Two Frank Lives
ALTHOUGH distinctly amusing, there is no doubt that Mrs. Sheridan's book leaves a nasty after-taste. The trouble with it, perhaps, is not that it is nuda veritas but that it is not quite frank enough. She should either tell the full story of her friendships with Kameneff, Trotsky, Chaplin (with whom she spent a week in a camp in California), or she should tell us less about them. She is a witty and vivacious woman : that, no doubt, is sufficient reason for M. Kameneff to have taken her to Russia to sculpt the Bolsheviks, for Lenin to have given her sittings, for Trotsky to have offered to take her to the front, for Signor Mussolini to have given her an interview, and for Mr. Chaplin to have gone camping with her ; but, ungratefully perhaps, we feel that she has not told us enough about the psychology of these people.
Another quarrel we have with the author is that she is one of those revolties who accept all the blessings and privileges of civilization and every ounce of the prestige that the power of Britain gives to those who are fortunate enough to be born tinder her flag, without—apparently—ever once admitting that she has any responsibility to her country or to the creed (convention, if you will) that has made England great. She says that her spiritual home was in Moscow. She lived there for a time, but came back to England after choosing a couple of extremely expensive furs presented to her by the Soviet Government from the loot taken from the aristocracy. On her return, she seems somewhat surprised that she was considered a Bolshevik. Her Communistic principles, however, do not appear to be more than skin-deep, for she accepts the pension of a widow whose husband has been killed in the War and is bringing up her children, she tells us, as ardent pacifists. There is, in short, throughout the book a tacit denial of the good old-fashioned theory that there are duties as well as rights in the social order.
The best advice she appears to have received as regards the conduct of life was given her by two such different personali- • ties as Signor Mussolini and Mr. H. G. Wells. "Make your heart a desert," said the former, looking at her sternly with eyes which Mrs. Sheridan calls epileptic (the great man may have been enraged by his interviewer), while the latter is reported as saying, "It is a pity you are not educated, Clare." • Indeed, it is a pity. Here is a brilliant woman with talents that would have made her famous in at least three Walks of life, who somehow has not achieved the full success due to her in any one of them, and who is looked upon (to put it mildly) with disapproval by a not inconsiderable section of English people. Yet her faults, if we may presume to be at least half as frank as this very frank autobiography, tire rather those of misdirected energy than deliberate perversity. Much of the book is very amusing and some of it contains real wisdom. It is being widely read and deservedly so; for it gives a vivid - picture of vivid people. Particularly successful is she in depicting the rackety "atmosphere" of the War years and of 1919. With energy and ability that are-broth-exceptional. flu-
hope that Mrs. Sheridan will leave some lasting mark on her time. _ : Son Of a charming and cultured man and inheriting some of his father's poetic talents as well as much of his bonhomie, Lord Rosslyn might have been a great man as well as a popular one. He has failed, however, or so he tells us, and if by failure is meant a wreck of his domestic and financial affairs, we would be inclined to agree. But happiness is now his, we are assured, for we read that in his later years he has found the best thing of all, the love of a good woman, compared to which the dissipation of a paltry 217,000 a year,- and, even the ruin of his health by drinking too much port, counts for nothing at all. In short, this record of a life, which if it has not been - misspent has, at any rate, been muddled, ends on a happy note.
Racing, fishing, shooting, billiards, the stage and breaking the bank at Monte Carlo figure in Lord Rosslyn's reminiscences, and the delicate subjects of feminine beauty, and the bottle, two things he has loved too well all his life, are not neglected. Quite frankly and simply the author tells us that he has always loved women for their beauty. He is not alone in that, and he has had to pay the price of seeing only skin- deep. His second marriage ended with a dreadful scene at Trouville, when his jealous wife came home late from the Casino and hit him twice in the eye. "Whilst trying to hold her wrist, she screamed the harbour down, people coming from neighbouring ships till I got her to her cabin." After the divorce she married an Italian prince, who turned out to be a bigamist and a maker of macaroni.
The present reviewer admits that he would not have persevered with Lord Rosslyn's volume except as a profes- sional duty, for a good deal of it is about Victorian worthies of the Turf or Stage in whom he has little interest, yet he feels that the book has a moral—a moral that can be found between the lines on almost every page. It is the very old one that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. Also if you drink a quart of champagne and a quart of port daily, or even often when young, you will live to rue the day. But you may have a good time while your health and money lasts. Lord Rosslyn did.
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