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321
in which the woman does her work, her abstract placement in life, the
philosophical overtones of cleaning, than can, in my opinion, be intelli–
gently maintained.
"The Invited" concerns itself with a problem so old and one used
so many times by all sorts of writers that we know it must be a real prob–
lem, and yet the very familiarity of the theme makes enormous demands
upon the writer to say something new, even, if you will, something sen–
sational. The theme of "The Invited" is the effort of a rich man to get
to know the poor. Once again Sansom records the usual contradictions
in the attitudes !of both classes: the poor feel resentful toward the rich
and yet hope to be "invited" to the other side even if it means .repudia–
tion of their own people; the worker who gets authority may be as
tyrannical as the owner, etc. The tone of the story is compassionate and
serious, but the characters are as stiff as figures in a morality play. Even
the rich man who from pity and humanity wishes to escape the irrespon–
sibilities of his class is not so much a character as an argument. The
atmosphere of the story is projected with remarkable skill and the cin–
ders, dust, noise, and machinery that surround the life of the industrial
poor remain in one's mind after the charaCters are forgotten.
"Cat up
a
Tree" is a very short piece; placed between the two long
stories. Its intention is small but the story is quite successful and shows
Sansom to
be
capable of a delicate humor that would not have been
out of place in the .longer pieces.
ELIZABETH HARDWICK
THE ADELPHI MAGAZINE
"THE ADELPHI is nothing if it is not an act. it is not a business
proposition, or a literary enterprise, or a nice iittle book in a pretty yel–
low cover; it is primarily and essentially an assertion of a faith that life
is important, and that more life should be man's chief endeavour .. .
I don't want people to buy this magazine under false pretences ... I
want them to have an inkling of the kind of thing they may expect to
find in it. All I ask is that if occasionally they get a shock, they should
wait a day or two and try to make up
~eir
minds whether it may not,
after all, have been a salutary and life-giving shock, before they stop
their order at the newsagent's." So wrote John Middleton Murry, as
Editor, when THE ADELPHI first appeared in June 1923.
Now we are approaching the quarter-century of the magazine's life,
and Mr. Murry is still its invaluable editor. The policy of the magazine
as enunciated above has never been changed. It has weathered the ex–
tremely difficult period of world upheaval (and paper restrictions) with
a reputation of fearlessness unimpaired, an importance of content main–
tained, and a list of loyal subscribers. The prospect of adequate supplies
of paper in the near future makes us eager to obtain more readers for
the copies we can print. We therefore invite you to_become a subscriber.
THE ADELPHI is issued on the first
day
of January, April,
July and October. $2 yearly, 50e per copy, from Lodge
Farm,
Thelnetham, via Diss, Norfolk, England.
