Wit and Nitwit

Mr. aubrey menen was bound to write a book as cheerful, witty and cutting as "The Backward Bride" after "The Stumbling-Stone." The logical development of that charming, puzzling, and occasionally pugnacious Christian, Colley Burton, is Anisetta, beautiful, absolutely sure of herself, and capable of flattening, in turn, a distinguished freethinking English professor, an Existentialist French Marquis, a young American One-Worlder, and the president of the League for the Uplift of Women.

As in his previous two satires, Mr. Menen has a crack at to-day's philosophies, from existentialism to the latest thing in determinism; but here, for the fist time, he offers a positive solution, in the shapely form of Anisetta, whose sole, instinctive philosophy is the natural law and the Ten Commandments. Anisetta (not the name of a flower, but of a popular Sicilian drink, "on which she had got illicitly drunk at the age of four") on the European honeymoon which was arranged by Uncle Giorgio, Sicily's most famous brigand, and financed by Uncle Domenico, Sicily's famous forger, wipes the floor with her young husband and his advanced ideas on everything from birth-control to the Spirit of Progress. And she makes it look so easy.

If, however, you have a hankering for Bloomsbury, the French Maid, and Higher Thought, or free love and intellectual melancholy, you will still enjoy this "Sicilian Scherzo" as such, and a very funny story. Aubrey Menen's dig at English sentimentality (a wife can be kidnapped any time, but when it comes to kidnapping a dog, that kind of thing can't happen here) is neat, but his dig at American sentimentality is perfect: "And you said—I'll never forget it, Mom—'Well, Larry, your father ran away to sea when he was a boy. So I suppose it's in the blood. But wherever you are, Larry, you'll be my son. So wrap up warm now like I always told you, and God bless you." There is obviously no danger of "The Backward Bride" being filmed by Hollywood. (Chatto & Windus, 7/6).

John D. Sheridan's "The Magnificent MacDarney" had some excellent reviews: but if this is an example of the best modern Irish wit, we'll go back to Richard Brinsley himself.

The magnificent MacDarney is one of those "real characters"—the kind who drinks his family out of house and home, cadges from every one in the city, yet has such a colossal nerve and witty impudence that it's worth "lending" him a fiver, because you get double that amount in entertainment. We can see clearly enough what MacDarney is meant to be—an unmanageable and incorrigible peacock who is worth preserving because of his brilliant plumage. But unfortunately we aren't given a glimpse of these feathers—we only see the peacock making a nuisance of himself. If more of the action took place in the pubs and cafes haunted by MacDarney, where his wit was displayed in its full glory, and less in his homes, where the effect of MacDarney's magnificence is felt in poverty and humiliation, we might think that, in spite of everything, the man of the house pays his way in entertainment value. As it is, the peacock is more trouble than it is worth.

Mr. Sheridan set himself too large a task. It is very difficult to combine humour and pathos; one writer of genius who did was a fellow-countryman, Oliver Goldsmith, but he is the exception to most rules. The sorrows of MacDarney's wife and children became so real to his creator that he paints a sympathetic picture of them, and relegates the MacDarney's swaggering to a minor place, the mere cause of the main plot. If MacDarney is to be genuinely funny, the effect of his humour cannot be real, and justified, tears: if they were synthetic, and MacDamey's family were a set of spoilsports, he would be able to shine in his full glory.

Still, it is pleasant enough story, in the same vein of competent and slightly sentimental journalism as Sheridan's collection of essays, "My Hat Blew Off." (Dent, 9/6).

—P.B.