Rainbow Folk

Celebrities follow bright rainbows to pots of shining gold. The U. S. pot is most golden. Therefore choicest celebrities from overseas swarm into it, simmer, exude the essences of genius. Last week the pot seemed brimming full. Choice dumplings were:

Keyserling. The extremely tall, incessantly restless philosopher whose domed cranium and pointed chin give his head the shape of a child's peg top is Count Hermann Keyserling, 47, head of the Darmstadt School of Wisdom, and creator of sensitive, soul piercing books.* Like the humming of a peg top is Count Keyserling's conversation. He chattered and he lectured in perfect English, last week, to lionizing Manhattanites, but so rapidly and with so much finger-waggling that some were abashed and others annoyed.

Soon prudent gourmets of celebrity turned from the Count back to his writings, pondered once more the essence of his philosophy: "Anglo-Saxons are particularly prone to misunderstand me, because they find it hard . . . to conceive that a man is able to serve others precisely by living for himself. . . . Even in my childhood the words of Jesus, Woman what have I to do with thee?/- spoke more directly to me than any other. . . . Only he who lives for the supernatural can, in the deepest sense, live for himself. . . ."

Rotarians were especially puzzled by Count Keyserling since their official mottoes are "Service Above Self" and "He Profits Most Who Serves Best." For all who simply cannot understand philosophy, Count Keyserling has pap. Example: "America is ruled by women."

Ludwig. "The professors dislike me because of my method. They cannot excuse my habit of beginning with a vision of my man and then getting my sources and historical details. . . .

"Ach! Without a little passionate, furious mad relationship to your subject you will not be able to make him live in your writings. . . .

"I began to think Napoleon 10 to 20 years before I set pen to paper. I ate with him, I slept with him, I lived with him."

The maker of these safe but sizzling statements, last week, was German Celebrity Dr. Emil Ludwig, 47. He stepped off the Majestic with his handsome wife, espoused in South Africa when he was 22. Throughout the U. S. his Napoleon, Bismarck and Wilhelm Hohenzollern, the Last of the Kaisers, are best selling biographies.

August and sumptuous were the quarters soon occupied by Dr. and Frau Ludwig as house guests of millionaire Manhattan culture patron Otto Kahn. Smart New Yorkers came to dine, to tea.

From Lion Ludwig dowagers learned that "Today the great personalities of Europe are found only in science and technology.'' He concluded ably: "I have seen only three great men in Europe this year. One is Bernard Shaw, far greater as an educator than a playwright; another is Einstein, who changed the fundamental ideas of our entire world, and the third, perhaps the greatest of all, is President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, who first dreamed his nation, then made it, and then governed it."

Author Ludwig seemed likely to offer valid entertainment.

Molnar. The sleepy celebrity, the one with a monocle on the right side of his plump face, the self indulgent one who sat silent at formal dinners but roistered about Manhattan with his friends--that one was Ferenc Molnar.

Greatest of living Hungarian dramatists, slyest of cynics, surest of technicians, he has had successful plays in Manhattan theatres almost continuously since the U. S. premiere of Liliom (1921). Successes: The Swan, The Guardsman, The Play's the Thing, and many another.

To Molnar the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is an old, jaded story, and the fleshpot an older. His successive wives have meant much to him, but so have the enormous slumbers and epicurean dinners which he loves. His selfishness is not the mystic ego culture of Count Keyserling but something earthy, practical.

Rulers. Above the rank of mere celebrities were two rulers, one royal, one democratic, who reached Manhattan. They were the reigning Prince of Monaco. Louis II (TIME, Jan. 2); and the President of the Irish Free State, William Thomas Cosgrave (TIME, Jan. 16). Upon landing Prince Louis effaced himself completely beneath an incognito and succeeded in vanishing from the cognizance of the press. President Cosgrave was scheduled to tour the Midland and Eastern States, explaining his government to Irish-Americans, and counteracting the propaganda of famed obstreperous Eamon De Valera, now in the U. S. attempting to raise campaign funds wherewith to disrupt Mr. Cosgrave's majority in the Free State Parliament.

Business. Although numerous foreign businessmen of standing were in the U. S., last week, one about to arrive was unique. He, Commander Charles Dennistoun Burney, a British M.P., inventor of the paravane comes to prepare for a series of trans-Atlantic flights by the giant dirigible R-100, now nearly complete. The skyship, equipped to carry 100 passengers in cabins, is expected to make only a few trips to the U. S. and will then go into service between England and Egypt. But Commander Burney purposed, last week, to raise capital in the U. S. wherewith to build a fleet of trans-Atlantic dirigibles which would carry passengers between London and New York in 48 hours or less for a $500 fare.

Musicians. Having arrived from Poland, England, France and Italy, four distinguished musicians loomed, last week, in the U. S. They are: 1) Ignace Jan Paderewski; 2) Sir Thomas Beecham, leader of the London Symphony orchestra, guest conducting for the New York Philharmonic; 3) Maurice Ravel, renowned French composer, guest conducting for the Boston and other Symphonies; and 4) Bernardino Molinari, conductor of the famed Augusteo Orchestra at Rome, who will lead the St. Louis Symphony through a series of 15 concerts. Boasted the great Molinari: "In Rome I have 90 sopranos and 70 contraltos always available. . . ."

Miscellaneous Celebrities. 1) At Yale University was recently welcomed J. Alfred Spender, cultured, intellectual, British journalist; 2) Persuasive, rational British evangelist Agnes Maude Royden continued her U. S. tour, last week, though several of her engagements had been cancelled by local bigots "because she smokes," 3) Lastly loomed as celebrities exchange professors, visiting scientists, European political and industrial investigators . . . etc. . . . etc. . . . etc. . . . etc. . . . not forgetting innumerable vacationing and widely preaching foreign clergy. Example: the Rev. Canon James Gilliland Simpson, D.D., of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, who preached monotonously by invitation, last week, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Manhattan.

* The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, The World in the Making, and edited by him, The Look of Marriage (all Harcourt, Brace).

/- A rebuke addressed by the Savior to the Virgin Mary when she protested that there was no wine for the quests at a marriage feast. Waving her aside, He changed into wine six potfuls of water "containing two or three firkins apiece," St. John, II, 1-10.