SOURCE: “Poor Relations,” in New Republic, Vol. 21, No. 272, February 18, 1920, p. 362.

In the following review, West traces Mackenzie's improvement as an author and describes Poor Relations as “a coherent and beautiful farce.”

It was not that one really disliked Mr. Compton Mackenzie's previous books. But they were so much more like expensive cushions than like books that it seemed a social solecism, like drinking out of a finger-bowl, to be reading what was so obviously meant to be sat on. They appeared not to be created out of separate sweatings of the spirit, as books should be, but to be made up from bales of rich materials, gleaming with stiff inorganic gorgeousness, which were stored in Mr. Mackenzie's brain as gold tissue and the like might be stored in a draper's warehouse. Plumply written descriptions of scenery lay embedded in the glittering general texture even as padded fruits on...