◆ SpookStack

O action. He managed just to miss tak- ing part in all the famous battles, save for the tragic retreat from Mos- cow, in which he played a role more STENDHAL conruom - conspicyous for squeamishness than for brafery. Peripheral though his activity§may 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 y What is not so clea: pol despite ° flashing insights into Beyle’s evolving character, is the alchemy by which the erratic fop, so consumed by triv- ial passions, ennui and: dyspepsia, was transformed into’ the dedicated creator of Julien Sorel, 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 a Sage for making these diaries avail- able in English. The admirable trans- lation, in awit, contemporary idjom, preserves te. “flavor of Beyle’s dry, pithy prose. Everything of value in the 2,000 pages of the original five volumes seems to have been kept, while the gaps have been filled by inserting Beyle’s letters to his sister Pauline and to his friends. An ex- cellent introduction and thirteen con- nective passages between the major portions of the various notebooks provide continuity. It is an impres- sive job, done con amore, and it to delight hath the spe- cialist and the general reader. A Heroic Woman Reformer Reviewed by Ann F. Wolfe Contributor, N. ¥. “Times Book 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 more 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 vote til! 1920, the hun- dredth anniversary of her birth. in herself yoted in 1] 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 ‘y's political hosses, The good Indies were later arrested and Ireated 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 $as but one of countless stir- ting ingldents in a career that was prodigious for sheer strenuousness. This home-loving daughter vf New England Quakers stumped the length and breadth of the land, brav- ing bandit-infested frontier trails and mountains made impassable by Review,” “Saturday Review” blizeards. Untike 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- eralor of the meeting displayed a pistol at the ready. At 86, the in- domitable spinster journeyed to Washington, where sh a suffrage gatherin men do something besides extend congratulations?” President Theo- dore Roosevelt had just sent her an anti-climactic birthday greeting. Pyeposterous as it now seems, opposition to women’s rights was formidable. When Eugene Debs verre Haute st 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 sterilization of the human race. The enfranchisement of women was not uncommonly asso- ciated with freo Jove. In such a psy- chological climate, it was a Hercu- lean grind to finance the battle for women’s rights. Dollar by dollar, ' 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 Antoinette, 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 leader, abolitionist and suffrage re- former were hound up with vital periods in our history. Both through blood ties and through her slavery agitation, she was involved in the John Brown tragedy. She was caught up in the 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 associates. 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. Hie 3 The New Leader yw