Frumps & Fashionables

To sit in the Chamber, Senate or Cabinet with hats on or with hats off was the dilemma last week of three good and even great women, the first of their sex ever appointed to a French Cabinet (TIME, June 15). Sensibly they conferred. In the United Kingdom, they know, female members of the Mother of Parliaments, such as Lady Astor, sit in hats. Last week, however, buxom and expensively dressed Undersecretary for National Education Cecile Leon Brunschvicg; drawn-faced and thrifty Undersecretary for Scientific Research Irene Curie-Joliot; and sweetly garrulous Undersecretary for Child Welfare Suzanne Lacore, decided unanimously to set the precedent that a French Cabinet female sits without hat.

With all France in a labor ferment the three good & great women had opportunity last week to do little more than assure reporters of their triple determination to draft and urge the enactment of specific laws for the benefit of French education, science and children. A heavy cross for Undersecretary for National Education Cecile Brunschvicg to bear is the fact that her immediate superior, Minister of National Education Jean Zay, is a most arrant Radical Socialist, author of perhaps the most defamatory poem ever written about a national flag, the red-white-&-blue French tricolor. It appears impossible for Mme Brunschvicg to keep French moppets from singing in school if they choose the amazing lines of M. Zay. Chorus:

Fifteen hundred thousand dead for that filthy tricolor!

Fifteen hundred thousand men dead each of whom had a mother, a mistress, children and a home.

Fifteen hundred thousand dead, God!

For that stinking little rag!

In the candid opinion of most male members of the new Cabinet its three females seemed last week bores, if not frumps; but these Radical Socialist and Socialist males continued strong for "The Red Marquise" and her potent friend, Minister of Defense Edouard Daladier, called "The Bull." Although almost as painful a subject as the new Minister of National Education's song about the flag, the new Minister of Defense's hospitable Marquise Rouge was last week a key to understanding the new Cabinet. Its political supporters, 381 Radical Socialists, Socialists and Communists, are not such austere champions of the masses but what they, like many British Laborites, are glad when occasion offers to dine with the rich.

"The Red Marquise," the charming Marquise de Crussol, Marie Louise Frederique Jeanne Amelia de Crussol d'Uzes, is the bourgeois-born daughter of one of France's great industrial families, the Beziers. Her father's millions were derived from the tinning of sardines. Precocious as a child and fond of teasing an old Senator, her uncle, to tell her about the politics of the day and the political salons of great French maitresses in the past, Marie Louise acquired by marriage the exalted nobility of the House d'Uzes, espoused the grandson of the greatest and most socially prominent horsewoman in all France, the late Dowager Duchesse d'Uzes (TIME, Feb. 13, 1933). Thereupon Marie Louise set out to become, as it were, the Pompadour of the Proletariat.

Her salon in the aristocratic Avenue Henri-Martin still sometimes welcomes the old nobility, the distinguished diplomats and the arrived artists for whom it was built by Marie Louise, but today ministers of the first definitely Socialist Cabinet France has ever had are her star guests. Always the place of honor is occupied by "The Bull," heavy-jowled Edouard Daladier, Minister of Defense. Not long ago M. Daladier wrested control of the Radical Socialist Party from paunchy old Edouard Herriot, also a frequent guest of the Marquise de Crussol, and the possibility of a Left coup d' etat is never mentioned without mentioning the Bull, who today commands the Army.

Not until after Mme Daladier's death did the faithful Bull and Marie Louise become such intimates that today she speaks of her husband thus: "He is a young gentleman farmer. He looks after his properties and is adored by the peasants for his simplicity. He is a great sportsman. I have a holy horror of sport. As for the French bourgeoisie--to which I myself belong--I do not like them. My nostrils have breathed heavily the winds of the great spaces. I abhor everything which might be niggardly. The bourgeoisie are too egotistical. They cannot understand that it is no longer possible to keep the French people in a state of relative misery. Yes, it is true, I am called 'The Red Marquise.' "

After thus expressing herself recently, Madame La Marquise added, "I think if they are going to tax the large fortunes again it would be wise to free the castles of their taxes, for these beautiful chateaux of our old families are national treasures. . . . My own philosophy is simple. I wish that everyone might be happy."

Asked what she thinks of the League of Nations at Geneva, Madame La Marquise replied dreamily with half-closed eyes, "I have given important dinners there."

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