An Unfinished Portrait
Edward Perry Warren. By Osbert Burdett and E. H. Goddard. (Christophers. z8s.) This book is worth while, in spite of its self-condemning nature —for it has no economy or lightness and its subject is dimmed by over-description, the freshness spoiled by anticipation, the exploits made commonplace by an enforced vicarious apprecia- tion. It would hardly have had these faults if Osbert Burdett
could have completed it before he died. It is a pity that his memory has been so mistakenly respected that his notes have, obviously, been printed verbatim instead of being used as g source.
Rich, American, eccentric and ethically odd, Edward Per
Warren is the perfect subject for the kind of biography that it exaggerated without looking distorted, dishonest without being untruthful, penetrating and lavish—out to make the best of good story. One soon becomes dimly aware that he was a mai at least to be respected for his sincerity, and gradually there grows an affection for his gauche self-absorption, his generosity, and his absurdly complicated emotional lift. He was the son of a rich paper-mill owner in Boston, Mass., and his mother, a stria
Congregationalist, idolised him. As a child he enjoyed that precocious sophistication that so often makes the adolescent priggish and naive. At an early age he became interested in the ritualism of the Episcopalian church; he persuaded his mocha, in spite of her beliefs, to hear him read Morning Prayer and the Litany. " I wore a nightgown and, for stole, a broad pale-blue Japanese scarf embroidered with fans." He had his own little shelf of rare china in his bedroom, and would make himself an hour late rearranging it. At school he was troubled by mini. festations of the flesh. "One of my friends was immoral. t went with him to satisfy myself of the factewhich seemed to in almost incredible. I made sure of it without slipping myself (that was perfectly easy to me) and returned disconsolate." Both at school and at Harvard he was tortured by his desire to get into the " right set" and never to be seen with the " wrong set' Even when he went to Oxford at twenty-three, he refused invita. Lions in his first year because of what he called " social doubt' Before he went to Oxford he cultivated his appreciation of " the beautiful," and was increasingly troubled by the problems ei friendship and love. When he got there he began to perfect tlx ethical system and plan for living that was to last him the rest of his life. "Real lightness of spirit comes when there are men and boys who can look after themselves," he wrote of his ideal household near the end of his life, but it sums up his desires and intentions from his early twenties.
He was a tenacious and discerning collector, and, with the collaboration of his lifelong friend John Marshall, bought many treasures for himself and for the Boston Museum. Too mfich cf the book is spent describing the technicalities of dealing, bit even for laymen these parts have entertaining moments. John Marshall was in some ways a more admirable character than hit friend; more passionate more human, far more vulnerable and more intelligent. I think he probably ought to have been th subject of this book, but in any case the relationship of the is painfully interesting.
Warren- did far more than merely theorise and admire. He
was not merely a rich man with a passion for beauty and his on sex. He was deeply absorbed by the Greek idea of life. His magnum opus, privately printed, A Defence of Uranian Love, a a serious and probably readable work. Many of his quoted remarks have a penetration and wit that make one take him far more seriously than the gentlemanly, conventional obscurity d his unconventional love poems. "Women," he writes is
with logic [i.e., the logic of the position afforded I! the pro-feminine Christian ideal], receive the Vote . . . not without loss of that humility which had been the Grace of the Blessed Virgin."
At his country house at Lewes, Sussex, Warren led a jovial lift with a string of private secretaries, plenty of friends, horses, g food and "great St. Bernard dogs." He had a capacity f , emotional aloofness that allowed him to be quite unaffected by the frequent thundery atmosphere. "Of all the people who eve lived in it perhaps the host alone never felt a moment's doubt." Jong PIPER
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