GENERAL, BUT PARTICULAR

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20920, 29 July 1933, Page 13

GENERAL, BUT PARTICULAR

General Impressions. By E. M. Delafield. Macmillan. 269 pp. (7/6 net.)

Miss Delaiield's '"general impressions" are a series of witty sketches of such scenes and actors as you may witness in a house-agent's office, at the zoo, at a country auc-tion-sale, at the bargain sales, at a hunt ball, and so on. But there is nothing "general" whatever about these impressions, except their truth to human nature and its social stage, of which Miss Delafield is a mighty shrewd observer and pungent reporter. It is her particularity which is so "express and admirable"; and —though the trick wears a little in the end—her capital letters often seem to be the point of the needle, or the toe ot her very elegant shoe. As let us see. in the General Impression of a West-End Rraper's:

In the Inexpensive Evening Dress Department, where it is almost impossible to avoid a General Impression that Colour, at our present stage oi British Civilisation, is considered to be oi' more importance than Cut. An elegant young Mannequin is parading in a scarlet tea-gown before two ladies oi' matronly build. FIRST LADY (enthusiastically): There, that's what I mean, dear. That delightfully slim line.

THE FRIEND: Yes. Unless perhaps . . . You don't think the colour might be a liny bit trying? THE SALES-LADY (very firmly indeed, and with a good deal of musical laughter): Oh, no, moddam. The Colour isn't trying. Not in the very least. It's really a wonderful colour, in that way. if you see what I mean. No one could call it trying, moddam. (This is apparently true, as. after this, no one does.)

There follow some laughable but wickedly truthful essays on men, women, and children in fiction. As, for instance, appears in the devastatingly simple observation that children in fiction "never talk about their food/' though "real children prefer this to almost any other topic." The broadcasts of home life by Mr Clarion Vox, the "Studies in Everyday Life," and the collection of parodies increase the generous measure of entertainment in this happy, heartless book..