Courier of Trafalgar

HE BRINGS GREAT NEWS--Clemence Dane--Random House ($2.50).

In her newest novel, English Playwright-Novelist Clemence Dane (A Bill of Divorcement, Broome Stages) hangs a deft literary costume piece on the bearer of one of the greatest messages in England's history--the news of the victory of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson.

John Richards Lapenotiere had been to sea since he was ten and had served under the great Lord Nelson. When England set out to break Bonaparte's blockade he was over 30 and still only a lieutenant, commanding nothing more impressive than the tiny schooner Pickle. But after the Battle of Trafalgar the little Pickle's speed won Lapenotiere the coveted assignment of carrying the news to England--with promotion, prize money, and a narrow niche in his country's history.

Through heavy seas the Pickle beat her way to Falmouth, where the exhausted lieutenant began his sleepless, 266-mile journey over the rocky, rutted road to London. Wild bells of victory rang out as his laurel-decorated coach careened through the countryside, to change suddenly to the solemn clanging of the passing-bell as people learned the news of Nelson's death. For Lapenotiere's urgent journey. Authoress Dane has provided suspense in the person of a Captain Sykes racing him to Whitehall with the news. She has provided romance in a genteel 18th-Cen-tury girl friend, who conveniently encounters Lieut. Lapenotiere on the road and patches up their five-year-old quarrel en route. But best of all, she has created a vivid microcosm of lusty pre-industrial England through which to carry the news.

Though her novel is short and her characters few, Authoress Dane skillfully contrives to weave into her story such diverse sketches as the state of aeronautics (balloon ascension) in 1805, the English attitude towards Frenchmen, the gay life and frothy patter of London's artistic dandies, the smug, bumpkin solidity of the county gentry, and the trials of the barnstorming theater among the roistering, roughneck yokels. High point in her craftsmanlike novel is the poetic, single-page impression of Trafalgar, made of the great resonant names of ships, some of which have echoed down to World War II--those "battered seventy-fours, the Revenge, Achilles, Swift sure, Orion, Ajax, Thunderer."

High point No. 2 is her account of Lapenotiere's historically authentic audience with his king--bumbling, half-blind, half-deaf, half-insane old George III.

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