Social Notes

PERSONALS--Eleanor DeLamater--Farrar & Rinehart ($2)*

Every small-town paper (not to mention metropolitan dailies) runs a column of personal items, a bald list of local names and picayune events that mean nothing to the outside reader, may mean a lot to knowing fellow-townspeople. Author DeLamater takes a typical column from the "Steepleton Weekly News," makes each item the text for a chapter about the people concerned. By the time she has finished the column she has expanded it into a novel.

In the little seaside village of Steepleton the Brittons were the big family. But when the Old Gentleman died his son Raymond, fitted for nothing but the role of heir apparent, thought he ought to manage the family brewery business. He lost money steadily; Prohibition nearly ruined him; for the first time in history the Brittons could not afford to winter in Manhattan. "Mr. & Mrs. Raymond Britton and daughter Ellen, will spend this winter in their house on Riggs Island." Schoolma'am Ada Whitehouse had set her unmodish cap at young Warren Chubb but Chubb was trying to hitch his wagon to Rae Britton. So, although Ellen Britton deserved the prize, that was why "Florence Widgell won the Sixth Grade Oratorical Contest in our School House Tuesday. A sterling silver medal was presented. Good work, Florence!"

As Author DeLamater ticks off her items you begin to see what lies behind the demolition of the old schoolhouse, Dressmaker Willow's "handsome diploma from the Sims School of Dressmaking," the Young Men's Club ball in Firemen's Hall. Like its skeletal column, Personals comes to no conclusion, merely ends; but the author has padded the skeleton, dressed it up into an ingenious semblance of life.

*Published July 7.

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