In _The Custody of the Child_ (HUTCHINSON) Mr. PHILIP GIBBS has chosen a
difficult theme--the story of a broken home, told from the child's point
of view, and he has handled it like an artist. Of the three books into
which this biography of _Nicholas Barton_ is divided, the first is so
much the best that the second seems a little tame. This was, of course,
inevitable, for the first book is the thunderstorm, the second the
gentle rain which follows it. I have another reason for deriving
particular pleasure from the opening book, and that is that the scene is
laid in a Battersea Park flat. I have long since marked down Battersea
as one of London's most romantic neighbourhoods. To a child, the
curiously mingled intimacy and exclusiveness of life among the
cliff-dwellers of that long road facing the Park, where you drop your
toys out of your front garden (which house-agents call a balcony) and
see them impounded as legitimate gifts that have dropped from Heaven by
a perfect stranger in the front garden of the ground-floor flat, must be
a perpetual wonder. Mr. GIBBS has brought this out so persuasively that
I have shaken hands with him after each sentence. There is not an
incident in Book I. that is not exactly right. The rest of the story,
with its courageous avoidance of unmitigated happiness in the ending,
never fails to arrest, unless for a moment or so in the middle; but for
me at least the real charm of the volume lies in Book I.

* * * * *

"Let us try to avoid the detestable trick of sentimentality when dealing
with this beloved, presuming, gallant, unhappy man." So Mrs. EVAN NEPEAN
adjures us and herself; and it must be confessed that the warning was
needed. For the man was JAMES, Duke of MONMOUTH, a study of whom she has
written under the title of _On the Left of a Throne_ (LANE); and of all
the Stuarts he is the one about whom it is most difficult to avoid being
sentimental. Mrs. NEPEAN has perhaps just succeeded, but only just; and
we will agree, therefore, to call her style vividly enthusiastic. She is
quite frankly in love with MONMOUTH throughout. That wonderful,
dangerous beauty fascinates her; and who, looking at the delightful
portraits with which the book abounds, is going to blame her or anyone
else for yielding to its charm? One fortunate result of this attitude is
that the Fairy Prince of the seventeenth century lives again in the pages
of this fervent admirer as he wou