Eccentrics

PERISH IN THEIR PRIDE--Henry de Montherlant--Knopf ($2.50).

Because they could take it as one more indication of degenerate capitalist aristocracy, Reds might delight in Henry de Montherlant's portrait of two eccentrics. Tycoons would find it had little connection with real life as they know it. But readers with no axe to grind and no grindstone to rest their noses on will be entertained, amused and touched by Perish in Their Pride. Though a study in human eccentricity (and French eccentricity at that), it was concentric with a more perfectly rounded humanity. Author Montherlant did not make caricatures of his creatures, grotesques in their own right.

Aged Uncle Elie and his aging nephew Leon lived together in a rented Paris house in a style all their own. Both were Breton noblemen, but Elie looked like a tramp, his rags held together with string, and Leon looked like a hired man. Uncle Elie and Leon had lived together for 40 years, ever since they had given up the attempt to get ahead in the world. As a young man Leon had excelled at writing Latin verse, had a facile talent for music and painting, had once invented an apparatus for enlarging photographs, but the only thing he really liked was pottering round the garden, fixing things in the house. For years he had hardly gone out-side the gate. When he did, it took him hours to get anywhere, as he would carefully plan his "means of transport" ahead of time from guides that were out of date. He used soap only on Sundays, other days he merely rubbed the end of his nose with a wet towel.

Leon was an ineffectual innocent, but Uncle Elie was bad. From sheer stubborn laziness he had given up a promising career. When Leon's mother (with whom he boarded as long as she lived), had moved her establishment, Uncle Elie had stopped going to his lectures at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, because it would have meant spending an hour a day in the bus. He had effectively broken up Leon's prospective marriage by writing an anonymous letter falsely accusing Leon of being the father of several illegitimate children. When he went to see the family lawyer-- both he and Leon lived on their dwindling capital--he always kept his hat on in the waiting room, even when it was uncomfortably hot, "for fear that if he removed it, the gesture might be mistaken for politeness." He could never be trusted to post a letter because he would remove the stamp. He raided the pantry in the middle of the night and turned on more heat when nobody was looking. At 64 he was still a virgin.

Both Elie and Leon, though born in good society, were terrified of callers, would plunge into the toolshed and hide there if anybody came. Neither of them could solve a division problem that had decimals in it. What really kept them going was not the family lawyer's meagre disbursements but Elie's rich brother, a successful banker. When the bachelors' crazy household finally broke up from lack of funds, Elie was settled in a boarding house and Leon was sent to live in the keeper's lodge on his rich uncle's estate. Leon thought he was getting the best of it, but bad old Elie had the laugh on him at the end.

Author Montherlant writes with brilliant self-control, never smirks, nudges or winks. Result is a portrait that is both bitingly just and hilariously sympathetic. He is not so objective with some of the minor characters, notably Mile de Bauret, a type of modern young woman that he admits makes him shudder: "Mile de Bauret had a taste for letters and the arts, but her literary education only commenced with the end of the 19th Century. Which is to say it amounted to nothing. She looked at the world and explained it in terms of the pet theories of a few fashionable authors. For instance, she sincerely believed that every man had been in love with his mother when he was a child." His wit has plenty of vinegar: "It is a great mistake to place unlimited confidence in the malice of man. They seldom do us all the harm they might."

The Author, born in Paris (1896), like his eccentric bachelors is a member of the ancient French nobility. His family's rank dates from the 15th Century. One of his forbears was cupbearer to Louis XIV; an other lost his head in the French Revolution. Henry de Montherlant served in both the U. S. and French Armies during the War, headed the Propaganda Service of the Comite France-Amerique after the Armistice.

A sportsman and athlete before he was a writer, he played football, ran the 100 metres in 11 1/2. An amateur matador, he killed his first two bulls when he was 15, was so badly wounded in 1925 that he had to give up athletics. In literature too he won prizes: France's Grand Prix de Litterature de 1'Academie Franc,aise, the prize of the Foundation Tunisienne, England's Northcliffe Prize and Heinemann Award. Author Montherlant, disapproving of the French policy in Tunis, refused the Foundation Tunisienne's 20,000 francs, handed over the Heinemann Prize to London's King's College Hospital.

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