58
PARTISAN REVIEW
up and attract attention. Mr. Thomas here appears in a
Sturm
und
Drang
portrait by Augustus
J
olm and lets off a fine salvo of poetic fireworks.
Ethel M. Dell was the best seller of the last war and has for years been a
household word as the 'greatest ever' of sob-stuff. Her
skill
in garnishing
the stock plot of delayed rape had a touch of genius, and I am sure no
contemporary literary critic has been able to avoid referring to her with
some blend of condescension, envy and astonishment. She is to the gush·
novel what Chaplin is to film-comedy, or Mistinguett to music-hall. Seen
over the distance of a hundred years, her
Charles Rex
(with the hero and
the heroine both pretending that she is a boy, so that he can whip her)
should have such a revival as the surrealists have given to Mrs. Radcliffe.
And so goodbye to the little interregnum of peace. "Put away," as
Pitt might have said, "those Genevan blue-prints of a new Europe. We can
still get some sparks out of the old one." Bloomsbury's Brave New World
is stored away in an air-raid shelter for the duration, and Uncle H. G.
Wells is writing propaganda again and watching some more mechanical
nightmares come true.
Shut down the lid. We are underground.
DESMOND HAWKINS
