Wife's-Eye View

ARNOLD BENNETT : A PORTRAIT DONE AT HOME--Dorothy Cheston Bennett--Ken- dall & Sharp ($3).

Wives of great men do not all remind us how sublime their husbands were, for not all relicts of the great write books about their husbands. When they do, the experiment often turns out to be a flop. A more dangerously intimate observer than even a valet, a wife with the best will in the world is likely to detract more than she adds to a man's reputation. But now & again, in spite of its stained-glass windows, a widow's memorial lets in an occasional shaft of light on the human figure within. Like Frieda Lawrence's book on her late great husband (Not I, but the Wind; TIME, Oct. 8, 1934), Dorothy Cheston Bennett's intimate portrait of Arnold Bennett last week gave curious readers a worth-while wife's-eye view. Those who found her style awkward, her psychological probings selfconscious, could turn to the second half of the book, where 170 of "A. B.'s" letters furnished a refreshing commentary to her text.

Dorothy Cheston was never legally Arnold Bennett's wife, though before his death in 1931 a court let her adopt his name. Because he would not face the clamorous squalor of the divorce court, Bennett first would not, later could not get a divorce, under English law, from his real wife. When he first met Dorothy Cheston, he contemplated no further domestic entanglements. He was a famed middle-aged author, she a young (22-year-old) actress. Their friendship ripened perceptibly--from teas to tete-`a-tete dinners to duets to a solemn kiss. Finally he proposed that she become his mistress.

Of two minds about how or whether to take him, Dorothy proposed a trial trip to Paris together--purely platonic. As the train pulled out of London's Victoria Station, according to his invariable custom Bennett changed to his "traveling hat"-- "a round affair of tweed with a soft brim, peculiarly endearing." Records Dorothy Cheston: "I remember that I felt curiously responsible, as though I were traveling with bullion." In Paris something happened that decided her heart: every morning Bennett would call for her, bearing a bunch of white flowers which he had bought at a stall on the corner. "He carried these flowers tightly, holding his arm rather high up and rather rigidly. His gesture reminded me of the King of Hearts in a pack of cards." What touched Dorothy Cheston's heart was that he was being daily cheated: the flowers were never quite fresh.

For three years she lived in London as Bennett's mistress, going away with him on occasional holidays but keeping a separate house, following her chosen career as he followed his. One fine day, when Bennett was off on a cruise, she knew she was going to have a baby. His reply to her news: "Very sorry. Very glad. Shall catch boat Hook of Holland, be with you tomorrow." When the baby (a girl) was born. Dorothy and the child moved into Bennett's house, were acknowledged as his family.

In spite of the disparity of their ages and accomplishments, Dorothy was too independent a character to let Bennett regulate her, intimates that she domesticated him more than he revised her. They never agreed on the subject of her intuition. On one occasion he stubbornly gambled away 1,000 francs in an effort to show her that her hunch about a certain number was nonsense. Though he never succeeded in weaning her from unpunctual habits, his husbandly summation was a nutshell masterpiece: "I regard non-punctuality as bad manners. I don't expect you to be punctual; I know you are not capable of it, save under great stress. On the other hand, I don't expect to be told, when you are late, that it is my fault that you are hurrying." He had little better luck with her spelling: "But why in the name of God, despite all my warnings, continue to write 'happyness' and 'luckey'?"

Dorothy Bennett yields to none in her admiration for Bennett's literary capacity, and was obviously very fond of him. But neither her admiration nor her affection kept her from seeing him with shrewd maternal eyes.

Though at first she took him at his face-value as a man of the world, a writer enriched by shrewd trading in the literary market, she soon discovered that "about things of the world he was a child, not a rip." Her measured judgment of him is remarkably serene: "a reserved man with an aesthetic taste, which was partly baroque, partly Methodistic."

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