Princes & Potentates

THE EDWARDIAN ERA--Andre Maurois--Appleton-Century ($3).

As befits France's most successful living writer and foremost Anglophile, Andre Maurois moves with dignity and tact through this Edwardian picture gallery. Sobered by his position and his responsibilities as a guide, Author Maurois is careful not to indulge his Gallic lightness but he does occasionally point a faintly ironic anecdote. As he passes from portrait to portrait, only one is able to draw phrases of condemnation from his respectfully admiring lips. All good Edwardians will applaud his taste. Author Maurois gives it as his considered opinion that Edward VII was a gentleman, Wilhelm II a bounder. As a sympathetic exhibition of the English pre-War generation The Edwardian Era should be hard to top; it might almost bear that seal so dear to the fronts of better-class London shops: "By Appointment to H. M. the King."

Was Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, a libertine? Author Maurois says decidedly not, says the rumors of his high living have been greatly exaggerated. Some readers may be surprised to hear that he resembled his mother, the Good Queen, "as much in mind as in body. . . . He had his mother's sound sense, her natural goodness towards others, her smile." But he was a great gossip. He set a hot pace for future Princes of Wales by becoming his time's sartorial authority ("his absentmindedness started the fashion of leaving the bottom button of the waistcoat undone; another time it made trousers turn up at the foot") and an almost professional student of insignia and decorations. Tactful, when as King he took the Oath before the House of Lords he so mumbled the passages denouncing the Roman Catholic faith that no one could hear a word of it.

Of Tennysonesque Lord Salisbury, Author Maurois says: "He always looked as though he had slept in his clothes. . . . When he was bored, as he was by nearly every human activity, he showed it by a trembling of the legs peculiar to himself."

Salisbury's nephew, Arthur James Balfour, "preserved throughout his life a graceful indolence of manner, the habit of lying abed until noon, and that of never reading a newspaper, even as Prime Minister." Maurois quotes Balfour's typical remark: "I am more or less happy when being praised; not very uncomfortable when being abused; but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained."

The Duke of Devonshire, recounts Author Maurois, nearly always fell asleep in the House of Lords,* yawned during his maiden speech. Disraeli, greatly impressed, said: "That young man will go far." Once, after delivering a lengthy speech, the noble Duke sat down and fell sound asleep, was awakened to answer criticisms and stilled them by reading his speech all over again.

* History says it was the House of Commons.

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