On Colonial Upstarts, Brits Err

The people at Debrett’s of London are renowned for knowing the intricate details of British nobility, but they seem to have a few problems when it comes to U. S. presidents. In the publisher’s “Debrett’s Presidents of the United States of America,” a full-page color reproduction of Rembrandt Peale’s 1805 portrait of Thomas Jefferson is labeled as portraying his predecessor, John Adams. The book’s facing page shows a painting in which Adams, Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin are drafting the Declaration of Independence. In that work, Jefferson’s jutting chin and flowing hair make it difficult to confuse him with Adams, who had a receding hairline and wore long sideburns. Roberta Scimone, speaking for the book’s American publisher, Salem House of Topsfield, Mass., said the mistake was made by the British publisher Webb & Bower. She said it would be corrected in future editions.

--Another former U. S. President is getting more respect in Britain. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher unveiled a statue of Dwight D. Eisenhower facing the building in London that he used as his headquarters while commanding Allied forces in World War II. Thatcher declared Eisenhower “a true leader of his country and of the free world,” and said his presidency would be “remembered as a golden age of peace and prosperity.” She joined U.S. Ambassador Charles H. Price II in dedicating the life-sized representation of Eisenhower, in uniform and with hands on hips, outside the U.S. Embassy. The sculpture, by American Robert Dean, was contributed by residents of Kansas, Eisenhower’s home state. One inscription, taken from Eisenhower’s inaugural address of Jan. 20, 1953, reads: “The faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to the free of all the world.” Eisenhower was President for two terms, until 1961. He died in 1969.

--The Washington state Senate made a strategic move in the case of former Soviet chess star Elena Akhmilovskaya and her American husband, John Donaldson, the U.S. chess team captain. The Senate approved a resolution asking Soviet officials to let Akhmilovskaya’s 7-year-old daughter join her in Seattle. “This was a marriage of love--it was not a defection,” state Sen. Kent Pullen, a former state chess champion, said of events surrounding the civil wedding of Akhmilovskaya and Donaldson on Nov. 25, 1988, at the Chess Olympiad in Greece. Because of the secrecy surrounding the wedding, her daughter remained with Soviet relatives.