A Scholar's Climb
A Cornish Childhood. By A. L. Rowse. (Cape. us. 6d.) MR. ROWSE has produced a strange mélange. All autobiograp are necessarily in some degree egocentric and self-revelatory. Rowse carries the former quality to the point of eccentricity the latter almost to the point of indecent exposure. He takes h. self with prodigious seriousness. He feels that his book may " a distinctive contribution of its own to make to our literature." can write in all solemnity of successes he had as a choirboy: subsequent reclame, what with politics, books, broadcasting, lectu scholarships, the university—all dates really back to that." He be merely silly, as when, writing of a time long before the Gr Movement had been heard of, he mentions that he " knew all a the goings on of Prebendary Mackay . . . and Frank (not—Ug Buchman, conspuez-la) but Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar ; grotesquely extravagant, as when, in undergraduate days, he he a sermon on " God is Love " which " so vexed me that I had rush out of the church in the middle of it, the blood streaming fr my nose."
Yet there is much in the book that is admirable. Mr. Rowse, his great credit, has carried himself by his own unaided eff from a Cornish china-clay worker's cottage to an All Souls Fell ship and a considerable position in the history school at Oxf The story of that pilgrimage is full of interest. The last chap telling how the scholarships were amassed one by one, till necessary £200 a year was acquired and the goal was reached, the best in the book. Mr. Rowse can never forget his origin why should he?—but he never quite knows what to do about th Like so many people who appear to despise social distinctions, seems obsessed by them. He spurns the pit from which he digged ; the working-classes are brutish, ignorant, inert—incapa even of intelligent discontent. The middle classes come in equal castigation. And " I am not a gentleman, I am glad say ; I cannot understand anybody preferring to be a gentle to being even the most insignificant possessor of a little gent So there Mr. Rowse must be left indeterminately poised, a Fell of All Souls who is not a gentleman. _ But Mr. Rowse's idiosyncrasies, so many of which would better shed, have not spoiled his book. He is a Cornishman the backbone, and his descriptions of life in a Cornish village a Cornish country-town twenty-five years ago,- particularly the scriptions of the elementary and the grammar schools, and reflections on co-education as there experienced, are admira The casual reference to " the first time that I had ever epos the Tamar into England " is authentic Cornish ; Cornwall is Co wall, England beginning only beyond the severing river. There some simple and moving passages about the little strains sorrows of a humble family, as when the daughter, Mr. Row sister, goes off to a situation (only seventeen miles away), and " day she went away we turned our chairs to the wall and c all day. For days the house had a funeral atmosphere. indeed, it was the turning-point—the end of her life at horn A note no less true is struck by the description of the impress made on the boy who went up for his scholarship examination felt for the first time the' compelling charm of Oxford environ Of all the thousands who have felt that dimly how many c convey to others the unforgettable as Mr. Rowse has done?
Few books mix so many flaws with so many excellences as One day, I fancy, Mr. Rowse will go back and prune.
H.V.
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