DUMBBELLS AND CARROT STRIPS (405 pp.)—Mary Macfadden & Emile Gauvreau—Holt ($3.95).
Mary Williamson was only a Yorkshire millhand until Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden, the "Father of Physical Culture," put a tape around her torso (bust 38½, hips 39). After that, life speeded up for Mary. First, in a nationwide contest, Macfadden crowned her "Great Britain's Perfect Woman"; then he gave her the star turn in his physicultural demonstrations—that of springing nightly off a high table and landing "with both feet together on his breadbasket."* Between springs he poured into her astonished ear the truth about the breadbasket—how the Macfadden stomach revolted against breakfasts, steaks and alcohol, and how steel-strong it grew on a regimen of nuts, raw carrots and beet juice. She knew that he loved her when he took her on a 20-mile hike; they had barely covered half the distance when he popped the question. When she said yes, "he stood on his head for me for one minute and four seconds." So began (in 1913) a robust alliance that was to flourish until 1930, when they separated. Dumbbells and Carrot Strips is her story of those years, and if it is richer in beet juice than any other biography of Bernarr Macfadden, this is because no one has more to reveal about a man than his former wife. Moreover Mary has been assisted by Emile Gauvreau, once a Macfadden editor, who not only has his own beans to spill about the boss but knows just how to cook Mary's. Mahogany for the Teeth. Mary was 19 when they married; Bernarr was 45. He had already rid himself of two wives' who had proved too brittle to uphold the high Macfadden standards of "divine vitality," so he took no chances with Mary.
Her breakfast might consist of one dry cracker washed down with cold water and honey; her lunch varied from grass tea and pea soup ("Fit for a king!" he exclaimed, smacking his lips) to a wide assortment of nuts, fruits, vegetable juices and interminable strips of raw carrot.