The Coast of Folly--

The Coast of Folly*

Scandal in the Homes of the Rich The Story. Joyce Gathway was not in any sense mid-Victorian.

Nevertheless, it came as a distinct surprise to her to learn from the papers that she was to be named as co-respondent when Larry Fay was sued for divorce. Larry, a young fellow who had hoped for a quiet, homy home, soon found that not only was he not to have that, but that he had even lost the highly-spiced wife who could have given it to him and wouldn't.

Things are complicated by the fact that Joyce's millionaire grandfather--old Jupiter Gathway--has picked this embarrassing moment for his last illness. He refrains from decease long enough to see the article about the divorce and to offer Joyce a difficult choice: either she must find God or lose her inheritance.

Not knowing just what to do, the girl betakes herself abroad to her mother. The maneuver proves to be illadvised. Her mother is in no sense qualified to give moral aid and comfort. She is magnificently free from morality. While Joyce was still a child, the mother had run away from her husband; and she has not neglected to keep his place continually, if varyingly, filled by a succession of masculine intimacies. Joyce, inexplicably stimulated, returns to fight the world--particularly that part of it comprising the supposed friends who had led her down the steep path to indiscretion.

Thereafter things move briskly, everything getting increasingly black for Joyce. She is not without friends --Nannie, the fat old nurse of her childhood, who sticks by her through the dark days; Mr. Reel, fat lawyer who would give anything he ever owned to help her, and, in fact, does give her any amount of good advice, which she cheerfully disregards--to her own partial undoing. Above all, there is the invaluable Hal Utrecht, Mrs. Larry Fay's counsel, who is the prime mover in the happy ending.

There has very rarely been a happier ending.' Joyce, in the last chapter, is in a perfect ecstacy. She never does succeed in finding God, but God finds her. Her grandfather understands and forgives. His insulting will cutting her oft is destroyed. The incomparable Lawyer Utrecht, the injustice of the case finally made clear to him, throws it over. He does more. He goes to the extent of marrying Joyce, and, as the last page turns, we are left with the agreeable anticipation of years of idyllic happiness.

The Significance. There is no particular reason why The Coast of Folly should not be one of the very best of best sellers. It has all the appeal of a cinema thriller and one or two other things besides. The long arm of coincidence sweeps the entire landscape.

Moreover, there is an undercurrent of what is very evidently serious thought on Mr. Dawson's part. The dilemma of the young woman, innocently led into the traps of modern Society, is clearly preying on his mind. The world is a dangerous place for a girl, he reflects. The things that happened to Joyce might happen to almost anyone.

The Author. Coningsby (William) Dawson, born in England in 1883, came to America in 1905. Since then he has been a conspicuous contributor to magazines and papers here and abroad. He was literary adviser to the George H. Doran Publishing Co. He served throughout the War in the Canadian Field Artillery, was wounded. He has lectured on the War and its results. One of his War books, Carry On, caused considerable discussion. He disliked Three Soldiers. Among his works are: The Test of Scarlet, It Might Have Happened to You, The Kingdom Round the Corner, The Glory of the Trenches.

New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion: SILK--Samuel Merwin -- Houghton ($2.00). This is the story of the great adventure of Jan Po, "native of P'ing Ling in Shansi, pupil of Ma Chung at Lo Yang, mandarin of the eighth rank with button of worked gold," as told in the journals and letters of the polished Jan himself. He tells of his journey beyond the edge of the world, along the route of the silk; of Ibn Shu Eer Din, Wa Zir of Balkh and his wily plans for the acquisition of the secret of the weaving of silk; of Roxana, spirited young Queen of Balkh, and her love for the Prince Imperial of China, come disguised and almost alone into her land; of Jan's own love for Mosul-la, the slave girl. He tells of trial and treachery, of nights of passion, blood, flight. A book for the tired Mah Jongger.

THE MIDLANDER--Booth Tarkington --Doubleday ($2.00). Mr. Tarkington has written the booster's epic. Dan Oliphant is the apostle of hustle. He is a gorgeous, epochal Babbitt. Unfortunately, he imports his wife from the East--a pretty, self-willed little product of civilization who hates the West fully as much as the West hates her. The book proceeds through pages of mutual irritation and tantrums, until, between the wife and the son who is like her, Dan is brought to an early grave just as the town, justifying his faith in its power of growth, vindicates his years of fierce struggle. The book is an adequate exposition of the other side of the picture of Gopher Prairie.

THE POET ASSASSINATED--Guillaume Apollinaire (Translated from the French by Matthew Josephson)-- Broom ($5.00). Wilhelm de Kostrovitsky (Guillaume Apollinaire), was a Frenchman famous for his eccentricities. He was a familiar figure in the Latin Quarter, leading about in his trail a gang of writers and freaks, artists and idiots. Idol of the professional modernists in literature, he was the friend of such distinguished artists as Matisse and Picasso. The Poet Assassinated is a work containing practically all of its author's unlimited peculiarities. It is remotely autobiographical, the history of a poet, whose birth is described with a somewhat appalling minuteness of detail, whose death takes place in a world-wide pogrom of poets.

The book is anything but usual. It bristles with the unusual. Incidentally, it has been discreetly published in a limited edition. The censors are not always in sympathy with the acutely modern.

Lizette Reese

Gay, Young, She Makes Poetry Popular

Lizette Woodworth Reese of Baltimore, is one of America's most accomplished lyricists. She is also one of the gayest and youngest elderly ladies I have ever known. Slight, shy, with wispish gray hair and sparkling eyes, she reminds me of a kindly elfin spirit, mischievous, yet understanding. She taught in a Baltimore high school for 45 years. In 1921 she retired, beloved by generations of scholars, interested in the community and in her writing. Only recently she published a new collection of verses, Wild Cherry, which show her unflagging vitality and her great gift of choosing the soft and beautiful word, of catching a simple and ringing lilt.

I met Miss Reese only once. It was a hasty talk, in Washington, at a meeting of anxious ladies who had formed themselves into a strenuous club for the propagation of their mutual literary efforts. She seemed out of place in such a company and ill at ease. Yet she was much too kindly to voice the opinions of her fellow literati.

Her sonnet, Tears: When I consider Life and its few years-- A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; A call to battle, and the battle done Ere the last echo dies within our ears; A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; The burst of music down an unlistening street,-- I wonder at the idleness of tears.

It is one of the most exquisite sonnets, yet, to me, this gracious woman, born in a suburb of Baltimore in 1856, living quietly now in her home town where she has spent practically all her life, is an example of a certain type of American schoolteacher, perhaps, too little heralded. There were two in my high school-a man and a woman. Both were elderly; both, noble in action and thought. Major Putney had fought in the Civil War. He had known Lincoln. His patriotism was equalled only by his love of Greek. Miss Moore was of a distinguished family. She appreciated the English language as few Americans do. She was never too tired to encourage a youngster's literary efforts, or to straighten out a tangled romance of youth that she saw developing in her class-room.

Such a woman, such a teacher, is Lizette Reese. She has not only given beauty to the world in her poetry; but she has given a vision of beauty to generations of young people. She has made the life and the living of poetry a reality to thousands.

*THE COAST OF FOLLY--Coningsby Dawson--Cosmopolitan ($2.00).