". . . No, Nor Woman Neither"
Such Women are Dangerous. By Harold Heathen. (Hutehin.
son. 10e. 6d. ) 'Cora Pearl, Courtesan. By Baroness von Hutton. (Davies. 5s.)
Passion. By Robert Neumann. (Hutehasion. 6s.)
Timm three books should be in the hands of every misogynist, for They contain what must be a record assemblage of tho- roughly nasty women. Cora Pearl had a charm which does not weather cold print al' do her avarice and complete lack of 'scruple. The" Six Literary Marriages" which Herr Neumann lumps together as Passion muster perhaps one decent human being among them ; and the thirty heroines of Such Women ore Dangerous are as pretty a collection of murderesses as one could wish to avoid.
What Dr. Bearden thinks of women I hate to imagine. He generalizes slashingly, is steadily witty, sometimes funny, and 'always acute. In brevity at least he is the soul of wit, and his tales are superbly vivid. His attitude is one of pseudo. tolerant irony : here, for example, is Amy Dugan in her over- crowded Home for Elderly Folk :
"The whole situation tog most unsatisfactory ; but Amy's feminine clear-sightedness enabled her at once to hit upon a solution. These dilatory old souls must be hurried up a little. Amy set herself at once to attend to this. She purchased a -quantity of arsenic in the village on the pretext that the Rome was overrun with rate; and in a very short time what had formerly been a gamble on the part of the institution was raised to the status of a trustee investment."
There is murder for money, murder for love, murder for hate, and murder for the sheer joy of murdering : every case, from Amy Dugan to Ruth Snyder and the Sisters Flannagan, neatly and professionally summarized. This is no bedside book, but it is just the thing for those who like a good murder on a Sunday afternoon.
Cora Pearl tins No. I of the new "Sinners' Library" all to herself, and it is scarcely enough for her surprising .life and personality. She rose from a squalid betrayal in London to become the most expensive luxury of the Second Empire. She was raucous, blasphemous, avaricious and cruel, and she could have any man she chose. She moves vividly among the masks and crinolines and tasteless extravagances of that tinsel world, and dies at last in well-earned misery. It is a snore', if not an edifying tale. Baroness von Rotten tells it with enjoyment and adroit skirting of thin ice, and with such accuracy as is possible or necesserY. The most startling mis- print is in the last sentence, and the .most startling mixed .-metaphor . the Emperor, to whom his mother's ay-
, blown reputation was a continual itch."
- By shock tactics, Herr Neumann sets out to prove that • authors are human, if iaot sub-human, and at least as good ..copy for a horrifying full-page feature as any Cora Pearl or Mrs. Maybrick. His heavy-ironic, tong-distance flights of - imagination are not unlike Dr. Dearden's, except that they do not succeed. The marriages upon which he displays informa- tion concerned Shelley, Strindberg, Dostoievslcy, Goethe, Byron and Balzac. One study," Dictation at Dostoievsky's1' As an admirable piece of imaginative biography, and even allows the young Anna Grigoryevna Snitkin several good qualities. " Lord Byron plays Lord Byron" and "Mr. P. B. Shelley is 'Confronted with the Seriousness of Life "prove hoir little fidelity to fact need have to do with truth to life. Vigo- rous and striking as are Herr Neumann's imaginings, I fail to see who will benefit much by them—except, of course, those who are already thoroughly out rif temper with the human
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