WRITING AND LIVING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 380, 4 October 1946, Page 22

WRITING AND LIVING

THE MERRY WIVES OF WESTMINSTER.

Mrs.

Belloc

Lowndes.

‘Macmillan and

| Co., Ltd.

on at least one reader an impression of triviality which is belied by its always graceful and sometimes glittering _ contents. Anecdotal it is, but hardly comic; and most of the wives of Westminster who glide through its pages are grave rather than merty, and their sedate London lives are never turned upside down, like those of the ladies of Windsor, by an irruption of Falstaffian farce. € title of this book makes This is the third of an autobiographical series. Mrs. Belloc Lowndes was fortunate in her connéctions and friendships. The sister of Hilaire Belloc, married to a man on The Times, she lived in Westminster among writers and politicians during that fateful 20 years preceding the first World War when the true nature of western civilisation was at last beginning to show itself. These were years of insouciant timism for most people, but not for Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, armed by her French upbringing with an incurable suspicion of Germany, as she perambulated, insatiably gregarious, in and out of the houses where the great Liberal leaders, who could never be induced to share her forebodings; wére to be mét. The fine character of such men as Grey and Asquith was in some ways a misfortune for their country, (Perhaps this is what Chester‘on was thinking of when he wrote, after bewailing the fate of the men who died for Engiand, this bitter stanza-

The men who rule in England, In stately conclave met, Alas! alas! for England, ‘They have no graves as yet). Mrs. Belloc Lowndes gives an int€resting account of Lord Haldane, a widely misunderstood statesman. A busy journalist as well as a novelist, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes was a Working Writer who still had enough nervous -enefgy to run a home, bring up a family, and keep in the closest personal contact with the worlds of letters and politics. When she describes her delightful houses in Westminster, we think of them as ideal retreats from the hurry and scurry of the world which are so inimical ‘to most authors’ peace of mind. But there we reckon without her social talents, which must have been prodigious. Her fitst social duty was to her fellowwriters; them she met as often as she could. There was no jealousy in her character, and she Was ever generous in her appreciation of the work of others. There were few of the major figures in contemporary literature who were not known to her fairly intimately. She has fresh stories to tell. of Maurice Hewlett, of Arnold Bernétt, and of Henry James. In talking of Sir James Barrie she mentions incidentally his friendship with Sit Bernard Freyberg. She shows the explorer Stanley in a new light, and though her stories are usually without malice, "Elizabeth" (Countess vor Arnim) is handled a little roughly, especially in that conversation which

"Elizabeth" begins "I know you don’t think I am a nice woman, Martie, and I have often wondered why, as éveryone else thinks I am a very nice woman." Although she is deeply concerned with the art of writing, there is surprisingly little counsel that Mrs. Belloc Lowndes can offer to young players, but she does let slip that in her experience those who write at night die young, while those who write in the morning live to be old. Unfortunately, she names no names, so we cannot compare the quality of the work of the writers who, by design or inadvertence, shortened or lengthened theit own lives by their choice of working hours. Trollope, we know, wrote in the morning. I have a feeling that Emily Bronté would write at night. The Merty Wives of Westminster is full of good things and odd things-for instance, the astounding information that King George V always refused to learn German. The book is full, tod, of a mellow benignity. Mrs, Belloc Lowndes has enjoyed her life and we enjoy it with her in retrospect. I must confess that I thought that there were rather a lot of people who were each her "dearest friends," but this is literally the way — the writer thinks of them. Although she warms to her friends, Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes doé@s not view them by any means uncritically. Her sturdy impartiality extends to her husband, who, she records rather sadly, "Was one of those human beings who care for very few people." Mrs. Belloc Lowndes was able to hold in affection a bewildeting number of people at once, an affection eévidéntly returned.