Nymph*

Obscene Genius is Mixed with Thumping Respectability

The Story. A vast obscene man, a Rabelaisian beast, a shaggy musical genius was old Albert Sanger, who early quit his native English shores to wander over the Continent, accumulating mistresses, wives, children, a boar hound, disciples, fame. His ill-mannered, ill-kempt menage was called "Sanger's Circus"; and European society had reason to be thankful that so reprehensible a band spent at least part of its time in a home of its own, the sprawling chalet Karindehuette, high in the Austrian Tyrol.

Sanger's more permanent attachments, three in number, were Englishwomen. The most high-spirited of this trio, Evelyn Churchill, had respectable kin in Cambridge. When old Sanger had uttered his last obscenity, written his last volcanic bar, the "Circus," not without dignity, cabled Cambridge for suggestions.

Florence Churchill, Evelyn's cold, efficient, beautiful niece, responded. In the crazy Karindehuette, she found: Kate and Caryl, old enough to be packed off to work; Linda, old Sanger's last duchess, slattern enough to be expelled without remorse; Antonia, the late Evelyn's eldest, so compromised as to make her marriage with Ikey Mo, Munich Jew, unavoidable; Tessa, Lina and Sebastian, the other three Churchill-Sangers, so young and rude that thorough English schooling was the obvious and immediate thing for them.

Florence found also Lewis Dodd. From his Symphony in Three Keys, she made him out a precocious Sangerite with a future. From his pallor, ginger hair and reticent intensity, she made him out an ascetic and fell in love with him. Sangerite he was, but no ascetic. Hence his astonishment when what he had anticipated as a rather difficult seduction turned suddenly, firmly, into a marriage.

Though no ascetic, Dodd was hard as bone inside. To him, even more than to all the Sangers, Music was life's solitary fact. That was why he had never felt Tessa's love for him. He only began to feel it when they all got to England, and Florence, after installing him in a correct setting, went about her work of making him famous. Tessa, Lina and Sebastian, intrepid individualists all, had swiftly rejected British mass culture, had fled to Dodd with their indignation. At first, Tessa seemed the least indignant of the three. Then Dodd discovered, in her diary, that she had little left to be indignant about. Tessa loved him, always had. From her childhood he had grown into her primitive, leaky little heart. He was aware that he had loved her --for jokes, timely scorn, fearless innocence, utter constancy. She was so constant, in fact, that she now refused to cast her die for freedom. She had grown to love Florence-- and honor. But the strain wore Florence down. The rough rasp of Dodd's discontent, the acids, jealousy and suspicion, cracked her polished self-control. She cursed Tessa hideously one night. Next morning, Tessa went with Dodd to Brussels. She was seasick on the way, violently; she was chilled; in their fly-blown lodgings, the window stuck. While Dodd sat taking stock of himself, swearing to love at last, Tessa's leaky little valve gave way. He laid her on the bed, beyond his love now; beyond his folly. Florence came and arranged matters. Their lives went on somehow.

The Significance. England has been inclined to celebrate this book with song and shouting. Clearly, it surpasses most in rapidity, precision, force. Its people breathe. Its consequences descend inevitably. Its arraignments are terse, detached, restrained; and if its pleasantries are few and curt, so are its unpleasantries. The author's instrument had wide range--from the wild, high notes of Bohemia to the sodden, dry thumps of English respectability. An undisciplined performer might have slipped into coarse discords and fierce hurricanoes of sound and fury. Miss Kennedy, possibly because she is English, showed her mettle. The Author. Margaret Kennedy, now 29, has shown her mettle before. In school, her poetry took a prize; but she took to prose when Poet Yeats scribbled "alpha minus" after her best effort. She compassed a weighty historical tome in 1922, after which fiction-writing seemed like child's play. The Ladies of Lyndon was one of the bright features of 1923.

*THE CONSTANT NYMPH--Margaret Kennedy--Donbleday, Page ($2.00).