SPECIAL DELIVERY
By Branch Cabal
Mr. Cabell's "fan-mail" is, one gathers, enormous ; and in Special Delivery (Philip Allan, 8s. 6d.) we are given the careful and whimsical protest of this literary man against such intrusion. The book is divided into sections, each addressed to some particular type of his admirers, and each headed by a facsimile reply as sent by Mr. Cabell. Then follows a discursus couched in that species of style which is invariably described as inimitable. Miss Edith Sitwell once coined the memorable phrase, "literary cricketers," but it is too subtle to apply to Mr. Cabell. If one could speak of literary croquet it would be nearer the mark. There is something both elephantine and puckish in the way in which he knocks his imaginary oppon- ent's ball away into the shrubbery. On the whole the book is extremely dull ; there is little edification to be had in watching an elderly writer being arch and self-revelatory to his fond public. Once, however, Mr. Cabell addresses himself to another writer, an American woman novelist. It is not difficult, in spite of his claims to be impersonal, to guess who is intended ; and, it is distressing to read so offensive and vicious attack on one of the greater of American writers. After all, is this croquet ? Mr. Cabell wishes to be considered as an artist in prose, or rather, as he puts it," a devotee of the niceties, of the overtones, and of the precisions of very often rewritten and suitably coloured prose." This book is cer- tainly a treasury of much-chewed and tortuously enunciated " dicta " : a comparatively modest example is the odd little sentence : "This is life's stinted tuition's end, in so far as I can fathom it." At best Mr. Cabell's humour may be de- scribed as pawky ; at its frequent worst it is tetchy.
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