The New York herald., 1922-12-01
"The second Empire"

! No one has asked us yet what we
want for Christmas, and probably our
stocking will be filed with just few
good cards. But it might be as well
to drop a hint or two. What we de-
sire and covet more than all else just
ut present is the ability TO write like
Philip Guedalla. He is the young Eng
lishman from oxford with a Spanish
name and a sardonic eye. He is the
author of The Second Empire" Re-
Gently. at some luncheon or other, one
of the more elegant of the theatrical
managers reached for one of the old
est rubber stamps on the Broadway
rack and impressed on his audience
the fact that the theater is place
for entertainment. This sage obser-
walton means exactly nothing, unless,
as never happens. the speaker goes on
to explain what, if anything, he means
by entertainment. With which pre-
amble let us report that we have found
no book this fall so richly and de-
lightfully entertaining as The Second
Empire"
Page after page of Guedallas book
is phrased with a brilliance of style
that is dazzling enough to fascinate all
writing fellows everywhere. And it
must be comfortable and pleasant, too,
to be able TO look placidly on a whole
half century of jostling humans with
the kind of cool disdain which marks
his study of the little folk who made
history in the Europe that bequeathed
us the great war. AS figure after fig
ore passes in the procession, each to
be adroitly fiayed by his thin edged,
fastidious and delicate scorn, he him
self takes on an Olympian stature,
murmuring What fools these mortals
be!' and deriving something of the
dreary satisfaction which the young
Brothers Capek of Prague have found
in reducing their fellow men to the
dimensions of beetles and ants that
they may be the moro easily looked
down upon.
History written in this condescend-
ing and slightly malicious vein-it is,
of course, the Strachey vein--is doubt
less bracing corrective to all the
hero worshiping historians on the shelf,
and doubtless, too, we have not yet
had enough Of it. Certainly 1t is still
little disconcerting The European
scene, so often exhibited under the
warm amber and softening rose lights
of the incorrigible Belasco that is In
all of us, is, in ''The Second Empire"
subjected TO the sharp, cutting day.
light let in past gently but firmly
drawn curtain. Behold a rather alb
surd stage, with makeshift and hollow
trappings. That portentous figure in
the corner is just straw stuffed man
nequin. The somber, tarnished gold
there Is, all too palpably, scrofulous
gilt. And the play? Guedalla will not
even grant IL the dignity of melo-
drama. 1t is farce.
1t is not merely that Napoleon Ill
emerges as a figure not even family
sinister. but as a dumpy, owlish, we'll
meaning. muddle headed accident, the
fond submission to whom by his negli-
gent. abstracted and politically incom-
petent countrymen quite richly earned
for them the painful consequences in
flicted In due course from beyond the
Rhine. Not Napoleon alone. but all
OF them--the elder Hohenzollern. Vic
toria, Albert-they all are presented
as a trif1e fatuous. And not these
scapegoats alone. but every mortal on
the scene from Olivier TO Victor Hugo
Especially Victor Hugo. Please note
Guedalla on Hugo's exile, Hugo. who,
in Les Chatiments" made his Muse
drunk with words" and sent her 20
reel across Europe and crouch, mouth
ing her detestation. on the doorstep Of
the empire. The dreary business of
denunciation went on for eighteen
years. The scene shifted from the
seafront at st. Heller to a corner
house in Guernsey: bulky parcels
came and went with the proofs Of
LES Miserables;" the poet was caught
by the watchful camera In attitudes
of profound reflection in which the
gloom of Lord Byron was artfully
combined with the expatriation of
Ovid: he thought; he thought more
deeply still; he grew a beard. But
whenever an anniversary came around
i'm the republican calendar, or a dis
tant insurrection was detected in need
of the encouragement of n manifesto