Books: Hard Scrapple

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MY PHILADELPHIA FATHER (256 pp.)—Cordelia Drexel Biddle, as told to Kyle Crichfon—Doubleday ($4).

When Edward VII toured the U.S. in 1860 as Prince of Wales, something about Philadelphia especially impressed him. "In Philadelphia," he is reported to have said, "I met a large and interesting family named Scrapple, and discovered a rather delicious native food they call biddle."

In this uproarious memoir Cordelia Drexel Biddle (now Mrs. T. Markoe Robertson) serves up a Philadelphia pepper pot of stories about the Main Line's celebrated Biddies. Most of the book is about her father. Colonel Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, a punch-and-judo-throwing millionaire who led fully as strenuous a life as his good friend Teddy Roosevelt. As an amateur boxer, the bald, spike-mustached aristocrat fought under the name of "Tim O'Biddle." The great Ruby Bob Fitzsimmons called him one of the best amateur fighters he ever saw. In 1908 he went four roughhouse rounds with Philadelphia Jack O'Brien. About that time, Biddle took over a Bible class, started a movement called Athletic Christianity that soon won some 200,000 followers around the world. Mixing Bible lessons with boxing bouts, Biddle would tell his young disciples: "I want you boys to go in there and fight as if Christ were the referee."

Probable Baritone. When World War I threatened, Biddle set up camp on a family estate and trained 40,000 men for U.S. fighting forces. One young marine boot named Gene Tunney took his first boxing lessons from Biddle. Later, the athletic Christian circled the world to find more punishing combat tricks to teach marine and FBI recruits. He also found time to write a dozen books ("in a rather half-nelson style," says his daughter) and give annual recitals at Philadelphia's august Academy of Music. ("Mr. Biddle is a baritone, I think," said one critic.)

When World War II broke out, the colonel, then 67, was called back to help harden marines. "Come on, now, kill me," he would snarl unarmed, as they brandished their bayonets. "Why," said one recruit flattened by the colonel's jujitsu, "that old geezer knows more ways to kill you with his bare hands than any man alive."

Complete Man. By the time Anthony Biddle died (in 1948 at 73), he had seen his son and ring protégé Tony become an ambassador and a colonel. His grandson, Cordelia's boy "Angie" Biddle Duke, later served as Truman's envoy to El Salvador, the youngest ambassador in U.S. history (36 when he was appointed). Though Biddies still proliferate in Philadelphia's social register, Cordelia has switched from the Main Line to Manhattan. The result is that My Philadelphia Father, "as told to" Kyle Crichton,* reads like ripsnorting, Bull Moosish commotion recollected in the comparative tranquillity of a Park Avenue penthouse party.

Though there are glimpses of the many-mansioned world in which Cordelia grew up, the ponderous, plunging figure of the colonel dominates the book. "He was an elemental force," says his daughter. "At any time in his life one could point to him and say, 'There is a complete man.' "