Road to Mandalay

THE LACQUER LADY--F. Tennyson Jesse--Macmillan ($2.50).

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap

was green, . .

'An 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat--jes' the

same as Theebaw's Queen. . . .

--Kipling.

Here is the true story of Supaya-lat (as Author Jesse spells her) and how she came to be Thibaw's queen; how the riotous, sometimes murderous goings-on in the Golden Palace of Mandalay finally brought the British to Upper Burma, to extinguish in one night the picture-book existence of the Lord of All Power and Glory, the Centre of the Universe.

Fanny, the pretty little Burmese-Italian half-caste, was the immediate cause of Mandalay's downfall. When good King Mindon died, and the unscrupulous Supaya-lat married Thibaw, a minor prince, and engineered a coup d'etat which landed him on the throne, his brothers and their supporters in a bloody grave, Fanny, her European maid-of-honor, found herself a favorite. In spite of wholesale massacres not quite drowned out by nightlong music and daylong feasting, Fanny enjoyed those butterfly years. But then she fell in love with Bonvoisin, who had come to the court of Ava to get the concession to the royal ruby mines. He was a Frenchman, but she took him seriously. When he returned with a wife, Fanny stole copies of the treaties Mandalay had made with France, gave them to the English, had her revenge on Bonvoisin, brought down everything in ruins.

Author F. Tennyson Jesse is a grandniece of the late great Alfred Lord Tennyson, onetime (1850-92) Poet Laureate of England. But she is no whole-souled admirer of the Tennysonian virtues. Some of her printed remarks should make her great-uncle revolve in his cerements. One-time painter, newspaperwoman, reviewer, correspondent for the Ministry of Information during the War, she has also written: Tom Fool, Many Latitudes, Moonraker, Murder and its Motives. Author Jesse is married to Harold Marsh Harwood, with whom she collaborated on a play: The Pelican. She lives in Sussex, likes yachting.

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