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A "Jacobin," Benny hated and feared the way things were going in the U. S. "He wanted the people to govern themselves directly and express themselves explicitly. He wanted to see the disappearance from political life of all individual wills which were too strong, which could not yield to the desires of the masses." So he attacked Washington, vilified him to a fare-ye-well. Naturally Benny's enemies were legion. His rival journalist in Philadelphia, William Cobbett, expressed the settled opinion of the day when he called him "Printer to the French Directory, Distributor General of the principles of Insurrection, Anarchy and Confusion, the greatest of fools, and the most stubborn sans-culotte in the United States." He was attacked on the street, denounced as a spy, his printshop windows were broken. In the summer of 1798 yellow fever settled on Philadelphia, every paper suspended publication except Benny's and his old enemy Cobbett's. One hot midnight Death came for 29-year-old Benny Bache; an hour later his widow was printing a defiance to his foes, a promise that his paper would go on.
The Author, a 40-year-old Parisian who divides his year between France and the U. S., is rare among unofficial ambassadors in being properly and adequately accredited. A brilliant scholar who has taken every degree open to a professor in France, he knows more about the U. S. and U. S. history than the vast majority of U. S. citizens. No myopic flatfoot, Professor Faÿ served nearly five years in the War, emerged with the rank of captain, the Croix de Guerre (won at Verdun), the Medaille de Leopold II. Twelve years ago he began to make regular visits to the U.S., has lectured at Columbia University, University of Chicago, Northwestern, Iowa State et al. Still a bachelor, on trips to Manhattan he stays at the Harvard Club.
Other books: The Revolutionary Spirit in France and in America at the Close of the Eighteenth Century, A Panorama of Contemporary French Literature, Franklin: The Apostle of Modern Times, Washington: Republican Aristocrat.
Spaniel by Woolf
FLUSH — Virginia Woolf — Harcourt, Brace ($2).
As most Browningites and most Manhattan playgoers know, Poet Robert Browning was not Poetess Elizabeth Barrett's first love. Highest in her affections before Browning's appearance and his rival even for a short time after it was her spaniel Flush. Perhaps to show that of the making of biographies there is no end, perhaps because such a dog's-eye-view of human romance appealed to her originality, Virginia Woolf has written a vignette in which both Flush and his invalid mistress are brought touchingly to life. If at times Flush seems more Woolf than spaniel, his biographer smilingly admits that "there are very few authorities" for so circumstantial, so authoritative an account.