Citizen Biographized

CARR -- Phyllis Bentley -- Macmillan ($2).

To write the life of a plain man with all the pomp & circumstance of a full-dress biography might seem a satirical idea; in unkinder hands than Phyllis Bentley's such a book might be a reductio ad absurdum of both subject and method. But Authoress Bentley's intentions and accomplishment are honorably serious. Though she sets the stage with such reverent care that the reader expects a notable if not tycoonish hero, the curtain has not been up long before alert spectators realize that the spectacle will be unspectacular. Authoress Bentley succeeds, however, in transfiguring her average man into a man-sized hero. Says she: "Why . . . should not one of the crowd, one of those who maintain, those who transmit, have a standard biography written for him with as much justification as one of the celebrities, one of those who improve?" Carr makes her question superfluously rhetorical. Like Inheritance (TIME, Sept. 12), Carr is a novel of Yorkshire, its background the textile industry of the West Riding.* Hero Carr's father was an absconding scoundrel, but that did not prevent Millman Ainsley from paying for young Carr's education, taking him into the mill and making him junior partner in Carr, Carr & Ainsley. In return, Carr was supposed to be a credit to the firm and to marry Ainsley's nice but not very attractive daughter Catherine. Carr was a success in a business way, but before he was old enough to realize his other duty he fell desperately in love with Cordelia, daughter of his father's worst enemy. In spite of unanimous opposition they married and were forgiven, but Carr lost his chance of a fortune. He prospered, however, and when old Mr. Ainsley died, Carr was managing the firm and making a pretty penny for Catherine, who had inherited a controlling interest. All might have been well with Carr and his family if Catherine's heart had not been bigger than her brain. Lomas, Cordelia's rapscallion brother, had been courting her for years, and though Catherine despised him she finally gave in, to discover too late that she had made the mistake of her life. To save Carr's name from being dragged in the mud by Lomas, Catherine withdrew her capital from the firm, left Yorkshire forever with her ill-meaning husband. Carr saved what he could from the firm's wreck, but from then on it was hard scratching all the way. Other disasters came: His only daughter died of pneumonia; one of his sons was killed in the War; the other lost an arm, married a girl his parents disapproved of. When Carr came to die he had worked hard, done his best, though he had little wealth to show for it. But he had grandchildren and friends, and a wife who still loved him. The Author is a writing example of what a woman can do in a man's world besides getting married. Born & brought up in Yorkshire's West Riding, in the midst of the woolen industry, she joined her passion for story-telling to a lively interest in her surroundings. "As a child I used often to go to my father's mill, lean over the edge of the boiler pit and watch the various processes of cloth manufacture. My father was a man very highly skilled in all textile processes, and famous for this far beyond the walls of his own mill. . . ." Authoress Bentley went to Cheltenham and London for her education, then came back to Yorkshire to write about the things and people she knew best. An unrepining spinster, at 39 she finds plenty to do; besides her writing she takes an active interest in the Little Theatre movement, in the formation of women's lunch clubs, is in demand as a lecturer (she will lecture in the U. S. next January'), likes walking, badminton, tennis. Other books: The World's Bane, Cat-in-the Manger, The Spinner of the Years, The Partnership, Trio.

*Carr, an earlier work than Inheritance, was first published in England in 1929.

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