In the Book and Literary World

Solomon, My Son! By John Erskine. 301 pp. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. $2.50.

As Those acquainted with the novels of John Erskine may readily guess, in this new book he has returned to that type of theme and manner which distinguished his “Private Life of Helen of Troy” and his “Adam and Eve.” If the intervening, rather dull, modern novels have served no other purpose, they have at least given him a breathing spell in which to refresh his style and pungent wit. For it becomes apparent in the early pages of “Solomon, My Son!” that it is the equal of the best of Erskine’s historical burlesques.

The main outlines of this story derive of course from the Bible account of the reign of Solomon, but the details of action have originated entirely in Erskine’s fanciful and clever mind. The archaeological discoveries in Palestine during the last five years have intensified interest in the fashion in which the Hebrews lived in the time of the Kings. Erskine presents us with a highly realistic and probable picture. He shows that the Hebrews were a race of warriors, farmers and artisans relatively uncivilized compared to their neighbors in Egypt and Tyre. The merchants among them were mostly foreigners, and trade was abhorred as degrading.

For A King they would have a strong man, a great warrior, as David was. When, after a round robin of palace intrigues, Solomon is designated as the successor of his illustrious father, there is a #reat deal of muttering and dissent. Here is a weak, almost beardless youth, a poet and dreamer, a puppet in the hands of his scheming mother, Bathsheba. (Had she not arranged that David should see her #hing on the housetop, and thus won herself a royal spouse?) And, what was a more immediate misfortune to the populace, Solomon was a victim of the wiles of neighboring rulers.

For no sooner had David died, than King Hiram of Tyre, a noted center of commerce, sent his prize salesman (who bore a suspicious resemblance to the king) to interview Solomon and to remind him of his father’s project, the building of a temple. Solomon immediately sees himself as the tool of a high destiny, and not only confirms his father’s suggestions, but doubles the orders for materials and the dimensions of the building. There is, however, labor trouble in Jerusalem, and in order to ease the payments of the necessary taxes, Solomon gives ear to the counsel of the leading agitator, Jereboam. In order that all the fruits of the enterprise shall not go to foreigners, it is stipulated that a Hebrew worker shall be employed side by side with every imported Tyrian artisan, even to the cutting ### cedars on Lebanon.

Meanwhile the dreamy, poetically inclined youth has become involved with women. The first is Abishag, a skilled native courtesan. The second in Magsala, the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, whom Bathsheba has invited to become Solomon’s bride, and whom he cannot well refuse because of political consequences. Yet political consequences there are, for Jereboam agitates against the foreign queen, and the heavy taxes that have to be imposed for her luxurious maintenance. In truth, however, Magsala is the only one able to beat some practical sense into Solomon’s head; and it is she who achieves a liquidation of the fantastic debts owing to the king of Tyre.

The third woman is the Queen of Sheba, a lovely dusky monarch fleeing the bankruptcy of her kingdom. Attracted to Jerusalem by rumors of Solomon’s wealth, she was quickly disillusioned upon her arrival by the spectacle of unemployment, strikes and riots. So she turns her attention upon the Tyrian salesman, and lures him off to the desert with her, thus inadvertently helping Solomon to reduce the national debt. At the close of the book Solomon has acquired a little of the wisdom for which he later became famous, and a good deal of experience in handling radical troublemakers. Mr. Erskine does not introduce his thousand wives, stating that he prefers quality to quantity, and that the report was doubtlessly exaggerated anyway.

Although Mr. Erskine handles the solemn personages of history with flippand fingers, he somehow manages to avoid any objectionable vilifications of the institutions for which they stand. The reader may be assured that there is no aspersion of things sacred to the Jews in the telling of this story of the building of the temple. In fact he is rather shrewd in getting at the nature and habits and attitudes of these biblical Jews, as for instance when Hiram of Tyre is made to say, “They’re never going to pay that debt: They don’t like it, and what they don’t like they think is an affliction.” You will be hard put to find pleasanter hammock reading for lazy summer days than “Solomon, My Son!”