Beer & Skittles—
CAKES AND ALE—W. Somerset Maugham—Doubleday, Dor an ($2).
Somerset Maugham writes a workman-like novel; easy to read, witty, sardonic, realistic, far from the borderline of boredom. He does not believe in "great" books; has never written, will never write one. His habitual bitterness, whether natural or acquired, has become part of his stock-in-trade. He now uses it effectively, usually cloaks it in brusque but polite irony.
Cakes and Ale: or The Skeleton in the Clipboard is a novel without a hero. Narrator is William Ashenden, middle-aged bachelor writer, through whose disillusioned eyes you see unfolded the story of Edward Drimeld and the lovely Rosie. When Edward Drimeld died his late-won position as Grand Old Man of English Letters was secure. His shrewd second wife wanted an official, respectably-mum-mifying biography, asked the popular novelist Alroy Rear to write it. But Ashenden was one of the few who knew anything about Driffield's early life. When Kear tried to pump him, Ashenden had reason to tell only a little of what he knew. The rest he tells to the reader.
Ashenden was a boy when he first met Drimeld, then a struggling author, and Rosie, his beautiful barmaid wife. When the Driffields "shot the moon" (left town without paying their debts J, Ashenden thought he would never see them again. But years later, while a medical student in London, he met Rosie on the street, went home with her to tea, became an habitue of the Drimeld salon. Rosie was the chief attraction. Kindhearted, affectionate, she became Ashenden's mistress, but he knew he shared her with others. One day she ran off to the U. S. with a married man she liked better than any of them. Wrhen Driffield married again his second wife did her best to dragoon him into respectability, finally outwardly succeeded. Word came from the U. S. that Rosie was dead. But close-mouthed Ashenden knew better. On a lecture tour in the States he had had a note from her, had called to find her a widow in Yonkers. Rosie was old, fat, bobbed-haired, but just the same under- neath. On the living room wall was a large photograph of the man with whom Rosie had run away. Said Ashenden, "I wonder what it was you saw in him." The picture "showed him in a long frock coat, tightly buttoned, and a tall silk hat cocked rakishly on one side of his head; there was a large rose in his buttonhole; under one arm he carried a silver-headed cane and smoke curled from a big cigar that he held in his right hand. He had a heavy mustache, waxed at the ends, and a saucy look in his eye, and in his bearing an arrogant swagger. In his tie was a horseshoe in diamonds. He looked like a publican dressed up in his best to go to the Derby. 'I'll tell you,' said Rosie. 'He was always such a perfect gentle-man.' "