Avarice House

AVARICE HOUSE--Julian Green--Harpers ($2.50).

The Story. Emily Fletcher went into her father's room on the morning after he died. "The blanket had been thrown off and hung beside the bed; the sheets seemed clasped between his legs and wound about his body. There was something hideous in his immobility, which was not the repose of sleep." Soon after that morning Emily's grandmother, Mrs. Elliot, came to live at Ashley House, and through its wide dismantled rooms there passed whining draughts of greed & hatred.

Emily's mother had never been able to forget the horror of poverty that had been her childhood. Even in Stephen Fletcher's life, spending money had been impossible for her. "She would dream of an immediate trip to Washington to buy fine things, such as new cloth for upholstering the furniture; then, by a natural impulse, she would touch the plush of the chair on which she sat and say to herself, 'But this is still very good.' " Her mother's arrival filled her with dread. "There was no true bond of affection between mother and daughter, and it is easy to surmise that they exchanged numerous letters before arriving at an agreement on a number of capital points, notably on the figure which Mrs. Elliot would concede as the price of her board and keep."

Before long, Mrs. Elliot became an invalid. She would call Emily into her room and the two of them would discuss Mrs. Fletcher. Emily was too weak to oppose her mother's economies that took, among other things, the form of selling the furniture and buying clothes at second-hand sales. Mrs. Elliot would push herself up in bed and stare at the pale, frightened child. "She clutched her granddaughter's wrist and shook her arm 'Don't you understand? You must resist her. . . . Why, if I were your age, knowing her as I do, knowing that she never had a grain of good in her . . . do you know what I would do?' She saw the apprehension in Emily's face and stopped."

In the cold rooms, life trickled on in Avarice House. Emily would walk through the halls counting the furniture that would be hers, when her mother died. Mrs. Fletcher would tighten her lips and help the cook to scrub the floors and bake the bread. The old invalid would lie upstairs, her mind full of a thin despair and a narrow, terrible enmity. At last, one afternoon, Emily came in to find her grandmother dead. Whether her mother had found the medicine which Mrs. Elliot had expected her to provide, could not be told. Perhaps she had discovered some drug to still the anger in that ancient twisted heart. Emily asked no questions. She looked at her mother with fury and fear; but whatever Mrs. Fletcher commanded, Emily accomplished.

The day came when Mrs. Fletcher took in a boarder to help defray expenses which did not exist. At this Emily rebelled. She went to the farm next door and asked Frank Stevens to marry her. Then she took him home and made her mother, who refused to pay his expenses, leave the house. But even this victory was merely a new disaster. Her husband brought his child by his dead wife to live at Ashley House. Emily began to feel the acute passion of her mother's vice creeping through her mind. At last she tried a final thing: "A few minutes later the front wall wavered; but enough of the roof remained to hold it together and it continued to stand, a sheet of flame behind the trees that crowned Ashley hill. The house burned on until daylight."

The Significance. Avarice House is a narrow book. Great literature can seldom be so confined, so intense in its focus as the writing of Author Green. He is not, in this book, interested in people, in background, in style, in color. All that he desires to do is to explore fully, fundamentally, one impulse in humanity--an impulse that in some people becomes no less than an instinct, the instinct of greed, the instinct of possession. But the next thing to understanding human beings is understanding one thing in them completely; and this Author Green accomplishes. The hungry hatred of the grandmother, the miserly appetite of Mrs. Fletcher, Emily's nasty envy; these three emotions sweep through the corridors of Ashley House. There is nothing left to be written about avarice, that one quality, existent in all human beings, which prevents them from ever being totally beautiful. Thus Avarice House, missing the vast scope of writing that is immortal, has the quality which gives it what only the finest of other writing contains. The book must be called perfect, because its intention is entirely realized.

Avarice House is not an amusing book to read. Its concentration deprives it of that variety which provides casual interest; its grim objective will make it dry for those who desire in novels merely an escape from the crass sorrows of life. Yet, for readers who wish when they read to learn about life, it is a textbook which contains all the variations of one formula. If Author Green had written so well about some quality rarer in life than avarice and more common in literature, some aspect of love, for example, his book would have been a best seller. As it is, Avarice House is merely fine, intelligent, complete.

The Author was born in France of Virginian parents, of Scotch, English and Irish ancestry. After preliminary education in France, Julian Green went to the University of Virginia where he wrote for his college magazine in English. Since that time he has written exclusively in French. During the War he was first with the field service near Verdun, then with the Red Cross in Italy, then in the French Artillery. Author Green is regarded by Frenchmen, and properly, as a novelist of their own. He has been compared by foreign critics, falsely, to Balzac or Poe. Living in Paris, he goes to the country when he wants to write a book. Taking a room in some country hotel, he writes upon large sheets of paper precisely 60 lines per day. His previous books have been: Adrienne Mesurat (French background), Le Voyageur sur la Terre (Virginian background). His most recent is a book of essays, Suite Anglaise (not yet translated).