EXILES My Double and I: Sentimental Adventures. By Nikolai Gubsky.
(Heinemann. los. 6d.) By the Wayside. By Harry Tighe. (Heath Cranton. 7s. 6d.)
MR. GUBSKY was born a Russian, and, in spite of his ac- quired British nationality, where writing is concerned a Russian he remains. He has a natural aptitude for writing, and he knows his job. My Double and I is an account of a journey to Mexico made on a tramp steamer, followed by a description of the author's life when he arrived in that country. Mr. Gubsky tries to explain the sort of person he is, the sort of career he has had, what it feels like to have no country, and how all these things have bearing on his visit to Mexico. On the whole he is successful. The Russo- Mexico-American family are well worth reading about. When he gets on to the subject of his love affairs, what is wrong with the World, and the Infinite,'he is less entertaining ; but these are generally admitted to be matters which make heavy demands on the reader's attention whoe'er the writer may be. It is facts that Mr. Gubsky is good about : what it is like to live by your pen in a foreign country ; how the Mexi- can ruins struck him ; what is pleasant and what unpleasant in that country. His book is sometimes a shade whimsy, but it shows a section of life that is uncommon and interesting: Count Huyn's Tragedy of Errors is also a competent piece of work. Its aim, says the author, is " by presenting a variety of reminiscences, observations and impressions, to describe the development of a personality." This makes the book sound as if it were going to turn out to be something on the same lines as Mr. Gubsky's. It is, in fact, poles apart, because Count Huyn makes the word " personality " mean something much more closely related to the intellect and to politics— indeed something much more " official "—than Mr. Gubsky would ever dream of doing.
Count Huyn, who comes of an Austrian family of military
traditions, served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy for ten years as a young man. After the War (and some ups and downs) he soon found himself Press attaché to the Austrian legation
in Warsaw. Later he represented the semi-official German news agency, the Wolff-Bureau, and was again Press attaché in Warsaw—but this time to the German Legation. When the Nazis came into power he resigned from this post, being
out of sympathy with the movement. In 5934 he was appointed Press attaché to the Austrian legation in London, where he worked with Baron (now Sir George) Franckenstein up to the Anschluss.
Count Huyn has• plenty to say about Poland and Eastern Europe generally, a part of the world with which circum. stances and family connexions have made him familiar. He gives a good idea of the exceedingly compliFated problems which abound in that neighbourhood. There is, however, another side of Tragedy of Errors that should not be over- looked. It is a statement of the point of view of a Right- wing opponent of Herr Hitler's Government. The author, an " enlightened " nationalist, by no means unconscious of the implications of belonging to the Teutonic race as well as being a patriotic Austrian, gives his reasons for his disapproval of the Nazi regime. He does this with moderation, and is distinctly critical of Herr Schuschnigg and others. But at the same time the book is a reminder that all the opposition to the Nazis does not come from the Left ; and that there must be Austrian, and indeed German, soldiers, sailors and civil servants to whom their present rulers are " the brown bolshe- viks." Although the translation is at times a little stiff, Count Huyn's book is clearly expressed and well put together.
We now leave the grown-ups and their stuffy pre-occupa-
tions with love, art and politics, and enter with Mr. Peter Opie the never-never lands of arrested development. Mr. Opie's publishers make a lot of play with the fact that he was educated at Eton, and even go so far as to reproduce an Old Etonian tie on the wrapper. This is misleading, because he has nothing of the faintest interest to say about the school, and his chapters on it, dull enough for his school-fellows, will be unendurable for others. But, apart from this, I Want to be a Success has a horror-interest ; and it is possible to assure the author that he will be a success—because no one could produce quite such a flood of slush at the age of eighteen and fail, sooner or later, to make a success of popular journalism. The ability to turn out inanities of so concen- trated an order at so early an age is no small achievement. There are fine examples of vulgarity and shoddy writing
throughout the book, but for those whose time is short I recommend the chapter called " What to Believe? "
" I am most painfully aware that with people of my own age I do not make a good first impression.- I am very naughty, for either I am attracted to somebody at first sight, or take an instant dislike. As I am bad at hiding my feeelings, this does not help. But the real trouble is that I am so acutely shy and self-conscious that my natural inclination is to reserve, and so I appear to he stand-offish; or believing that we have clicked and trying to hide my confusion, I talk too much and get so overwhelmed by my uncontrollable joy and excitement that they think I must be puttin, it on. This is untrue. I never say what I do not mean, & &c., &c."
By the Wayside is a book of memoirs, apparently by Mr. Harry Tighe, who calls himself throughout the work, for some unexplained reason, Chard Ellcomb. Mr. Tighe (or Mr. Ellcomb) came to England from Australia some forty- four years ago, and a number of books and some plays by him are listed opposite the title-page. He has travelled widely and enjoyed a varied social life, spent largely among personalities of the theatre. By the Wayside is written -1 a curiously jerky style.
"He was getting back to self-pity, and it was time he cau, his train and returned to the Kentish hospital. He took up cap. He set out. The patch over one eye, the intensity of ;-:s thought, prevented him from seeing and saluting a superior offi,.„r. The peppery old martinet stopped him, railed at him, accused': in of smoking because he had a pipe in his hand. Chard apologis --1. He was threatened with being reported to his superior offiL,r. He let the man have his say. He did not tell him he was only a Red Cross man masquerading in a second lieutenant's unifor-11. His Commandant was his superior officer, and she was a worn.: 1. The tribulations of the times made the futility of saluting almost a farce."
It is in some ways a sad little book.
ANTHONY POWELL.
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