Books: Lifer

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MUSEUM—James L. Phelan—Morrow ($2.50).

At the edge of a desolate section of fog-ridden moors, the grey, ancient English prison of Bleakmore was almost impregnable, had harbored so many generations of convicts that it smelled "of the primal basic filth of old humanity, of the things forgotten when the oldest cities began." Although fogs sometimes came down while convicts were working in the quarries and on the moors (blotting out the prison road in an hour), convicts who escaped under cover of it were easily caught because all outlets were guarded. When a young convict asked, "What's the chances for a stoppo [jailbreak] ?" oldtimers replied. "Two million to one . . . ten million to one."

This week this grim stronghold serves as the setting for a memorable first novel in which able descriptions of prison life about evenly balance the confused accounts of the breakdown of a sensitive prisoner. The story of Number 957 (name: Alexander William Mansell; sentence: life servitude; eyes: brown; height: 5 ft. 7 in.; age: 20; ruptures: none), Museum deals less minutely with its central character than with the stones which enclose him. The work of an Irish agitator who spent 14 years in Dartmoor and Parkhurst prisons, was twice sentenced to death, it is written in a sensitive narrative prose, interrupted with passages of Joycean inner-monologs, suggests the emergence of another strong poetic talent in the ranks of young Irish novelists.

Mansell was no revolutionist, but a bewildered weakling with a streak of artistic feeling. He learned his first lesson when two convicts got into a fight about him, quickly accepted the prison social distinction between "mugs" and "right." The mugs included perverts, morons, members of the choir; the others don't "run after the chaplains, nor crawl to governors, nor run with the sissies." Sickened by the perversion he saw all around him, Mansell was helped out by big, tough Bill Weldon, doing a five-year stretch for robbery, who told him that most lifers crack in the first month, drew him into a circle of accomplished thieves, big-time bank robbers, Socialists. This organization centred at the carpenter shop, was respected by the guards, smuggled in tobacco and books, got its members transferred to the best jobs by wire-pulling as elaborate as any in ward politics. But to keep in with the group that made prison life bearable called for more courage than Mansell possessed. For ten months microscopic amounts of dynamite were stolen from the quarry, until enough was collected for a sizeable explosion. The plan—hinging on bribery of guards and perfect timing—was for Mansell presumably to be buried under rock, while he escaped on a truck scheduled to pass at the moment. The explosion went off on schedule, the truck passed on time, but Mansell got cold feet at the last moment, was cursed by a Socialist who escaped in his place. From then on, Mansell's dissolution was a study in descending discords. Although readers will be impressed by the authenticity of his story, they are apt to finish it with something of the same relief they might feel at getting out of jail themselves.