Dark Hester

DARK HESTER--Anne Douglas Sedgwick --Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

Proverbial the jealousy between a man's mother and his wife; proverbial the trouble that an old love affair will cause to a new relationship. Yet Author Sedgwick takes the two threadbare situations, weaves bright new colors into the pattern.

Clive's mother, Monica Wilmott, with her golden hair twisted about her head "was like a falcon, a jar of honey, a spray of rosemary." Victorian at heart, she had, years before, rebelled against the fast vulgarity of the military set in India--but since her husband's death she had supported herself and her son: the office, the antique shop, the millinery establishment had made her something of a modern.

When Clive told her he was marrying an unshackled modern, a newspaper woman, with dark hair brushed straight back like a boy, Monica was shocked, but contrived to ask lightly: 'Is anybody shackled nowadays, my dear?' 'Oh, we all are! . . . People who dress for dinner, I mean, and are presented at Court, and take in the "Quarterly Review"--'

Monica, well bred, was exceedingly cordial to Hester; but Hester was rude with harum-scarum honesty. She swept Clive off to her world of modernistic furniture, and noisy banter, while Monica quietly retired from London to the country. Then Hester, disturbed by the misery she felt in Clive, in Monica, could not leave well enough alone; followed her mother-in-law, and by malicious coincidence found an old lover among Monica's new friends. Monica, quick to recognize the situation, flared into unaccustomed wrath, disrupting the close understanding between Clive and his wife. Only by the deftest handling did she bring them together again, finding in the process a deep affection and necessity for dark Hester.

Without The Little French Girl's taut loveliness, without the strange fascination of The Old Countess, Dark Hester is acute portrayal of delicately balanced human relationships, done into tight infallible prose.

Born in the U. S., educated in France, living in England, Author Sedgwick has a fine sense of the best elements in all three countries. In private life she is Mme. Basil de Selincourt, lives in England, tends her roses, sings Brahms and Haydn oratorios in the village choral society which her husband conducts.