Royal William: The Story of a Democrat
$2.50 By MACMILLAN
IF you can’t take your biographies straight and must have them diluted with fiction, you will like this slightly ‘fictionized‘ life of the king nobody knows. This is George Ill’s third son, William IV, who reigned seven years, between George IV and Victoria. The traditional view is that he was a well-meaning but vacillating and blundering nonentity. Miss Leslie presents him as much the best of his family (though this would not be alone much of a compliment), whose qualities were never rightly estimated. Her portrait is very appealing, and it is drawn with considerable spirit and humor against a background of amusing Georgian manners. Perhaps the most original interpretation concerns his relations with Mrs. Jordan, the actress. The most successful portrait is that of Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the girl wife whom he married when he was fifty-three. R. M. G.