Dinner in the Dark

In the lounge of Manhattan's Phi Gamma Delta Club last week newshawks found a sleek-haired young man who was once the second most important man in Peru. Straining a whiskey-&-soda through his enormous teeth, Juan Leguia told a colorful story of three years' political imprisonment, and unwittingly revealed to his listeners why there are so many revolutions in Latin America.

Juan Leguia's white-mustached little old father Augusto had been President of Peru for eleven consecutive years. His family, pure Spanish, had lived in Peru since the days of the viceroys. All their loyalties, according to Juan Leguia, were for the family. Peru existed for the benefit of the Leguias and its people were dogs, to be ruled kindly but forcibly as a gentleman would govern any other kennel. Juan Leguia was prepared for his inheritance in the chaste corridors of St. Mark's School, Southborough, Mass. The family's greatest pride is the fact that for centuries its members have been hereditary colonels of the Papal Guard. Every Leguia heir at least once in his life served 40 days in that capacity at the Vatican. Juan Leguia also served in the British air force during the War.

In 1930 the people of Peru, weary of the Leguias, rose up under a red-eyed little wildcat of a man named Lieut.-Colonel Luis Sanchez Cerro and overthrew the government. The Leguias were thrown into jail, charged with a list of peculations long as their pedigree, a list that reached all the way to Washington where it was testified before a Senate committee that the Manhattan firm of J. & W. Seligman & Co. had paid Juan Leguia a "fee" of $415,000 for the privilege of lending $100,000,000 to Peru. All those bonds are now in default.

In jail the Leguias stayed until onetime President Augusto was taken ill and died and Son Juan had spent nearly two years in solitary. Sucking on his drink last week Juan Leguia gave his version of the revolution and his imprisonment:

"My father owned half of Peru when he came into his estate, and he married a woman who owned the other half. We had an income in good years of $5,000,000 to $6,000,000. As for myself . . . when I walked on the streets of Lima or Callao in the old days I would not let anyone else walk on them at the same time. . . . Of course it made many enemies, but I showed them their place, and they respected me.

"When news of the revolt was brought I was at my summer place playing polo on my private polo field. I immediately went to my father's side in Pizarro Palace in Lima. He told me he was heartsick and discouraged . . . and was already formulating the names of those in a junta who should govern the country. One of the disloyal men in his administration spoke up to him and demanded that he should include his name on the list. I. very peacefully, hit him in the face and took him to the window and threw him out into the street. . . . This man, this disloyal man, I said to those assembled, could not govern if he could not talk, and he could not talk with a mouthful of teeth. . . .

"In jail, when my father was gone, I was left alone; the very lights were taken away. I had to use candles. They gave me eight candles during the last year of my incarceration. I lit the candles only to test the food, which I prepared myself, by thrusting a silver knife into the viands. Sometimes as often as twice a week the knife became stained--evidence of poison! If it appeared that nothing contained poison, I then would dress for dinner. . . .

"Do you think I would let those dogs think that anything should affect my morale so I would not dress for dinner? Every night for 641 nights (I ticked them off on the wall) I dressed for dinner in a dinner jacket or in tails and sat down in the complete darkness of that dungeon to eat my dinner. . . .

"Of course everything we had has been swept away. To get to Europe and back here I had to sell my last pearl studs. . . . I have wealthy friends here. I used to play polo with Tommy Hitchcock. . . . But I do not want money from them. If they should offer to lend me money I would fling it in their faces."

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