Carlota and Mancini
CARLOTA—THE STORY OF CHARLOTTE AND MAXIMILIAN OF MEXICO. By Princess Bibesco. (Heinemann, 13s. 6d.) CARLOTA is subtitled 'A Historical Romance,' but there was nothing particularly romantic about the marriage of Princess Charlotte of Belgium to the brother of the Austrian Emperor, nor in their subsequent tragic involvement in world politics, where they seem to have been puppets rather than protagonists. A great historical novel might have been made from their Mexican adventure, their disillusionment, their abandonment by Louis Napoleon, Char- lotte's fruitless journey to Europe to appeal for help against the rebels, her madness, her husband's death and her long survival. Instead, Princess Bibesco has devoted half her short book to the early life of Maximilian, his reputedly Napoleonic origins, his courtship and marriage. Nothing is added to the bare historic facts except some dialogue and descriptions of scenery, and it is hard to gather what these Europeans were doing in Mexico, or why Charlotte went mad or why Maximilian was shot. The whole book reads like a film scenario and, no doubt, will make a highly successful one.
Mrs. Sutherland, on the other hand, has chosen a subject which is supposed to have inspired Racine's Berenice, and, though her style is not at all poetic, she does manage to give a clear idea of the characters and the setting of her romantic tragedy. She shows the isolation of the young Louis XIV, a king at five years old, brought up by a Spanish mother and the Italian Cardinal Mazarin; also the Anomalous position of the Cardinal's nieces, mere nobodies from the dynastic point of view but heiresses to his great wealth and brought to the French Court as children in order to make splendid matches. They were the only girls allowed to associate as equals with the young King, and it is not surprising that he should have.fallen in love with one of them, though strange that it should be Marie, the plain, intelligent one, and stranger that he should have expected to marry her. The Queen Mother Was horrified and though the Cardinal might, in other circum- stances, have been pleased, he was engaged in negotiating a peace treaty with Spain which entailed the marriage of Louis to the Infanta. Mazarin, therefore, used all his influence in breaking off the love affair, persuaded Louis to go on a progress through his dominions while the treaty was pending, and sent Marie and two of her sisters into semi-captivity in a castle near La Rochelle. Louis, in the end, sacrificed his love to reasons of state and Marie was sent back to Italy and unwillingly married to a Prince Colonna. The whole episode made an ineradicable impression on the King and, on his return journey from the Spanish border where he had been married, he left his bride for three days while he visited the castle where Marie had stayed, wandered by the seashore and slept in her room. This romantic behaviour, more appropriate to the nineteenth than the seventeenth century, marked the last time that the Sun King appeared without a mask. Mrs. Sutherland's book is delightfully illustrated with contempo- rary medals, paintings and engravings and would have been even more satisfying if she had given a brief sketch of Marie Mancini's subsequent career.
PANSY PAKENHAM
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