Cardinal of Spain

“ AN eminent English historian of the last century once suggested,”writes Simon Harcourt-Smith, British journalist and diplomat, in his introduction to Cardinal of Spain: The Life and Strange Career of Alberoni, “that had England not spurned the offer of Alberoni’s friendship, the American colonies might never have been lost.” Mr. Harcourt-Smith continues, “I do believe that if we had not thwarted his [Alberoni’s] precocious Italian nationalism and ruined his enterprise against Sicily in 1719, the Mussolini family would still be bound to their anvil and bellows, and our tragic onslaught on Italy in 1943, to free it once more of the loathed Germans, would have been unnecessary.” It, is this historically integrated approach, plus a witty, Guedaltasque juxtaposition of period trivia and climactic event, which makes Cordinal of Spain an extremely fascinating book.

Alberoni. born in 1664 of most humble Italian parents, died at eighty-eight, having become Spain’s “absolute ruler.” He disrupted the international political scene, received ten votes in the conclave called to choose Pope Innocent XIII’s successor, and generally played marionettes with the crowned heads of Spain. France, and England. Alberoni manipulated his strings with tact, intuition, and good Italian olive off Parmesan cheese, and exotic noodles. His was an excessively venal day and truffles, marzolim, and ravioli — prepared by his own hands in between fighting wars and signing bills for the redemption of Spain — were his currency.

In “The Art of Biography,”Virginia Woolf says, “In order that the light of personality may shine through, facts must be manipulated; some must be brightened; others shaded; yet in the process, they must never lose their integrity. Simon Harcourt-Smith does not inflate his hero, and his material is so rich, so amusingly apposite, that he has had very little manipulating to do. Alberoni’s time was one of amazing personal eccentricity, frequently involving world shaking results, Mr. Harcourt Smith, fortunately, has a flair for such eccentricity and knows how to make the most of it. Some two hundred years ago Alberoni said, “The character of the Germans is to be insolent and unbearable when things are going well for them; they would do well to reflect that Fortune by her very nature is capricious, and that there’s nothing fixed under the moon Both the observation and the warning are still pertinent Knopf, $3.50.

LEO LERMAN