Books: Sister & Brother

THE ANTIGUA STAMP—Robert Graves —Random House ($2.50).

Seasoned writers ought to be willing and able to turn trained hands to any literary job; but few can or will. Of this able minority, Robert Graves is an encouraging example. He has written poetry, biography, autobiography, criticism, short stories, historical novels; he has rewritten David Copper field, has done books on the meaning of dreams, the English ballad, the future of swearing. Because his last two books (I, Claudius, Claudius the God) were on Roman history and sold well in England and the U. S., readers might have expected him to follow up his success with more along the same line. Such readers were surprised, but should not have been, to discover last week that his latest novel was about a postage stamp.

Like those expert penmen who can inscribe the Lord’s Prayer on the back of a stamp, Author Graves has written a whole close-knit modern comedy on the back of his. He has fun with his story, and so do readers, unless they are the kind who must have sugar on their salad. Idealists should think twice about reading The Antigua Stamp; realists will quite possibly read it twice. For readers who are accustomed to find their way quickly to the side of the angels, it may be a shock to discover that in this book there is no obviously angelic side.

Jane and Oliver were sister and brother, and they never got on very well, even as children. The trouble began over Oliver’s stamp album. After a quarrel in which Jane was clever enough to show him that he was shamefully in the wrong, Oliver made amends by giving her half-interest in his stamp collection. When he was away at school, Jane sent him stamps, among them one of an uncatalogued Antigua issue. But by that time Oliver considered stamp-collecting unmanly. Their mutual interest subsided. They grew up. Years later, when Oliver was a still-unsuccessful novelist and Jane a highly successful actress-manageress with her own theatre, they met again. Again there was a quarrel; the subject of the stamp collection revived. Oliver considered that by this time Jane had forfeited her rights in it, refused to acknowledge her claim. When he went home he looked over the album, rediscovered the Antigua stamp, decided it must be valuable. It was. But at the ensuing auction, where more than £6,000 was bid for it, proceedings were halted by Jane’s injunction.

The now thoroughly aroused brother and sister took their curious case to court. Proceedings were further complicated by Oliver’s shady behavior, by Jane’s counter-machinations, by the untoward fact that Edith, Jane’s girlhood friend and business partner, who owned a controlling share in Jane’s prosperous theatre, fell in love with Oliver. Altogether it took two trials, a dramatic second auction, a happy and an unhappy marriage, brisk detective work and some stiff psychological third degree before the Antigua stamp found its rightful owner.