Personalities

BOOKS ABROAD

Hereunder TIME reviews collectively books pertinent to FOREIGN NEWS

Personalities

A frail old lady rides sometimes about Copenhagen in a limousine that seems far from new. When her motor halts at the Palace of her nephew King Christian X she sits quite still. Her footman, kindliest of Russian servitors, hastens to open the door and helps her to descend. To him she is, will always be, "Matoushka Tsaritsa," ^1beloved wife of the "Little Father" Alexander III and mother of the last Romanov Emperor, Nicholas II. Surely the memories of this once very great lady are stranger, more glamorous, than any fairy-tale by her Danish countryman Hans Christian Andersen. Her new biography is among the most richly colorful of the year.

The Dowager Empress' father was the all but penniless Prince Christian of Holstein-Gluecksburg. During the Schlesvig-Holstein squabbles among the great powers the succession of Denmark was altered, and Christian became Crown Prince amid general astonishment (1852). Fortune's darling if ever mortal was, he not only became King Christian IX of Denmark but lived to see three of his children monarchs: King George I of Greece (reigned 1883-1913, assassinated 1913) ; Queen Empress Alexandra of Britain (reigned 1901-1910, died 1925); and the Empress Marie of Russia (reigned 1881-1894, aged at present 79).

Biographer Poliakov recreates with fine emotional skill the dramatic scene which resulted in a Danish Princess eventually becoming the Empress Marie. She, a blooming girl, and the Grand Duke (Crown Prince) Nicholas of Russia (died 1865) had experienced for each other an undoubted and romantic mutual infatuation. Before they could be married he was stricken with paralysis. Brave, devoted, he called his fiancee and his brother Alexander to his deathbed and swore them to wed each other. The gigantic Grand Duke Alexander (later Tsar Alexander III) was as strong as a bear, as slow as an ox and one of the most obstinately loyal of men. He married his brother's fiancee (1866); and one day he crowned himself Tsar* and her Tsarina (1883).

For Europe the marriage was momentous. The Tsarinas of Russia had been German since Catharine II (1762-1796). But the Empress Marie avowedly hated Germany and the Germans, and her sister was Alexandra of Britain. It was in the reign of the Empress Marie that the alienation of Moscow from Berlin became as marked as its rapprochement with London.

The present book paints in the human background of royalty behind this shift in high politics. Moreover here is sketched quietly and surely the story of Gregory Novihh, the "man of god" who was nicknamed Rasputin ("The Debauchee") and who perhaps "caused" as much as anyone the fall of the Romanovs. His power over the Tsar and Tsarina was due to the fact that their only son, Alexis, was a hemophile, bled profusely at the navel on the slightest provocation. Doctors were powerless to stop the bleeding; but Rasputin contrived to do so, by what means will per haps never be known. He was too clever to show his debauched nature to the Tsar, who saw in him the daily savior of the Tsarevitch Alexis' life, and thus listened too readily to the counsels of one whom he believed a holy man, able to "talk with the blood" of Alexis. Deft, Biographer Poliakov adds the tale of how Alexandra, Britain's Dowager Empress, sent the Dreadnaught Marlborough to rescue from a Bolshevik "Prison" in the Crimea her sister the Dowager Empress of Russia.

Royal "Gassooning." A somewhat panegyrical biography^3^2 and a scholarly travel book 1/4^3 concerning Edward of Wales are current. From the former an anecdote:

On H. R. H.'s South African and South American tour (TIME, March 23 to Oct. 26, 1925) he one evening unexpectedly sauntered with his ukelele on his arm into the saloon car occupied by South African newsgatherers. "In five minutes he had the whole crowd going at the top of its form. It was like a scene in the anteroom of an officers' mess after dinner on guest-night with the senior subaltern as master of ceremonies. Every eye was on the Prince, every face smiling, some with sheer de light, others with wonder. . . .

"In the course of the first few songs and choruses, H. R. H. concluded that the efforts of the 'band' would be assisted by a little more noise, so he added a couple of brass trays to his own musical equipment, beating upon them with his feet whilst he strummed his ukelele and sang the words of the song. . . .

"Meanwhile, H. R. H. had become intrigued by a little jazz gadget which one of the correspondents had produced and was using with considerable musical effect. I think its name is 'gassoon.' It is a small aluminum instrument, about five inches long, into the mouth of which one hums the tune, with a result rather like the sound of humming through a paper-covered hair-comb. The correspondent removed the instrument from his mouth, wiped it on his sleeve and gave it to the Prince to inspect. H. R. H. promptly placed it in his own mouth and commenced practising upon it.

"At the conclusion of 'John Brown's Body' there occurred a lull--like the uncomfortable pause in a conversation at a dinner-party where the guests are not quite sure of their ground. The eyes of H. R. H. gleamed impishly: he raised the gassoon to his lips again, expanded his cheeks and commenced to play another tune. ... It was one which had been sung to the Prince half a dozen times a day during the whole tour. It was 'God Bless the Prince of Wales.'

"For a few seconds there was silence, except for the sound of the gassoon. A sort of taken-aback silence, as though the company did not quite know what was the correct thing to do in the circumstances. Then, as suddenly as the air had been recognized, the whole crowd joined in heartily, magnificently. . . .

"As 'God Bless the Prince of Wales' came to a premature end, and before the intentional humor of the incident had been completely realized, H. R. H. again raised the gassoon to his lips. And this time there emerged the strains of another song that had been sung to him on countless occasions, usually as a complement of the first: 'For he's a jolly good fellow.'

"The Prince's efforts to stop this were helpless. Nothing short of the derailment of the coach would have stopped it. ... There was not one man in that saloon who would not have gone gladly to the devil for the Prince that night."

^1MOTHER DEAR" : THE EMPRESS MARIE OP RUSSIA AND HER TIMES--V. Poliakov ("Au-srur")--Appleton ($3.50). ^2H. R. H.--Major F. E. Verney--Doran ($3.50). 1/4^3THE TOUR OF THE PRINCE OF WALES TO AFRICA AND SOUTH AMERICA--Ralph Deakin --Lippincott ($4.00). *His full title is instructive as a gazetteer of his eight million square miles of absolute domain: "The Orthodox and Pious and Christ-loving, the absolute Autocrat and Great Lord, Crowned and Elevated by God, Alexander Alexandrovitch, Emperoi and Autocrat of All the Russias, His Tsaric Majesty of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Chersonesus in Tauria, Tsar of Georgia, Lord of Pskov and Great Duke of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia and Finland, Duke of Estland, Lifland and Kourland and of Semigallia, Samogitia, Bialostok, Karelia, Tver, Jugoria, Perm, Viatka, Bolgaria and others, Lord and Grand Duke of Novgorod in the Low Country, Tchernigov, Rjasan, Polotzk, Rostov, Jaroslavl, Bialosero, Udoria, Obdoria, Kondia, Bitebsk, Mstislavl and Lord of All Northern Lands and Lord of Iveria, Kar- talinia and Kabarda and Hereditary Lord and Master of the Provinces of Armenia, Circassia and of the Mountain Princes and Others, Lord of Turkestan, Heir of Norway, Duke of Schlesvig-Holstein, Stoon-mark and Oldenburg."