Classic Bookshop - New Ttiles

Rose and Henri, For richer, for poorer, published by StarGroup International, Book Division, lavishly illustrated in 70 pages of full color, is the story of the fifty-two year marriage of Count and Countess Henri de Marcellus.

The narrative describes the loss of the European fortunes from which they came, the trenches of Verdun, financial investment in the California of the '20s, the Stock Market Crash of '29, the Great Depression, real estate ventures in New York and Palm Beach, and the raising of seven children and is brought to a close as the Count and Countess became fixtures in Palm Beach, Florida, where they lived the last decades of their lives.

The book features descriptions of the diametrically opposing cultures from which they came - Edwardian England and the French nobility - which create the book's chief interest and lies at the core of the story. These are described incisively and knowledgably by its author, the fifth of the couple's children and a professional writer.

She approaches her subject matter with a merciless analysis of the social, religious and political differences that their marriage over-came. She writes wittily, and incisively of the people who touched their lives and of the places they lived. The early chapters are the most revealing as the opposing cultures of Edwardian England met the financially strapped, but strictly traditional French aristocracy, in a world that was fast disappearing and giving way to the modern one we know.

Although the book claims to be a love story between Rose and Henri, it is also a love story between the Count Henri de Marcellus and the United States. We are told of his early fascination with Buffalo Bill, whom he saw a child in Paris; his friendship with the Yankee soldiers he met with his unit during the "Great War"; his early travels in America, which included every corner of North America from Canada to Key West '21, with stops in as varied spots as Winnepeg, Santa Fe and Flagler's Palm Beach.

The book is noteworthy for its author's truly masterly description of lost worlds and traditions that have totally disappeared. She describes the etiquette required by the life of the French chateau, as opposed to that of the English country house. She gives intimate details the religious differences between the Count's strictly Catholic mother and the Countess' Anglican parents.

The book reads easily; it is full of anecdote, and a number of famous personalities. She has not tried to glamorize the characters nor minimize their difficulties in this narrative. She has placed throughout the narrative mention of the international problems that impacted their time and caused the Count to make the decisions he did in bringing his family to the United States. The book also has aspects of a social document as it gives many details of every day life such as the prices of hotels during the Depression the cost of gas, of property and of international travel.

The book has value in that it succeeds in showing how the historical facts of the twenties, thirties and forties, now the material of history books, actually affected individual lives. The gradual impoverishment of the European families, the religious issues, and American economic problems, the emotional impact of the Second War on Europeans in the United States all are vividly described.

On the back cover of this unusual book is a comment from Britain's author and Member of the House of Lords, Lord Crathorne, "No one meeting this distinguished couple in later life would imagine the vicissitudes they had passed through together."