It must be borne in mind that Nijinsky’s public career in the Western World was hardly more than seven years long. The legend of Nijinsky commenced with his first appearance in Paris in _Le Spectre de la Rose_, in 1912. It may have been started, fostered, and developed by Diaghileff, continued by Nijinsky’s wife. It is quite possible this is true; but true or not, it does not affect the validity of the legend. The story of Nijinsky’s peculiarly romantic marriage, his subsequent madness, his alleged partial recovery, his recent death have all been set down for posterity by his wife. I am by no means an all-out admirer of these books; and I am not able to accept or agree with many of the statements and implications in them. Yet the loyalty and devotion she exhibited towards him can only be regarded as admirable. The merit of her ministrations to the sick man, on the one hand, hardly condones her literary efforts, on the other. Frequently, I detect a quality in the books that reveals itself more strongly as the predatory female than as the protective wife-mother. I cannot accept Romola Nijinsky’s reiterated portraits of Diaghileff as the avenging monster any more than I can the following statement in her latest book, _The Last Days of Nijinsky_, published in 1952: “Undoubtedly, the news that Vaslav was recuperating became more and more known; therefore it was not surprising that one day he received a cable with an offer from Mr. Hurok, the theatrical impresario, asking him to come over to New York and appear. My son-in-law, who had just arrived to spend the week-end with us, advised me to cable back accepting the offer, for then we automatically could have escaped from Europe and would have been able to depart at once. But I felt I could not accept a contract for Vaslav and commit him. There was no question at the time that Vaslav should appear in public. Nevertheless, I hoped that the impresario, who was a Russian himself and who had made his name and fortune in America managing Russian dancers in the past, would have vision enough and a humanitarian spirit in helping to get the greatest Russian dancer out of the European inferno. What I did not know at the time was that there was quite a group of dancers who had got together and who worked in silence to keep Nijinsky out of the United States and from public life. Illness had removed the artist with whom they could not compete. They dreaded his coming back.”