New Novels
A Bed of Roses. By William Sansom. (TheBogarth Press. 12s. 6d.) MR. SANSOM has taken the lout for hero. This lout is cruel. He locks his mistress in a cupboard, and not for the first time. She decides to leave him and goes off with friends on a trip to Spain. But the lout comes too. He seduces the young girl Molly on board ship and when she is going to have a baby says it "was the steward." They have all by this time arrived in Spain and we get some of Mr. Sansom's familiar travel writing—Gibraltar, Seville, a wicked bullfight, the smells and the heat. The lout kicks an English acquaintance in the groin. This heaven-sent opportunity to hand him over to the Spanish police is not taken. In hospital, "Can I still make babies?" bleats the victim. But there was nothing in his character up to now to suggest he might use such language. The lout's ex-mistress is enchanted by his accumulation of bad behaviour and especially by his ruthlessness with poor Molly. And she knew it was the lout because she saw them going into Molly's cabin, next to her own, with a bottle of champagne. One is left with the feeling that Mr. Sansom fancies his lout.
University intrigue at Cambridge just before the war gives Mr. Rhodes a splendid stretch for his considerable talent. St James's College is an ancient foundation. The Provost has just died and one of his two nominees—a learned Indian called Gandar Dhobi and Lieutenant-General Sir Alec Cairns, who is chiefly interested in building a summer house at the end of his garden—is to be elected in his place. The scheming Dean, seeing war coming up and being ultatmontane rather than transcendental in his views of college government, wants the General. But the Senior Tutor, Mr. Gabriel, who hates the Dean and wants the General Purposes Funds stretched to include a lift for his domestic tower, is for Dhobi. And so the struggle begins. Oddly involved, and fatally for himself, is the blameless Richard, a new young officer undergraduate, seconded from the Sappers because the War Office thinks its officers should "learn to mix." Some rich young men are sent down and the ewiger Student (one Hogg—a most happy portrait), framed on a charge of harbouring a forbidden female, has to go. Richard himself is cast out by the infuriated Dean because Richard locked up his candidate and the vote went by default to Dhobi. But as Richard's career has been one of unmitigated mishap—did he not while hunting land his borrowed horse in a thorn hedge, pulling the bridle off in an attempt to free the maddened animal?—he does not mind. The novel is best when it keeps cheerful, the thoughtful parts seem a little jejune. Incidentally, do bishops hunt in chasubles?
The picture Signor Pavese always gives of his own country ig a restless troubled Italy with the young people running mad like flies for not knowing what to do next. The three young student boys are so restless they like to stay up all night walking the streets, sitting in cafés or climbing the country roads round Turin. They have a rich friend, Poli, son of a Milan business man, who has a car. This seems very important, for always not far from the boys are the poor peasantry and the shopkeepers. In Poli's car sits his mistress, a thin woman in a pink evening dress, old enough to be his mother. These two like coke and sin. She shoots him—for something to do? —but he recovers and it is hushed up by Poli's father. Later the boy who is telling the story has an affaire with POWS hard young wife. This author had great visual power and was conscious of innocence in vicious circumstances, as when the young men sunbathe in the cliff cleft where the little snakes and toads are. But it was from a sad heart that he wrote, and he committed suicide in 1950. He saw Italy as naive, sentimental, materialistic—and beautiful.
Mr. Wertenbaker is an American and his novel is full of life. American writers seem to be more full of life than our own. His story is about a periodical called the Beacon. In 1938 the owner, Louis Baron, had liberal ideas and collected liberal young men to edit and write for him. A is exciting, because of the author's liveliness, to see how the paper changes its policy as time goes on. But Robert Berkeley, the hero, does not change, he stays liberal. He gets a European assignment when war breaks out, is in London during the blitz, where he finds the grand ladies are as accommodating as the common ones, goes to North Africa and sees his Jewish friend and colleague being killed heroically shielding the body of a likeable English officer from shell splinters. When Robert gets back to New York he finds the evil times have come. The Beacon is now not liberal at ajl. Louis Baron claims it is "democratic" to let the new editorial board "arrange" the news and they are hard men who do not mean to get caught bY Mr. McCarthy. A good liberal friend and colleague of Robert's is framed on a charge of "commie" sympathy and Robert, having tried in vain to rescue Louis Baron from himself and his editors, cannot but say farewell. It is a long and alarming story and is very interesting.
Mr. Hewitt Is a delicate writer and a solemn one. His hero, James Masterman, is a museum man, his life is dedicated to pictures and sculpture and the history of their times. A villain of the art world has sold a spurious Rembrandt drawing to a business magnate at a party. The magnate is going to sue and in the process of keeping the case out of court it is discovered that Masterman's wife, Angela, recently killed in an accident, is involved. She was at the party and she was also the mistress of Masterman's colleague, young Malcolm. There is a great deal of talk about feelings and Malcolm admits that he did not really "love" Angela very much : he is a puzzled reputable young man. Masterman is in a very nervous state, he' tries to remember about his life with' Angela, and to understand art, women, life and civilisation: He' is laft.sad butresolvedta stay at thetntiseum. One feels he is an art custodian who wilt never know how wild art is and how little it has to do with diiiisation.
STEVIE SMITH
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