SOME lives make almost unbearable reading, particularly those which describe,
in sedate and factual terms, a continuity of individual miseries, and yet so subtle is their power that it is impos- sible to reject the appeal they make on our pity. Such an autobiography is Dr. Rowse's discovery of the sixty-year-old author of A Cornish Waif's Story. who, under the pseudonym of Emma Smith, tells a tale which belongs to Dickens's back streets and Hogarth's gin alleys. The facts are almost incredible, and the progression from had to worse is something this age of social services must view as legendary. Sold for a few shillings to an itinerant organ-grinder when she was six, being illegitimate and therefore un- wanted, Emma Smith records a childhood which is devilishly woeful. Abused in every way by her perverted master, the little girl was half rescued by the then existent social bodies whose grace to
the child did not extend beyond placing her in a penitentiary-convent. This shocking story con- tinues until the author tells us, with an odd precision, how finally she was 'certified.' This is a remarkable social document, all the more remarkable because the author writes not only without bitterness but actually with the object of paying tribute to the small kindnesses granted her during her trouble-burdened years.
KAY DICK
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