Mr. Tarkington's Ladies

Several suburban affairs of the heart

The Stories. The scene was the Woman's Saturday Club. Mrs. Cromwell had just read an essay: Women as Revealed in Some Phases of Modern Literature. Mrs. Cromwell's good friend, Mrs. Dodge, rose in criticism not of Mrs. Cromwell but of literature: "Mrs. Cromwell's paper has pointed out to us that in a novel a study of women must have a central theme. . . . Now, so far as I can see my own life has no such centralizations. . . . Our lives seem to be made up of apparently haphazard episodes. . . . So I say . . . why should such a book about women be centralized and bound down to a single theme, a single conflict, a single heroine?" This is Mr. Tarkington's apology in his preamble. He then plunges into a book of 31 chapters, which is really a collection of nine rather disconnected episodes taking place in a certain circle of society. There are the stories of:

Mrs. Cromwell's and Mrs. Dodge's great concern for a neighbor, Mrs. Battle, whose husband is running after another woman. Mrs. Battle worships her husband with apparent ecstasy--takes his name as an authority 100 times a day--and yet it turns out that she is better able to look out for her interests than either of the other two ladies expects.

Of Mrs. Cromwell's second daughter, Anne, whose popularity a more successful rival attacks only to lead to Anne's getting the pick of husbands.

Of Mrs. Dodge's only daughter, Lily, whose affections are according to her own estimate the tenderest, and according to "her parents' estimate the most wayward. She adores a perfect good-for-nothing. Twice she has tried to elope with him. Her parents cannot undo the match but she, defeating them, defeated her passion.

Of Mrs. Cromwell's youngest daughter Cornelia's puppy love and its tragedy.

Of Mrs. Dodge's neighbor, the saintly Mrs. Braithwaite, and the breath-taking secret that Mrs. Dodge discovers and will not tell to Mr. Dodge.

Of Lily Dodge's second erratic love affair, and of her dear friend Ada, who is quite a model daughter. The terrible consternation of Mr. and Mrs. Dodge is revived but changes to thanksgiving.

Of Mrs. Cromwell's niece Elsie, ugly duckling, who discovers she is a cygnet.

Of Lily Dodge's accidental conquest of an heir to millions.

Of how Anne Cromwell (now married) comes to the aid of her older sister, whose husband is being taken by another woman, and how Anne's own married life is temporarily upset in the rescue of her sister from peril.

The Significance. All of Mr. Tarkington's little episodes are light, cleverly told--prose de societe. The effect of each is heightened by a surprise ending, a clever twist at the denouement. But Mr. Tarkington does not live up to his preamble. The book is not a novel in effect but a collection of short stories casually linked.

Realism--his excuse for writing in episodes--is belied by the well-tailored air of the stories and the fact that every one of them is centred on one problem--getting and keeping a husband. The book is no more or less realistic than Seventeen, for example, although it covers a wider range. But if Mr. Tarkington says he makes bread and does not--what of it? He bakes good pastry. His women's tongues whip the cream of conversation. He deftly be-sprinkles it with the cinnamon of satire.

The Author. (Newton) Booth Tarkington is a Princeton product and he is also a product of Indianapolis, his place of birth and breeding. In fact, although it is more than 20 years in history, he was once a Representative in the Indiana Legislature. But that was a brief interlude and for the last 25 years he has been writing--novels, almost one a year--plays, in goodly number--and a galaxy of short stories. In the days of his youth he wrote Monsieur Beaucaire, The Beautiful Lady; in his later days he has examined youth and written Penrod, Seventeen. As a workman he is always conscientious, a polite writer, a gentle satirist. He is the literary idol of such men as gentle Julian Street. Some even propose to dub him, by virtue of his years of literary fecundity, "Dean of American Letters." But the fact remains that for a writer of occasional bestsellers, his work retains a surprising amount of merit.

He has in the main confined his pen to the time, the place and the people he knows. He tears no passions to shreds, stalks in no high tragedies. But he has won esteem from the people he writes about because there is no virulence in his nature. Twice, because he knows his business, he has won the Pulitzer Prize for the best American novel: in 1919 with The Magnificent Ambersons; in 1922 with Alice Adams. But others of his books have left as great an impress on the public as his prize-winners--The Conquest of Canaan, for instance, The Turmoil and The Gentleman from Indiana.

As a representative of the Hoosier in literature, he fills much the same place that Thomas R. Marshall (Vice President 1913-21) filled in politics. At once humorous and good-natured, there is no sting in his satire, no demagogery in his pen. He is a "writer of the people," and if you are "of the people," you like him.

*WOMEN--Booth Tarkington--Doubleday Page ($2).