so well at school that his family scraped together enough money to send him to Harvard College. A rum party in his room brought his brief career there to a close; his disappointed father put him to work on his grandfather’s farm near Portsmouth. Once more drink and an unguarded tongue fouled him with the authorities. He left town in a hurry, headed for General Amherst’s French & Indian-fighting army at Crown Point, at the southern end of Lake Champlain. There he enlisted in Rogers’ famed Rangers, just in time to join the heroic two months’ march on and retreat from St. Francis, Canadian Indian village that had been the hornet-nest base for many a raid against the frontier settlements of New England.

Langdon Towne returned to Portsmouth, a bravo who could safely thumb his nose at civil authority, could even sell some pictures. Beauteous, snobbish Elizabeth, long out of his reach, began to bend towards him. Then came great Major Rogers himself, to be lionized. He treated Langdon bluffly as an old pal—and took his girl away from him. Langdon, heartbroken, sailed for London to learn more about painting. There,.four years later, he met Rogers again, still a great man but with the cracks beginning to show. Rogers was full of a scheme to find the Northwest Passage, will-o’-the-wisp short cut to the Orient; Parliament had a standing reward of £20,000 to the lucky discoverer. By personality and pull Rogers got the post of Governor of Michilimackinac (now Mackinaw, Mich.), went off to his new adventure in high feather, taking Langdon along to paint his fill of Indians. Still-beauteous Elizabeth went too, but Langdon found his heart was now proof against her. Besides, he had a ward, Ann, a little-girl Galatea from the London slums, and was growing as fond of her as of a stray Puppy-Rogers’ scheme was to get settled in Michilimackinac, then start west on a three-year expedition to the Pacific. The Northwest Passage he hoped to find was not the undiscovered outlet of Hudson Bay but an overland route. He needed money and no money was forthcoming from his English sponsors. His American superiors, Sir William Johnson and General Gage, feared and disliked Rogers, did everything they could to hamstring him. While Langdon Towne and a small party set off to find the Northwest Passage for him, Rogers had to stay fuming in Michilimackinac. When the expedition came to grief, barely managed to get back safely, Langdon found Rogers a prisoner in irons; his enemies had had him arrested on charges of treason and malfeasance. But Langdon’s sympathy for his chief vanished when he discovered why Ann was no longer there. He left Rogers to the descending discords of his fate, went in search of Ann. Their marriage, his career in London and his return to America during the Revolution, bring the long tale to its close.

Readers will find Northwest Passage is as historically accurate as painstaking research could make it. But whether they will consider its author the best U. S. historical novelist is another matter. Author Roberts’ contemporaries, though they may rate him higher than Walter Edmonds (Rome Haul), or Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind), will not give him a majority vote over James Boyd (Drums, Marching On, Long Hunt). Author Roberts’ friends complain that he has never been given his due. However, the Chronicles of Arundel (Arundel, Rabble in Arms, The Lively Lady, Captain Caution) have sold more than 100.000 copies in the U. S. alone. Northwest Passage is Book-of-the-Month choice for July.*

The Author-Kenneth Roberts. . . Down-Easter from way back, was born in Kennebunk, Me. in 1885, still spends his summers at Kennebunk Beach near his great & good friend Booth Tarkington, After graduating from Cornell (1908) he journalized on the Boston Post, Puck, Life. During the War he served as a captain in the Intelligence Section of the Siberian Expeditionary Force. For nine years after the Armistice he was roving correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, in which his stories are now usually serialized. With his wife and fox terrier, Roberts winters in a telephoneless Italian villa, works a heavy schedule the year round.

A persevering, peppery researcher, Kenneth Roberts digs through piles of books and documents to get his facts, fills the margins of his source books with curt comments: “He’s a liar. . . . Nuts. . . . Untrue. . . . The louse judgment of a literary louse. . . . What an ass!” He never hesitates to disagree with the knaves or fools who have smudged history’s pages, and as he takes his belligerent way through their ranks they are constantly knocking the chip off his shoulder. This attitude has led Author Roberts into some historic underdog fights, notably in the case of Benedict Arnold (Rabble in Arms). Readers generally will cock a sympathetic ear when he asks angrily: “Out of what history can you get an understanding of [how things really were]? Not out of one damned history. Or out of ten. And if that isn’t a show-up of our historians, I don’t know what is.” But they will not be able to agree that Northwest Passage is a satisfactory answer to Mr. Roberts’ rhetorical question.

*Publishers Doubleday, Doran have done Author Roberts proud. Besides the trade edition they published a limited (1,050 copies) edition in two volumes, of which the second contains documents on which the story is based. Price: $10.