POWERS OF ATTORNEY

This proceeds from the same venue- the law- as an earlier book (namely The Great World and Timothy Colt), and, under the segis of a staid and successful firm, Tower, Tilney & Webb, assembles a variety of episodes dealing with its personnel and patrons, procedure and protocol. There's the testy senior partner, Clitus Tilney; the romance of his daughter with a socially undesirable younger member (these distinctions are never really approved of but somehow they keep coming up); an eccentric's will; the obsolescence of an old partner; two divorce actions and one customer's yacht; etc., etc. in what amounts to a varied portfolio. At its best, it is decorous entertainment, dusted with references to Newport, the Social Register, Harvard. But somehow and sometimes all this discreet bonhomie is almost too well-behaved to be amusing. Incidental.