The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-09-10
Few Persons
Live Wholly
Spiritually
Lucy Gayheart, Character
by Villa Gather,
Is Example.
BY DOROTHY d. BROMLEY
Times Special Writer


A NUMBER of reviewers have
L N damned Villa Gathers char
acter, Lucy Gayheart, as incredible,
because she's all yearning spirit and
no part flesh While find the book
as a whole far from convincing, I
think there are living and throb-
bing Lucys in this world.
Some few persons there are in
whom spirit IS in the ascendancy.
Just why this should be SO is a myS
terry neither the theologians nor the
scientists have solved. Lucy Gay
heart was one of those persons
whose fate lies in what happens not
to their external selves but to their
feelings and their thoughts.
How often" the author tells us,
she had run out on spring morn
ing into the orchard, down the
street, in pursuit of something she
could not see but knew! 1t was
there, in the breeze. in the sun; it
hid behind the blooming apple
boughs, raced before her through
the neighbors' gardens, but she
could never catch up with it."
It's this type Of girl who is in
mortal danger when she falls in
love-if the love is nothing she can
catch and hold.
Lucy had come from Nebraska in
the early part of this century to
study music in Chicago. There, sit
ting in a concert hall, she had
fallen under the spell of an older
man-artist of note. When by
chance she became his accompanist
the fugitive CLEANS she had of life
on a plane above terra f1rma be-
came an actually to her.
Product of Her Temperament
That she should have been estat-
ically content with the pasSionless
affection which Clement Sebastian
gave her may be hard for a girl of
1885 to understand. But it shouldn't
be, because Lucy was a product of
her imaginative temperament as
much as she was of the vanishing
nineteenth century.
1t must be remembered, too, as
August Forel has said in The Sex
ual Question" that a young wom-
ans erotic instinct is often more
deeply buried than a young mans
although it may be equally as strong
when once it has been aroused.
Inherently a woman is more con-
tent than a man with the senti-
mental or the spiritual, if you will,
rewards of love. These were what
mattered to Lucy.
While she seems possible to me,
Sebastian is no more than a wooden
idol, with nothing for glamour but
a name which authors seem to think
denotes genius and temperament in
musician.
If I had been Lucy of the once
gay heart I should have been cold
to the magic Of this broad-Should-
cred, black-clad man who was dull,
humorless and fed up with life. If
worse came to worst I'd almost pre-
fer Amelia's faithful Dobbin.
For me Sebastian would not have
had the key to any door at all, and
am afraid that his drowning in
Lake Como would not have sent me
into the Other that it did Lucy.
Maybe "Life's the Sweetheart"
After she got the news the poor
child lived in a daze for months at
home. She finally came out of it
when she heard another concert
singer-thiS time a woman She
knew then that she must go back to
the world that Strove after excel
lence.
What it, she said to herself, life
itself were the sweetheart? 1t was
like lover waiting for her in dis
tant citieS-acrosS the sea; drawing
her, enticing her, weaving a spell
over her.
But at this high moment in Lucy's
life the author chooses to round
off her tragedy by drowning her
heroine in skating pond. I'm
sorry, for / should like to have seen
Lucy Gayheart come of age spiritu-
ally, as Roman Hollands Jean
Christophe came of age in that
great book called "The Burning
Bush"
I'm little weary of having my
flctional heroines always in the I'M
happy throeS of love. I should like
to see them assimilate tragic ex-
perience and come out on the other
side with new wisdom and under
standing of life.