"THE PROVINCIAL LADY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 267, 10 November 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

"THE PROVINCIAL LADY."

AMERICAN SCENE. It is remarkable- how many more books are written by English people about America than books about England by Americans. Every second successful writer in England seems to mark his success by going to America on a lecturing tour and making a book of his impressions. The explanation is tho enormous size and variety of the United States—the greatest melting pot in history—the unflagging interest that Americans take in strangers, and their willingness to pay good money to hear celebrities and read what they say afterwards. Miss E. M. Delafield, successful and very competent novelist and author of the diaries of a "Provincial Lady," followed tho fashion some time ago, and "Tho Provincial Lady in America" (Maemillan's) is the result. The opinion may be hazarded that the ladyjjj diariee of her life in England are lees popular in the Dominions than in her own country, where readers understand better the trivialities of middle-clu*s life that she describes. For this reason colonial readers may wish to skip the introductory chapters in this volume, and hasten with the traveller to New York. The lecturing tour is described with verve and humour, though what some of Miss Delafield'a hostesses may say about isom6 of her sketches is sad to think of. One is- given an impression of reception after reception in luxurious surroundings, where women, expensively gowned, talk at the top of their voices about culture. Mr. Chesterton said, after travelling in America, that he longed to see an American woman frown, Here 'one is given a similar picture of an , almost unvarying facile cheerfulness. Mil-;* Delalleld, however, finds koiuo really genuine as well as charming people, and moments of tranquillity. Tho experience that moved her most was her visit to the Louise Alcott home, in New England, and she wept unashamedly at the fllra of "Little Women." A lightly entertaining book this, and no one .would admit more cheerfully than the author that only in a very, very limited sense js it to h< , taken ar> an accurate picture of American (society.