Childhood Home

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28542, 22 March 1958, Page 3

Childhood Home

The Octagonal Heart. By Ariadne Thompson. Hodder and Stoughton. 221 pp.

The minutiae of recollections of childhood are so often tedious that the author deserves congratulations upon the sustained interest which this autobiography evokes. Covering roughly five years in the second decade of the century it follows the history of a prosperous and cultured Greek family domiciled in St. Louis, where two branches occupied a large. house, inevitably named Parnassus. Here, under the benevolent patriarchal sway of grandfather, founder of the Orthodox Greek Church in the city, these expatriates, all of them bearers of such legendary names as Achilles, Aphrodite, etc., led a serene, orderly and disciplined existence, enriched by their own ancient traditions, politely regardless of the rmoact of a virile modern civilisation. Ariadne absorbed the Homeric legends as happily as the average child will listen to fairy tales. To each anecdote of her early days she brings a delightful touch of cultivated wit and accurate observation. The only American member of the household, the children’s ex-nurse, was Thea, an impassioned Southerner, who disliked Yankees and foreigners with a fine impartiality. Her marriage to someone referred to only as “that Dirty Yellow Dog/’ who had made off with her savings and another woman, had turned her into a Cassandra-like figure, dwelling with gloomy relish on the unhappy prospects of those about her. The dreadful Ma-Ma. Papa’s mother, a tiny Greek tyrant, who exacted her own way on all occasions by lying on the floior and screaming until it was Conceded, was another unattractive memorji. But all the rest was sweetness and light. True. Aphrodite, as beautiful as her namesake, disappointed her parents by her insistence on training to be a doctor, and in pursuing this unorthodox ambition completed their discomforture by marrying a German-born American, in spite of numerous proposals from eligible Greeks.

The destruction of Parnassus by fire marked the end of this happy era, and though Parnassus was subsequently rebuilt, the, author’s heart has stayed in the childhood home she has immortalised in a most delightful book.