Kelwyn, post-graduate lecturer on historical sociology, was rather theoretical than practical. Mrs Kelwyn was conventionally practical, always eager, theoretically, to be fair and generous, but rather fussy, withal; and both were typically New England. They rented an abandoned farm, with one of their “family” houses, of the Shakers for a year, had a farmer and his wife put in charge, and arranged to spend their vacation there. The farmers were shiftless and ignorant. In their world and the Kelwyn’s there was no common meeting ground and the latter’s summer turned out a tragicomedy. The situation was somewhat saved by their cousin, Parthenope Brook, and a stray teacher, a poetic dreamer and idealist and experimenter with life. His experiments even included the kitchen and the cooking of meals in which Parthenope joined him with the inevitable result.
+ Booklist 17:116 D ’20
“Nowhere has Mr Howells shown more clearly his possession of the dual powers of the observer and the chronicler. Many novelists have either the one power or the other. Few possess them both equally, and Mr Howells is one of the few.” E. F. E.
+ Boston Transcript p4 S 29 ’20 1500w
“It must be admitted that ‘The vacation of the Kelwyns’ represents Mr Howells in his most uninteresting phase.” F. E. H.
− + Freeman 2:478 Ja 26 ’21 180w
“About this trivial theme play all the warmth and grace and gentleness which marked the later Howells.” C. V. D.
+ Nation 111:510 N 3 ’20 180w
“The trouble with ‘The vacation of the Kelwyns’ is that it makes too little out of the situation presented. The implications of the story hang at loose ends. Worse, the movements of the characters thus tangled in a web of intangible difficulties are not only too often trivial in themselves but they lack the symbolical significance which might have carried the observer into larger regions of reflection.” Carl Van Doren