Genius, Died Young*

SAVAGE MESSIAH--H. S. Ede--Knopf ($5).

You have probably heard little if anything of Henri Gaudier; you have doubtless heard nothing at all of Sophie Brzeska (pronounced "B'jeska"). After reading Savage Messiah you will wonder why not.

Death, as to many a young soldier, came to Henri Gaudier in 1915, when he was 23. He was good at fighting and had risen to be a sergeant. Far from being a professional soldier, he was an artist, a radical who had left France to escape his military service. But he was a whole-hogger: when he did anything he did it like St. Michael chasing Lucifer from heaven.

Gaudier's father was a carpenter who was pleased when his son won scholarships, not so pleased when the scholarship led to garrety art instead of clerkly business. At the Paris library where Henri studied in the evenings he met a gaunt Polish woman of 38, Sophie Brzeska; talked to her hungrily, fell in love. He was 18. Sophie believed she was destined to be a great writer, but she had had nothing but hard knocks. Her family joined the majority of her acquaintance in disliking her. She had been as far as the U. S. (as a governess) but never far from starvation; she had intimations both of immortality and madness. Men had taught her to fear love. She welcomed Henri as a kind of son-brother. This queer pair lived together, in France and England, for five years.

Biographer Ede says it was a purely platonic relation, and most of Gaudier's letters in this book bear him out. After reading them you can believe it. Sophie was a neurotic, Henri a genius (super-neurotic). They had a hard time in other ways too. Sophie cooked whatever food there was on Monday, they ate it cold the rest of the week. They were both nearly always ill, largely from undernourishment. Their lodgings were always depressing, dirty. Sometimes Sophie put cotton in her ears, sat down facing the wall, shut her eyes and sang at the top of her voice to drown out the scene. But to visitors they would never admit their poverty, would lie like troopers about their prospects and resources.

Whether or not he was selling anything Gaudier worked like a demon, sometimes made 150 drawings in an evening. Gradually he met some useful friends: Frank Harris, Paul Morand, Jacob Epstein, John Middleton Murry. But he quarreled bitterly with Murry because Katherine Mansfield did not like Sophie. Nobody liked Sophie. Gaudier himself quarreled with her constantly. Frequently he tried to get her to become his mistress but she always refused, though she was not pleased when he went to other women.

Just as Gaudier's work was beginning to be known--and bought--the War came. He went to France to enlist, was arrested as a deserter and told he would get twelve years' imprisonment; so he escaped and went back to England. But he was determined to join the French army, and his second attempt was successful. Sophie's last letter to him was bitter, nagging, complaining; she demanded he come back and take her away. Then the news came that Gaudier was dead. Says Ede: "Many people will remember Miss Brzeska in the streets of London, a strange, gaunt woman with short hair, no hat, and shoes cut into the form of sandals." She died in an asylum some few years later.

The Author. Harold Stanley Ede, of London's National Gallery, Millbank, long an admirer of Gaudier's work, has done what few modern biographers are willing to do: kept himself completely out of sight. Content with reprinting Gaudier's letters, with supplying a running comment that is sympathetic but perfectly impersonal, he has achieved a biography far above the common run, which the Literary Guild did well to nominate their March choice.

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