African Journey. Eslanda Goode Robeson.
John Day. $3.50.
THE ODDEST thing about this book for white people with small minds to grasp is that Mrs. Paul Robeson wanted to make this trip to Africa with her son, on her own money, to find out how the African people are having to live in this world of much big talk. The book is based upon travels made in 1936, but it is doubtful whether it could have had as good a reception as it will probably get now. Odd and important, we say, that an American Negro woman should be dragging her eightyear-old son through Africa to gee that part of this world that people speak of so unkindly . . . and reason about so wildly.
A white woman going through Africa would have been just another woman looking for something, maybe her family, maybe a thrill, maybe gold. But a Negro woman from America was worth more in the dreams of these oppressed peoples than fifteen missionaries and ten state officials, and nobody knew that better than the South African Government. But Mrs. Robeson is an idealist who can see beyond race and racism. Her brief stop in Liberia on the way South to the Cape is dynamite. 4.. . I came to realize that the Negro problem was not even limited to the problem of the 173 million black people in Africa, America, and the West Indies, but actually included (and does now especially include) the problem of the 390 million Indians in India, the problem of the 450 million Chinese in China, as well as the problem of all minorities everywhere.' But in its limited sphere, our problem nation Liberia troubles her: ". . . the backwardness, poverty, and lack of franchise among the subject Liberian people as against the wealth and official corruption among the ruling Americo-Liberian citizens makes a shameful picture—a disgrace to the 'Republic' and to the United States which sponsors it." Now, if Mrs. Robeson is not a crusader, who is?
This is a much better book than is apparent at first reading. That is to say, it is not all mere travel gab, no mere Cook's tour stuff. Mrs. Robeson has seen America and Europe, she knows something of the ways of the strong with the weak. Moreover, she is interested in the education of the people, and cites Julian Huxley to illustrate a trend of thought that is applicable in Africa, Asia, and the Deep South alike. Writes Huxley in "African View" in the vein that pleases Mrs. Robeson:
"If the present state of affairs continues, in which only about so percent of native children get any education whatever (and perhaps 2 or 3 percent any education worthy of the name), we shall naturally not arrive at that general background of changed ideas from which alone a new social tradition can spring."
The American Negro might look to the Labor Party victory to change all this, but that will hardly be true, for the dependence of the British worker in England upon the slave-labor of South Africa is apparent; more apparent than the labor statesmen yet realize, and it is doubtful that our generation will see much of a change to the benefit of the Africans. But Mrs. Robeson says, "In Russia I was excited and profoundly moved to see for myself how the so-called 'backward', 'primitive' peoples from the formerly remote wastes of Siberia and Asia have been stepped up to active and constructive participation in a highly industrialized modern state... ."
Taken all together, what she has seen and what seems to move her thinking, here is my "prediction": There is a lot of ground to be covered, but when an American Negro woman can go to Africa on her own money and get her views printed in a pretty decent looking book, brother, the race is rising! —George Streator
January Thaw. Bellamy Partridge. Whittlesey. $2.75.
THERE wasn't much grace to the life led in the original Connecticut farmhouses. Many the woman, prematurely aged, who woke to face another long day in their icy bedrooms; many the infant who died in their wooden cradles. Even Indian fighting didn't always take a higher death-toll. Israel Putnam buried his Hannah after her tenth child long before his stormy career in the Revolution had begun. But now the uncomfortable and not too beautiful old houses are taking plenty of punishment from the "commuters." Mr. Marquand has scanned the situation in his waspish description of a weekend party with farmhouse hosts who lived up to their ears in quaintness. At Lazy Corners there was also hay—though not fireproof—tucked coyly round the rafters inthe barn which had been given a polished dance floor and a chromium-plated bar in its box stall. But, unlike Marquand, the arrows of Mr. Partridge's wit are so carefully blunted that he might almost be writing "How We Made Over the Olde House" for the serial readers.
Mr. Partridge had a good idea that he might have developed into a short story of the type of Kipling's famous "An Error in the Fourth Dimension" with a caustic contrast of two different social economies. Instead he has padded his idea into the outward form of a novel. It takes all of 37 pages for the city dwelling Gages to buy the old farm and to explain why they were the fools to do so, there existing this flaw in the title that Jonathan Rockwood, who held a life tenure of the house, had never been proved dead after his sudden disappearance. The story begins when Jonathan and his wife reappear just as the Gages are holding a "barnwarming" and take possession of the guest bedroom. While the Gages's slowwitted lawyer is seeking a solution, the Rockwoods annex more of the house and put the farm back to work and when the war and the cold winter of 43-44 leave the Gages stranded without water, food, heat or cooking facilities, old Jonathan proves the security of his way of life and independence of plumbing and electricity with broilers sputtering over the woodburning stove in the study; chickens laying eggs in the chromium bar and livestock conditioning the "quaintness" of the barn.
It seems a pity that Mr. Partridge didn't tell his tale from the standpoint of "Country Lawyer," that thoroughly delightful book of filial reminiscences. As a novelist his characters are stereotyped and his humor much less pithy. Indeed, it must reluctantly be confessed that "January Thaw" is sloppy weather.—E. V. R. Wyatt
John Donne: His Flight From Medievalism. Michael Francis Moloney. Illinois. $2.50.
IN THIS artistically written, ably argued and original study, the author has made a real contribution to the learned literature that has heaped up about the controversial figure of Donne. The war between an idealistic Thomist aesthetic and one determined by pagan naturalism is still waging in the minds of twentieth century artists; consequently, they find in Donne's poetry and personality a fascinating and disturbing mirror of themselves. Unhappily, the mass of Donne criticism has been contributed by men and women who are scholastically and in mental habit unfitted for understanding his motivations and tensions. They can participate in his feelings but they can no more understand them than they can understand similar tensions in themselves. They have much to learn and more to forget before they are ready to pierce to the heart of Donne's mystery.
Because Mr. Moloney knows the medieval mind from first-hand study of medieval sources and from the most respectable authorities in that field, he has the advantage over critics who accept the conventional dicta about the Middle Ages without personal investigation. The hard knocks he gives several highly-regarded analysts of the Donne problem are more than justified. His thought is as precise as his definitions; his historical knowledge is not parroted from second-rate textbooks; he writes of philosophy like a philosopher. This study belongs in every Catholic college library.—J. G. E. Hopkins
