BOO KS
141
VRAIMENT CHIC
KING EDWARD THE SEVENTH.
By
Philip Magnus. E. P. Dutton. $8.50.
ART NOUVEAU.
By
Robert Schmutzler: translated by Edouord Roditi.
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. $25.00.
Though equally mammoth in size, recent biographies of emi–
nent Victorians and Edwardians do not possess the simplemindedness and
unremitting adulation of most of the older "Life, Letters, and Times"
school: Lytton Strachey did not quite live in vain. Less stylish than he,
the new biographers have the advantage of many more papers available
to them and have been freed of restraints by the deaths of those whose
hurt feelings might have led to lawsuits. Sir Philip Magnus, as a dis–
tinguished biographer of Gladstone and Kitchener, had easy access to
persons and papers, so much so that his modesty foreshortens what
would have been a long list of benefactors: "I abandoned the attempt
because the full list appeared pretentious to me." Of all his handicaps,
the most limiting was the loyalty of Edward's secretary, Lord Knollys, to
his sovereign's wish that much of his correspondence be burnt. Burnt too
was Queen Victoria's diary by the King's sister, Princess Beatrice. And
Lord Knollys' sister performed a similar service for her mistress, Queen
Alexandra. All this was a "lamentable combustion," as Sir Philip quite
rightly characterizes it; his grudge against Lord Knollys, justified by
what he considers his errors of political judgment, is more, I suspect, a
consequence of his having carried out the royal orders to burn. Only
the more public aspects of Edward have survived in their fullest form;
and the racier private aspects, although suggested, are not dealt with at
any length.
Even if Sir Philip had more documentation for the recesses of Ed–
ward's private life, would he not have held back? He appears to have so
successfully assimilated himself to the world of the court that discretion
and "good taste" would have prevented him from going into details.
The tone of the courtier is not altogether absent here; there are mo–
ments, fortunately few, that might well have appeared in any earlier
laudation of the King. Sidney Webb is taken at face value in his fanci–
ful assurance that Edward's handing out certificates to worthy if poor
students confirmed the loyalty and affection in which British Socialists
held the crown. We are asked to believe that the reputation of the
Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, was damaged less by the
Jameson Raid than by the fact that Edward's daughter, Princess Maud,
was jostled on the pavement, a ttempting to enter the reception that
