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Died. Gamaliel Bradford, 68, biographer (Damaged Souls, Darwin, The Quick & The Dead); after lingering illness; in Wellesley Hills, Mass. Eighth in lineal descent from Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony, he termed himself a "psychographer." Critics called him "the U. S. Lytton Strachey," rated him less urbane and epigrammatic but more profound. An essayist and editorialist (for the Boston Herald), he said: "My biographical work is laborious and hard. . . . But plays and novels! It's easy and fun to write them. . . . That's what . . . I've done year after year without much encouragement." Biographer Bradford, though sickly...
THIS volume, issued shortly before his death, is probably the last which may be expected from the late Gamaliel Bradford. Due to his constant illness, he worked very slowly, and it is unlikely that more than a few short sketches will be added to his published works. Happily the biographical studies included in "Saints and Sinners" are a fitting memorial to a writer who was exceptional in the breadth and sympathy of his interests...
Caesar Borgia, Casanova, Talleyrand, Byron, and Thomas a Kempis, St. Francis of Assisi,--these are the sinners and saints whose characters are examined here as a study in contrasts. All of them acted according to Mr. Bradford from distinct motives, so that the casual reader is free to choose his own favorite form of sanctity or sinfulness for study. But whether he turns to St. Francis or Casanova, he will find the same gently ironic insistence on the underlying egotism which prompted them...
...book of this type, previous acquaintance with the characters treated is bound to influence one's preference. Mr. Bradford's interpretation of Lord Byron as a man who was moved more by the glamor of sin than by sin itself will not seem new or very illuminating to anyone fairly familiar with the life and work of the poet. The portrait of the Borgia, painted against the background of a blood-and-roses Renaissance (that familiar stage-set) deals too casually with the violent contrasts which from constant repitition have lost their original value...
...with the less-known figures that Mr. Bradford is most successful. Here the narrative details he supplies are fresher and more interesting, and he is well able to reveal an enigma at least where he cannot explain it. Discussing Talleyrand and Fenelon, two men strikingly similar in temperament, worlds apart in their actual careers, his impartial sympathy for both leaves the reader free to enter sympathetically into their characters. It is high praise for this kind of biography to say that it makes the reader eager to go beyond the information given, and study the characters at first hand...