Crewe Train
by . New York:Boni and Liveright. 1926. 12mo. x+309 pp. $2.00.
POOR Denham, dazed and bewildered, not allowed to stop at Birmingham, but hustled along to Crewe! Relentless train of destiny, which sweeps everyone on, even the most obstinate and reluctant child of nature, into our sophisticated modern hurly-burly of talk, talk, talk! Miss Macaulay never wrote a cleverer book than this. She has abandoned the Victorians to their fate. She has done well; poor things, they are all dead anyway! The poniard of her gay satire pierces this time the life of contemporary London — London, where people are so clever and so kindly, interested in so many things, so keen on discussing one another, and alas! sometimes so mischievous when with the best intentions in the world they touch one another’s lives.
Or is it really London that is satirized? Or rather the Reverend Mr. Dobie and his daughter Denham, who are in revolt against this energetic and taxing world? One can hardly tell whether Miss Macaulay’s sympathies are with the girl, ‘naked, savage, skeptical, and untutored,’ running away from intellectual diversions to make a whistle, or with her unlucky husband, who catches cold when expected to camp out among dirty dishes in a damp, deserted Cornish cottage and find it fun. After all, it does n’t matter; amusement, not sympathy, is the keynote of the book.
Of course, the contrasts are too forced. Denham is quite incredible. No one ever carried out so literally her devastating ideal of an existence in which one never interfered with other people and practically took no trouble at all. No girl who could win the affections of the civilized Arnold was ever quite so lazy, so obtuse toward all that ‘higher life’ to which she piteously tries for a while to adapt herself, so comfortably at home in dirt and mess. The author’s own affiliations are clear, in that her Greshams are possible — all too possible — and her Denham is not. But the impartiality of her mind is clear too, in that she makes us look at the situation after all a good deal as Denham does, and find contagious her childish delight in sitting in a chilly cave down a secret passage.
‘What’s the good of a hiding place?' Arnold asked.
‘Well, you never know when you may n’t want one. . . . People might want you to go out to tea. Or they might come to call and when we saw them in the distance we could get down into the cave and lie hid till they’re gone.’
Arnold grunted.
The high spirits of the book never flag, and we pass from one delectable scene to another. Denham, trying to be like other girls, bestowing her midnight confidences on an amiable spinster and unable to find anything to talk about except barometers; Denham again, reviewing her sins with the aid of the Catechism, prior to her reception into her husband’s church; Evelyn with her party for the lamas invaded by the brown Sudanese; Arnold, with his irresistible imitation of Joyce: —
‘I suppose.’ said Denham doubtfully, ‘Jane did think like that. I suppose she was a little queer in the head.’
‘If you’ll think it over,’ said Arnold rather vexed, ‘you’ll discover it’s the way we all think.'
Denham thought it over, then shook her head,
‘No, I don’t.
It is a mirthful book, and all the better because I he situation might easily have been so treated as to rouse us to tears instead of laughter. Indeed, as the conclusion draws near there is a slight hint at tears. Charming and kindly Aunt Evelyn is responsible, perceiving situations that don’t exist, and so spoiling a wholesome friendship. But Evelyn is likable; all the people in the book are nice people except Humphrey. We are spared any suggestion of post-war decadence, which is apparently played out in fiction if not in life. We see London at its best, ‘artistic, literary, political, musical, and cultured.’
But Denham could n’t stand it, and neither can we when we have been in her company. We close with a wicked desire to run away as she did. Wherefore this is a dangerous book. But it is very entertaining.
VIDA D. SCUDDER