Dear Old Daddy

FATHER--Elizabeth--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

"Elizabeth's" English eye, naturally optimistic, has been trained by feminine intelligence and living long abroad to take a somewhat sly slant at human beings, even the English variety. At her best moments she reminds you of her late great cousin Katherine Mansfield; at her worst of any Girl Scout burbling beatitudinously. General average: good.

Jennifer, like Ishbel MacDonald, was stocky, well-scrubbed, healthy, plain. Like Ishbel, Jennifer had a Famous Father, whose daily lookout she was, with no watches shared. Father, widowered and only-daughtered, was a famed novelist whose books were appreciated by the few, unread by the many, abhorred by the clergy. Jennifer and Father lived in London as in a sheltered treadmill: she ran the house, took his dictation, typed his manuscripts, chased from the quiet street the occasional catastrophe of an organ-grinder. Suddenly one day Father brought home a pretty young wife, several years younger than Jennifer. With no hurt feelings but a sensation of tremendous relief Jennifer left home, got herself a cottage in the country, took off spiritual corsets, breathed easy for the first time in her life.

Vicar of Jennifer's village was one James Oilier, a beneficent gardening kind of man held strictly to business by an acidulous sister Alice. James was to Alice as Jennifer had been to Father. When James and Jennifer showed signs of drifting together, Alice whisked him off to Switzerland. Jennifer was a little hurt but forgot it when Father's wife left him and left Father on her hands again. By a cataclysmic effort of will, James shook Alice long enough to rush manfully home to Jennifer, declare himself unvicarishly. Father, a selfish, tactless man on the whole, died at just the right moment.

The Author. Nee Beauchamp, "Elizabeth's" present name is Elizabeth Mary Countess Russell. Her first husband was German Count von Arnim; her second, the late John Francis Stanley Earl Russell, brother of Philosopher-Mathematician Bertrand (now Earl) Russell. Tiny, feminine, aristocratic. "Elizabeth" shrinks from publicity, has never written under her full name. Of her writing, reminiscent of well-bred but intelligent conversation, she says: "Like the Apostle Paul, I never think beforehand what I am to say." Other books: Elizabeth and Her German Garden, Expiation, The Enchanted April.

Father is the June choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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