Fire Under the Andes
by . New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1927. 8vo. xii+331 pp.Illus. $4.00
You wonder how anyone could have hit upon a title so reticent of its meaning — until you read Miss Sergeant’s book; and then you marvel at the felicity of her choice of words, a felicity that extends from title-page to conclusion. Her fire under the Andes -&emdash you learn through a quotation from Emerson and her own painting of a series of American portraits — is nothing but the light and warmth at the heart of tilings, the vital sparks of heavenly and earthly flame, which are as essential to human fulfillment as hydrogen to a balloon or springs to a coach. The title, you find, is most happily descriptive of the book.
To illustrate the need and power of fire under our mountain ranges of rock. Miss Sergeant takes fourteen contemporaneous figures — all living but Miss Amy Lowell and subjects them to a biographic treatment very much her own. She counts it ‘out of keeping with the sharp biographical method now in fashion, anti so it is, if ‘sharp’ must imply tHe exposure of all that is unlovely. If ‘sharp,’ on the other hand, may relate to penetration of vision and clearness of outline in recording what, is seen. Miss Sergeant is out of fashion chiefly because so few can compete with her in these particulars.
In contrast with Mr. Mencken — one of her subjects - Miss Sergeant alludes to herself as *a dissident from the race that is being superseded, as one who has assimilated certain aspects of European culture.’ I - it not precisely because she is thus a sort of amplified New Englander that the spirit behind her technique and in large measure determining it is what it is? Does not her unlikeness to the biographers of the latest mode lie in her willingness to extend a prevailing admiration and respect to the subjects she has chosen, her unashamed readiness to reveal these feelings? Her first act of discrimination is in choosing a subject — whether it lie Pauline Lord or Mr. Justice Holmes, Amy Lowell or Paul Robeson. Her sympathies and comprehensions are broadly catholic. Her final discriminations are implicit — one reads them rather bet ween the lines than in unyielding type, ’t et they are there, and the reader is constantly aware that the warm admirer of her sitters — most of them obviously her good friends — is also their shrewd observer.
The method which Miss Sergeant has pursued with consummate art probably lends itself better to small than to large canvases. Distillation is a matter of the essence - the very antonym of bulk. The ‘new biography’ of which we hear so much will probably continue, like the old, to range in stature from the heroic to the thumbnail. In whatever dimension, Miss Sergeant has set an example of tlie sympathy, intelligence, and art which distinguish tlie best of biographical writing, whether ‘new’ or ‘old.
M. A. DEWOEFE HOWE