WHERE LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP DWELT

Another panel in the autobiography -- this time a genteel, tranquil account of Mrs. Lowndes' girlhood years in France, a ""fragmentary story of nine years"" -- first in a country cottage in La Celle Saint Cloud, later in Paris where she went to write, on her own. Portraits of her French grandmother, wife of the first Hilaire Belloc, a painter; of the Deroulede family, neighbors, and of Paul, idealistic patriot; of Emile Augier, playwright; of a suitor, Georges, who dies; of miscellaneous cousins, aunts, friends. Later, Paris and the literati of the era of the '90's, -- Verlaine, the Daudets, the Goncourts, Anatole France, Dumas fils, Zola, Jules Verne. Anecdotal, incidental reading, a literary autobiography with a pleasant quality. But for a somewhat defined market.