Sachet

THE LONELY LADY OF DULWICH--Maurice Baring--Knopf ($2).

Maurice Baring is old-school without being oldfashioned. Urbane without pomp, sentimental but only sensibly so, he has the happy faculty of appearing as a citizen of the world without showing off the labels on his baggage. His latest novel, The Lonely Lady of Dulwich, is a little book (150 pages) but it compasses a full human career without skimping. Deliberately, nostalgically reminiscent, it has the small fragrance of an old sachet.

Zita was a Victorian beauty who married a solid Englishman, a gentleman though a banker. He buried her in the country, never thought about her amusement. As mutely Victorian as he, she was unhappy but would not have admitted it. When business settled them in Paris, life began to look up for Zita. She had her portrait painted, met a young French poet who fell Gallically in love with her. At the last minute their elopement fell through; Zita was too blooded a Victorian. Years later they met again, but the poet was no longer a temptation. Instead, Zita fell ridiculously and tragically in love with a vulgar journalist. She told him the story of her life; he sent it to a U. S. newspaper as a Sunday feature story. Her husband immediately got a separation. The journalist married someone else. Zita settled down to be an old lady by herself, took her unresigned but Victorian heart to the grave.

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