Immoral Ninon

Immoral Ninon

THE IMMORTAL NINON--Cecil Austin --Brentano's ($3.50). Ninon de Lencloslos is now a half forgotten name. Unlike many women of less innate genius, she caused no kingdoms to change hands, married no prince, inspired no desperate armies to an improbable triumph. Her career was merely that of a successful courtesan; but because she secured for her lovers the most distinguished men of her age, because her wit and charm per- mitted her to become simultaneously a notably fashionable as well as a notoriously promiscuous figure, because her refusal to marry was based partly on her unwillingness to accept the conventional limitations of femininity, she has been remembered. Her influence in succeeding generations has been powerful and, in the main, propitious; although today she receives the same reverence that small boys tender to Buffalo Bill, from wretched demimondaines who imagine that their dreary chirpings, their horrid -amusements bear a close resemblance to the more graceful if less temperate indiscretions of the immortal Ninon. The history of her long and erratic career (1615-1705) is well recounted by Author Austin, without evidence of vast research, in his shallow, swift running style. He regards her misdemeanors with a sympa- thetic eye, is careful to point out that her liaisons often cooled to life-long friendships. Well he describes her receiving, in the convent to which she had been temporarily remanded by the Queen of France, a visit from the extraordinary Queen Christina of Sweden. The crowd of shadowy gallants that at all times surrounded her are dexterously manipulated. Ninon's long friendship with M. de Saint-Evremond is made real and splendid, as is that curious moment when the old lady stretched a wrinkled hand to touch, like a godmother who bestows an inheritance of her magic, the small sticky paw of Voltaire, then a monkeyish brat. Ironical, Romantic

CONQUISTADOR. American Fantasia -- Philip Guedalla--Harpers ($3). "Tall, unlikely towers steep suddenly out of the mist . . . group themselves into a city," and Historian Guedalla lands at New York to begin three months' inspection of the U. S. He finds Manhattan "an Unsleeping Beauty . . . ever so slightly undis- criminating." Boston is gracious, Kansas City a slim young sister of New York, and Chicago "the fabled melting pot ... not yet heated to a point at which the elements will fuse." To Mr. Guedalla its mayor, Hon. William Hale Thompson, is "a por- tent" and "a flamboyant emblem." Pleasing in Mr. Guedalla's sight are Iowa, the state universities, the hotels, the promptly-answered telephones, and San Francisco, "tilted city." Most pleasing are U. S. Pullman Porters, to whom, as "charming guardians," he dedicates his book, an occasionally ironical work of affection and romantic wonder.