HAPPY RETROSPECT The Reminiscences of Count Wilczek Count Hans Wilezek
was a remarkable man. Having known Metternich and Strauss, he entertained Lizst and Dumas, and then lived on to see a socialist, post-war Vienna. In the course of his life he was by turns sportsman, athlete, explorer, soldier and scientist. His is the sort of figure out of which popular myths are created, and in Austria a legend is already crystallizing 'around the manner of this grand seigneur. They speak of his fifty-metre leap with gun and hunting-bag from a rock into the Teufels See, of his impolitic climbing exploit with the Empress Eugenie, of his polar expeditions, and of his adventures and generosities. These memoirs (Bell, 12s. 6d.), written for his family without any idea of publication, are often too occasional ; on the other hand, they are not spoilt by the slickness and facile pyro- technics which have made many recent autobiographical and biographical works so objectionable. Though they exhibit in their style that particular type of dull naivete which only sportsmen and soldiers seem able to achieve, these reminis- cences remain interesting on account of their variety and of the wide territory they cover in time and place. Their chief fault is a lack of sensitiveness which one also feels in the man himself, and which for many people must deprive his life of more than a narrative interest.
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