Cross-Section

NIGHT IN THE HOTEL--Eliot Crawshay-Williams--Liveright ($2).* The Hotel des Anges et d'Albion, its arresting title notwithstanding, was a second-rate hotel overlooking a second-rate Riviera town. Its 22 guests were a fair cross-section of upper-middle-class England (except for three who were French). When you first see them gathered in the dining room for their skimpy dejeuner they look a pretty average, not to say mediocre lot; but when Author Crawshay-Williams lets you follow them into their separate sanctums, shows them quarreling, soliloquizing, making love, they cease to be typical specimens, become (in most cases) strikingly individual. The fact that it duplicates the idea of Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel overshadows but does not invalidate the book.

Only perfectly popular person in the hotel was middle-aged Widow Sarah Shelbourne. Always bouncingly, sensibly cheery, she seemed to be without a care in the world. In the privacy of her bedroom you see her writing a letter to her daughter, with the news that the doctor has given her two months to live.

Sour and furtive Spinster Ella Lining suspected the relationship between Eleanor Steel and Mary Hewson; nobody else did. But Spinster Lining was right.

Bad man of the hotel was Ralph Hunter; Marion Latimer was bad girl. The hotel hoped they would get together; somehow they did not. At last they did.

While Colin Winthrop was making a fourth at bridge his wife was reading a letter from his mistress which he had carelessly left on the table. There would have been a divorce if the draft from the window had not made him sneeze when he tried to spend the night on the sofa.

If 50-year-old James Dowson had played his cards better he might have won Pamela Baynes, beautiful young widow. As it was he went back to his bottle; and Pamela, after being seduced by the hotel bad man, committed suicide.

Though you might suspect Author Crawshay-Williams' motive in inviting you to peek through the keyholes of all these bedrooms, the sights he shows you are less salacious than salutary; they are by turns humorous, pathetic, depressing, always recognizably human scenes.

The Author. Lieut. Colonel Eliot Crawshay-Williams (retired). Etoned, Oxfordized, twice divorced, served his country as an army officer in India, served one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George as Parliamentary Private Secretary; in the War served his country again in Egypt, Palestine. Many a book of plays, essays, stories bears his name. Night in the Hotel is his first U. S. importation.

*Published June 15.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.