CLARISSA Highbrow?

FRANK. I hardly know that word's meaning. Admirers of Dell may not fall for it. No reason why-say - Dickensians should not.

CLARISSA. But is she a coterie pet? That is what I mean by 'highbrow.' The sort of author John Brown tells you is wonderful because of his daring lampoon on Bill Jones. I do dislike these coterie pets. Reading them is like being nudged by somebody you don't know.

FRANK. Anybody may become a coterie pet. But Hope Mirrlees has a breeze about her, is not merely esoteric. Let me advise, too, E. M. Forster's Passage to India. I have not made up my mind whether that book is better as a simple novel, or as a representation of the clash of cultures. But it is marvellous stuff. Read it, Clarissa, do!

CLARISSA. Another holiday task?

FRANK. Another holiday, Clarissa. But you want something Herodotean? Detective stories, perhaps?

CLARISSA. I have read all those, I expect. Really, I don't count detective stories as fiction, any more than I count acrostics as poetry. Leave them out.

FRANK. You have read Willis Crofts' and Freeman's latest? And

CLARISSA. Yes, yes. I have standing orders for them. What else?

FRANK. Garnett, of course. By the way, what a compliment it is to Garnett that one should say so naturally, of course,' and he with only two very slim volumes to his credit. You will like The Man in the Zoo. And as you are intelligent you see I give you the benefit of the doubt, though I personally never refer my teeth to your scrutiny as you are intelligent you will what was I going to say?

CLARISSA. Never mind. A Man in the Zoo is amusing, is it? What else?

FRANK. Henry Baerlein's Mariposa is the product of a wise, sophisticated intelligence. More jokes than story to it, and some of the jokes not very good, but a most urbane, insinuating book. Just the book for a deck chair at a not too popular seaside resort. Not Margate - take Wodehouse there. But Littlehampton, is it?

CLARISSA. It is not.

FRANK. Or Ilfracombe? Baerlein is almost too good for Ilfracombe.

CLARISSA. Another daring lampoon on Bill Jones?

FRANK. It does tend that way. But - no matter it is amusing. And as we have come to short stories

CLARISSA. I never do.

FRANK. That is a pity, because Triple Fugue is short stories. So is Huxley's Little Mexican. And

SO

CLARISSA. What are little Mexicans?
FRANK. Hats.

CLARISSA. Silly, are n't they?

FRANK. I am no judge of hats. As to the stories, well, I did not like them much. Clever and boyish, but rather belatedly boyish, you know. As if he were starting again from the wrong end. CLARISSA. Anything more solid?

FRANK. There is Fielding Marsh's After Harvest, which suggests so much more than it says that I perhaps ought to call it interesting. The country - Norfolk, to be precise — wide, sunset-stained vistas, and slow strong passions. And there's Mrs. Millin's intelligent African God's Step-Children; painful, but swift, like one of your own extractions. And, if you want, something romantic The Passing of the Pengwerns, by Margeret Leigh.

CLARISSA. Romantic! Does that mean Heredity, and the last of the What-you-call-thems and lonely figures driving through the waste, and that?

someone

FRANK. Yes, it does tend to. But if you are reacting against romance, try Tony, by Stephen Hudson. With all his faults we love him still,' the Pink 'Un, I think — said. You will not love, but you may wonder at this solid, squalid adventurer. Learn something. Learn — who knows? - understanding of a theoretically objectionable type.

CLARISSA. You do, my poor Frank, want to do me good, don't you? We were talking of amusing books. Anything else? Anything Dickensian?

FRANK. Aye, bless you. Wells's Dream is pungently, unmitigatingly, deplorably Dickensian, with Wellsian trimmings. Wells, I would diagnose, deliberately doing the things that amuse his readers in preference to the thing that will interest him. But you should read it, as you should read everything he writes, because he is the last of the prophets, and may be vulgar, but cannot be mean. For the rest If you are not

FRANK. Then take for one of them E. M. Delafield's Messalina of the Suburbs. For Scarborough take Osbert Sitwell's Triple Fugue, if only because of the excellent picture of Scarborough.

Woodsmoke will please you, and if you are you will at least be amused by the setting of one of his not-best tales. And, Clarissa! was it Ilfracombe really? Because my own holidays - I was not certain CLARISSA.

Is it Ilfracombe?