Rose By Gaslight

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30478, 27 June 1964, Page 4

Rose By Gaslight

The Duchess of Jermyn Street. By Daphne Fielding. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 207 pp.

AH her life. Rose Lewis had a vivid personality. Born in 1867, she was put into service as a housemaid at the age of 12, but after four years gave up her post, regardless of persuasion and . disapproval, and took a post as under kitchen-maid in the house of the Comte de Paris. From then on, she rose steadily to become well known in the highest circles as an excellent cook, whose dishes were approved by the Prince of Wales himself. At 25 she married a butler, Excelsior Lewis, but continued to work as a cook, being eagerly sought after for luncheon and dinner parties. Indeed, in Coronation Year, 1902, in a single week she provided 29 suppers at balls! Then she bought a small hotel, the Cavendish in Jermyn street. Her marriage, always unsatisfactory, ended in divorce, and she concentrated her energies on making the Cavendish a comfortable home for its patrons, and in particular a respectable place for dining out. It was here that she got her nickname, “the Duchess of Jermyn Street” and it was her home until her death at the age of 85.

In the earlier part of this : book, Mrs Fielding skilfully ■ recreates the world of EdI wardian high society, with its I love of practical jokes, of ; good food—and scandalous I liaisons, that were little ’ thought of as long as they were conducted discreetly. Of i course, the servants knew all ■ about them, and Mrs ' Field says of Rose, "it ; was particularly fascinatI ing that she knew I who really were the fathers . of one’s friends.” Rose herself is a rather I shadowy figure in the first ■ part, largely because of her I own perennial reserve. “No : letters, no lawyers and kiss my baby’s bottom!” was one : of her favourite remarks. In, ; the second part, however, ' when Mrs Fielding knew her well, she comes to life as a hotel proprietress who took a personal interest, in all her patrons, milking the rich to support the poor, supervising

their love lives and curing their hangovers. She could be dignified when she chose, but her normal speech was a frank cockney. Indeed, in her old age one of her brothers who came to work at the hotel left again because he could not stand his sister’s language. There are many famous names in the book to attest to Rose in her later years, but there are few left who might remember her early days. There was a certain schoolboy, however, who used to annoy his mother’s cook by taking tit-bits, till she chased him out, shouting: “Hop it, copper-nob!” He was Lady Randolph Churchill’s son, Winston. PAPERBACKS

"MARXISM: THE UNITY OF THEORY AND PRACTICE,” by Alfred Meyer (University of Michigan Press, distributed in New Zealand by Ure Smith 181 pp.) is a brilliant introduction to the major ideas, insights, problems and contradictions in the writings of Marx and Engels. Designed for the intelligent laymen in all walks of life and for university undergraduates, Meyer gives an over-view of Marxism that is at once descriptive and critical. He Shows that the proclaimed unity of Marxist theory and practice is an illusion, and that the disintegration of Marxism dramatizes the existence of unresolved problems in the Western intellectual tradition.

"THE ESSENTIAL TROTSKY,” (Allen and Unwin, 251 pp.) contains the text of three of Trotsky’s papers concerned with the October Revolution: “The History of the Russian Revolution to BrestLitovsk,” written in snatches between sittings of the Peace Conference; “The Lessons of October,” a skilful attack upon his denigrators in 1924: “Stalin Falsifies History,” a letter showing an early stage in the process by which Stalin secured his own position and the suppression of more humane opinion. These are important papers and show how much Trotsky contributed to the success of the Bolsheviks.