BY PHOEBE ADAMS
EHRENGARD (Random House, $3.95), a short novel found among the papers of ISAK DINESEN after her death, has the teasing, mythical quality characteristic of her fiction. This particular tale is set in one of those fanciful German principalities which are so useful as backdrops for high romance.
The plot concerns the suppression of a scandal in the ruling house, which is all that ever happens in these places. The painter Cazotte, a worldly, wily meddler in other people’s affairs, is partly responsible for the scandal and altogether responsible for the measures taken to conceal it. One of his tools in this operation is the lady Ehrengard. Where art and love are concerned, the beautiful Ehrengard is a solid replica of her five jackbooted brothers. She is utterly dissociated from life as Herr Cazotte understands it, and he naturally itches to get the upper hand of the girl and shatter her strange, isolated assurance. He explains his campaign, which is purely psychological, as an artist’s legitimate desire to comprehend the inner nature of whatever object he confronts, and the results that he gets from his impertinent rummagings into Ehrengard’s character are surprising, not at all what he had in mind.
Is Cazotte the devil defeated by love, the sophisticate defeated by simplicity, the artist defeated by reality, or something else, or all three? The reader is left to make his own choice, for the author, having led an ironic minuet in a landscape out of Claude Lorrain, vanishes like the magician in a fairy tale. On a commonplace level, the manuscript seems to have been treated with excessive respect and sent to press without any corrections, preserving some grammatical lapses that Isak Dinesen, alive, would certainly have removed.
The name XAVIER RYNNE is a pseudonym presumably covering several reporters, since Mr. Rynne refers to himself as “we.” Mr. or the Messrs. Rynne, on the evidence of LETTERS FROM VATICAN CITY (Farrar, Straus, $3.95), had a close and knowledgeable view of the Vatican Council called last year by Pope John. The book is admirably informative, including the historical background of the council, an account of the tensions and political differences within the Church which made such a meeting desirable, summaries of the debates on the topics considered, and sharp, brief sketches of the characters and convictions of the clergy involved. It is a remarkably comprehensive and lucid study of a very complicated subject.
RUTH MULVEY HARMER. of the faculty of California Polytechnical College, surveys the undertakingbusiness in THE HIGH COST OF DYING (Crowell-Collier, S3.95) and finds little good in it. Undertakers start with a heavy score against them; it is hard to feel kindly toward a tradesman who demands large sums of money for a service neither desired nor enjoyed, and, worse yet, a service that is unavoidable. But the acts of overselling, overpricing, pagan ostentation, straight swindling, and inexcusable blather about God, mother, home, and country which Mrs. Harmer charges, with evidence, against the undertakers are more than any group should be permitted to get away with. For exasperated readers who wish to be buried in sensible, economical style, the book includes a list of societies in the United States and Canada dedicated to the discreet disposal of their memberships’ remains.
MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE SCREEN PAINTING (Crown, $10.00) has fine color plates made in Japan. The text by JON C. COVELL describes not only the painters and their techniques but the historical events and political conditions which underlie these large and beautiful sixteenthcentury works.
WILD FLOWERS OF AMERICA (Crown, $15.00) is a sad Contrast to the Japanese volume. The four hundred color plates, from paintings by Mary Vaux Walcott and Dorothy Falcon Platt, were done in this country, and not one of them looks anything like the plant it supposedly represents. The colors in this fat, pretentious book are no better, and sometimes worse, than those in the pocket field guides that used to be available in ten-cent stores. The descriptions by H. W. Rickett of the New York Botanical Garden often fail to mention the type of ground in which a flower is to be found and never give the time of year at which it blooms.