Fiction

BY GRAHAM GREENE

Little Friend. By Ernst Lothar. (Seeker. 7s. 6d.) bEEILDHOOD is life under a dictatorship, a condition of perpetual ignominy, irresponsibility and injustice. If a child could read the innumerable stories written by adults to express the beauty and fantasy of a child's existence, it would feel, I imagine, the same exasperation as an Italian Liberal listening to a foreigner's praise of Fascism. Even the titles would 'nfuriate with their false sentiment, their abysmal misunder-

standing: Dream Days (but the dreams are of release), The Golden Age (when one is arbitrarily punished, even arbitrarily loved). But Little Friend is the truth : against the background of visits to grandparents, of examinations and lessons and children's parties, the tragic drama of childhood is played, the attempt to understand what is happening, to cut through adult lies, which are not regarded as lies simply because they are spoken to a child, to piece together the scraps of conversa- tion, the hints through open doors, the clues on dressing-tables, to understand. Your whole future is threatened by these lowered voices, these consultations with solicitors, the quarrels in the neighbouring room, but you are told nothing, you are patted on the head and scolded, kissed and lied to and sent to bed. Herr Lothar has written the All Quid of childhood, showing what is behind the official posted bulletins : "X has been irritable." "X has been good." "X has gone to bed in tears."

The background of Little Friend is almost universally applicable ; the case is a more particular one. Felieitas Tagman, aged 12, who feared "everything direct, immediate, brutal," hauled into the divorce court by her father to give evidence against her mother, had enough simple cunning and passionate love to fight the whispers, the decisions, the omniscience of grandparents. Her absent-minded governess gave her opportunities ; between meals, between lessons,

before tea parties she had to snatch the minutes for her fight to keep both parents, not to have to live alone with her mother, beautiful, sophisticated, adored, or alone with ber father, a Jewish business man, simple, emotional with that

taint taint of barter, which made him bid with presents and theatre tickets for the child's affection. She feared everything

brutal, but following Captain Hilta to his accommodation address in order that she might appeal to him to leave her inother alone, she found her mother with untidy- hair and

crumpled dress and shrill- anger;' she feared everything direct, but her father appealed to her suddenly in the theatre box during an interval, weeping with a fish sandwich in his band. She was burdened with the spiritual responsibility of an adult without an adult's freedom. Driven as far as suicide she won the fight as accidentally as her own life was saved, but she had lost all that was valuable in childhood (a certain trust, a certain freshness) in the fight. Beautifully translated by Mr. and Mrs. Muir, this novel has an air of permanence about it.

• Love on the Dole is a devastating picture of unemployment, itf families tied together by the Means Test, of the old kept by the young and the young unable to marry. . . or the young kept by the old, with no dole because the father has work, unable to leave home, unable to marry . . . The irresponsible workings of State economy in each case has the same result : those who hate each other are tied together, and the unemployed man is barred from any relationship which in its tenderness or permanence can make existing a little more like living. Several novels have been written lately on unemployment with hatred as the driving force ; one has felt about them, as about so many War novels, that the occasion has made the novelist. But Love on the Dole is not a tract ; it is a novel beautifully constructed by a born novelist, written with hatred, but also with excitement and humour ; one is amazed that the humour which created Mr. Price the pawnbroker, the chorus of old tippling women, Sarin. Grundy the bookmaker, could survive the horror of unemployment in Hanky Park. It is not humour pf that al..'rated quality, that blithe clerical optimism, which made Mr. Pett Ridge famous ; it is a despairing, a bitter humour. as when Mr. Greenwood writes of the women at the pawnbrokers: "Not only did Mr. Price own their and their family's clothes. but, also, the family income as well. They could not have both at the same time. If they had the family income in their puma then Mr. Price had the family raiment and bedding ; if they had the family raiment and bedding then Mr. Price had the family income. This morning Mr. Price had the family income . .

The most tragic aspect of a tragic book is the thwarted relationship between young Hardeastle and Helen. For a week (a lucky bet had given them the money) they escaped

from Salford to a village by the sea, dreamt of a cottage to let at two shillings a week, and returned to Hanky Park, to the street corner gossip, to the room shared with parents, to the knowledge that only employment could prevent their love becoming soured, embittered, non-existent. Mr. Green- wood writes with vivid clarity ; a gesture, a turn of speech, a cough, and the whole man lives. Judged by the highest standard, this is an impressive, a deeply moving book. There is one very exciting moment in Miss Mitchell's in- telligent, rather groping novel. In a research station in Wales a scientist has been experimenting on rats in an attempt to get rid of senescence. "I'll be damned if I won't teach someone on this earth that it's time that human beings stopped this stupid sitting down under decay and death."

He has arranged to continue the experiments secretly on his wife with her approval, when his withered sniggering assistant

reports to him that two of the injected rats are behaving together unnaturally. This surely is sufficient theme for one short novel. Unfortunately Miss Mitchell's mind is too prodigal of ideas ; they cross and recross ; themes lapse before they have been properly worked out, and the general effect is obscurity. The action moves forward in jumps ; too much of the mental progress of the characters is left to the imagination ; but the novel is original, unhampered by literary conventions, written with a pleasant astringency. Gentlemen—the Regiment is an embarrassing book. -What begins as a satire on some of the dead traditions of the Army (the period is that of the Crimean War) develops into a school- boy's daydream of Honour, Love, Back to the Wall, The Regiment. It is a little difficult to be indignant with the old grossness and cruelty of regimental customs ; the past is not a subject for- satire ; but it is still harder to sympathize with the naive emotionalism of what follows. It recalls

school speech days -(The School . . . Honour of. . . The School), housemasters' perorations (The House . . . Honour of. . . The House), and it is a little difficult not to blush w,hen Alastair Chappell broods : "The Regiment disgraced— 'The 137th comes first' . . . Family betrayed . . . Friend- ship ruined . . . and oh, Katherine ! Katherine ! " Katherine is- the most dreadful heroine I have ever encountered. She is whimsical, she is humane (" I love animals far too much to

eat their flesh "), she is poetic (" How I love the hours when I sit at my attic window and dream "), she is pure (" Why cannot we be just dear friends ? Why must men spoil every- thing with this passion ? "). Her purity is responsible for a scene appalling in its indecency, its sentimentality, its fake religion, its emotional anaemia, when "she gives herself" to Alastair from pity after a religious service. of _her own invention in an old ruin (she calls it her Cathedral, where "They" speak to her). If the scene had been satirically

intended, it might have been admirable ; it is the author's tenderness for this -character, his sympathy with the type of

purity which has its cake and eats it, that makes one under- stand, clearer than ever before, how right Lawrence was to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover.

The Story of a Country Town, written in 1880, is an engaging example of Victorian simplicity. There are no characters, only humours. The Rev. Goode Shepherd, Mr. Theodore

Meek, Jo Erring behave exactly as one would expect. Mr. Brand Whitlock in- his-introduction- speaks-of Howe's "bitter irony and sarcasm" and gives the impression that Howe set himself to satirize the small prairie town and the pioneer

spirit, but _the. zelteral StrecA is nearer Cratifird than Dodder.