Penguin’s first flight

Press, 12 October 1985, Page 20

Penguin’s first flight

Ariel. By Andre Maurois. Penguin Books, 1985 (first published in Penguin, 1935). 252 pp. $5.95 (paperback). (Originally 6d — one one-hundrbd-and-nineteenth of the latest price). (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) “Ariel,” No. 1 of the first 10 Penguin Books published in July, 1935, by Bodley Head, has been reproduced singly and in a boxed set of 10 to mark the 50th anniversary. Both the special set and the separate copy are facsimile editions with the paper dust-jacket over the paper binding, the familiar original symbol, and even the 6d net price tag — now, alas, risen to $5.95, but still cheap at the price. For all its 50 years Penguin Books has striven to publish quality works, and in choosing Andre Maurois’ life of Shelley as the flag-bearer it set an extremely high standard. Maurois, a writer of wide interests, achieved bis greatest successes in the field of biography. Written with insight and an imagination which refuses to be confined merely to the bare bones of ascertainable fact, “Ariel” captures unforgettably the essence of Shelley’s character and personality. Maurois’ method is faintly reminiscent of Virginia Woolfs for he seems to “hover round” his subject,

recording the impressions and effects Shelley had on those close to him. So the reader gains vivid and flashing glimpses of the mercurial poet. Apart from the fascination of the life of this genius and rebel, there is the delight of Maurois’ style — elegant, erudite, and witty. “Arguments have never convinced anybody yet. But to imagine that the arguments of a father can change the ideas of a son is the height of argumentative madness.” “Like all artists, Byron and Shelley wrote in order to console themselves for not living.” Such startling generalisations are thrown out with an insouciant charm that defies challenge and simply entertains. From the first unexpected paragraph of the book (“In the year 1809 George 111 appointed as headmaster of Eton, Dr Keate, a terrible little man who considered the flogging block a necessary station on the road to perfection, and who ended a sermon on the Sixth Beatitude by saying, ‘Now boys, be pure in heart' For if not I’ll flog you until you are!’ ”) to the moving description of Shelley’s funeral pyre on the beach near Via Reggion, the reader is captivated by the subject and the style of this biography. The first Penguin is alive and well 50 years on.