Career Mother*

Career Mother*

MY STORY--Mary Roberts Rinehart--Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

Few writers have written their rem-iniscences/- they have other fish to fry. But it is more as a successful money-making woman than as a writer that Mary Roberts Rinehart has told, in My Story, more than even an insatiably curious public either desires or deserves. As a series of magazine articles (My Story ran serially in Good Housekeeping) it has its points; .as a 432-page book it makes scrappy and sometimes downright dull reading.

Mrs. Rinehart has had unusual experiences, has made a fortune, has been hailed as foremost U. S. woman writer, but what she seems to feel is her chief claim to fame is her dual role as career-woman and wife-&-mother "that odd combination of private anxiety and public career which has been my life." She was born in Pitts-burgh in 1876, into a family in moderate circumstances. When she was 17 she decided to be a nurse, and entered a Pittsburgh hospital through the good graces of one of its internes, Dr. Stanley Marshall Rinehart. Before she finished her two-year term she and Dr. Rinehart were engaged. As a young girl she had begun to write verse, which occasionally sold. After her marriage, to earn more money, she tried her hand at writing stories, sold her first one to Munsey's Magazine. Editor Bob Davis took an interest in her, encouraged her to keep on. The Circular Staircase, intended as a satire on crime stories, made a big hit as a bona fide thriller, and from then on Mary Roberts Rinehart's reputation increased steadily, also the size of her checks.

Soon the Rinehart finances were in good shape; the Rineharts could afford to go abroad. Mrs. Rinehart could even afford such extravagances as buying "a sixteenth of a gold mine which never developed." When the War came she was sent abroad by the Literary Digest. She met notables: Foch, Queen Mary of England, King Albert of the Belgians. She went into the trenches, into No-Man's Land. She came back and wrote it up guardedly. When the U. S. went in, Dr. Rinehart and the two eldest boys enlisted; Mrs. Rinehart finally managed to be sent over by the Secretary of War, but only in time for the Armistice.

When Editor Edward Bok retired in 1919, Mrs. Rinehart was offered the editorship of the Ladles' Home Journal, regretfully turned it down. But she went to Hollywood on a three-year contract. Still the family fortunes rose. They moved to a bigger house in Sewickley. They moved to Washington, D. C. They vacationed in the Cascades, in Mexico, in Egypt. The boys grew up, went to college (Harvard) and married. Now two of them are members of the firm of Farrar & Rinehart, have helped publish several of their mother's books.

Twice the Rineharts have lived in a haunted house. Stoutly asserting a disbelief in ghosts, Mrs. Rinehart gives unvarnished but spooky facts about bells ringing, furniture moving, queer sounds, queer sights.

Mrs. Rinehart does not tell all she knows. She never has. It seems to be on her conscience. She says: "I had at my fingertips a wealth of material which I would not use. I knew better than the average the weaknesses of mankind, the errors; I had seen human relations at their most naked, human emotions when the bars were down and the soul peered out, heroic, cowardly or defiant. Yet I could not write of these things. I did not want to recall them. To this moment realism is easy for me, much easier than other writing. ... I turned to romance, to crime, to farce, to adventure; anything but reality."

As the Sparks Fly Upward

THE FORGE--T. S. Stribling--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).*

"As Southerners, the Vaidens believed in States' rights; as Alabamians, they believed in individual determinism on all legal and moral questions; as Primitive Baptists, they believed they were supernaturally foreordained from before the laying of the foundations of the earth to do as they damned pleased on all questions whatsoever--social, moral, legal, and re- ligious." Slave-owners but not lords of a manor, the Vaidens lived simply but thought of themselves as aristocrats.

When the Civil War began the Vaidens, like their neighbors, were surprised but immediately set about to make short work of the Yankees. Before the young men went to the army there was to be a double wedding: Miltiades Vaiden and Drusilla Lacefield, A. Gray Lacefield and Marcia Vaiden. But the night before the wedding Drusilla eloped with Major Crowninshield, and Marcia was not sorry her wedding was postponed, because she too was really in love with the Major. Miltiades went grimly off to war and took orders from the man who had stolen his bride, until Crowninshield was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. Polycarp and Augustus Vaiden were too young to go, but they did not think so. One night they climbed out of the window and ran away to enlist.

Augustus joined the cavalry, was badly wounded in his first skirmish, fell in love with his hospital nurse and married her. Polycarp Vaiden and A. Gray Lacefield came through the war unhurt. But before they got home again the Yankees had been there and had not left much to come back to. When the reconstructed Negroes got uppity Miltiades organized and headed the local Ku Klux Klan. Then Polycarp was shot from ambush. Marcia had little excuse left for not marrying A. Gray, but at the last minute was won by Jerry Catlin, a Southerner who had fought in the Northern army. With his family scattered, his property dwindling, his position gone, 01' Pap Vaiden went feebly to work again at his long-disused forge, and when Death struck him he would have died there alone if Quadroon Gracie had not happened along. In the arms of his unacknowledged daughter 01' Pap Vaiden died, furiously protesting.

The Author--Publishers Doubleday, Doran announce that The Forge is the first of a cycle in which Author Thomas Sigismund Stribling--will show "the upheaval of a whole civilization." A Tennessean but not an unreconstructed Southerner, Stribling* has written of the Civil War with malice toward none, with flashes of charitable humor for most. Other books: Birthright, Teeftallow, Bright Metal, Backwater.

Punch's Topsy

TOPSY--A. P. Herbert--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Not many U.S. magazine readers ever see a copy of Punch, London's most ancient & honorable humorous weekly (founded 1841). Not many who see Punch do more than look at the pictures, read the often ponderously British captions underneath, wonder what the English see in them to smile at. And there the occa- sional Punch reader is too hasty, for hidden away in those oldfashioned, closely printed columns are to be found many a quip and crank that would wreathe even an alien reader in smiles. For the past three years Alan Patrick Herbert, Punch staff member and tireless contributor, has been regaling readers with the letters of Topsy, exclamatory and energetic post-War type, to her bosom friend. Publishers Doubleday, Doran have collected them in a book which reads more entertainingly than most such collections.

Topsy tries to make herself out a charming fool, but Author Herbert guides her pen, and the result is satire that reflects not only or chiefly on Topsy but on the things she writes about. Her adventures, like those of all such week-to-week women-of-straw, are as varied as they are improbable. First engaged,'then married to a Mr. Haddock, who has lost his seat in Parliament but still takes himself seriously, Topsy stands in his stead, is elected hands down. As an M.P. she drafts many a portentous Bill aimed at the discomfiture of Puritans and the increase of gaiety. But motherhood, as it may to any married woman, comes to Topsy; the book ends with her ecstatic but disillusioned description of her twins.

Like the Good Queen, Topsy would be hopelessly muffled if she could not underline, but she is not otherwise Victorian. An example of her style may remind you of Anita's Loos's famed blonde, but Topsy's fooling is not so sharp. "Only my dear don't think I don't utterly adore Americans because I merely do, and of course Haddock knows some perfectly blossomy ones, but that's the staggering thing about them, my dear you meet them in London and they seem quite lambs and then they go home to America and gun at each other, well anyhow," etc., etc.

Enameled Miniature

THE ORCHID--Robert Nathan--Bobbs-Merrill ($2).

The shades of a late great writer and of others not so great slide and fade across the pages of Robert Nathan, sometimes linger there. Anatole France's is the biggest shadow; lesser ones, not so clear in outline, resemble O. Henry or Richard Harding Davis. The Orchid is like a miniature in enamel: ingenious, smooth, fitted cunningly into small spaces. It is not. a novel but a satirical fable, a grownup fairy story.

Not in real life could such characters come together on such everyday terms: Professor Pembauer, poor but profound piano-teacher; beautiful Actress Rose Grogarty; Mr. Gambrino, carousel-pro-prietor with operatic ambitions; Miss Arbuthnot, acidulous Australian novelist; Mrs. Connor, thrifty but romantic hairdresser; possessive Tycoon Julian Heaven-street; Mrs. Heavenstreet, who felt herself to be a woman but was all bound round with committees. The plot is artificial but, as in real life, the puppet-characters are pulled by strings of desire. Tycoon Heavenstreet wants to protect beautiful Miss Grogarty; Hairdresser Connor wants to possess romantic Mr. Gambrino. With the help of Spring, a merry-go-round and Robert Nathan, the fable ends fabulously well, not with a bang but with a snicker.

Robert Nathan never sacrifices a paragraph to a phrase, but every now & then a sentence gives you a quiet wink. ''Her first experiences of marriage, like those of most good women, had left her with the desire to defend herself against strangers."

The Author. Robert Nathan has written many books (11) for his age (37). Dark, quiet and divorced, he married again, lives in Manhattan, writes carefully and with difficulty. Says his friend and admirer Louis Bromfield: "He looks like his books." Among them: There is Another Heaven, Jonah, The Fiddler in Barly, The Woodcutter's House.

Again, Colette

RENEE--Colette--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Renee, new to the U.S. is vieux jeu (old stuff) in France, was published in Paris in 1910. But that will not worry Colettists, who will find Renee a typical Colette novel, well up to the Colette standard of sense & sensibility.

Renee has already lived one life when her story opens. She has been the devoted, deceived, finally disillusioned wife of a fashionable portrait painter, and her divorce, she thought, put the quietus on any further flutterings of the heart. But not so. Although she takes very seriously, professionally, impersonally her job as music-hall dancer and she and her partner are on a mutually unaffectionate business basis she wants someone to love. When gawky, rich, but sincere Max Dufferein- Chautel presents himself, suffused with gawky and sincere emotion, at her dress-ing-room she is merely annoyed, brusquely kicks him out. He gets himself properly introduced, evinces impeccably respectable intentions, dogs her with his wistful and persistent hope. In spite of herself Renee begins to thaw. . . .

When she finally said she would marry him. Max was so happy he grew almost handsome. He saw no point in further delay, but Renee insisted they wait until she returned from a six-week tour. They wrote each other every day: it was terrible. When the tour was nearly over Renee's partner urged her to be sensible and go on with him to South America, where they could get good engagements. After heart-rending sessions of sad, silent thought, Renee made up her mind.

/- Notable exceptions: Mark Twain, Henry Adams, Tolstoy.

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME -were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price (#5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

*No kin to Heavyweight Boxer William L. ("Young") Stribling Jr.

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