MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
y HAVE been reading this week Eve Curie's war-time experiences I in Russia, Africa and Asia, which have been published by Heinemann under the title Journey Among Warriors (15s.). The American edition, which is printed on thick paper with wide margins, is a formidable volume, almost as weighty as Van Loon's Geography: the English edition gives us Miss Curie's five hundred odd pages in perfectly readable and almost pocketable form. I should wish in the first place to express to the British publishing trade my admiration for the skill with which they have coped with war-time restrictions. After the first horrid shock of short paper and narrow margins they have adapted themselves to what is in fact a new experiment in book- production. I earnestly hope that when peace comes and the restric- tions are eventually relaxed they will not revert to the old habit of making a thick book look fat, but will retain and perfect the present necessity of making a fat book feel thin. There are two great and durable advantages in the new system. Even a book as long as Journey Among Warriors can be slipped with ease into the pocket of any ordinary great-coat ; and upon our book-shelves fifty books can find a home in what, before the war, offered Lebensraum for only ten. I do not say that the lettering upon the spine of Eve Curie's new book is well designed ; it is not well designed: it .is badly designed. But apart from that the book is as elegant, as legible and as comfortable as anything one could desire.
I have for long cherished the deepest admiration for Eve Curie. Long before I had the privilege of her personal acquaintance, long before I came under the spell, of her impressive personality, I had regarded her life of Madame Curie as among the few classical biographies of modern times. It is one of those few books which, when one thinks of the art of biography, spring immediately to the mind. It can be read with equal pleasure by a Fellow of All Souls and a boy at Charterhouse. It is a really creative work. My admira- tion for its author was increased by her conduct during the sad months of 1940. She escaped from France, bringing to our darkened capital a small handbag and all the elegance of Paris. She sailed through the blitz like a young swan, and in the wet-sr moments of the bombardment not one feather became displaced. Her unruffled glamour was such that she taught all those who saw her that the word " collapse " was not, after all, the correct word to apply to France. When asked by de Gaulle and others to cross to America and to tell the United States what France meant at that time, and what England meant, she sailed across the Atlantic, bringing with her calm, and courage and hope. And now, after the extraordinary adventures which this book recounts, she has returned to London and donned the trim uniform of a private in the French forces. France and Poland, her two mother countries—for Madame Curie was Marie Sklodowska—owe a great debt to Eve Curie.
It can be imagined, therefore, with what excitement I opened this, the second book, which she has published. My first impression was one of disappointment. I missed at first that high literary quality which had so distinguished her biography of her mother. Here, I felt, was not a work of literature, but a compilation put together from the notes and articles of a conscientious and overworked journalist. Her book seemed to me to display errors of composition: the canvas was too vast, the details were far too numerous and often too insignificant. I realised once again how vital it is for any author to have in his mind an audience, corresponding to his own more specific qualities. One is aware, for instance, of the way in which the tone, the interest and the quality of one's private letters vary according to the person to whom they are addressed. In writing her biography Miss Curie was thinking of the select world of scientists and men of letters. In writing her present book, or more specifically the articles upon which it was based, Miss Curie was thinking of the readers of the Herald Tribune. The impersonality of so vast and unknown an audience seems to
have deterred Miss Curie from the direct expression of her own thoughts ; her very modesty, her extreme conscientiousness, appear to have induced her to concentrate, less upon what she herself experienced, than upon what they would be likely to understand. The fact, moreover, that she was writing in English (a language which she handles with complete ease and accuracy) may also have led her to form her words, and therefore her thoughts, in a medium which was not attuned to her own essential genius. For it was not even the English of London in which she was thinking ; she was thinking in the English of Vassar, Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr.
Her own conception of her task was original and ingenious. She desired to give an impression of "simultaneity." She realised that most of the accounts of the war which were reaching America were only partial accounts, describing what, after all, were only the several sectors of a single gigantic effort. She conceived the id g that it would be of value to visit all the fronts within the shorteit possible space of time and thus to convey to her public a sense of simultaneous effort. She very nearly achieved this purpose. She flew from New York to Libya and was present at General Auchinleck's brilliant but inconclusive campaign. She flew on to Russia and entered Mozhaisk in the wake of the Russian armies. She flew to Rangoon and felt the first hot breath of defeat and disaster. And then, unfortunately, she flew on to India and became involved in the 'distracting issues of Indian politics. In this manner her original pattern became dislo- cated: instead of giving us a picture of joint and simultaneous effort, she gives a picture of unity on three fronts and disunity on the fourth. It would have been better if Miss Curie could have given more time to her Indian experiences, and have published them in a separate book. As they stand, they merely mar the pattern of the whole.
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These comments explain, and largely remove, the sense of dis- appointment which I at first experienced. The fact, moreover, that she was writing with a Herald Tribune audience in mind may explain the conventionality of her incidental remarks. All her hostesses (and she was indeed a grateful guest) are sweet and kind ; all the aides-de- camp are smart and handsome ; all heroes have great personal charm. Yet as one reads her book, and follows her amazing passages from heat to cold and cold to heat, one becomes aware that this is no ordinary journalist but a woman of great gifts, astounding courage, and real literary ability. One has only to read her study of Madame Chiang Kai-shek and her isters, her portrait of the Generalissimo himself, to realise that there is something more than ordinarily acute observation. Her portrait of Nehru gives one a lasting impression of that remarkable man. She is able, by her insight, to make even Gandhi human. Yet it is in the Russian section that the true value of this book is to be found. Although she was writing of the now distant January of 1942, at a date when victory was a faith rather than an expectation, Miss Curie is able to convey, as no writer has conveyed before, the utter intensity of Russia's resolution. By an accumulation of small touches and tiny incidents she is able to construct a solid and coherent pattern of Russia's energy—an energy such as the world has never seen before—an en crgy in comparison to which our own day-to-day efforts appear mere dawdling. And throughout her pages there runs a most moving note (a note which
is stressed seldom and very gently, but which echoes in the mind)—a note of the exile's loneliness. Miss Curie has seen both her father- land and her motherland destroyed and ravished. The thought of
France and Poland remains an undertone to all she writes. In the midst of other people's battles and other people's controversies she will suddenly feel herself to be alone and strange. The note pierces
suddenly and at once is hushed. Through all her journeys, through all her adventures, runs the iron thread of homesickness. It assails her suddenly in Central Africa or in the desert. There is nothing pathetic about this agony : it is strong and brave and calm.
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