EARLY DAYS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 23

EARLY DAYS

Probing Below the Surface of Extreme Youth “The Other Day,” by Dorothy Whipple (London: Michael Joseph). One of our best-known writers of youth has created a character—a woman author who draws inspiration from "nature” for her touching tales of priggish and impossible children, refusing to meet the real article in the flesh as she finds it upsetting ami often shocking. Admiring readers of this woman's tales are advised to avoid “The Other Day,” for here is no wellrounded and pretty tale, but rather a truth-seeking adventure undertaken in a sympathetic and humorous spirit into tile possibly inexplorable regions of childhood. Many of us. no doubt, would willingly forget our own early reactions to life, but those of us who still feel kinship with the strange little creature who represents our beginnings will find Dorothy Whipple's record a touching and delightful one. Somewhat reluctantly—most of us will understand this —the author rptfses her adult self and chases it hack through the years to the place of earliest memory and finds herself looking at “a rather pale child with straight fair hair and sleepy expression.” From then on the reader follows little Dorothy through apparently inconsequent oddments of memory and experience, and makes the enlightening acquaintance of her family as seen from the level of a child's eyes. She says:—

I was aware very early of the power of grown-up people. Willi a word they could destroy vour leaping hopes or deprive you of something you cherished with passion. They seemed not only tyrannical hut incalculable: vou could never tell beforehand when or why they were going to approve or disapprove. . . . They would invite some smug boy or neat little girl to tea, make a fuss over them because we did not, and when they had gone, exclaim: "Now why can't you behave like that?”

There are vivid little expressions of the apparently unreasonable fears of childhood. The little girl is alone with her beloved grandmother. I looked at my grandmother She yns asleep. Her bodice rose and fell. I dldn t feel I had ever really looked at her before. And she was strange to me; old. sad remote. I began to be frightened as I looked nt her. ... The chapter on "Things lhat Did Not Come Off,” can hardly fail to stir some memory of the difference between actions planned and carried out. in Hie excess of mistaken enthusiasm and their reception by others to whom the glamour is not apparent. "A Bad Patch” describes the mental torture that a teacher lias power to inflict, but E iH’’ o tells of the ecstatic happiness connected with Monday—dancing day. Through flickering sunlight and shadow. Dorothy passes to her convent days with their attendant religions bewilderment. The reader leaves her living in the country where her pity for an imprisoned bull changes to sudden terror. Did space permit, one could quote largely from this fascinating book, which offers more than mere entertainment. It can be confidently recommended to the childlover. to the educationist and psychologist. to anyone, in fact, who cares to probe beneath the usually charming ami apparently simple surface of extreme youth.