Way of Life
EVERY man, so it has been said, can write one good book, his own biography. Well, two men have done so this month, and although their lives were passed in very different ways, if often in the same places, there are certain common bonds, notably the gift of unadorned, simple, lively narrative, keen observance of human nature and the benefit of full, inter- esting lives. Both, too, went through hard times to success. Ludwig Bemelmans was the bad boy of a family of Bavarian brewers who made good (and a fortune) as a New York
waiter. In Life Class, which he has illustrated with neat sketches by himself, he recounts his progress and tells us all about the people he met on the way. And very odd, though often strangely lovable, people they were. Mr. " Sigsag," the slick maitre d'henel from Przemysl, with his passion for home-made boats ; Monsieur Victor, the head waiter with an eye to the main chance, the rascally but kind-hearted and broken-down old thief Gustl, Herr Otto Brauhaus, that immense stout man from the soft-spoken Palatinate, with the big feet, the big heart and the worried face, bemoaning " Every time I see a friend of mine he's dead. . ."
But Mr. Bemelmans is at his best with groups ; the dance band when the ball is over, the Japanese diners taking their knees in their hands and whispering " Ffffffs," the horde of Portuguese scullions whom Mr. Brauhaus calls gnomes (but he pronounces it genomies), the expansive Jewish wedding guests shouting about their insides, and the faded aristocracy of New York, whose names are the streets of Lower Manhattan, saving up for, and on, their one yearly treat.
Then tragedy comes in and Mr. Bemelmans, vainly seeking peace in his native Bavaria, says goodbye too soon. It 1, an ideal book for a train.
Mr. Edward Knoblock's Round the Room is more ambitious, for Mr. Knoblock makes excursions into Philosophy and Politics which Mr. Bemelmans does not. His principal charm is the way he rambles from one association to the next. so that the various objects in his " Regency " room evoke fascinating anecdotes of people he has met and people he has not ; of Lena Ashwell and Lord Northcliffe, and Charlie
Chaplin and Napoleon Buonaparte and Shakespeare. Mr. Knoblock was obviously very fond of his room, whether it was in Albany or the Palais Royal or Worthing, and he makes his readers fond of it too. There is a deal of conso- lation for the struggling playwright in reading of all his dis- appointments and the many rejections, even of such smashing hits as Kismet. But for the successful, the book is less consoling. Peace of mind the writer sometimes finds, happi- ness never. Many of his forecasts, the gloomiest ones, have come true. But when Mr. Knoblock innocently assures us that in the July of 1914 he said (to himself) " the mask is off, this ease, this luxury, this emptiness must come to an end for others as it must for me "; and that seeing President Wilson drive through Paris in 1919 he couldn't help thinking, " This
poor, honest idealist. They are going to bamboozle him. There is only one title fit for this chapter—Wilson, a tragedy "; he will inevitably meet with a certain scepticism.
GEORGE EDINGER.
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