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Re wes O action. He managed just to miss tak- ing part in all the famous battles, save for the tragic retreat fram Mos- cow, in which he played a role more “for b oragery. Peripheral though his sini have been, he never- theless @ored up a mass of material which was to serve him later in his major works. Through the welter of facts, im- pressions, analyses and quips, one gets a clearly defined and cohesive panoramic view of life during the most fatafis} vere at the Nasoleonic ye wae aa ae Orne era: What is not so clear, despite flashing insights into Beyle’s evolving character, is the alchemy by which the erratic fop, so consumed by triv- ial passions, eanui and: dyspepsia, was transformed into’ the dedicated creator of Julien Soral. , . But the fact remains that the trans- formation did take place. To be sure, fifteen years of furious activity were to pass before he devoted himself exclusively to the novel, the genre in which he was to excel. By then, Beyle —or de Beyle, as he liked to call himself—would become Stendhal. we one WW. . wd oltad Babine we are greatly indented. fo AGoe4rt Sage for making these diaries avail- Oo able in English. The admirable trans- lation, in. swift, contemporary idiom, preserves The “flavor of ‘Beyle’s dry, pithy prose. Everything of value in the 2,000 pages of the original five volumes seema io have been kepi, while the gaps have been filled by inserting Beyle’s letters to hia sister Pauline and to his friends. An ex- cellent introduction and thirteen con- neclive passages between the major portions of the various notebooks provide continuity. It is an impres- sive job, done con amore, and it cannot fail to delight bath the spe- cialist and the general reader. Susan B. Anthony. By Katharine Anthony. _ Doubleday, 521 pp. $6,00. SUSAN Brownell Anthony died in 1906 at the age of 86, after selflessly devoting mote than half a century to the cause of women’s rights. It is one of the many ironies of her strug- gle that American women were not given the voie til! 1920, the hun- dredth anniversary of her birth. Siisan herself voted in the Presi. ~ dential election of 1872—-the straight Republican. ticket, as she wrote her lifelong friend and colleague, Eliza- beth Cady Stanton. In her home city of Rochester, N.Y., she led fif- teen of her followers to the registra- tion office and the ballot box, thus confounding and. embarrassing the country’s political bosses, The good ladies were later arresied and treated like common criminals. Susan suf: fered years of persecution. But the fact remains that she presented American history with a neat and not unamusing fait accompli. _ This Gas but one of countless stir- Ting ingjdents in a career that was prodigious for sheer streniuousness. This home-loving daughter of New England Quakers stumped the length and breadth of the land, brav- ing bandit-infested frontier trails and mountains made impassable by 18 A Heroic Woman Reformer Reviewed by Ann F. Wolfe Contributer, N.Y, Review," “Saturday Review” blizzards, Unlike her friend Mrs. Stanton, Susan was no orator. Yet, she forced herself to address vast audiences here and abroad—once, an audience so hostile that the mod- eraior of the meeting displayed a pistol at the ready. At 86, the in- domitable spinster journeyed to a suffrage "gathering: “When will men do. something besides extend congratulations?” President Theo- dove Rocsevelt had just sent her an anti-climactic birthday greeting. Preposterous as it now seems, opposition to women’s rights was formidable. When Eugens Debs walked along the Terre Haute streets _ with Susan, people jeered at him. Earlier, at a teachers’ convention, a West Point professor opposed Susan’s resolution in favor of coeducation. It constituted, he protested, “the first step... to abolish marriage... a monster of deformity.” Coeducation would lead to slerilization of the human race. The enfranchisement of women was not uncommonly asso- ciated with free love. In such a psy- chological climate, it was a Hereu- lean grind to finance the battle for women's rights. Dollar by dollar, “Times Book pe AT ge mostly seli-earned, Susan personally scraped together the money for each meeting, each trip, each. printing job. “Shoestring heroism” is her biographer’s term for it. Katharine Anthony, no relation, does as handsomely by her feminist namesake: as she has done by Marie Margaret Fuller, Cathe rine the Great and other colorful fig- ures. In her hands, the Susan B. Anthony story adds up to a signifi- cant chapter of Americana, Susan’s labors as bloomer-clad temperance Jeader, abolitionist and suffrage re- former were bound up with vital periods in our history, Both through bleed lies and slavery agitalion, she was involved in the Jehn Brown tragedy. She was caught up in thea horrors of New York’s draft riots, As a friend of Henry Ward Beecher and the Til- tons, she was drawn into the sen- sational developments of Paffaire Beecher. William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Horace Greeley were her associaies. Over and above the reforms that she effected towers her service as an edycator of Ameri- can opinion. Her life was a practical demonstration of the power of faith. : Antoinette, through her anli- a The New Leader ¥