Violette of Père Lachaise

As one begins to read Anna Strunsky Walling’s fascinating and delicately phrased epitome of a woman’s life—'Violette of Père Lachaise' — one is inevitably reminded of Walter Pater’s 'The Child in the House.' There is in Walling’s story the same completeness of escape from the commonplace as in Pater’s, and there is something of the same effect of haunting strangeness. Walling, too, has chosen, as Pater so often did, the form of an unsubstantial narrative — a narrative personal in its intere...