Expatriate

MEMORIES OF HAPPY DAYS -- Julian Green--Harper ($3).

That this story of France was written in a house in New England's White Mountains is not surprising. Author Julian Green is one of the strangest Franco-American mixtures in American expatriate literature. His father was a Virginian, his mother came from Savannah, Ga.; he himself was born (1900) and raised in Paris where Father Green went to represent a U.S. oil company. Author Green, now 42 and in the U.S. Army, is an American citizen with twelve books to his credit (best known: The Closed Garden, The Dark Journey).

The Green home was a source of wonder to Parisians. Visitors gaped at the huge sofas and tables imported from Savannah, were shocked on ringing the bell to hear Mrs. Green's high voice crying "If it's another bill I won't pay it!" At home, Father Green wore a Turkish fez; outside, a silk top hat. Impressed by Bible stories, young Julian tried unsuccessfully to offer up the topper as a burnt sacrifice, using the sewing machine as an altar. Later he managed to sit on the hat in church. "My father . . . uttered a low groan," beat Julian with a walking stick. Nothing worse had happened since Julian's cousin sat down at the piano and innocently played Marching Through Georgia.

Author Green looks back on his French schooldays with some dismay. The boys studied day & night, at 14 could read Herodotus, find their way through the Hundred Years War, explain Newton's theory of colors. Once a week, for one hour, they exercised with dumbbells and climbed ropes, "fully dressed, of course; the idea of taking off one's clothes to go through exercises would be considered strange and indecent." Seldom, says Author Green, did these children or their teachers "think of the new generation growing up on the other side of the Rhine, sturdy fellows whose bodies [were] carefully trained." The Green family refused to budge when the German advance swept to the edge of Paris in 1914. Julian Green joined the American Field Service, drove his truck erratically on the Argonne front. So many burial shrouds, made of fine material, were delivered to his group that Author Green grew accustomed to sleeping on them and eating off them.

Memories of Happy Days ends with the publication of Green's first novels in the years following his discharge from the army in 1919. Its simple, unaffected story will appeal mainly to admirers of the French tradition and those who enjoy looking back to the "happy days when a crisis meant only a few hours' uncertainty and a slight headache which an aspirin tablet dispelled before you knew it."

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