Mother and Daughter

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19397, 7 August 1937, Page 9

Mother and Daughter

M L !? Fanny Lea, in "The Four Marys,” has told the story of a group of American women which j might be told of a similar group in j any young country to-day. Meg, who stands between her mother and her daughter, provides a character which will not easily be forgotten. She herself had made an unsuccessful marriage, but, by dint of considerable courage and a great deal of hard work, she made a new design of life for herself, and, when the book opens, she is a successful journalist, travelling up to New York daily and supporting her mother and daughter in comfort. Mimi, the fourth Mary,- is an attractive girl of 20, with a lithe figure and bronze-red hair. Her friend, Elizabeth, is marrying Alan Wythe in the garden of Meg’s house and Mimi is bridesmaid. She and Alan had once been in love, but Alan has succumbed to Elizabeth’s material advantages. The bride and groom go off in a blaze of felicitations; Meg turns to Brook Avery, a man 11 year's her junior, who is in love with her: Mimi feels that something fatal hat happened and determines to forge; Alan—if she can; Molly, her grand mother (the second Mary) sighs with weariness and relief. It is obvious that Mimi will not le things end like this. Alan, returning from a protracted honeymoon, already somewhat bored with his ingenuou; bride, crosses her path again all too soon. The methods which Mimi uses i order to obtain what she has convinced herself ‘she wants are ultracivilised, and quite futile. Fate, however, treats her generously in the long fun. Meg is not so fortunate ancJ the tale of her defeat is as sad as it is inevitable. At a later date she might console herself in the knowledge that she had done the right thing; a pale substitute for happiness!