THESE MODERNS : SOME PARISIAN CLOSE-UPS By F. Ribadeau Dumas
Since this collection of sketches and " pen-portraits " comes with an introduction from no less a writer than Miss Dorothy Richardson, we must do our best to find in it the merit she proclaims. " Artists," she tells us, " life's irregulars, vary from race to race. There is in the French a reassuring con- sistency. The French author would seem to live more ' artistically ' than do most Britons of the same persuasion. And it is not quite that he desires to do so, deliberately dramatizes his life. It is a fundamental difference of tone." M. Ribadeau Dumas is resolved that drama shall not be lacking. M. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle he calls " Impetuosity, froth of youth of a young god escaped from the Hell of the War to fall into the Hell of the senses." M. Henry de Monther- lant is " the new Chateaubriand, the new Barnes, the im- petuous Caesarian, child of the Sun and of Mithra, the matador overthrown but yesterday in the arena." The portrait of Colette, which begins well, tails off into vague chit- chat and a fifth-hand epigram of M. Reboux. With M. Maurois the author is happier—but is his art of biography only " a system of minute documentation " ? The best portraits are those of M. Duhamel and Maurice Dekobra. M. Payen's caricatures, with their expressive nervous line, are the best part of These Moderns. (Humphrey Toulmin. 7s. 6d.).
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