The Washington times., 1932-03-22
An Old Lady

Yet of all the recent books women have written about
themselves have the warmest feeling for one set down
by dim candeght with goose quill in the city of Ham,
burg two and half centuries ago, by the widow of
Jewish merchant business whose business min
stered to- and did not interfere wlth her career as
mother 1t was not addressed to the taboids or to
publisher it to have been written because Gueckel
of Hamen couldn't suffer her life any longer unless she
wrote her memoirs and it addressed to the Divine
Providence in which she believed
"Thou knowest WELL Almighty God, how pass my days
in trouble and afficton of heart l was long woman
who stood high the esteem of her pous husband who
like the apple of his eye But with his passing,
passed away my treasure and my honor, which all my
days and years lament and bemoan So she writes,
with richness of feeling then proceeds to discuss mar
riages and dowrie business dealings, frauds practced
upon her, successes, honorsa complete life flowing into
the pages which are full aso of human beings of action
humor and sympathy. The only things of which she
seems to know nothing are the emancipation OF women
and the Measures of nervous breakdown the first be-
emancipation happened to to her and she was
unconscious of it, the second because she lived IN time
when other ills were more popular.
A Mystic's Mistress
It isn't of course fair to contrast her record with the
"Souvenrs of Georgette Leblanc, the story of her life
with Maurice Maeterlinck. Yet, here is passage
written by Nine Leblanc long after she too, had lost
her lover, but not by death: =.
"My present is infinitely rich much the more be-
have retained from my past that which made it
and which is mine for namely, my essential right
understand to live suffer- honesty curiosity
and my respect for what I have experienced |
remember with emotion my best moments and i touch
them again above the flow of lfe magnificent human
good and evil but destitute in it's DEGREES and in all
that moves narrowly within the limits of the ego"
Literary Love
This is literature, compared to the simple life of
Guecke and the author knows it because she protests
against literature in the next sentence It was part
literature which prevented marriage between these high
strung and mystical lovers and Nine Leblanc aggrieved
as Mrs. Arnold Bennett aggreved in her story of
life with writer, still say that she might have
gained materially by a marriage, but not spiritually.
Her book is not altogether candid; the story of the
intrigue which threw her out of Peeas lacks fulness.
And the end reads like of the chaotic French
novels of amourhe part where the lovers separate in
cloud of misunderstanding.
Miss Janis Album
For another sharp contrast Elsie Janis has written
$50 Far. So Good" The title itself would strike
Frenchman typicaly American in''its optimism and
in its satisfaction with life. But Frenchman could
ever understand that and actress could
write the story of her first forty three years and vr
tuay advertise the fact that she had lover.
Her book is album of snapshots, than auto
biography; it is record of worries, triumphs,
ances, pleasures, but except when it deals with the
authors mother, it has emotion in it. 1t will be
popular Elsie Janis is popular; and Miss Janis is
popular in Paris, too