Hereditary Environment

OUR STREET--Compton Mackenzie-- Donbleday, Doran.

In the course of his not too nostalgic childhood reminiscences Author Mackenzie takes his readers the length of a Victorian London street, introduces them to as engaging a troupe of well-to-do householders as ever went to market to buy fat pigs. Memories of their sooty black houses, architecturally linear and flat, are prettily three-dimensionalized by little whirlwinds of domestic perturbations spiralling, like smoke from the chimney-pots, above every roof.

To No. 9, to stay with his Aunts Adelaide and Emily, small Compton Mackenzie first came in 1887, Queen Victoria's Jubilee Year. That date he remembers less because of public celebrations than because of The Street's ancient crossing sweeper who one day startled the neighborhood by suddenly shouting, "God save our gracious Queen," and forthwith standing. perched on a pile of gutter sweepings, on his head. He was not the only topsy-turvy thing about The Street. Its houses were all on one side and all their numbers, from 1 to 25, were odd. This gave Mr. Lockett, the grandiose Dickensian organist, opportunity to remark to General Brackenbury, a grand mogul who spiced his living with curry and memories of Balaklava, "By George, General, the man who numbered our street must have known who were going to live in it."

In those odd days queernesses grew naturally on people, like bumps on logs. Nobody thought it wonderful that Mr. Eardley, the dairyman around the corner, was like the rest of his family, the color of milk, or that the local barber should bear the name Cutbeard. Small Compton Mackenzie thought it only natural that Dr. Arden, who lived at No. 1, should, with his lanky frame and short frock coat, incarnate the figure 1. Mr. Lockett, living at No. 3, had carroty curls that puffed out beneath his curly-brimmed silk hat "in a very three-like way." And who should live at No. 13 but the highly un fortunate Spinks. He was the impecunious editor of the weekly Bohemia, she was a frowzy woman who messed about her barnlike house in flamboyant silk wrappers, looking "like some tropical bird whose plumage had been dimmed and ruffled by captivity and whose cage was not kept as clean as it should be." It was at her irrational house with the Spink boys and girls that the best fun was to be found. Making the cistern water overflow from the attic and tobogganing with it down the stairs was a panacea for all childish ills.

The Clyburn twins' museum, whose chief exhibit was an emu's egg mistaken for a thunderbolt; Mr. Mellor, the eccentric Pre-Raphaelite painter at No. 5; the Tom-Sawyerish pranks of the Gurney children, whose fearsome governess wore a respirator over her mouth when she ventured outdoors, all lend variety to Author Mackenzie's reminiscences. The touching story of Vagabond William Cobb who lived & died in the attic of empty No. 25, and the final setting straight of his Aunt Adelaide's crippled Victorian romance are matters of a longer fibre that bind the scattered memories into a close-packed nosegay.

The Author-- In 1883, into an atmosphere reeking with literary and dramatic talent, Edward Montague Compton (Mackenzie is his ancestors' clan name) was born. His father was an able actor; his aunt was "Leah" Bateman, famed Lady Macbeth; his actress sister Fay Compton still holds the boards. After Oxford he took to writing plays, finally to novel-writing. He fought in the War, was invalided out as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and O. B. E. After the War he leased from King George one of the Channel Islands, Jethou, stocked it with 10,000 books, 10,000 phonograph records. Here he spends what time he can spare from his villa at Capri, exercises some feudal privileges thrown in with his lease, such as flying his own flag. Lately he acquired a wilder, remoter island off the coast of Scotland. Jethou is now for rent. Besides his playwriting and book-writing activities Author Mackenzie edits The Gramophone and Vox, a weekly dedicated to candid criticism of London radio programs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.