RACHEL THE IMMORTAL
By Bernard Falk
Mr. Bernard Falk has followed up his biographies of Adah Menken and of himself with one of the great French actress Rachel (Hutchinson, 18s.). It is an improvement on them in many respects, and not least in its title—Rachel the Immortal being neither so pretentious nor so vulgar as Ile Laughed in Fleet Street and The Naked Lady. The book would have been better than it is if Mr. Falk could have controlled his tendency to moralise in an unhelpful way and had eliminated some rather elephantine flippancy, but it would be unfortunate if shortcomings in its manner should cause to be overlooked Mr. Falk's few valuable discoveries. The most notable of them is of a curious pact which Rachel made just before her death with her sister Sarah, with the object of evading the Laws of Inheritance. Rachel intended to bequeath to her two illegitimate sons a greater portion of her estate than was legally permissible. To achieve this, she handed over to Sarah bonds bringing in interest of about 0,000 francs a year, with an understanding that Sarah should have the interest for life, but that at her death the capital sum' should revert to her sons. Sarah, who was more or less constitu- tionally incapable of keeping any such bargain, accepted the money gratefully but omitted to make the stipulated will, with the result that after her death Rachel's sons had to go to law to recover the mL _icy. This is Mr. Falk's most valuable discovery, but he has succeeded in throwing new light on a number of other disputed points—among them the identifica- tion of another of Rachel's known but unrecognised lovers:
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