The Bonny Prince

PRINCE CHARLIE AND His LADIES-- Compton Mackenzie--Knopf ($3).

Monarchy's sun may be setting, but monarchists are still loyal to their lost causes in many a stoutly republican country. The Stuarts sank long ago below the English horizon, but the Jacobitish after glow lingered. That all Jacobites are not yet dead was shown this week when Novelist Compton Mackenzie published Prince Charlie and His Ladies. Author Mackenzie writes Jacobitingly, speaks with contumely of "Whig" reviewers who deplore his loyalist zeal. U. S. readers may not share Author Mackenzie's emotions nor his unflagging interest in the controversial minutiae of the Jacobite legends, but they will not need Scottish blood to perk up their ears at these echoes of "the Forty-five." Author Mackenzie's is not a formal history of the Young Pretender but a series of portraits of the women who made up a large part of his life. Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria (1720-1788), like most royalty, was less racially pure than many of his subjects. His mother, Princess Clementina, was German-Polish, the granddaughter of John Sobieski, famed Turk-toppler. From her Prince Charlie inherited his charm, his love of adventure. Clementina's marriage with Pretender James was a runaway to romance that turned into a drab political alliance; the Old Pretender was not the glamorous figure his son turned out to be.

Of the events of "the Forty-five" leading up to the bloody collapse at Culloden, Author Mackenzie tells little, concentrates on the loyal heroism of Prince Charlie's protectors after the battle, when redcoats combed the country for him. One of his hostesses, Anne Macintosh, on a visit to London three years after, found herself dancing with the Duke of Cumberland (known to all good Jacobites as "the Butcher of Culloden"). The first dance over, she asked if she might choose the air for the second, called for The Auld Stuarts Back Again.

Most famed of these Jacobite ladies was Flora Macdonald, who risked her life more than once to guide the Prince to safety, dressed him in women's clothes and passed him off as her maid. Her loyalty did not prevent her marrying later and becoming the mother of ten. When Johnson and Boswell made their tour of the Hebrides they visited her, and she and the old lexicographer hit it off from the first. His typical tribute to her was inscribed on her tomb: "A name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour. She is a woman of middle stature, soft features, gentle manners, and elegant presence." Safe back in France after his fiasco, Prince Charlie became a young-man-about-Paris. Author Mackenzie says that Charles, like his ancestress Mary. Queen of Scots, was "essentially cold sexually," but women liked him nevertheless. His liaison with Mme de Talmond was largely a political move, but he and Clementina Walkinshaw were lovers from the time they first met; she bore him a daughter, Charlotte, the only child he ever had. Why she left him remains something of a mystery. Though she wrote and asked his forgiveness Charles never saw her again.

Because he needed an heir Charles finally married, at 51. Princess Louise was 32 years younger, but Author Mackenzie wastes no pity on her. He admits that his hero sometimes "took refuge in the bottle" but denies that he was "a confirmed sot." implies that any princess should have thought him a catch. Princess Louise did not, however; she twitted him for his lack of marital vigor, made fun of him behind his back, finally cuckolded him with Italian Poet Alfieri. Author Mackenzie is annoyed by the tradition that has made her out a wronged and romantic figure. Says he: "She was mercenary. She was a liar. She was cold to the very core of her being. She was pretentious. She was self-complacent. Such humor as she had was of the privy. She began life as a chatterbox with good teeth and a pretty complexion. She ended it as a dowdy, in terminable old bore, in a large red shawl." When she and Charles finally separated, he turned again to his bastard daughter, made her his legitimate heir. But she died two years after her father. The Pretenders were dead; there was nothing left of the Stuarts but pretense.

Casual readers may be puzzled to ob serve that the footnotes sometimes contradict Author Mackenzie on matters of Jacobite fact, sometimes disagree on mat ters of Jacobite opinion. Reason: Author Mackenzie went to South America before seeing the proofs, left them for his friend Alistair Tayler to read, mark, modify when his conscience called him.

The Author. With precocious promptness, British Novelist Edward Montague Compton* had his first literary fling when at the age of 22 months, he startled his actor-father Edward Compton by reading nursery rhymes at sight. By six, he had exhausted the family library. After public school and Oxford, he retired to write plays in the wilds of Cornwall. With characteristic speed, he turned out his first novel, The Passionate Elopement, in less time than it took him to find a publisher. From the War he got an O. B. E., was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, but when in 1932 he wrote up the work of the British Aegean Intelligence Service, in which he had served in 1917, he was tried in Old Bailey (TIME, Nov. 28, 1932 ), sternly fined -L-100 and costs for betraying official secrets. Last autumn, forgivingly, England's Iberian-American Institute sent him to Brazil to spread polite propaganda. He used to divide his time between Capri and 50-acre Channel Island Jethou, which is leased directly from the King, gives its tenant such crotchety feudal privileges as flying his own flag. But by 1931 feudal Jethou was again for rent.

* Mackenzie is an ancestral clan name.

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