Méere Marie of the Ursulines: A Study in Adventure
by [Doubleday, Doran, $2.50]
Miss REPPLIER, to the advantage of her readers, follows her study of Père Marquette by another biography drawn from the heroic days of New France. This time her subject is a woman, foundress of education for girls in Quebec and of the Ursuline Convent there. Contrast is always piquant, as here, between the exquisite sophisticated civilization of seventeenth-century France and pioneer life in Canada, where ordeals grave and light, hardship, danger, and occasional martyrdom, were met with the gay good breeding and the superb courage of that great period. there is no other story quite like this; the flavor is wholly different, for instance, from that of the colonization of New England.
Mère Marie de l’Incarnation, a widow thirty-four years old, came from Tours in 1639 with several other nuns, and with an ardent lady whose generosity made the enterprise possible, Madame de la Peltrie. Miss Repplier’s subtitle is justly ’A Study in Adventure’; yet the impression made by her heroine is that of sanity, serenity, and competence. She tells us that Mère Marie was a mystic. Doubtless she is right. Only union with Love Unseen could impart the fortitude and the cheery tireless devotion that breathe through the story, as through the ‘Relations’ of the Jesuits. But we should welcome a little more stress on the mysticism, for the modern world can no longer assume the power of spiritual dynamic — it needs to have this power explicitly brought home. We see Mère Marie with her little Indians, charming, French, maternal, tender; we see her, self-possessed woman of the world, in contact with governors and prelates, with chiefs friendly or treacherous. We feel that glimpses of her devotional life are needed to initiate us into her real personality.
But the story holds us even if the background be more vivid than the heroine. There is picturesque detail galore; there is capital portraiture. Laval the great Bishop, Governors of the Province, the ‘laughing nun,’ Indians, explorers, all live before us. Especially good is the study of Madame de la Peltrie, impulsive, generous, self-willed, never a Religious but sharing the Adventure, and indeed running away for a time to Montreal when Quebec grew a little tame Mère Marie was never tempted to run away. To-day, when the satirical type of biography lately in vogue begins to pall, there is satisfaction in this straight forward account of a life finding, in true Christian fashion, scope for all romantic aspiration in patiently teaching little half-savage girls.
Needless to say, Miss Repplier writes with many illuminating and incisive touches. Her lucid and effective style suits her heroine, who was also lucid and effective. Not too much is claimed for Mère Marie. Comparison is drawn with the greater Saint Teresa— greater, as is well pointed out, because she added humor to her mystic passion. Mère Marie was like Teresa, however, in practical ability. Those who believe in the administrative gifts of women no less than those who enjoy good stirring history may well be grateful to Miss Repplier for this bracing and pleasantly written book.
VIDA D. SCUDDER