Henry Doesn't Live Here

THE WALLACES OF IOWA (615 pp.)--Russell Lord--Houghton Mifflin ($5).

More than one plain-spoken journalist has found his phrases turning fuzzy trying to explain Henry Wallace. Some basic amorphous quality of mind & manner in Wallace has defied definition, by either swooning admirers or exasperated critics.

After six years of working at it, Biographer Lord, a Wallace admirer and himself a farm writer and editor, takes refuge in mystical pronouncements that are as ponderous as they are unrevealing. Writes Lord: Wallace is "no chance growth. The product of an extraordinary heritage and upbringing, deeply--almost broodingly--aware of a genetic continuity in his every act, he lives, moves, and grows as a continuing force."

Father Henry C. Wallace, a solid, competent editor and a good Secretary of Agriculture (he helped blow the lid off the Teapot Dome scandal), would test the talents of a Boswell. It is Grandfather (Uncle Henry) Wallace who steals the show. First a rebellious Presbyterian minister, later a farmer and outspoken farm-paper editor, Uncle Henry passed on his name but none of his sharp wit and little of his peppery common sense and talent for writing.

Although the second half of this fat book is about Henry A. Wallace, neither "the force" nor the man is brought into focus. Lord can record the official acts and pronouncements of Editor (Wallaces' Farmer, New Republic), Agriculture Secretary. Commerce Secretary and Vice President Wallace, but the man himself eludes him. Wallace, to Lord, "is my kind of guy." but readers will look in vain for something of Wallace's personal life, his tastes and habits. Nor does Lord document, though he tries to support, Fiorello LaGuardia's estimate of Wallace as "just a humble little man who has lived the Sermon on the Mount."

Henry A. Wallace inherited his Scotch-Irish parents' capacity for work, but he lacked color and, except as a student of agriculture, any conspicuous abilities. He spoke poorly and wrote not much better, though his father and grandfather before him were editors. He was 33 when, in 1921, Father Henry C. became Harding's Secretary of Agriculture and made Henry A. the editor of the influential Wallaces' Farmer. He was 44 when he met President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt at Hyde Park, used the language of the Brain Trusters so patly that F.D.R., to Wallace's surprise, made him his Secretary of Agriculture six months later.

Old Man Common Sense. Some of the best sections of The Wallaces describe the feverish operations of the first wave of Brain Trusters. (Author Lord was one of them for a year, ghosted many of Wallace's reports, speeches and articles then & later.) Some measures of the quality of F.D.R.'s earliest advisers is suggested when Roosevelt tagged Wallace "Old Man Common Sense." But to Milo Reno, a farm-audience spellbinder of the early '30s, "Wallace would make a second-rate County Agent if he knew a little more." And blunt AAAdministrator George Peek (whom Lord respects), wrote: "[Wallace] tended rather to specialize in the study of corn, and was a dreamy, honest-minded and rather likable sort of fellow. He had a mystical, religious side to him, and, never having been in the real rough and tumble of life--for he simply went on the family paper as a matter of course--since [he] was always with the good men, he never quite got the whole of any picture."

Readers who have the tenacity to wade through The Wallaces will make a topsoil-deep acquaintance with U.S. farm problems and politics; that, and not character portraiture, is its only reward. At 51, big, friendly Russell Lord edits The Land, a sound agricultural quarterly, at his Maryland farm, runs a correspondence section for the Country Gentleman. The Wallaces wasn't "authorized," but Henry A. and the rest of the family were always ready to pitch in and help. Wallace read every chapter (but the last) as Lord finished it, pretended not to be interested. Says Lord: "Maybe he wasn't, but each chapter came back with an awful lot of commas. Henry sure loves commas."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.