BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 205, 30 July 1932, Page 9

BOOK NOTES

AN ENGLISH PRINCESS AT THE FRENCH COURT. It is not iimhediately apparent what class of book Margaret Irwin had in mind when she began to write “Royal Flush: The Story of Minette.” There can be no doubt, however, that the result is an unusual historical novel—a very fine novel indeed. At first it reads like a memoir or biography, the kind of “imaginative interpretation of history” to which the late Lytton Strachey has accustomed, the English reading public. Then a plot emerges, loosely fitting round the figure of a charming seventeenth century English' princess and all the recognisable apparatus of a novel. It only needs Miss Irwin’s whimsical warning that “None of the characters in this book is imaginary” to remind the reader of tho book’s accuracy in essential matters, when it comes to historical detail.

Princess Henrietta, of England, the beloved sister of Charles 11., who rechristened her “Minette,” is the heroine of the book. She had never known' “the martyred king,” her father, who was busy with the Civil War during Minette’s childhood. So that the future Charles 11. easily established himself as the girl’s idol and mentor, a position he gracefully maintained during her life. Minette was a mere child when the Royalist cause was lost and her father executed. With the unhappy Queen Henrietta Maria, she presented herself at the Regency Court of Anne of Austria, where she made the acquaintance of the boy king, Louis XIV., and his younger brother, Philippe. Her position was decidedly that of a poor relation with no apparent prospects, and she might have been thoroughly unhappy but for a sanguine temperament and a capacity for disarming the most spiteful of her would-be tormentors. The enforced departure of Charles to Holland, when Marzarin’s recognition of Cromwell’s Government made France an impossible asylum, reinforced Minette’s belief in her brother as an heroic and romantic figure. She was already a. dowerless young woman of marriageable age, with no prospect of a husband, when the glad news came from Charles of his restoration. Records of the times are enthusiastic about Minette and Miss Irwin has no difficulty in presenting her heroine as one of the brightest ornaments of Louis VlV’s court. It was Minette’s misfortune that she should love King Louis, who returned her love when it was too late. Mazarin had not been persuaded of tho Commonwealth’s impermanence in England, and had no intention of marrying Louis to the sister of a dethroned monarch. Only a year after Louis’s marriage with Marie Therese of Spaiq came the Restoration, and Minette was promptly united to Louis’s brother, the dandified and perverted Philippe. But it seems that Louis’s love for his charmingly lively sister-in-law endured until he stood in tears at her deathbed, and Minette is consequently one of the central figures in the brilliant fetes, balls and ballets which Miss Irwin so well describes.

“Royal Flush” is well named, for nearly all the important figures of the day at the English and French courts appear in its pages. One of the most interesting of them is La Grande Mademoiselle, ‘the greatest spinister in France,” whose behaviour was a constant source of embarrassment to her family. There are also revealing glimpses of Anne of Austria, the weeping Queen .Henrietta Maria, Prince. Rupert, Mazurin, and the future James 11. Miuette, of course, is the most carefully studied portrait of all —a delightful character with an underlying tragedy barely modifying her habitual light-heartedness. Constantly in her mind is the thought of her brother Charles, whose devotion to this loyal sister —his best friend jand (repository of his confidences —forms one iof (the brightest aspects in his life. GOOD DETECTIVE TALES. 11l the course of his new detective story', “Murder in the Basement,” Anthony Berkeley observes that “if preparatory school terms went on one week longer than they do, the mortality would ho tremendous.” Judging by the school so cleverly described in this book, and the antagonisms of its staff, his remark is probably very near the truth. Jealousy and scandal are rampart before the term is half over, and no one will marvel when a peculiarly gruesome murder is traced "by Roger Sheringham to this apparently innocuous institution. Mr Berkeley has written in this book ope of the most engaging of recent thrillers. If his detection is not quite firstclass, his story is delightfully told, with one or two original features. H. M. Stephenson is not so ingenious in “The Missing Partner,” but he, too, tells a well-rounded tale ill which the characters are not sacrificed to purely detective interest. The locale of the story is a small West country village, with a new bus service to Bristol, the inauguration of which is the signal for strange happenings to begin. The idea at the back of the plot is good, and Mr Stephenson works it out quietly and credibly: . , Vernon Lpder’s (“Death m the Thicket” describes one of those murders that seem to occur with astonishing frequency at country house parties in England. The victim is a Labour M.P., whose unpopularity with several of his fellow guests made the latter immediately suspect. Mr Loder writes brightly, with humour, although his methods in detection are somewhat conventional.