I downloaded Old Rose and Silver before I started Myrtle Reed’s Lavender and Old Lace, back when I thought Lavender and Old Lace was going to be good. And then, I did want to give Myrtle Reed another try, and I thought I might as well get it over with. And as it turns out, she deserved another shot. I mean, I wish she had a better grasp of structure, and there are myriad reasons why she’ll never be among my favorite authors, but Old Rose and Silver was pretty enjoyable about 70% of the time, and I’m chalking that up as a win.

Old Rose is forty-year-old Rose Bernard, who lives with her widowed aunt, Francesca. Francesca was widowed during the Civil War, and has been eagerly looking forward to joining her husband in Heaven ever since. While she waits, she has a reasonably happy life and a slight fixation on shoes. Rose has lived with her for fifteen years, and, while still beautiful, she considers herself pretty far along in spinsterhood, and is a bit sensitive about her age. She’s very much like Eve Martindale in The Silver Dress, only a bit better socialized and a lot more interested in fashion. Also, she plays the piano.

Silver is a new, temporary addition to the Bernard household: Isabel Ross, Francesca’s niece and Rose’s cousin. Isabel is twenty, probably approximately as beautiful as Rose, and eerily similar to the Isabel in The Car Behind. Her primary character trait is selfishness, and she’s also got a disturbing habit of passing off other peoples’ clever remarks as her own.

Then we have the Kents: Colonel Kent is Francesca’s best friend, and Allison is his thirty-year-old violinist son. They return from a number of years abroad shortly after Isabel’s arrival, and it soon becomes clear that Myrtle Reed hasn’t put Allison’s age exactly halfway between Rose’s and Isabel’s by accident. Most of Reed’s opinions on gender roles are a bit icky, but she does use her characters as mouthpieces for a fairly enjoyable rant on the double standard that encourages men to be interested in younger women and not older ones. Anyway, Rose is clearly the right woman for Allison, and they bond over music, to the point where Allison wants Rose to come on tour with him as his accompanist. But just as Rose is beginning to fall in love with Allison, Allison is becoming infatuated with Isabel.

Rose, as I said, is better socialized than Eve Martindale. Isabel…really isn’t. And she hasn’t even got good taste to help her out, as Eve does. Isabel likes Allison because he’s reasonably wealthy and will probably someday be famous and extremely wealthy, and because she’s gratified by his interest in her, and because she knows that Rose likes him and she’s not a very nice person. It doesn’t occur to her that she ought to be in love with him, and she seems a bit confused as to why anyone would think she should care about him at all. So they get engaged, and Allison remains oblivious to the fact that Isabel basically has no feelings, even when she throws the turquoise engagement ring he’s had designed specially for her into a pond and demands that he give her a diamond one instead.

Meanwhile, there are the Crosby twins, Romeo and Juliet. You don’t really need to know much about them except that they’re a joke. Sometimes it’s a funny joke, but mostly it’s a little pathetic. The way Myrtle Reed plays certain characters for comic effect actually makes me kind of uncomfortable. Also uncomfortable? Anything relating to the Crosbys’ car. Suffice to say they get one, and Isabel badgers Colonel Kent into giving her one as an engagement present, and the two cars crash. Isabel, in spite of the way she limps around and complains about her bruises later, escapes relatively unscathed. Allison gets his hand run over. I don’t remember which hand, except that of course it’s the one he needs to play the violin.

So Allison Kent is permanently crippled, and probably ought to have his hand amputated, but that wouldn’t allow for a miraculous recovery, so Colonel Kent forbids anyone from removing the hand and goes off in search of some specialists. It’s a lot like that bit in Pollyanna.

Allison honorably offers to release Isabel from the engagement, but doesn’t actually expect her to accept the offer, and is shocked and appalled when she’s like, “So I don’t have to marry a cripple? Excellent. Thanks!” Everyone else is shocked and appalled, too, and Isabel gets to be vaguely sociopathic and confused as to why people expect her to have feelings some more. Rose, predictably, steps in and encourages Allison not to be mopey, and they secretly decide that they’re going to get platonically married and she’s going to help him write music.

Enter Doctor Jack. He’s young and optimistic and insists that if Allison cheers up and goes for walks, his hand may be saved. And of course it works, and Rose feels like she can’t hold Allison to the engagement once he’s well, so she goes into hiding and he has to go after her, and all the things you think are going to happen do. And there’s more stuff with the Crosbys as well, but we’re not talking about that.

In conclusion: Myrtle Reed’s writing is so patchy. There were some great bits, and some incredibly uncomfortable bits, and I felt like the whole thing needed to be tightened up at the seams. I liked the characters a lot better than the ones in Lavender and Old Lace, and it never entirely stopped making sense, but I stopped caring about most of the characters halfway through. And I’m still a little traumatized by the Crosby twins.

Old Rose and Silver at Project Gutenberg

Lavender and Old Lace at Redeeming Qualities

Visit Melody’s blog, Redeeming Qualities for more vintage reviews and commentary!

Lord Loveland Discovers America, by those automobile fiends A.M. and C.N. Williamson, is sort of a sequel to Lady Betty Across the Water — Val (short for Percival, one of the Marquis of Loveland’s many names) is Betty’s cousin, and although he’s said to resemble Betty in many things, I’m pretty sure his massive ego isn’t one of them. But if his ego is large, his bank account is the opposite. Completely aside from the maintenance of the proverbial lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed, it sounds like his ancestral home is just about ready to start coming down around his ears. To Val and his mother, the obvious solution to this problem is a wealthy wife, but much to their surprise — Val’s mother thinks as much of him as he does of himself — even the ugliest heiresses they can find aren’t interested.
Then they remember Cousin Betty. She went to America and found herself a rich husband, so theoretically Val ought to be able to do something similar. So they gather together as much cash as they can and buy Val a ticket on ship that’s departing soon. Only, for various reasons, he ends up traveling on another, earlier ship, and when he arrives in New York a couple of weeks early, his reception is puzzling. And when I say puzzling, I mean he’s shunned and kicked out of his hotel, for reasons that should be pretty apparent to the reader, but aren’t to Val, who isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

To make matters worse, or at least more complicated, Val’s fallen in love on the boat on the way over — and with a completely unsuitable girl. Leslie Dearmer doesn’t pretend to be anything but a writer, and he’s even skeptical of minor heiresses. And anyway, Leslie likes Val, but she definitely doesn’t approve of him. And you can’t really blame her. He’s kind of an ass. The purpose of the book is to make him a bit less of one.

Lady Betty was kind of a tour of American high society, but Lord Loveland is pretty much the opposite. I’d say Val keeps hitting new lows, but the lows are pretty hard to choose between, and I don’t think I could put them in order. He’s a waiter for about a second and a half, and then he joins a super low-end touring company of actors. His new BFF is a homeless guy. I mean, he’s a really sweet homeless guy, but still.

Val’s not too horrible either, after the first few chapters. I think the Williamsons were pretty successful at making him awful enough at the beginning that you want to kick him without making you hate him for the entire book. I sort of wish they hadn’t done it by making him so stupid, though. I guess he has to be, or the twists and turns of the plot would strain belief more than they already do, but I have great faith that the ingenuity of the Williamsons could have produced something less embarrassing to read. Oh well. At least by the end he has a very clever fiancée who will presumably save him from the consequences of his stupidity in the future. I guess I prefer my Williamsons to strike more of a balance between lovely scenery and impoverished noblemen; I find you need the former to prevent the latter from becoming irritating, and vice versa. But honestly, I can’t say that this book wasn’t pretty adorable.

Lord Loveland Discovers America at Google Books

Lady Betty Across the Water at Redeeming Qualities

Visit Melody’s blog, Redeeming Qualities for more vintage reviews and commentary!

The Clue is Carolyn Wells’ first mystery novel — it’s from 1909 — and possibly her best. Much as I love Carolyn Wells, I’m completely willing to admit that there’s a certain sameness to her mystery novels — the beautiful young woman freed from some kind of oppression, the implausible solution to the mystery, the stupidity of the main characters. And I’m happy to deal with all of those things, because it’s still Carolyn Wells, but it’s also really refreshing to read a mystery novel of hers that has only one of those three elements.

The beautiful young woman, for starters, isn’t oppressed at all. Madeleine Van Norman is not only fabulously wealthy and the sole owner of a snazzy estate, she’s also just about to marry Schuyler Carleton, with whom she’s very much in love. She’d be happier if she thought he loved her back, but she still plans to go through with the wedding. And she would, too, if she wasn’t found stabbed to death in the library the night before it’s supposed to happen.

The main characters, once the investigation kicks into gear, are kind of delightful. Kitty French, who was to be one of Madeleine’s bridesmaids, somewhat resembles Patty Fairfield: blonde, adorable, clever, funny and vivacious. And Patty Fairfield is an excellent person to resemble. Rob Fessenden is in town to act as Carleton’s best man. He’s unacquainted with the neighborhood, but he’s smart, level-headed, and loyal, and he’s got a talent for investigating things (less of an example of the Carolyn Wells “tell, don’t show,” method than you might expect). They meet, flirt, exchange opinions on Madeleine’s death (Kitty: Maddie didn’t kill herself; Rob: Schuyler didn’t murder her), and investigate together.

When it comes to mystery novels, there’s not a lot that’s more fun than couples investigating together, and while Rob and Kitty aren’t Lord Peter and Harriet, or even Tommy and Tuppence, they’re pretty fun — and significantly earlier than any other mystery-solving couple I can think of. And they’re not terrible at investigating, either. If they aren’t capable of discovering who killed Madeleine themselves, that’s no one’s fault but Wells’.

This is the one Carolyn Wells mystery novel where I really resented the intrusion of her detective Fleming Stone. Most of the time, the characters who are investigating the mystery before he arrives are so stupid that it’s really a relief to have Stone step in and present a solution. But I really would have like to see Rob and Kitty solve this mystery; aside from my desire to see the girl Carleton’s in love with turn out to be evil, that’s my one wish for this book.

The thing is, I see why Wells didn’t do that. There’s a reason she needs Fleming Stone, nine times out of ten: her mysteries are too ridiculous for an amateur investigator to solve. Frequently I can figure out, in a Wells mystery, who the murderer must be, but I rarely, if ever, know how they did it, because most of the time they did it with the aid of a secret passage or some kind of ridiculously specialized skill. I knew pretty early on in The Clue who must have killed Maddie, but I did not know that they were able to rearrange their bones in order to fit into small spaces, nor do I know how I could possibly have figured that out. It’s not something you would expect Rob and Kitty to know either. It’s even a stretch for Fleming Stone, but he’s the only character — and the only type of character — that one could expect to come up with that kind of information, and so Fleming Stone is necessary. I would argue that the crazy, nonsensical solutions to most of Wells’ mystery novels are not necessary, but what’s done is done. And The Clue, in the end, is really an enjoyable book.

The Clue at Google Books

Visit Melody’s blog, Redeeming Qualities for more vintage reviews and commentary!