Dolores
Sir: In face of so much adverse criticism, now added to by Miss Storm Jameson (20 March), of Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett's Dolores, I feel compelled to defend this very witty novel. Surely the delicious comedy of the dinner party in Chapter 3, granting the mode of writing of that time, was as good as any con- tained in her mature work? The Dame Ivy of the future novels with her penetrating eye for pomposity and self-deceit, her amusement at these frailties of human nature, is already here; and without the ellip- ticism of her later work the char- acters are given greater depth.
Surely, too, this description of Miss Lemaitre could pass without consciousness of a prentice hand: 'She was a Frencimoman, over fifty, with a sallow, clever face and sad brown eyes which lighted with her smile; who had led a difficult life in the land of her forced adop- tion, and lived with its daughters, feeling that she owed it no grati- tude'?
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