New-York tribune., 1903-04-11
4 STR4NGE CHILDHOOD.
"reminiscences of Juliette Adam.
THE ROMANCE OF MY CHILDHOOD MD
YOUTH BY Nine Edmond Adam tJuliette
I,amberl i2rno pp Se9. d. Appleton & Co

THE ROMANCE OF MY CHILDHOOD MD
YOUTH. BY Nine Edmond Aaam 'I3lie''' Sn
Lambert 12mo, PIP. Ss9 D. Appleloh ~ "
81 simply note a state of mind and ways OF
life" says Nine. Adam. in her preface: and her
"reminiscences of a bourgeois household in nine
teenth century France are entertaining enough
TO win pardon for something Of over elaboration
in treatment Perhaps the romance in the
title is intended to explain the amazing feats OF
memory which enable the author to repeat with
particularly the conversations heard IN her
tenderest years, and We may concede that they
lend vigor and glow to her story That story
moves in an uproar. Little Juliette. the only
daughter of an only daughter was born into
nest of irreconcilable temperaments, tempers
and convictions, and storm was generally
lowering on the horizon. Her mother was a
woman possessed Of a morbid jealousy OF
nature. jealousy so great that it became a dis
ease; her father generous. fanaucal' un-
practical dreamer worshipper of Saint-Just-
one who In the pursuit Of his theories would
have upset everything. The grandmother who
brought up the little girl was singular woman.
a recluse with an extraordinary love for advent
ure "a horror for preordained and enforced
existence" and "a constant and imperious appe-
tite for written or enacted romance" The old
grandfather was a surgeon in the wars OF the
first Emperor. and Imperialist of the most
ardent sort. With Orleanist wife and
Jacobite son-in-law il may be imagined that the
political talks In DR.. Serons house were not
placid ones. There were scenes Of the most
passionate II can we'll remember my fright at
the first 1 Witnessed writes the doctors grand
daughter. II screamed and sobbed. but none
of them heard me. One day q was about four
five years old) climbed upon the table and
put one foot in a dish and with the other l
ratified the glasses and plates. The discus
sion or rather the quarrel ceased Immediately
as by a miracle my grandfather, grandmother
and father being convulsed with laughter
Not only concerning politics did these fiery
Latins quarrel; they were continually perform
ing family dramas" all violence and recrimi-
nation, and the child often object but not
q participant But If she did not take per-
sonaI share in the disputes Of her elders, she
put on the stage numerous little dramas OF her
own, and by the time she was ten years old
ruled everybody in her grandfathers house with
unquestioned severity. These chapters throw
an amusing light on the slavish worship Of chill
dren to be observed among the French bour-
geoisie. Juliette Lamber. if we may believe her
own tale was an absurdly spoiled child whose
precocity would have been painful il 1t had not
been ridiculous. It not a wise training,
and it sent out into the world most intense.
tempestuous and Stubborn if clever young
woman.
The volume has some slight and curious
slimpses of rural French customs in the first
half of the last century. "One cannot imagine
nowadays" writes Nine. Adam. how little
they washed themselves in our Picardy in The
wear of grace 1889. They soaped their faces
only on Sundays in the kitchen and their hands
every morning.
NV grandfather whom the barber Lacrosse
shaved every morning in the drawing room at
dawn wiped his face with the towel under ms
chin when it was united, and that was all ana
vet he looked clean, his white craVat ana MS
pleated shirt front We're always perfectly mn
rnaculate spotted over only with snuH, Whlch
he would knock off with graceful little gestures
with his finger and thumb As to my grand,
mother she was always handsomely dressed
and had her hair arranged every day by the
barber Lafosse. In the rooms of the hotels or
P;cardy which had been occupied by travellers,
cobwebs would be found at the bottom Of the
water tug long after the. epoch of which speak.
The book might have been condensed with ad-
vantage by the omission of much that is trivial
1t leaves its heroine suffering in an unhappy
marriage arranged for her in the French fashion
bv her romantic and i'll judging grandmother
It was with the opening of her literary life that
Juljette began to be interesting to her con-
,aTonoraries of the wider world, and it is to her
later records to be presented in another vol
u7na that her readers will turn with a lively
curiosity.