The Green Bay Tree*

You Will Not Soon Forget John, Julia, Lily, Irene

The Story. A loverless woman discovers her hero at dead of night passionately embracing her sister who has had many lovers. Behind that climatical night was the history of many dark things.

Lily, sister of love, rosy, full-limbed but of infinitely more grace than the women of Rubens, had returned to the town in Ohio to bury her mother. The mother had died as bitter protest against the smoke and soot which factories shot upon her gardened mansion. Out of the factories had come human wretchedness. Into the wretchedness had gone Irene, sister of virtue, to find in Christian charity what Pagan love had denied her. To her goodness a giant had been drawn, a socialist Galahad. But when he had run from the bullets of the strikebreakers into the gardened mansion at dead of night, he had found, not Irene the good, but Lily the beautiful. At dawn, Lily returned to Paris, leaving only a note to her one night's lover, which began: "There are some things in this world which are impossible."

Lily had made her home in Paris because she had, years ago, refused to marry her first lover, Governor of the State. She had refused to marry him, in spite of the unborn child, because she declined to be the slave of American convention. For was she not the daughter of Old John Shane, pioneer, who could "ride like hell" and in the same manner, fight and love?

By the same token, Irene despised the flesh. Her father's memory was an abomination--not less so since her sister was every inch his daughter. She made her prayers with the passion wherewith they loved.

And their mother? She, indeed, was the mother of all good and of all evil. She defended the old regime against the new. She defended her children from themselves. She understood.

When the mother flings her last novel to the floor, turns her head gallantly upon the pillows, dies, her joy is that Lily--whether good or wicked--will flourish like the green bay tree.

The Significance. That Man is at once tragic and comic, sublime and ignoble, vastly individual yet universally interesting, are maxims of life, and stock for novelists. This book is least concerned with the first given maxim; it would be a greater work if it dealt more with it. It reveals the second maxim subtly and upon the third, it is founded. There is no person created by Mr. Bromfield that is not poignantly individual, and even peculiar. The more his characters assert themselves and the older they grow, the more they intensify themselves. You have never seen John, Julia, Lily or Irene Shane before, but you will not soon forget them. They are alluring because they are alive. For instance, the development of Irene, from an innocent, sensitive child to the inhuman old maid, is surely one of the devilish tricks of life.

Unlike most young novelists, this one leaves you to find your own significance in his story. He does not moralize, he offers you an experience.

The Author. Louis Bromfield is of the restless War generation. From Cornell and Columbia he stepped into service in France--first in the French Ambulance, then with the Army. He lives at present in Manhattan, is married, works for Putnam's publishing firm. This is his first novel to appear in print, although he has written others which he has not offered for publication. A sense of his philosophy is felt when one considers the title of his book--The Green Bay Tree-- and its source-- I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree./-

*THE GREEN BAY TREE--Louis Bromfield --Stokes ($2.00). /- Psalm xxxvii, 35.