“The book is frankly personal, emphasizes personalities, and in its generous hero- and heroine-worship sometimes fails to do justice to the less spectacular phases of the collective effort that made possible the achievements recorded.” J. D. Spaeth
+ − Survey 45:72 O 9 ’20 1000w + The Times [London] Lit Sup p792 D 2 ’20 950w
MAYRAN, CAMILLE. Story of Gotton Connixloo, followed by Forgotten; tr. by Van Wyck Brooks. (Library of French fiction) *$2 Dutton
20–11072
“Although this series of translations from the French is described by the publishers as ‘illustrating the life and manners of modern France,’ the first of the two exquisite tales which make up the present volume has to do, not with France, but with Flanders. It relates the history of the bellringer’s motherless daughter, christened Marguerite, but always called Gotton Connixloo, telling of her pathetic childhood, into which there entered few caresses and little play, and of her love for the lame, red-haired smith, Luke Heemskerck, who for her sake deserted his shrewish wife and five little children. Very delicately, very surely, does the author trace the slow development of remorse and of that consciousness of sin which at last, when the German inundation swept over the countryside, caused Gotton to become a martyr, ransoming by her sacrifice the lives of all those in the village. ‘Forgotten,’ the second of the two tales, is also a story of the German invasion, but a story of a very different kind, and of a very different class of people.”—N Y Times
“The first story is told with a penetrating appreciation of lowly life. The appeal of both stories is to those who appreciate artistic workmanship.”
+ Booklist 17:72 N ’20
“As delicate as two brooches, they are as appealing to the heart as they are fragile to the eye. Set in English by Van Wyck Brooks they constitute an unusual ornament to the library of Franco-American literature.”
+ Dial 70:230 F ’21 60w