ave read with the
peculiar delight of discovery _The Pilgrim of a Smile_ are astonished to
learn that its author is, properly speaking, an engineer. Norman Davey,
born in 1888 (Cambridge 1908-10) is the son of Henry Davey, an engineer of
eminence. After taking honours in chemistry and physics, Norman Davey
travelled in America (1911), particularly in Virginia and Carolina. Then
he went to serve as an apprentice in engineering work in the North of
England and to study in the University of Montpellier in France.

His first book was _The Gas Turbine_, published in London and now a
classic on its subject. In the four years preceding the war he contributed
articles on thermodynamics to scientific papers. It is only honest to add
that at the same time he contributed to Punch and Life--chiefly verse.

After the war he had a book of verse published in England and followed it
with _The Pilgrim of a Smile_. He has travelled a good deal in Spain,
Italy, Sweden, and his hobby is book collecting. This is all very well;
and it explains how he could provide the necessary atmosphere for that
laughable story of Monte Carlo, _Guinea Girl_; but one is scarcely
prepared for _The Pilgrim of a Smile_ by those preliminaries in
thermodynamics--or in Punch. The story of the man who did not ask the
Sphinx for love or fame or money but for the reason of her smile is one of
the most intelligible of the gestures characteristic of literature since
the war.

=iii=

The gesture as such is perhaps most definitely recognised in the charming
book by John Dos Passos, _Rosinante to the Road Again_. This, indeed, is
the story of a gesture and a quest for it. The gesture is that of Castile,
defined in the opening chapter in some memorable words exchanged by
Telemachus and his friend Lyaeus:

"'It's the gesture that's so overpowering; don't you feel it in your arms?
Something sudden and tremendously muscular.'

"'When Belmonte turned his back suddenly on the bull and walked away
dragging the red cloak on the ground behind him I felt it,' said Lyaeus.

"'That gesture, a yellow flame against maroon and purple cadences ... an
instant swagger of defiance in the midst of a litany to death the
all-powerful. That is Spain ... Castile at any rate.'

"'Is "swagger" the right word?'

"'Find a better!'

"'For the gesture a mediaeval knight made when he threw his mailed glove at
his enemy's feet or a rose in his lady's window, that a mule-driver makes
when he