Books: Clumsy Voltaire

EUROPA IN LIMBO—Robert Briffault— Scribner ($2.75).

Robert Stephen Briffault has had a more than respectable reputation among anthropologists ever since he wrote The Mothers (1927). When he was 59, he published his first novel, Europa (TIME, Sept. 9, 1935). So many more readers were titillated by its scandalous scenes of pre-War continental society than were bored by its ponderous length that the book soared into the best-selling class. Last week a sizable audience was waiting with shocking hopefulness for the sequel, Europa In Limbo. But purple passages in the latest Briffault were thin and few. An earnest, disillusioned, clumsily Voltairian novel, its lean streaks of perception were buried in thick stretches of unmuscled fat.

Taking up the fortunes of Julian Bern, cosmopolitan young English intellectual, where Europa dropped them. Author Briffault discovers his hero holidaying in Belgium with Zena, his current mistress. War has been declared, and the German invasion quickly comes too close for comfort. Julian and Zena escape to England, hoping to live there quietly as spectators of a world gone mad. They soon find both England and their chosen role impossible. Zena goes back to her native Russia; Julian despairingly enlists. Thereafter the narrative is governed less by probability than by convenience: coincidences pop up as required, scenes shift and actors speak as the prompter-manager too obviously dictates.

Few readers, prodded as they are, are likely to miss Author Briffault’s point. At the front Julian sees a coward’s drunken action win a V.C. Nurses who served with “Martyr” Edith Cavell show no sympathy for her admirers. Meeting Lenin on his way back to Russia to guide the revolution, Julian wishes him every success. Briffault’s spokesman-hero, written down as missing after a hopeless attack, recovers in a German hospital, goes to Russia rather than return to perfidious England after the Armistice. There he finds Zena again, marries her. Though he survives both the Red-&-White civil war and Zena’s death, Julian eventually discovers no better niche for himself in the post-War world than free-lance journalism, is last seen heading for the U. S., on the apparent principle of any port in a storm. Dubiously optimistic last line is supplied by a farewell telegram from the woman Julian has lately left, informing him that she is to bear his child, heir to the civilization Europe has squandered: “He lives who will see it.”

Like most intellectually disillusioned people, Author Briffault’s characters put their best foot forward with a kicking motion: “For obvious reasons, I saw little of my former companions in arms, as I did not belong to any society for psychical research, and led a fairly laborious life. … To be anything but a misfit in a society so constituted is to be a scoundrel or a fool.” When a lady apologizes to Julian: “I am boring you with politics,” he replies: “Not at all, I have always been interested in archaeology, you know.” Though he uses every four-letter word in the language, it is usually righteous indignation that makes Briffault forget his literary manners: “He had not fully realized the full enormity of the ruthless infamy which no hyperbolic exposure could measure, much less exaggerate, and which used moral edification, patriotism and religion as the outward vestures of its unscrupulous and homicidal rapacity.”

The Author. Like a good scientist, Author Briffault writes from his own experience. As much of a cosmopolite as his hero, he was born in London of Anglo-French parentage, trailed his French diplomat father around the capitals of Europe, picked up his education in Italy, Germany and England. At 18 he went to New Zealand to be a surgeon, practiced there till the World War brought him to Europe again and turned his medicine to anthropology. He served in Gallipoli and Flanders, was wounded, twice awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous bravery. A widower remarried (to an American), Robert Briffault lives in Paris, still likes to travel in his illusionless world.