Irish Indifference

THE LAST SEPTEMBER--Elizabeth Bowen--Dial Press ($2.50).

The Story. At Danielstown, charming county seat near Cork, lived Sir Richard and Lady Naylor; lived also a niece, Lois, a nephew Lawrence, and many a lingering guest. At the moment it was the Montmorencys who lingered: she because of Danielstown itself--"doorways had framed a kind of expectancy of her; some trees in the distance, the stairs, a part of the garden, seemed always to have been lying secretly at the back of her mind"--and he because of Marda Norton. Marda was leaving next day, to visit her fiance in Kent. Meanwhile she walked with Montmorency-- and Lois--along the river toward a deserted mill.

"The river darkened and thundered towards the mill race, light came full on the high fac,ade of decay. Incredible in its loneliness, roofless, floorless, beams criss-crossing the dank interior daylight, the whole place tottered, fit to crash at a breath. Hinges rustily bled where a door had been wrenched away. ..."

Marda wanted to explore--and incidentally to escape Montmorency; she and Lois ventured into the gloom, relishing a fear that was "a kind of deliciousness." A crop of nettles, a dead cow, and by the stairs a prostrate lump that was a man. Sleepily he stirred, instinctively levelled his pistol at them; accidentally it went off, nipped Marda in the hand. The girls explained they were merely out for a walk; the man snarled it was time they gave up walking--for he was a Black-&-Tan, exhausted from days of guerrilla warfare, and they were the Irish aristocracy that ignored his existence, gave tennis teas for English officers.

One of these, a subaltern, loved Lois-- genuinely; but not pugnaciously enough to defy her aunt's disapproval: he had neither riches nor pride of family, his relatives lived vaguely in Surrey, and that, thought Aunt Myra, would never do. Lois, for her part, loved, but did not bestir herself to contradict her aunt. When a few days later the subaltern, on patrol, was shot from ambush, Aunt Myra thought it sad, and continued her teas. Lois pondered, to no avail, and went abroad to get on with her French. But that was their last bland September; by the next, revolutionary incendiaries had laid fiery waste to Danielstown.

The Significance. Such, expressed with infinite restraint, is the terrific indictment against an indifferent generation. A girl's lover is killed--she feels no emotion; a country is in revolt, "the best people" pay no attention. Not that they do not love their Ireland: their patriotism flowers in smart patter about their vulgar cousins, the English--"they tell the most extraordinary things--about their, husbands, their money affairs, their insides. They don't seem discouraged by not being asked. And they all seem so intimate with each other ... of course they seem very definite and practical, but it is a pity they talk so much. . . ."

A rarefied modern atmosphere, purged of emotion, immune to passion, is reflected in The Last September. Given Gaelic temperament, revolution, forbidden love, accidental shot in a deserted mill-- every opportunity for drama or even melodrama, Miss Bowen carefully sidesteps and develops her theme by the trivialities that beset the minds of her characters, and the even lesser trivialities that compose their clever conversation. The result is a novel that compels, for its esthetic perfection, a reluctant admiration, but leaves the reader almost as indifferent as the Irish artistcrats.