HENRY OF NAVARRE
By Marcelle Vioux •
Those 'who, like Lytton Strachey, have helped to make historical biography readable have performed an important service to modern students, but they must constantly blush for their Vast number of imitators with whom readability is the only aim, to be pursued at the expense of truth, beauty and goodness. Marcelle Vioux' Henry of Navarre (Geoffrey Illes, 10s: 64.) is the perfect example of the -modern type of biography which would send one back with delight, to tire pompous Victorian full-length narrative, to the dryness of Oman The sub-title gives the game away: it reads Le Verst- Galant. The authoress hos tried to paint not a King, nor a man but a lover. .The. hook is simply an account of his relations with his mistresses. It is perhaps .captious to complain that all the serious historical issues 'are ignored ; that could be defended on the ground that the book is a biography, not a history. But we-have a right-to demand that at least those events. of importance in which Henry directly participated should receive serious mention, As it 'is, the -omission of anything remotely serious means that we can get no complete picture of Henry, who, after all, was at least as important (and, incidentally, far more attractive) on the Throne than in the, bed. But we are only allowed to see an old Sex maniac running from one tedious affair to another, 'who never speaks without some bastard Shakespearian -oath, and whose
I is apparently filled with thoughts varying only from lust to the most dismal banality. Never once do we glimpse the fact that Henry IV was a real man (composed of blood as well as flesh), still lesS that he WAS n great King; a great statesman and a great reformer. _
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