Portraits of American Women

By GAMALIEL BRADFORD. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1919. 8vo, x +276 pp. Illustrated. $2.50.

A PORTRAIT by Bradford is coming to have as distinctive a connotation as a portrait by Sargent. That the superficies of medium and method, as well as the underlying psychological bias, of the two masters differs radically, does but strengthen the analogy. Sargent unveils souls; Bradford reveals them — a more modest verb. But for both the soul’s the thing.

In this new group of portraits, the spiritual values are very high. One gets from them a fresh confidence in the intellectual dignity of American women and in the artist’s ideal of womanhood, American or other. All are women of mind and conscience. Seven of the eight portraits are of New England women, because, as Mr. Bradford tells us, ‘material affecting the lives of New England women was most readily accessible to me.’ Four are married: one, Abigail Adams, is portrayed as the Wife. Three are writers of prose; two have administrative and organizing ability of a high order; one is a scholar, one a poet.

As we do not go to portraits for summaries of biographical details, résumés of achievement, or even lists of features, we need not look for these things in Mr. Bradford, except implicitly. Emily Dickinson’s white dress is there, and Mrs. Stowe’s curls. Mary Lyon’s Mount Holyoke is there, implicit. But Mr. Bradford is never betrayed into giving us a genre picture, or a domestic interior; though sometimes, as in Miss Alcott, he indicates the family group in the background. He is concerned first and last with character.

To call so lucid and tranquil a stylist Meredithian in his interpretation of women is to risk confusion; yet Meredithian Mr. Bradford undoubtedly is in spirit, in the camaraderie of his approach, the instinctive respectfulness of his analysis, the generous thoroughness of his criticism. Even where the fastidious temper of his disapproval breaks through his customary reserves of manner once or twice in the delineation of Frances Willard, he is antipathetic to the individual rather than to the woman. Elsewhere, as when he limns the egotism of Margaret Fuller in frank outline, or sets the preacher’s halo on Mrs. Stowe’s curls, his critical estimate is singularly free from personal distaste.

This is not to say that the artist may not have his favorites; though concerning the preferences of one so conscientious and reticent as Mr. Bradford it is as well to think twice before hazarding a guess. That he likes and respects almost all these women is a safe generalization, and that he heartily admires and approves Abigail Adams,— and Mary Lyon only less, — no one who reads carefully will question. But there are two whom he loves: the scholar and the poet. In the portraits of Mrs. Ripley and Emily Dickinson, skeptic and mystic, fine fragile flowers of New England, there is an understanding touch, a tenderness of atmosphere, a sympathetic depth, lacking in all the rest. These are the masterpieces of a distinguished collection. F. C.