Hands Across the Sea

By Stefan Kanfer

BURKE'S PRESIDENTIAL FAMILIES OF THE UNITED STATES Edited by HUGH MONTGOMERY- MASSINGBERD 676 pages. Arco. $39.95.

Jeeves, another gin stengah. A treasure, Jeeves is. Been with the club since the flood. Where was I? Ah, yes. Books. Haven't read but one since Oxbridge. Burke's Peerage. Breeders' guide to British nobility. Smashing heraldry: gules argent, lions rampant, bars sinister, all that drill. Snob's bible, they call it--the envious ones. For those of us who can trace our lineage back to Ethelred the Unready, it's--well, it's sort of a--er --bible. Meaning no disrespect, padre. Since the Empire's gone to the demnition bowwows, there's just so few items of permanence. And now damme if Burke's itself isn't going the way of the farthing. Coming out with an American version: Burke's Presidential Families of the United States. I've a good mind to frame a letter to the Times.

American aristocracy! Simple contradiction in terms. The Memsahib's got a Yankee cousin. Know what his idea of ancient history is? Spiro Agnew. Still, if one's got to deal with foreigners, trust Burke's to do a wizard job. Here: watch Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, editorial director, in the introduction. First he dismisses those with no interest in genealogy as "the real snobs . . . secretly afraid of what they might find." Smashing reverse English, what? When the reader is on the defensive, the director presses home: "The only reason the undersigned can establish the identity of his earliest recorded ancestor is the existence of a document showing that Lambert Massynberd was had up for [doing] grievous bodily harm in 1288."Note the strategy? First the more-felonious-ancestry-than-thou ploy, then hit them with the 700-year-old family.

What I like best are the book's biographies. Gems, every jack of them. Zircons, actually. George Washington in four pages. Lincoln in three. Even in the U.S., Burke 's retains its pukka airs. Calls Nixon "controversial." L.B.J.'s the chap who had "a large stock of folk tales -- not all of them appropriate for a polite audience." Gerald Ford is the one who was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. Only King in the book. Pity.

The family trees? About what you'd expect. Lots of descendants in trade. Lots of descendants in politics. But mainly lots of descendants. No wonder the company is now preparing Burke 's Distinguished Families of America. There'll be a volume for you: full of big spacecraft wallahs from Texas, moguls from Hollywoo --plus all their relatives, of course. And every mother's son of them a potential Burke's buyer. That ought to restore the balance of trade. Britain's all washed up, is it? We'll show the blighters where the sun never sets. Jeeves, another round.

. Stefan Kanfer

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.