WILLIAM TROY.
Book Reviews
The Chronicles of Rodriguez. By Lord Dunsany. (G. P. Putnam’s Sons.)
“Be always drunken!” said Charles Baudelaire. “Be always and forever drunken—with wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose.” Our best of all possible worlds has, indeed, run aground on evil days since then. To become drunken by any of the means which Baudelaire suggests, is to arouse comment, if not suspicion, in the year nineteen twenty-two.
Only one last refuge is left to those who would be always and forever drunken—the tales of Lord Dunsany. And, in his latest book, this literary Bacchus has not failed us. For “The Chronicles of Rodriguez” are apt to make all lovers of beauty in words very drunken—as drunken as men used to grow in Merry England who drank too deeply of the magic rymes of Spenser.
His real name was Rodriguez Trinidad Fernandez Concepcion Henrique Maria—and, before the tale is done, even that stupendous name has grown in stature by the breadth of a title or two, such is the magic warmth of Golden Spain. His father, the old Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez, from whose heights Angelico swore he saw Valladolid once; his father was grieved, as he lay dying, to see that Rodriguez’s younger brother had grown to manhood dull and clever, one on whom those traits that women love had not been bestowed by God. And so, knowing that the poor fellow could gain nothing for himself, since women are the arbiters of all things here on earth, and for aught he knew hereafter, the old Lord gave him all his lands and goods, except only his ancient Castilian sword. This he gave to Rodriguez, his eldest son, in the grand manner that they had at that time in Spain, saying, “I leave you, my son, well content that you have the two accomplishments that are most needful in a Christian man, skill with the sword and a way with the mandolin.” Then he gathered up his strength for the last time and looked at his son. “The sword to the wars,” he said. “The mandolin to the balconies.”
And now, since no one can hear of such a tale and rest content until they know what further magic is in store, I leave you all, like the old Lord, content that you will go to seek the wars and the balconies—which is the business of a book reviewer.
L. S. G.