Ladies' Day
THIS FEMININE WORLD. By Mrs. Robert Henrey. (Dent, 18s.) SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. By Mary Pickford. (Heinemann, 25s.)
IN her latest book Mrs.. Robert Henrey has elected to lavish all her exuberance and sentimentality on a number of Parisian personalities who, 'by their genius and talent, are creating this feminine world in which we live.' Her interviews with the rich and successful are guaranteed to delight that huge section of the public which lives glamorous lives vicariously through the pages of women's magazines. To those who have always ached to look into Mme. Suzy Volterra's home, and to know her bust measure- ment, to those who have small hope of seeing the couturier Givenchy at' work wearing a beige wool mandarin's coat and a boyish smile, to those who envy the Begum Aga Khan's gift for shrewd comment (she summed up Lollobrigida in a flash : found her charming,' she said) this book will be. absorbing. Sensing, perhaps, that femininity, though biologically desirable, does not of itself constitute a whole woman, Mrs. Henrey catches at a thought now and then, and warming to this strays on to a lower social stratum where she encounters lovable, funny, tragic people whose stories she relates with a lump in her pen. In fact, carried away by her appreciation for 'little women,' she ends up, rather surprisingly, far from the Avenue Montaigne but still admiringly observant, in a ward, in Westminster Hospital.
Over the bridge at Guy's Miss MacManus has spent the greater part of her life, working her way from probationer to matron there with barely a change of scene—Government Hospital, Cairo, France in the first war, working trips to Montreal and the Caribbean alone breaking the spell. Of Irish stock, a woman of wide knowledge •and cultivated tastes, a lover of sport and a poet, she has written a good book about a good life. Grown wise in the service of humanity, and almost too compassionate— she is harsh to none—she paints in quiet colours on a small canvas a detailed picture of the rigours and rewards of her pro- fession. Outstandingly free from cant, believing ardently in the individual, her views on the cardinal virtues for a nurse are uplifting, added to which she has a gentle sense of humour, a broad outlook and is both sensitive and articulate.
Legends rarely write good books, film stars practically never, so it is hard not to be amazed by Mary Pickford's autobiography, which is not only well-constructed and entertaining, but also possesses those qualities least to be expected from a ringlet-curled World's Sweetheart: true modesty, reticence on private affairs, and a keen sense of values. Her impecunious childhood, her first efforts as an actress (nineteen weeks of one-night stands at the age of eight), her film debut and subsequent triumphs, her marriages, her griefs, are recorded here with an objectivity rare in the cel- luloid world. Her character emerges as determined, ambitious even, but extremely sympathetic, and in her whole attitude to life, in all her relationships she is, above all things, genuine. Genuinely understanding, sensible, angry, rueful, businesslike, God-loving, or what have you. An unexpectedly interesting person for a myth.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
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