Flight Motif

"WE are all escapers, men, women, and children. Almost everything we do, except the supreme acts of higher enjoyment, which partake of higher reality, are escapes in some manner or degree." With this metaphysical prologue Francis Yeats-Brown, author of "Tales of a Bengal Lancer", introduces a strange procession of characters. Plucked from the dusty corners of history by his sympathetic hand, they have one thing in common. Each has escaped from something or somebody, and each has a tale to tell. The result is a diverting hodgepodge of narrative.

Since calibre of adventure rather than fluidity of style has been the criterion for the excerpts chosen, a corresponding absence of uniform literary merit calls forth neither surprise nor complaint. Side by side with such brilliant prose as that in which De Quincey illumined the mysteries of laudanum, we find the halting periods of Kavanaugh, whose bravery saved the British garrison at Lucknow. The biblical account of the exodus from Egypt offers strange contrast, both in time and in method of approach, to the war diary of a flighty young aviator. In lesser vein are the colorful tales of spies, condemnations, countermands in the nick of time, secret sleigh journeys on the Baltic ice, wolves, and various other escapes from famine, sword and fire.

Breaks from prison, both righteous and illegitimate, are not lacking to this volume. Jack Sheppard, an 18th century felon of note, laughed at locksmiths and was the beadle's despair of his time. His uncanny dexterity at picking his way out of gaol not only cheated the gibbet many times but made him a popular hero. Latude, whom a whim of Madame la Pompadour kept thirty-five years fast incarcerated in the Bastille, retained his sanity by taming rats and spiders in his cell. Then there is the whimsical tale of Benvenuto Cellini and the mad constable of St. Angelo.

Obviously this sort of compendium is unsatisfactory from the reviewer's point of view, since it yields up no ponderous cosmology, no bone of contention with which he may take issue. Accepted for what it is, however, the book makes excellent fire-side reading. Most of the narratives are well chosen, and in many cases they have the ring of truth. In selecting them, Yeats-Brown has wisely avoided the glossy newness of the recent past, and, by temperate use of the editorial pencil, has preserved that quaintness of style which lends glamour to the adventurers of another day.