Literary Life

Growing Up. Christopher Robin Milne no longer goes hippity hoppity, nor looks behind curtains for tickly brownies, nor muses over a name for his dear little dormouse. The hero of When We Were Very Young, now 19 and a crack squash player, leaves Stowe prep school this term, goes next fall to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he is winner of a -L-100 scholarship in mathematics.

Literary Exercise. Pseudo-duels, arty riots (incited by everything from Dadaism to literary prize awards), political squabbles and fishwife furies are traditional components of the French literary life. Dean of French literary stirrer-uppers is scrawny, deaf, 71-year-old Charles Maurras, libeling editor for 41 years of the Royalist-Catholic Action Francaise. Last Maurras scandal occurred a year ago when he was elected to the French Academy (TIME, June 27, 1938), following close on the finish of his eight-month prison sentence for urging assassination of Leon Blum.

Last month, a few days before he was formally received among the "forty immortals," Charles Maurras was challenged to a duel. Challenger was Jean Prouvost, publisher of Paris-Soir, whom Maurras had charged with "flattering the basest instincts of the masses." Maliciously courteous, Publisher Prouvost offered, in view of Maurras' extreme age and deafness, to fight any proxy he might name. Academician Maurras declined the challenge, but not because of old age. "So far as my age is concerned," said he, "M. Prouvost can rest assured that it has left me all my strength. But I shall not employ it to whitewash him." Thereupon punctilious M. Prouvost drew up a proces -verbal, which declared formally that, inasmuch as M. Maurras had not shown up, the duel was off.

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