Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

📕 Ardis Hall - the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis - this is the leitmotiv rippling through ADA, an ample and delightful chronicle, whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America-for are not American childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravellas, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams? The protagonist, a scion of one of America's most illustrious and opulent families, is Dr Van Veen, son of Baron 'Demon' i Veen, that memorable Manhattan and Reno figure. The end of an extraordinary epoch coincides with Van's no less extraordinary boyhood. Nothing in world literature, save maybe Count Tolstoy's reminiscences, can vie in pure joyousness and Arcadian innocence with the 'Ardis' part of the book. On the fabulous country estate of his art-collecting uncle, Daniel Veen, married to the descendant of a Russian princely race, an ardent childhood romance develops in a series of fascinating scenes between Van and pretty Ada, a truly unusual gamine, daughter of Marina, Daniel's stage-struck wife. That the relationship is not simply dangerous cousinage but possesses an aspect prohibited by law is hinted in the very first pages. In spite of the many intricacies of plot and psychology, the story proceeds at a spanking pace. Before we can pause to take breath and quietly survey the new surroundings into which the writer's magic carpet has, as it were, spilled us, another attractive girl, Lucette Veen, Marina's younger daughter, has also been swept off her feet by Van,...