Cavalier*

JEB STUART--John W. Thomason--Scribners ($5)./-

It may seem queer now, but in the old days men fought on horseback. James Ewell Brown ("Jeb") Stuart was one of the best of them. When the Civil War began he was 27, a regular U. S. cavalry officer, six years out of West Point. When a Yankee trooper's bullet brought him down at Yellow Tavern he was the 31-year-old Major-General commanding the cavalry and horse artillery of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Captain Thomason, a soldier who likes his trade, a Southerner (from Texas) whose ancestors fought the Yankees, is a good man to write about Jeb Stuart. He has done a good job.

Stuart was a fine figure of a man, just under six feet, big-boned, with a wide-flaring bronze beard and sweeping mustachios. "There was an elegance about him. He wore gauntlets of white buckskin, and rode in a gray shell jacket, double-breasted, buttoned back to show a close gray vest. His sword . . . was belted over a cavalry sash of golden silk with tasseled ends. His gray horseman's cloak was lined with scarlet. He liked to wear a red rose in his jacket . . . and a love-knot of red ribbon when flowers were out of season. His soft, fawn-colored hat was looped up on the right with a gold star, and adorned with a curling ostrich feather. ... He went conspicuous, all gold and glitter, in the front of great battles and in a hundred little cavalry fights which killed men just as dead as Gettysburg."

In the beginning, before the North had collected itself and learned how to fight, Stuart's cavalry had the edge over the Yankees. But every brush cost him some irreplaceable men and horses. Besides skirmishes he was in every big battle in the East: first and second Manassas, the Seven Days' Battle, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Antietam, the Wilderness. When McClellan invaded Virginia, Stuart's 80-mile, 24-hour raid across his rear with 1,800 troopers and four guns established what Capt. Thomason thinks is a record: "I know of no equal exploit in the cavalry annals."

Stuart was a hard fighter and disciplinarian, but he was also ''a social type, loving people, laughing much, leading out in song. He had a rich and golden voice. He was fond of charades and wrote execrable poetry, affected anagrams. There was never any sadness where he was." Wherever Stuart went he took Trooper Sweeny, onetime minstrel, to play the banjo. But he never touched liquor and he stopped all Saturday dances at midnight, for he "had serious ideas about Sunday." During the long, hopeless war (which he would never admit was hopeless) he saw his young wife seldom; when they brought him into Richmond to die, she came as quickly as she could, but too late.

The Author. John William Thomason Jr., Captain U. S. Marine Corps, writes as dashingly as he draws (he has illustrated this book with many a pen-&-ink portrait and sketch). He took his Marine commission in 1917, fought with the Second Division at Soissons, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry. From the War he brought back a portfolio of sketches, was wise enough to show them to no War-weary editor until 1925, when his leatherneck friend Laurence Stallings introduced him to Scribner's. He is now on Marine duty in China. No lover of publicity, no messenger to mankind, Captain Thomason regards himself as a soldier first, artist-author second. Other books: Fix Bayonets!, Red Pants.

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

/- Published Oct. 17.

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