Goodbye, Papa, Goodbye

LITTLE COQUETTE--Renee de Fontarce McCormick--Houghton Mifflin ($2.75).

Maxence d'Entremont was a big, jovial man with a big round head, no hair, a prominent brow, wide shoulders, a deep chest, long legs and almost no neck. When the doorbell rang in the morning he would shout: "The police!" When he led his daughter across the street he would say: "Let's keep together; it will cost them more to run over two persons." He could sketch brilliantly, but would not. He fought 17 duels.

The telephone girl who listened in on all his calls, and to whom he sent handsome presents each New Year's, told his daughter, Simone, that he had more mistresses than anyone in Paris. Maxence was innocently wicked. He was also a fine cavalry officer, a good husband, a devoted father to Simone and a typical well-to-do French family man.

At first glance, readers may mistake Little Coquette for a French version of Life with Father. It is, rather, social history viewed through the eyes of a little girl and written in a new form--or in an adaptation of the novel form which is so different that it promises to become a new type of literature.

Little Coquette, says Renee de Fontarce McCormick, is "really fictional." But Simone d'Entremont "is a little girl such as once I was. My life was like hers. . . .

The people, the places, the events of which I tell are in essence true, but the details are drawn from many sources. . . ."

The result is, like Santayana's The Last Puritan, a novel in the form of a memoir, not autobiographical, since it centers on someone other than the author, not fiction, since what it tells really happened, not biography, since it is not confined in a rigid framework of fact. At its best, this type of work combines the narrative interest of fiction with the educative value of biography.

Pampered and Lonely. Everyone called Simone "Biquette," meaning little goat.

When she was six, her beautiful, austere, mysterious mother bought her no dresses in one purchase. Biquette spent four miserable years wearing them out. At Christmas her playroom was so filled with toys there was no place to play. She got a trunk full of doll clothes, a hatbox full of bonnets, enough candy to give her indigestion for six months.

But though they loaded her with presents, Father & Mother d'Entremont had little time for Biquette. She was lonely.

For Maxence and Antoinette d'Entre mont were typical bright bubbles in the froth of prewar French life just before it went over the dam.

Life with Mother. Much of Little Coquette is about Mme. d'Entremont.

She was tall and pale, with slender legs and a generous bust. Her long black hair had a natural curl. "She had no illusions, and was frankly infatuated with herself."

Her motto: "Let us make as small a scandal as possible." Mother's dowry produced an income of 35,000 gold francs (she inherited 600,000--$120,000--more).

She was tolerant of her husband's conduct, and lived on terms of good-natured, affectionate banter with gallant Uncle Louis, and was ironic about Father's brother Sosthene. Father scolded her for continuing to associate with the beautiful but brainless Gisele d'Orlangues, after everyone knew of Gisele's affair with Uncle Sosthene. Mother retorted, "I think Gisele is reckless, but you must not forget . . . that Sosthene paid off all your debts last year."

As the years passed, Mother spent more time at the mirror. When Father told her that he wanted her portrait painted before she grew old, she rushed to the glass, exclaimed: "Houf, you frightened me. I thought . . . you had observed a crow's-foot." She spent more time at the hair dresser's. Her hair developed a red copper hue. From one visit she returned with pink cheeks and shadowy green make-up around her eyes. 'She even talked to an actress and began to take tango lessons.

Then one day, as she was being fitted into a new dress the color of tea-rose petals, Mother complained of a violent pain in her side. Two days later she was dead.

"If I am Killed." The rest of Little Coquette is the life of Biquette and Father.

Growing up for Biquette meant (among other things) that her curls were replaced with two pigtails "that were curled over my ears like macaroons and were held there by tortoise-shell pins." Father, with less & less need for concealments, used to stroll away, swinging his cane, to visit his mistresses. When World War I broke out, he dutifully paid a call on each of them before he left for the front. Then he took Biquette on his knees, and told her: "If I am killed, Louis will take care of you. . . .

Be honest in business matters. Try to be as little egoistic as possible. Be indulgent with people, and kind-hearted."

With a clank of his saber, a jingle of spurs and a wave of his white-gloved hand, he rode away to lead his cavalry against the German Army. An age rode away for ever with him. "Papa, don't leave me," cried Biquette through her tears. "Good bye, papa, goodbye."

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