A Queen of Naples. (By Mrs Bearne.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 73

A Queen of Naples. (By Mrs Bearne.)

Interesting, and in many ways attrao tive, as is the subject of Mrs Beanie's latest woik, " Queen Maria Carolina ofi Naples," she laboured under a two-fold' disadvantage. She was the sister of Marie Antoinette and the intimate friend ofi i Lary Hamilton. The pathetic charm that' ] clings about the name of the hapless! Queen of France — the supreme exhibition.' afforded by her life of " beauty and sorrowi walking hand in hand" — make her, in re- ; trospect, the outstanding female figure oi\A her time, so that even her illustriously mother — and, still more, the only one oH\ her sisters who lives in history at all — <■ inevitably take their place in. the background. It is hard, too, for Englishmen, to regard with sympathy the queen who" involved Nelson in the turbid vortex ofi Neapolitan politics, and whose chosen associate was the woman but for whom the greatest Englishman of his day might! have worn unsullied " the white flower o£ a blameless life."'

These drawbacks notwithstanding, Mra Bearne has written a most interesting! book. Midway between the two foremost! personalities of the time — her friend and* her enemy. Nelson and Napoleon — stands Maria Carolina, an arresting^ commanding, provoking figure ; inheriting much ofi her mother's governing capacity and resolution, and even more than her .mother's! intrepidity and enterprise ; but pitiably* lacking in the discretion and self-controlj that gave balance and cohesion to Mari? l Theresa's trreat qualities of he,ad and hearty To this lack of discretion, to her headfe strong self-will and her rooted incapacity for learning from experience, Mrs Beam* attributes much of the calamity that renj and embittered! the latter part of a li£# in itself sufficiently hard and sorrowful 1 .! Few women have made more enemies ;j but from the grayer and mbfe scandalous charges that in life and in death have beeiil heaped upon her Mrs Bearne *ntirely fl and we "think justly, exonerates her. WflJ get a charming glimpse into 'the home lifot at Schonbrunn and Vienna of the great Empress and of her numerous family whil« still in their unclouded youth. , , A curious and baffling atudj is/Mari^

Theresa — passionately devoted to her children, seeking earnestly their moral and spiritual welfare, and yet relentlessly dooming one fair young daughter after another to the misery and temptation of a repugnant marriage. Upon Carolina, a child of 15, fell the ill-omened destiny that her sisters Johanna and Josepha had escaped by their early death — marriage with the vicious and boorish Ferdinand of Naples Very touchingly during the first wretched days of her marriage is sho^n the young bride's tender concern lest a similar fate should befall her beloved httlc sifter Antoinette. This, the determining love of her life, wrought in her the concentrated passion of revenge that, after the terrible events of 1793-4, changed the currents of her blood, warping and devastating her whole nature. Tier sister's murder well-nigh slew Carolina's better self. Piobablv at no time could she have said with the gentler Antoinette. "J'ai tout vu. tout eu, et tout pardonne " ; but the contrast drawn by Mrs Bearne is startling between the superbly lovely Queen, ruling beneficsntlv and well for 23 years both her despicable husband and his kingdom, initiating reforms, attracting to her brilliant court all that in Italy was enliehtened and refined, and the haggard, reckless woman whom we see dashing herself in nndiscriminating fury against France and Napoleon, surrounding herself with spies and banditti, alienating her friends, and finally cast out discredited from home' and oountrv. In common with Mahan and Jeaffreson, Mrs Bparne acquits the Queen and Nelson of blame in the matter, though not in tbp manner, of Caracciolo".s execution, and Tmnutes the awful massacre that ensued eolelv to the forocitv of Ferdinand himself. — Literary World.