In her account of her husband’s life and work the writer reveals herself no less than in the parts more directly autobiographical. Here lay her deepest concerns and interests. As he came first during the years of her marriage, so he is the most prominent feature of her book.
My Portion is so sincere, straightforward, and genuine that one is sure the glimpses one gets beneath the surface are true ones. A strong, active personality pervades every page. You get the revelation, not by a concentrated, but rather by a pleasantly diffused, light. Mrs. Kohut sums herself up very clearly in her last sentence:
“For a moment, I stop there and say: 'That’s all. That has been my portion.’ But no, life holds even more, and in that more it has been my portion to share, too. Life, above all, is a going on, a never resting. And I see myself always going on, never pausing in the present, always restless, always straining forward for something that has not been but should be.”
Is such a book of service to mankind? Decidedly yes. To the unprejudiced it is a valuable picture of an ever-interesting people. To the prejudiced it can not fail to bring a feeling of respect by its dignity and direct dealing. Mrs. Kohut’s early struggle (was it worth while to be a Jew, frankly and openly, to face social ostracism and hatred) and her very definite stand can not fail to awaken admiration. She was born a Jewess, and took her place in the world as a power for the Jews. She did it very largely for religious reasons. The religious genius of her people was too strong, too vital, to be abandoned, whatever the cost. She gives an insight into the religious aspirations of such men as her father and her husband that is almost Biblical in its qualities.
Her picture of the family life of the finest Jewish types is eminently worth while, did the book contain nothing else. They worked for and with one another despite hardships and varied fates. The tribe still feels its call and its power in the response to that call. All through the book one is made to feel a spirit which must have come out very clearly in one of Mrs. Kohut’s talks. The quotation is long, but it seems to strike the keynote of the book:
“Later I was asked to address the pupils of the fashionable and exclusive Ely School. I could see that these lovely girl pupils giggled when I was presented as a Jewess. I was determined to have my revenge, and in my talk made them so homesick that they wept. Then I told them part of Heine’s Princess Sabbath and the Rabbi of Bacharach, in which the ghetto Jew carries the burden typical of his race through the ages. On Sabbath eve, returning from the synagogue and entering his little home, he finds the table set with snowy cloth and lighted candles and the Sabbath bread, and becomes transformed, not only in figure, but in face. The bowed shoulders straighten, light enters his eyes. Is he not then a Prince of Israel, and is not his home a palace? The girls giggled no more at the mention of 'Jew.’”
What Mrs. Kohut did for those pupils she will do for her readers: give them a better understanding of the Jews and therefore greater respect. And aside from the question of race, the book is of real value because of the wholesome attitude toward life that it constantly presents. It is an oasis amid the “glowing sands” of erotic literature, and affected scribbling where to-day we wander.
Of all the persons who have succeeded in attaining fame, wealth and happiness and who remember with kindliness their years of struggle, obscurity, poverty and misery, few harbour such tenderness in their hearts for their hard years of labour as Kathleen Norris shows in Noon, a little autobiographical sketch. It might as well be the story of all those she has loved and who have contributed to her self-fulfilment. They are numerous and exceptional—are they perhaps embellished and polished by love? Have they perhaps taken on a new aspect with the help of years? Were they really as worthy of admiration and as near perfection as Kathleen Norris makes them? We have no way of knowing, but we can make no mistake about one thing: the mother-theme is the predominant idea throughout the book. It is constantly repeated with different nuances and cadenzas, but it throbs with life and reality. The picture Kathleen Norris draws of her own youth reminds the reader of Miss Louisa Alcott’s Little Women. The atmosphere of the household is not soon forgotten.
They, Mrs. Norris and her husband, suffered the inevitable torments of young people who come to New York, with twenty-five dollars a week for all support, and who expect to take the city by storm and climb to the top of the literary ladder. The way they did it was made easy and beautiful through love, understanding, good friends, a little planning, much effort and mutual concessions. Luck was not always with them, but Kathleen Norris had the good heart not to be discouraged, and she refused to believe that success was not a natural sequence of work. She had much to be thankful for, and she knew it.