The Perennial Bachelor. By Anne Parrish. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d. net.)—Miss
Anne Parrish relates the history of a family, easily and with flashes of small beauty, denuded of the absolute truth of = Mr. 'Huxley's small pen pictures because more romantic, ,but still exquisite, From their childhood in the 1850's to their sad old age in the. twentieth century three sisters live and breathe under the domination of their brother Victor. For him they forgo marriage, money, self- expansion. And he, ordinary to all eyes but theirs, fails his way through a mediocre life. The character of Maggie, the oldest sister, who is worth all the rest of them put together, is brilliantly and joyously done, for au its piteous sacrifice and futility. It was the Maggies of the Victorian Era who kept a male-ridden world sweet. And it is well, when one is apt to sigh at the cocktails and indecorums of to-day's
to look back on the poor little bustles, dance programmes Mid greenhorns of a bygone time and admit, as one must in • sincerity, that the civilization of to-day—where women are, at the very worst, responsible human beings—is better than that in which they were mere appanages of Papa's and " the boys' " glory. The gentlest of joys can come from reading The Perennial Bachelor with its delicate building up, by sights, smells, voices and landscapes of a society exquisitely touching in retrospect, exquisitely gracious in tone. As a Subject for literature the period is inspiring : but as life, it was a monstrous cage now well-lifted from one half of creation.
Previous page
