Royal Gossip

BETTER LEFT UNSAID--Daisy, Princess of Pless--Dutton ($5).

She had the privilege of looking at kings, and kings had what seems to have been the greater privilege of looking at her. Born an Irish-English beauty, Daisy Cornwallis-West became a German Princess when she married Henry of Pless. In Daisy, Princess of Pless (TIME, March 17, 1930) she told what it was like to be English-born royalty in Germany during the War. Better Left Unsaid gives her reminiscences of the pre-War years.

For a long time Daisy got along well with her husband, bore him three sons. She got along well with almost everybody; everywhere men took to her kindly. On a visit to India she went roller-skating, fell, had to be bandaged up and put to bed. A Maharajah called to pay his respects. Because of Daisy's bandages they were mutually invisible, so the Ma- harajah kissed her toe through the blanket. In Egypt she was taken to see a stomach-dance; "it looked horrid." But mostly her travels were in well-marked royal grooves: visits to England, appearances in Berlin, vacations in Southern France, Switzerland.

It sounds like a nice life, but there were troubles in it. Husband Henry wanted to turn Catholic; if he did he could not inherit the family estates. Daisy finally smoothed things out. "I persuaded him to give in; surely no God would wish him to give up everything, all his future and position, for religion, when the Protestant religion is after all very like the Catholic and perhaps, in a way, purer and grander be- cause of its very simplicity."

Daisy thought Henry did not push himself enough; he was not a good royal mixer. She was always hoping he would be appointed Ambassador to Somewhere or Governor of Something, but somehow he never was. Daisy had troubles of the heart; more than several men were hopelessly in love with her; even the Crown Prince got himself talked about in her connection. At least once she had to write him a letter "full of home truth"; once she got really angry, said that if she were his sovereign she would make him wash his face.

Daisy was intelligent enough to be flattered when rumor pinned on her the authorship of Elizabeth and Her German Garden* She tried writing stories herself; nothing much came of it. As Henry's career continued not to materialize, as marriage became a somewhat weary habit, Daisy and her husband drifted apart. In December, 1923, she divorced him. Now an old lady, she lives part of the time in Germany, part in England, is delighted that so many readers have been delighted by her reminiscences.

*By Elizabeth Mary Countess Russell (TIME, June 1).

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