Of all the names that come to mind when the time of the Directoire and the years following it are mentioned, none carries so much charm, mystery, fascination and meaning as that of Juliette Récamier. She personifies the early nineteenth century and as years go by motives become clearer, and understanding easier; as the vista of time improves judgment, biographers of Madame Récamier and her circle add to our knowledge and to our appreciation of the period.

The latest of these is Edouard Herriot, recently Prime Minister of France, a man of classical education, who attaches much importance to culture and who has always shown interest in literature. Madame Récamier and Her Friends testifies to his quality. The mere mention of her name suggests a world of wit, of beauty, of romance and of achievement. M. Herriot has neglected none of the facets of her charm. Indeed he dwells upon them at length; yet he gives to the story of her life more significance than a mere record of herself; it reveals the world of the early nineteenth century, and it is through this world that we contemplate and admire his heroine.

As a study of character, M. Herriot’s attempt is not very successful. He has failed to make live one of the most living creatures of history; he has set up a statue which no Pygmalion could call to womanhood; he has modelled the effigy of a woman who remains cold and lifeless despite ample evidence of swarming life within. His biography is neither exclusively descriptive nor analytical. He has followed narrative order, and arranged his facts chronologically, but when it is necessary to the understanding of the heroine, he does not hesitate to anticipate actual events or to pass judgment on later actions. Obviously M. Herriot’s effort was to make Madame Récamier part of a whole; her friends, especially toward the latter part of the book, take the floor constantly and leave her out of our sight and away from our thought. If the author had succeeded in permeating his studies of her followers with her influence; if he had left her enough power to be felt throughout the book, whether or not he was dealing with Madame Récamier herself, his study would have been more successful. But, not himself inspired by her charm, viewing the whole period cold-bloodedly and critically, he has been unable to convey Madame Récamier to his readers. The advantage of such analytical examination is that it facilitates judgment.

The great merit of M. Herriot’s book is its judiciality; he often supports his own conclusions by those of others, qualified and sincere. Indeed, this is one of M. Herriot’s most distinguishing traits. Whenever opinions differ, when historians and biographers do not agree, and when interpretation depends upon personal reactions, the author effaces himself and allows events and facts to speak for themselves. The final word has not yet been said of the controversies that were waged in France after Madame Récamier first dazzled le monde, and M. Herriot does not propose to say it. He has set up the period of the Révolution, of the Directoire, the tentative monarchy, the Empire and second monarchy clearly, concisely, specifically. His style is substantial, unadorned and fluent.

A question of the greatest controversy has always been the non-conjugality of the Récamiers. M. Herriot devotes a fifth of his book to discussion of the reasons that have been suggested to explain it. He calls in physicians and psychologists to bear witness and pass judgment; he keeps his ears opened to gossip and to malicious chatter; and he keeps an eye out for any indiscretion behind the curtains of the alcôve, news of which might have trickled through the walls of time. Discussions of personal relations between husband and wife, post-mortem investigations and attempts at unveiling the mysteries that were savagely guarded in life by their participants are in doubtful taste. M. Herriot seems to uphold the thesis that Madame Récamier was her husband’s daughter—an opinion which is defendable since he defends it—but which is too monstrous to be advanced without irrefutable proofs. The idea does not seem to repel him, and he finds explanations and apologies for it. The few documents which are left that tell us how they lived under the same roof he interprets as he chooses. Yet, there is no suggestion of scandal; he is no bearer of oil to throw upon the smouldering embers of her marital fire; he gives the results of his efforts to elicit testimony, to obtain evidence and to submit it to the world’s jury. All that can be said of the situation which existed between Récamier and his wife was that, after all, it was their affair. The fact that they had no conjugal relation may have been due to her physical condition, or to his, or the result of mutual agreement. The only right the biographer would have had to dwell at length on it would be if it had had such bearing on the life of his heroine that it might be taken as the fulcrum of her reactions and behaviour. It did not, in Madame Récamier’s case, despite M. Herriot’s comment that, “perhaps from this medley of abnormal circumstances in which she had been placed, there remained in her suspicion, a leaning toward discouragement, fear of love, a sort of resigned serenity, and the first germ of the coquetterie for which she was so often reproached by those who did not understand its causes.”

She was no more a coquette than any woman would have been in her position. She was not a beauty, but her charm and her finesse were such as to conquer hearts more effectively than any Juno might have done. She had intellectual powers which raised her far above her sex together with an unusual capacity for fidelity, tenderness and sympathy; she hesitated to wound her friends or to refuse them anything in her power and thus she gave permanency to the affection her charm engendered. She was wealthy, sought after and beloved; but her chief asset was goodness. Her admirers and friends, indeed all she admitted to her heart, were unanimous in praising her goodness, her tireless devotion to their pleasures, her constant preoccupation with their pains.

M. Herriot is at his best when he discusses Madame de Staël’s influence over her young friend Juliette. The ex-Premier is by nature and experience better fitted to understand Madame de Staël than Madame Récamier. Her political ideas were akin to his; her mind had many masculine traits, her culture was deep; her talent admitted; her influence sought. She supplies most of the background of the book, and many of the anecdotes with which fortunately the book is sparingly padded.

Now and then M. Herriot paints himself in the picture and all too rarely expresses his ideas of life and human nature. We like to be assured that “Women who are pretty and who can not but know it are neither flighty nor fanciful; they are always self-contained; a prudent reserve accompanies them even in their weaknesses, which are never unconscious.” When he defends Madame Récamier against possible criticisms, he admits that nowhere in her history is there anything that could be interpreted as unworthy of her situation, or that would justify her reputation as a woman given to intrigue. It can not be denied that she opposed at first to the attacks of her admirers a subtle and world-wise fencing; “but men have perhaps an unjustified tendency to label 'coquetterie’ all that which, in a woman, obstacles their pride, or curbs realisation of their desires.”

Characterisations of the heroine are few, and it is obvious that her latest biographer has not sought to make her stand out particularly among her contemporaries. But she does, despite all; she was the shining light around which all the moths swarmed, dazzled by its brilliancy. Most of the characterisations are quotations from contemporary authors, particularly Benjamin Constant, who portrayed a side of Juliette which not all her admirers knew. Speaking of her conduct toward Lucien Bonaparte, he writes, “She was disturbed by the unhappiness she created, angry at her own disturbance, reviving hope unconsciously by the sole aid of her pity, and destroying it by her carelessness as soon as she had appeased the suffering that her passing pity had engendered.” Chateaubriand felt the truth here expressed and made use of most of Benjamin Constant’s material regarding Madame Récamier, but passed over this particular characterisation of the woman he had loved. Sainte-Beuve, far-sighted as he was and gifted with vision, expressed the same idea: “Lucien loves; he is not spurned, yet he will never be accepted. There is the nuance. It will be the same with all the men who will rush to her, and with all those that will follow.... She would have liked to remain in April, always.”

M. Herriot first modelled his heroine and after pedestalling her, proceeded to walk around his statue and survey it. He remodelled here, shortened there, smoothed this surface and softened that line. He treated it as photographers treat their plates. By giving it ample dimension, he has called attention more to the large lines than to the details. When he finished it he set it up in a vast plaza. This bigness of scope enabled him to group about her, as a rich background, the figures of those who were attached to her chariot with ribands of love and of admiration. The list of them is long; they were all intellectuals. Madame Récamier, though kind to every one, never attracted fools or bores, and her salon, which was the chambre d’accouchée of romantic literature, never sheltered a shallow mind, a cold heart or an uninteresting soul.

Only once was Juliette really so consumed with love that she hoped a divorce would free her—to marry Prince Augustus. But there again her compassionate heart took pity on a husband who had lost his fortune and who, despite many gallant adventures, harboured tender feelings for her. Since she could not have Prince Augustus, she would have no one; and from the episode of Benjamin Constant and of Ballanche, whose love was most pathetic and devoted, to that of Chateaubriand, we see Madame Récamier, anxious to please, glad to be able to do it, avid of admiration which was directed to her mind more than to her body, and willing to make any sacrifice to insure the success of a friend, the accomplishment of a plan, the perpetuation of an idea.

The imprisonment of Madame Récamier, during the few days when she was suspected of plotting against the safety of the State, recalls other names whose possessors did not escape as gracefully as she did, but M. Herriot does not allow himself to be distracted. He is telling the story of Madame Récamier and her friends, and he is not hypnotised by the high spots of the tragedy. Neither discursive nor willing to pass judgment, he is the impartial historian, the unprejudiced biographer. That he admires and loves Madame Récamier there can be no doubt, but that is unavoidable, and his love is neither blind nor impetuous; it is a reasoned love, but it is not so engrossing as to exclude criticism and interpretation.

The merit of Madame Récamier and Her Friends is founded in the soundness of its conception and the brevity of the narrative. There is repetition neither of words nor of effects. Few expressions could be deleted without taking something from the story. It neither offers suggestions nor makes startling discoveries regarding Madame Récamier. To write of Madame Récamier in her own spirit and in that of her time (which she was so influential in moulding) requires more graciousness than M. Herriot gives; it needs less matter-of-fact handling, and it should be softened by a great deal of poetry. Others have so described her and the pictures that they made reveal her idealistically. M. Herriot deals more with the matter than with the spirit, and what his biography lacks in poetry it makes up in reality.

The end of the book, which tells in detail of the death of Chateaubriand, is well rendered. Though filled with emotion, it does not overflow. Madame Récamier had moved into his apartment that she might be near him at the end. Blind and old, she showed herself equal to the demand that was made on her strength and courage; “she was constantly at the bedside of the dying man who seemed to be dragged for some time out of his drowsiness by the beautiful days of June. He was always silent. He could speak no longer; Madame Récamier could see no longer.”

On the day of his death, “every time Madame Récamier, overwhelmed with sadness, left the room, he followed her with his eyes, without calling to her, but with a look of anguish in which was painted the fear of never seeing her again. She was there at the last minute.”

Her death is related with the same simplicity, but the narrative has a touch of the grandiose. M. Herriot was wisely counselled to undertake the biography of Madame Récamier, and his wisdom was to hear and obey.

Rebekah Kohut, a Hungarian Jewess who has lived all her life in America and who has been closely identified with the Jewish intelligentsia of this country, believes that she has a story to tell, and that she should chronicle the emergence of the American Jewess into the communal life of the country. She has a story; it is an interesting one and she tells it convincingly. My Portion is the expression of a personality that has had firm contacts with varied currents of a full and active life. The daughter of a rabbi of liberal views and the wife of another, a distinguished scholar, Mrs. Kohut is widely known to her co-religionists as a woman of heart and determination.

Her story is not a conscious attempt to analyse, dissect, propound, or in any way enlarge upon the “inner workings” of the intellectual and emotional elements that go to make the individual. A sentence at the end of the book conveys the spirit of the writing: “As I turn the leaves of the past, I find myself growing as interested as though some one in a book, not myself, were the active participant.” Marie Bashkirtseff would hardly have said that. She would have been interested because it was herself. Mrs. Dorr would not have said it, and her reason would have been much the same, though she would have expressed it differently. Mrs. Kohut’s book is a self-forgetting autobiography.

Her account of her husband’s life is also the revelation of a personality. This man lives before us, both he and his work, the Aruch Completum. Of this Mrs. Kohut writes:

And Mrs. Kohut was born amid the exactions of scholarship—this was no amateur’s point of view!

In her account of her husband’s life and work the writer reveals herself no less than in the parts more directly autobiographical. Here lay her deepest concerns and interests. As he came first during the years of her marriage, so he is the most prominent feature of her book.

My Portion is so sincere, straightforward, and genuine that one is sure the glimpses one gets beneath the surface are true ones. A strong, active personality pervades every page. You get the revelation, not by a concentrated, but rather by a pleasantly diffused, light. Mrs. Kohut sums herself up very clearly in her last sentence:

Is such a book of service to mankind? Decidedly yes. To the unprejudiced it is a valuable picture of an ever-interesting people. To the prejudiced it can not fail to bring a feeling of respect by its dignity and direct dealing. Mrs. Kohut’s early struggle (was it worth while to be a Jew, frankly and openly, to face social ostracism and hatred) and her very definite stand can not fail to awaken admiration. She was born a Jewess, and took her place in the world as a power for the Jews. She did it very largely for religious reasons. The religious genius of her people was too strong, too vital, to be abandoned, whatever the cost. She gives an insight into the religious aspirations of such men as her father and her husband that is almost Biblical in its qualities.

Her picture of the family life of the finest Jewish types is eminently worth while, did the book contain nothing else. They worked for and with one another despite hardships and varied fates. The tribe still feels its call and its power in the response to that call. All through the book one is made to feel a spirit which must have come out very clearly in one of Mrs. Kohut’s talks. The quotation is long, but it seems to strike the keynote of the book:

What Mrs. Kohut did for those pupils she will do for her readers: give them a better understanding of the Jews and therefore greater respect. And aside from the question of race, the book is of real value because of the wholesome attitude toward life that it constantly presents. It is an oasis amid the “glowing sands” of erotic literature, and affected scribbling where to-day we wander.

Of all the persons who have succeeded in attaining fame, wealth and happiness and who remember with kindliness their years of struggle, obscurity, poverty and misery, few harbour such tenderness in their hearts for their hard years of labour as Kathleen Norris shows in Noon, a little autobiographical sketch. It might as well be the story of all those she has loved and who have contributed to her self-fulfilment. They are numerous and exceptional—are they perhaps embellished and polished by love? Have they perhaps taken on a new aspect with the help of years? Were they really as worthy of admiration and as near perfection as Kathleen Norris makes them? We have no way of knowing, but we can make no mistake about one thing: the mother-theme is the predominant idea throughout the book. It is constantly repeated with different nuances and cadenzas, but it throbs with life and reality. The picture Kathleen Norris draws of her own youth reminds the reader of Miss Louisa Alcott’s Little Women. The atmosphere of the household is not soon forgotten.

They, Mrs. Norris and her husband, suffered the inevitable torments of young people who come to New York, with twenty-five dollars a week for all support, and who expect to take the city by storm and climb to the top of the literary ladder. The way they did it was made easy and beautiful through love, understanding, good friends, a little planning, much effort and mutual concessions. Luck was not always with them, but Kathleen Norris had the good heart not to be discouraged, and she refused to believe that success was not a natural sequence of work. She had much to be thankful for, and she knew it.

Noon may not display either genius or much profundity, but it is like a ray of sunshine; it brightens up a life that too many are tempted to find futile and unjust and it leaves no room for pessimism.

Mrs. Dorr’s A Woman of Fifty is about as introspective as an account of a very active king in a chess game might be. It is, in truth, an account of feminism poured into an autobiographical mould by a clever reader of the trend of the day toward that form of literature. There is much in it that is personal, no doubt, but certainly the motive is in the direction of a “movement” rather than toward an analysis of individual reactions to that movement. If Mrs. Dorr’s purpose had been unmixed self-revelation, I have the feeling she would have done it in a more up-to-the-moment manner; in the hair-splitting, soul-dissecting fashion of the hour.

As biography, I don’t think it holds water. As a summing up of the struggle of women toward recognition as entities, it is vigorous, rather dashing, well put together with a perception of essentials, and valuable as a record.

The writer becomes more likeable as the book progresses, but the reader is satisfied that fate has not made his and her paths cross. At times, he wishes she would either get out of the picture or add something vital to it. She has made a “go,” but at the same time, in trying to write a double header, a so-called personal narrative with a purpose that is far from personal, she has now and then failed; the individual gets in the way of the subject up for discussion—feminism. But the book is readable and this is a quality of which not all biographies can boast.

Chinese ladies have had their day in literature. They have served the same purpose as European women in building or destroying Empires when such existed. Reading about them, we do not anticipate that we shall deepen our knowledge of personality, but we know that we shall be convinced anew of the potency of pulchritude; of the inconstancy of man.

Yang Kuei-Fei, who lived in the eighth century, was one of a quartette of famous beauties whose tradition is still alive in the Celestial Empire; one was known for her beauty, another for her patriotism; a third for her virtue, but Yang Kuei-Fei, who was the most beautiful of all, is known to fame for her artfulness. She held, in her lily-white hand, the fate of the Empire, and, aided by her beauty and her ambition, she climbed to the high position of Emperor’s favourite concubine. That she was not successful in steering the ship of state into a safe harbour may have been partly due to woman’s alleged and accepted incapacity in political matters—but the story of her life as told by Mrs. Shu-Chiung shows plainly that it was largely due to her falling in love with a young Tartar. The Emperor loved her—and his love was of the sort that blinds its victims so completely as to make them absurdly credulous—but he was unable to resist the charm of his former favourite and of the sister of Yang Kuei-Fei. Yang Kuei-Fei was in love with the Emperor, because he was Emperor, and incapable of withstanding the ardent love of the Tartar. Orgies and debauches culminated in tragedy, downfall and death—but as in all Chinese stories there must be a tenuous element of dream, of etherealness, of mysticalness—and it relieves the horror of the story and its pathos.