The Indianapolis journal., 1903-09-14
SOME OF THE new BOOKS
The Silver Poppy.

Viewed as fanciful exposition of the
oblique emotions of existence in an urban
Bohemia, Arthur Stringer's new book. 1.-The
Silver Poppy" is a success. 1t is not health
ful fiction, to be absorbed by 'the general
heart of man." no more than a book on
pathology is to be read by the laity. After
reading many books of this sort it seems to
reviewer that the art of love as portrayed
in idealistic romances is degenerating into
the science of love as portrayed by Tostoi,
Gorky, De Maupassant and many of the
European writers-love dissected, analyzed
and left in scattered fragments or put to-
gether again in whatever manner the writer
may elect. Such novel is something like a
solentihC treatise put into artistic form.
The question is, do not writer's overdo their
pictures on the side of abnormal phenomena
attending the manifestations of love and So
cial life? But the philosophers have de-
tended it ana the artists have yielded-or
nave the philosophers merely formulated
tne sense or the artists this subject?
Spencer says: 1.-THE attraction of the sexes
remains the center around which every
thing revolves; nothing exists but through
II; character, imagination, vanity, imta-
ton. fashion, time, place and many other
individual circumstances or social infiu-
ences give to love-or emotion or passion
the novelist to describe all it's various
shapes. and one which they have not failed
to perform This is all-inclusive and de-
tends the subject matter of all fiction,
whether repulsvely real in its matter or
attractively real or idealistic.
Cordelia Vaughan, a young Kentucky girl,
comes to New York, writes fiction which she
does not write. In short, she is a literary
thief. Through happy chance for her, she
comes at different times into possession of
three different manuscripts of various au-
thorshlp which are published under her
name. She is ambitious for applause, and
lngeniously defends her thefts to herself.
She is an extremely weak, abnormal type
or woman, criminal type, almost.
whose tendencies are repressed by the
circumstances of her environment. Her
appearance as described by the author
enables one to place her In a psychological
pigeonhole. ''Hartleys first impression of
Cordelia Vaughan was a happy confusion
of yellows. Her hair, luxuriant and heavily
massed on the small head, was a sort of
tawny gold. Her skin, which had more
than once been described as old ivory
in truth neither ivory nor olive, but almost
a pale, rose.like yellow. with a transfusing
warmth to its pallor, as though the lights
OF an open fire were playing upon 1T. The
eyes themselves seemed at times a soft
}ade-ase sad s, ye,iowish green; muihed, unsatis1
tragedy. shading off in strong lights to a
sea gray, by lamplight showing a deep
violet. In moments of excitement they were
slightly phosphOrescent, glowing with an
animal-like luminosity that temporarily re-
lieved and ilinmined the ascetically cold
chiseling of the face itself" She is "a SUBJ
Ject ratner dttrdctlVe as a Color STUDY IOr
poster girl, but unattractive in what one
feels Of her clammy, dispassionate emotion
as the heroine of a novel. She is bit of
unreal realism. John Hartley. young
Oxonian, falls in love with this blood
sucker, this yellow vampire, and the inter-
play of their emotions upon another
and the contingent pursuit of their ambi-
tions form the body of the story. The style
of the book Is consistent with the theme,
and not a great deal can be said in praise
of either. The best of the book is the
handling of the conversation, which is gen.
orally bright and oftentimes attractively
epigrammatic without being stilted. d. APP
pleton & Co., New York. w. A. w.