Talk:Lydia of the Pines

Reviews

 * The Bookman, April 1917: Lydia of the Pines seems to me, despite its title, an American novel of uncommon merit. It is a romance of girlhood, of schoolgirlhood even, which quite escapes silliness on the one hand and goody-goodiness on the other. Lydia is not a paragon of beauty or cleverness, nor is she professionally "glad." She does not even undertake the function of showing all her elders the way to deportment and salvation. We might like to see them credited with a trifle more virtue of their own; but her influence with them is the influence of a healthy child and not of an inspired (and complacent) lecturer and leader of men. Her place, "Lake City," is described as somewhere in the North Mississippi Valley, in a country of green hills and wheat lands. Its first people were pioneers from New England, to whom time has added all that miscellany of races and traditions which of later years have peopled the Middle West. There is a taint of corruption about the place (not least about its Yankee element) which centres in greed for the possession of certain rich Indian lands and forests to the north of the city. The Indians of the Reservation are diseased, pauperised, victims of a venial Agent, and of surreptitious robbery on the part of many of the leading citizens of Lake City. Lydia's father is a gone-to-seed Yankee who is not above taking his share of the spoils, when the chance comes. His and Lydia's chief friend, John Levine, is half Yankee and half French: it is he who openly advocates taking over the Indian lands, gets himself sent to Congress on that issue, and actually succeeds in his purpose. Among Lydia's school friends is an Indian youth, a manly fellow, son of a chief; and from him, as well as from her own heart, she learns the other side of the case. If she had been a cheaper heroine, if this had been a conventional story, the girl would have persuaded Levine from his purpose, and brought about the restoration of the exiles. She does nothing of the kind. Levine cannot see the matter as she does. And he is of the type which, believing that one thing ought to be done, is utterly unscrupulous as to the means of doing it. He has a cruel and ruthless side which Lydia is forced to see; but she does not hate him for it, he is too much a part of her life. This is the way things really happen; and it is true that a Levine, loving a young Lydia deeply and with hidden passion, respecting her honesty, and suffering because he makes her suffer, may still cling grimly to his own practical conviction and his own dingy ethics. This is the way things really happen; tion [sic] in little of that strange paradox of public depravity and private virtue which so often seems to rule the realms of finance and of politics. But apart from the "idea," it is an excellent story of a human and lovable girl learning to be a woman. Its style, especially in the dialogue, is uncommonly sincere, the real vernacular, without exaggeration or codification.