Vainglory

In Vainglory, we follow the luckless struggles of Mrs. Shamefoot-that fashionable but discontented London hostess-to get herself immortalized in a stained-glass cathedral window.The scenes are laid out in London drawing rooms and English country houses with the inevitable aroma of a cathedral as indefinable as piety, and such characters:Miss Compostella, an actress, "although so private looking," Lady Listliss, "who had the look of a person who discovered something she ought not to know, probably brought about by merely putting two and two together," Claud Harvester, "who had gone about here and there tinting his personality after the fashion of Venetian glass," Bishop Henedge, "who obtained his preferment solely on account of his beautiful long legs, and the really reassuring way of blowing his nose; to hear him do it was to realize the exact meaning of conviction."Here is the Firbank touch. Here is the deft humor that defies imitation, and here is fancy at its best.