The Provincial Lady Goes Too Far
The Provincial Lady at Horne and Abroad. By E. M. Delafield. (Macmillan. 7s. 6d.) MISS DELAFIELD has enlarged the conversation of her own literary models—the upper middle class—with her' comments upon it. It was obvious from the first that the Provincial Lady would become a popular drawing-room figure, and deservedly so. 'Her mild character and her lack of parti-pris must have made her generally acceptable. Even when the Provincial Lady, formerly content to Live 'Quietly, take an Intelligent Interest in. Things, and read Time and Tide, writes a Book and goes off to America for a lecturing tour, she changes none of her little ways. True, she met Katherine Ellen Blatt,. and that, from the reader's point of view was quite a worth-while meeting. But not even Katherine Mien Blatt, nor the Preadent of the Little Thinkers, nor
the innumerable acquaintances made at unhistorical Boston tea-parties can shake the Provincial Lady out of her faith in her own judgement and her habit of writing a diary. The diary goes on and on and on, until one is reminded of the sad story of the Young Man who had a Formula for Drawing Comic Rabbits. There are fiVe hundred and sixty odd pages of it. And one has the certain impression that Miss Delafield could send the Provincial Lady off to Abyssinia, a-rambling over another three hundred odd pages, with one hand tied behind her back or in her sleep.
It would be unjust to suggest that Miss Delafield's humour has got a little dog-eared. It has not. One feels, though, that a failure now and then, a spice of human mutability, some little corrugation in the dead level of efficient humorous journalism, would have freshened the later chronicles of the Provincial Lady. Miss Defalield's humour, the cosy, gentle humour that has formalised itself in The Provincial Lady Omnibus simply does not bear production en bloc. It is excellently fitted for occasional 'pieces and short stories but does not survive promotion to book form. Topsy and archy and mehitabel have gone into honourable retirement. Felix has walked over the horizon in company with other excellent figures of fun. Their creators had enough courage to dismiss their creatures. Her good. manners must make it difficult for Miss Delafield to take a firm line with the Provincial Lady, but go she must before she becomes a bore.
Miss Delafield's main fault in her other occasional work is a sort of Procrustean dishonesty. Her Public Taste 'becomes a soft middle-sized bed, and she lops off the exuberant limbs of her wit to fit it. Miss Delafield is capable of regular high-class knockabout burlesque when she chooses to use it, and she has used it extremely well in parts of " General Impressions." But it remains a pity that so much of her energy and peculiar talent is wasted on leading an ,imaginary public up the garden path.
SALLY GRAVES.
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