Historical Silhouettes
Miss MARJORIE BOWEN'S new book is written with all her accustomed skill ; it is well documented, picturesquely expreased,. the story, in each .case, well told. Perhaps she 1.ould have been better inspired to weave one of her fine historical romances round one or other, for the period is well studied and the material is there.
The title is a little misleading. What is a great gentleman ? Does the term differ in some subtle way from that of a great man .? To us the term represents someone who unites a noble mind with a descent from a long line of distinguished ancestors. The term could not be applied to the weak-witted Carlos II. of Spain or to the undistinguished Louis IL of Orleans, later Louis XII. of France, though it certainly applies to Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen and to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, to the Marechal de Saxe and to the dreamer Dom Sebastiao of Portugal.
The Emperor Frederick is, of course, one of the most romantic figures of his epoch, and the story of his life teems with interest. Four times crowned, twice excommunicated, the friend of learning, the pupil of Michael Scot and the Moors, the brilliant conqueror who styled himself " Emperor of the World," Frederick has come down to us with a sort of legendary glamour. Louis of Orleans, son of the poet who spent so much of his life in exile in England, has none of the strong personality of either Frederick or the soldier King Gustavus Adolphus II., or even of the splendid and often disappointed adventurer Count Maurice de Saxe. The picture of the Court of Carlos II. is surely painted in too sombre colours ; bad as it was, it hardly merited all the shower of depreciatory adjectives that are used to paint the picture. Even the ladies of the Court are described as swarthy, coarse and harsh ; the Escorial is a " ghastly edifice," smitten by howling winds that sweep down from the " gaunt mountains."
The story of Dom Sebastiao takes us to a new and almost untrodden path of history ; the grandson of Charles V. and of King Joao of Portugal, he succeeded to the throne when he, was three years old ; fortune smiled, but he was doomed to disaster because a ghost with the poetic name of " The Enchanted Mooress " cursed him in his cradle. He grew up a mystic, almost an anchorite, lonely among the gay courtiers of a luxurious Court ; he died nobly, in the endeavour to rid Africa of the Moors.
In her preface 1: this interesting book, Miss Bowen says that many of her stories contain a mystery, many tales having grown up round the death of Dom Sebastiao, of Marie Louise of Orleans, wife of Carlos II., of Maurice de Saxe, of Gustavus Adolphus. = She does not allude to the old legend that Frederick II. never died, having been spirited away, like our King Arthur, to wait his return at the fateful hour.
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