GRAMERCY PARK

The wife of the literary critic, Van Wyck Brooks, writes of her childhood and girlhood spent near Gramercy Park in New York City and East Hampton and of later trips to Europe in a pleasant memoir. The accent of her background was in the arts, for her father, a distinguished nose and throat specialist, had many famous singers and actors among his patients while her mother was artistic rather than social-minded and so directed her daughter who first studied music and later dramatic decor. Her account of her youth in a late Victorial period is an agreeable picture of a hard-working, somewhat plain girl who developed into a cultivated woman. The appeal here is for that circle which likes its recall well-bred and derived from the world of culture.