Notes

“HER MAJESTY THE KING. By James Jeffrey Roche. Illustrated by Oliver Herford. 12mo. Pp. v1. – 149. New York: R.H. Russell.

Although it was written several years ago, James Jeffrey Roche’s ‘Her Majesty the King’ now comes from the publisher in so pretty a dress and with such charmingly quaint and characteristic illustrations by Oliver Herford, that it really bears all the attractiveness of a brand-new book. And it is certainly a story well worth reading, for it is full of that quaint humor expressed in grandiloquent phraseology, which one often finds, but rarely finds well done. From Mr. Roche’s ‘Forewarning,’ written in the ‘year of the Hegira, 1276,’ to his generously bestowed ‘Langniappe,’ the reader settles himself for enjoyment.

The story is merely the loose network to be filled in by his up-to-date philosophy. From the shrewd Kayenna, daughter of the Sultan of Kopaul, and wife of Muley Mustapha, Pasha of Ubikwi, who was generously ‘ready at all times to direct her husband,’ to Shacabac, Grand Vizier and great philosopher, the court of Ubikwi abounded in notable personages. Muley had it in his heart to raise the prospective heir-apparent to his own throne and that of the Sultan, to sow his wild oats in his youth, but the fair Kayenna thought otherwise, and rather than have her husband’s plans executed she deluded the royal parent into believing that their son was a daughter, while the Pasha, in turn valiantly lied — according to his lights — to the court in general by spreading broadcast the news that a son had been born to the royal household.

This is the story of ‘Her Majesty the King,’ founded upon fibs within fibs, and Shacabac, the wise, aids and abets the Pasha in his pious fraud, even though he is himself deceived by the wily Kayenna. Meanwhile he justifies his course in golden aphorisms. “

– The New York Times, New York, New York, 3 Jan 1903