The New York herald., 1922-02-26
French
Whitrnan's "SaCrifiCe"

fice," Is far removed from anything
of the usual or expected in characters
or situations. 1t is an attempt to write
out, in his medium of tonic prose, a
conception poetical and imaginative
In the highest degree, a conception
Of beauty as fantastic, in way, as
any flight of Moore or Byron.
Throughout the book his obsession
with beauty, in its myriad manifesto
tions, rises continually like mist
before the readers eyes, and it en-
velops the whole purpose and action
Of the story.
His heroine is the offspring of a
pair Of overcivilized, disillusioned
neurasthenics whose cultivation, fas-
tidiously sensitive emotions and
learning curdled into a tangle Of
superstitions have been transmitted
to the girl. The father and mother
are swept out of this life in which
they found little but hardship, in
spite Of more money than they could
spend, in railway accident, when
their daughter, Lila, is six years old.
The child grows to womanhood in
the home of her maiden aunt, Miss
Balbian, a fading leaf on a stately
tree. 1t may be imagined that al
most anything might happen to such
a girl; almost everything did.
Mr.. Whitman's story is told with
tropical luxuriance of language. He
has quite as many long words as
short ones in his pack, yet few read
ers will find this disturbing; the
richness Of his vocabulary is a nat
ural complement for the enormous
detail of his descriptive passages;
when he tells us about the minutia
Of a woman's dress or the furniture
and pictures and ornaments in a
drawing room, or the feel and smell
and sands In the African jungle, or
the way the fiercest African savages
fight and the weapons they use, he
Is clearly a disciple of F1aubert; the
details Of the commissary in Hanni-
balls army Tin "Salammbo'D are
scarcely more extraordinary, even if
fas they say Flaubert did spend
seven years in studying up the rec
ords. Mr.. Whitman may not be ac-
curate, but he convinces you of his
accuracy. (Some learned critic said
~Kim"-that wonderful tapestry Of
India!-was not accurate, but most
readers thought it was accurate
enough for them). On the other
hand. Mr.. Whitman can make his
catastrophes-and he has plenty Of
them-as swift and arrowy as Maui
PEASANTS. His narrative runs strong
and steady as river. with rapids in
some places. and again broadening
out into sluggish lagoons. out of
which the reader is swept by the in
eyitable unexpected incident.
Lila Delivers father and mother,
in their home In New York, had
been protected against all contact
with ugliness. all ignoble influences.
all sources Of unhappiness except
themselves. It was stately old house
for two hundred years the Delli-
vers and the Balbians had been
stately families-a house always
rather dim, it's shadows agleam with
richness, and here and there a beam
of light Illuminating some flawless.
precious object. 1t was a house of
silent servants, of faces imprinted
with gracious WEAKNESS, Of beauti-
fully modulated low voices, of noble
reticence. Yet all the while the place
quivered from secret transports of
anguish. In this atmosphere Lila,
ment on which were recorded, to be
ultimately reproduced, original vi
brations too subtle for appreciation
by the five senses"
In her aunt's old house, where
medieval chalices, Golfers covered
with vellum and incrusted with
jewels, and a few authenticated
paintings from that period when the
men Of Italy. at a breath of inspira-
ton from the Athenian Tomb, per-
ceived instead of the glamour of a
celestial paradise the gorgeousness
of this world" were set among the