The Stranger in the House
By Howard Coxe "The author," according to the dust-cover of this book (Chatto and Windus, los. 6d.), "has set himself to fill what he feels to be a gap in English historical biography, and presents his picture in a racy, colloquial style, admirably suited to his subject." The gap in question is the life of George IV's Queen Caroline, who is the subject of a fresh biography at least once every two or three years. The racy colloquial style is easily attained by one who is prepared to refer to the King as " Prinney " throughout. Borrowing many of the forms of the novelist, Mr. Coxe has written a flippant work upon a subject worn threadbare by endless repetition. It is time that an interdict was laid upon Queen Caroline. With her dirty linen and dirty mind, with the crudity and vulgarity of her every word and action, she tarnishes the whole of her period. But a certain type of -reader is always ready to ignore the real depravity of het nature in the quest for concrete evidence of her adultery. Mr. Coxe himself pronounces that " nobody knows " whether adultery was or was not committed between the Queen and Pergami. Nobody, perhaps, who has not read the letters of James Brougham to his brother, published only last year. It is the last thing to interest anyone who is con- cerned with the psychology of a woman who on L:35,000 a year was " peculiarly tenacious " of changing the diapers of the grubby little plebian whom she adopted. Mr. Coxe attempts to make a case for Caroline, partly by trite recrimina- tions and in part by ignoring such episodes as her endeavour to besmirch the morals of her own daughter. His work is neither informative as a history nor entertaining as a fiction.
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