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

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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

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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

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It takes place at Newport, which is a plus in itself — sometimes I feel like all novels about wealthy people in the early 20th century should be set there — but unlike other novels of Newport that I’ve read, this one isn’t just there for the fabulously rich people: the naval base is just as important. Our heroine, Anne Wellington, is there because she’s fabulously rich, but our hero, Jack Armitage, is there because he’s in the process of inventing a new kind of torpedo.

Anne and Armitage like each other immediately, so there wouldn’t be much in the way of conflict if it weren’t for Prince Koltsoff, the third corner of the love triangle and the lynchpin of the spy plot, which involves a stolen part from Armitage’s torpedo. Even that doesn’t do much to add tension, though. I mean, having Koltsoff give Anne the stolen part to hide does give us a clearer idea of how slimy he is, but it also pretty effectively disposes of any mystery there might have been.

The characters are nice enough — I liked Anne’s mother, who has schemed her way to social supremacy, and Sara Van Valkenberg, Anne’s friend who turns out to have grown up with Jack, much to the detriment of his chauffeur disguise — but the book really does suffer from the lack of tension. Prince Koltsoff does his best, but he’s not that interesting. What is interesting is Anne’s attraction to him, which seems to be almost entirely physical — not something you usually see in books from this era. Other cool little bits include the mock naval battle Armitage shows to Anne and Sara, and the Wellington family dynamic, which seemed really true to life, barring the bit where they’re insanely wealthy. And there are other things to like — lots of them — but there isn’t really anything to love.

Prince or Chauffeur? at Project Gutenberg

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The Wiggs family is very, very poor, and there are quite a few of them. First, of course, comes the irrepressibly cheerful and kind Mrs. Nancy Wiggs, who does her best to help out her equally poor neighbors even when she doesn’t have enough food and coal for her own kids. She’s assisted in supporting the family by fifteen-year-old Jim, upon whom Rice concentrates enough pathos for two whole other books. Billy is an ordinary mischievous kid, and the three girls are chiefly notable for their names: Asia, Australia, and Europena (because poor people being ignorant is always hilarious). My favorite thing about the “geography names” is that Rice clearly can’t decide which of the many possible nicknames for ‘Australia’ she likes best, which results in other members of the family alternating between “Austry,” “Straly,” and “Traly.”

Another time-honored use of poor people in fiction — besides using them as comic relief, I mean — is to make them as pathetic as possible, so that those of us who aren’t starving and miserable can feel pleased with ourselves about not being starving and miserable. You may think Rice already has that covered with Jim, who, in addition to being starving and miserable, is shrunken and crippled with responsibility. But no, there is a way to make him more pathetic, and that is by killing him off.

I did enjoy Mrs. Wiggs, mostly, but I also found it a little bit infuriating. I really don’t want to judge a book from 1901 by later standards, but the fact remains that there are certain time-honored ways of using poor people in fiction, and this book does all of them. Clearly, though, Rice doesn’t find the Wiggs family sufficiently interesting to carry the book by themselves, so she soon introduces a couple of wealthy young friends for them. Miss Lucy Olcott is pretty and charitable and a little intolerant, and Robert Redding is handsome and charitable and compassionate, and almost as soon as we’re introduced to them they get into a fight over Redding’s friend Dick, who is an alcoholic, and possibly consumptive. Lucy is embarrassed for Redding to be seen with Dick, while Redding just wants to stand by his friend. So, naturally, they break up.

Enter Mrs. Wiggs, because another thing children and poor people have in common in books is that they’re excellent at bringing estranged lovers back together. Lucy and “Mr. Bob,” as the Wiggses call him, both become benefactors to the family, and Lucy learns to be compassionate enough that she and Redding can get back together. In the beginning, the Wiggses make a lot of noises about not accepting charity, but I guess it’s okay when your benefactor hangs out with you as well as giving you stuff. Within the book, at least, it all makes sense. And honestly, I liked it. Mrs. Wiggs is, most of the time, kind of awesome, and I loved that Lucy broke her engagement with Redding because she was young and sheltered and saw everything in black and white. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being manipulated. But then, manipulative books are always popular.

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch at Project Gutenberg

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Anyway, Rinehart’s mystery novels are, in general, a little inconsistent. Some are very well plotted, and some are all over the place, and The Circular Staircase is a good example of the latter. Rinehart piles on mysterious circumstances; as soon as a clue appears to one part of the mystery, a whole other plotline springs up fully-formed from somewhere else. And it’s very clever because, while theoretically you have enough clues to figure out what’s going on, there’s so much happening that it’s hard to sort out which clue goes to which mystery. It’s also kind of exhausting.

Actually, though, I didn’t mean to talk about The Circular Staircase; this post is supposed to be about The Man in Lower Ten, Rinehart’s first novel, which I think is pretty fantastic. As in The Circular Staircase, you’re given a lot of clues, but in The Man in Lower Ten, they mostly come at the beginning. and instead of the chaos spawning more chaos, it’s slowly put into order. Also, it’s a train murder story — and there’s something about those that always gets me — but not just a train murder story. Actually, it might be the first train murder story — it was published in 1906.

The narrator, Lawrence Blakeley, is a lawyer and a pretty likable guy. He’s on his way home from getting a deposition when he’s the victim of a mix-up on the train: first his sleeping compartment, when he goes to get ready for bed, turns out to be occupied by someone else. Then, when he wakes up in the morning, he’s not in the compartment he thought he went to sleep in and the important papers he was carrying are nowhere to be found. Also, there’s a dead guy in his former compartment, and several signs point to Blakeley as the murderer. He’s about to be arrested when the train crashes, which kills almost everyone on the car (although as the story goes on, other people who were there keep popping up and being like, “oh, by the way, I survived too!”). The only evident survivor when Blakeley wakes up is Alison West, the girl his best friend is hoping to marry. They escape the wreckage together, and by the time Blakeley makes it home we know a) that she’s somehow involved in the mystery, and b) that he’s fallen in love with her. Rinehart is great at developing a romance in the background of a mystery, and I find it particularly enjoyable in this book.

There’s also an entertaining amateur detective, a whole slew of mysterious women, hints of bigamy, and a creepy cat. Rinehart cleverly manages to have the reader know things that the narrator doesn’t and vice versa, which always impresses me. And it’s funny — check out Blakeley’s mental letter to the Pullman Company on the subject of their uncomfortable sleeping compartments: “If they are built to scale, why not take a man of ordinary stature as your unit?” I wrote mentally. “I can not fold together like the traveling cup with which I drink your abominable water.”

I was misled by Wikipedia and read The Circular Staircase first, but if I could somehow introduce myself to Rinehart for the first time again, I’d choose this.

Vintage Reviews: When a Man Marries

The Man in Lower Ten at Project Gutenberg

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The Visits of Elizabeth

Elinor Glyn

The novel consists of the letters of Elizabeth to her mother, and I can’t put the premise any better than Glyn does:

“It was perhaps a fortunate thing for Elizabeth that her ancestors went back to the Conquest, and that she numbered at least two Countesses and a Duchess among her relatives. Her father had died some years ago, and, her mother being an invalid, she had lived a good deal abroad. But, at about seventeen, Elizabeth began to pay visits among her kinsfolk.”

Her “kinsfolk” are all wealthy and nearly all titled, and she meets a lot of the same people as she goes from house party to house party. People are constantly falling in love with her, which is very entertaining, but it’s clear pretty early on that Harry, the Marquis of Valmond, is the one she’s interested in — even if she doesn’t realize it herself. But he’ll have to end his affair with the snide South African Mrs. de Yorburgh-Smith before Elizabeth can accept him as a suitor.

Elizabeth is a delightful character, beautiful, unaffected, innocent, and very, very sharp. Her innocence prevents her from seeing the implications of her observations (when she sees a shadowy figure wandering the halls at night, she thinks it’s a ghost, while it’s obvious to everyone else that it’s a man visiting a woman’s bedroom) and it should all be horribly coy, but it isn’t. And it’s a satirical book, but not in a mean way. Or, at least, it’s only mean in the way that young girls are when they think anyone over forty is elderly. Elizabeth skewers her friends, relatives and acquaintances with her wit, but she doesn’t realize she’s doing it, which somehow makes it all okay.

The Letters of her Mother to Elizabeth

I always wonder, when I’m reading The Visits of Elizabeth, what on earth her mother can be saying to her in her replies. And, because Glyn was plagued by anonymous sequel-writers, we get to find out at least one person’s opinion. William Rutherford Hayes Trowbridge was the author of a number of other novels besides The Letters of her Mother to Elizabeth (published anonymously in 1901), but all I really know about him is that I don’t like him. Trowbridge envisions Elizabeth’s mother as someone as much like Elizabeth as a forty year-old widow can be, but for several different reasons, it doesn’t quite work.

For one thing, I can’t imagine that Elizabeth’s character could be what it is if she was raised by the woman Trowbridge creates. And apparently Trowbridge can’t, either, because he has Elizabeth’s mother imply that the innocence is a front, and that Elizabeth is consciously on the lookout for a wealthy husband. I have no problem with unauthorized sequel-writers on principle, but I do think it’s important to try and make your sequel fit the original work, rather than twisting the original work to validate your sequel. Also, he keeps giving characters names like Blubber and Fruit and Portcullis, which is just irritating.

Mostly, though, the problem is that Trowbridge doesn’t have nearly as light a touch as Glyn, so Elizabeth’s innocence and candor become, in Trowbridge’s picture of her mother, coyness and spite.

Elizabeth Visits America

Elizabeth, Marchioness of Valmond

Glyn did actually write a sequel: Elizabeth Visits America. And while, like the original, it consists entirely of Elizabeth’s letters to her mother, it also gives us an alternative version of how Elizabeth’s innocence might work in a married woman. I don’t know how to describe it, exactly, except to say that, while Elizabeth knows more about the world than she did in The Visits of Elizabeth, she retains a faith in everyone’s good intentions. Her genuine liking for almost everyone she meets takes the sting out of her often ridiculous observations.

In this book, Elizabeth has been married for about seven years, and she and Harry have two children, who they have apparently named Hurstbridge and Ermyntrude, although, to be fair, Hurstbridge is probably a title rather than a given name. A letter from the Vicomte de Tremors, one of Elizabeth’s former suitors, sparks a quarrel, and Harry runs off to Africa to hunt lions or something, while Elizabeth joins her cousin Octavia and Octavia’s husband Tom on a trip to the United States.

Elizabeth waxes philosophical about America’s relative youth as a country, saying a lot of pretty ridiculous things and getting, at times, kind of offensive, but in the most good-natured way possible.  I always enjoy books like this (for another titled-British-girl-visits-America story, try the Williamsons’ Lady Betty Across the Water) because British and American customs were just different enough that hearing about what is and isn’t the same teaches you about both. Even allowing for the probability that Glyn has made everything just a bit more scandalous than it actually was.

Actually, both of the Elizabeth books feel sort of educational at times, Elizabeth Visits America more obviously, with its tours of opium dens, and San Francisco three years after the 1906 earthquake and such, but also The Visits of Elizabeth, which always makes me feel a lot better acquainted with upper crust Edwardian society than any other book I can think of, because Glyn really did hang out with the kind of people she writes about — those of you who are watching Downton Abbey would probably have a lot of fun with it — and I suspect these books would be enjoyable even if they had no basis in real life at all. Really, people don’t give Glyn enough credit.

Elinor Glyn and “Three Weeks”

The Visits of Elizabeth at Project Gutenberg

Elizabeth Visits America at Project Gutenberg

The Letters of her Mother to Elizabeth at Google Books

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To Have and To Hold, by Mary Johnston, was the bestselling book of 1900, and it’s not hard to see why — it’s awesome. It’s the same sort of book as Janice Meredith: adventure, American colonial history, etc. To Have and To Hold just has more pirates and, I don’t know, general craziness. I kind of love it.

To Have and to Hold is set in the early years of the Virginia colony, and follows the fortunes of Captain Ralph Percy, one of the earliest settlers. He’s not wealthy and he’s not politically important and he’s not a real historical figure, but he’s friends with all of those who are. For example: at the beginning of the book, Pocahontas has been dead for three years. Percy remembers her fondly, is best friends with her widower John Rolfe, and respects her brother Nantauquas more than any of the other members of the Powhatan tribe. Although — well, that’s not saying much. Percy has a high opinion of the Indians’ cunning, but a low opinion of their honor.

The story begins when Percy, mostly unwillingly, takes part in a sort of mail-order bride arrangement and ends up married to a young woman who is clearly more than she professes herself to be. How much more isn’t clear until the arrival by ship, some weeks later, of my Lord Carnal, the King’s favorite. He reveals that she is Lady Jocelyn Leigh, a ward of the King. The King wanted her to marry my Lord Carnal, but she hated him, and so she ran away. And it’s hard to blame her, because my Lord Carnal isn’t very nice, and Captain Percy is, and clearly she will eventually fall in love with her husband. But first, adventures!

Many weeks of everyone pretending they don’t know very well that Ralph and Jocelyn are going to be sent back to England to have their marriage annulled culminate in the couple escaping in a tiny boat. They mean to go alone, but they end up with three additional passengers:

• Ralph’s servant Diccon, with whom he has an extremely prickly relationship owing to that one time when Diccon tried to kill him.
• Jeremy Sparrow, minister, former Shakespearean actor, and good-natured hulking giant, who has appointed himself Ralph’s new best friend.
• Somewhat inconveniently, my Lord Carnal.

Fortunately they manage to leave behind my Lord Carnal’s sidekick, an Italian doctor who is much given to a) lurking, and b) poisoning people.

Then: shipwreck, pirates, a makeshift courtroom scene, jail, lots of Indians, and an assortment of atmospheric descriptions of scenery.

There’s enough plot for, like, three different adventure novels here, but none of it feels gratuitous, or hastily tacked-on. Except perhaps the end. Ralph Percy really doesn’t like Indians.  And I like the characters, too. Jocelyn should be profoundly irritating, and sometimes she is, but in a human kind of way, rather than a tying herself into knots in order to obey the constraints of the story kind of way. And Ralph Percy is lovely and self-deprecating and heroic, and while Jeremy Sparrow comes out of nowhere and all of a sudden everyone is like, “Oh yeah, I remember seeing you in Twelfth Night,”, I don’t mind, because being a pious minister and a big, burly adventurer at the same time is tough, and he makes it work. I’m less enthused about the villains. My Lord Carnal is disappointingly one-sided, and I can’t really see the point of his creepy Italian poisoner sidekick. But I loved how they all — minus the creepy Italian poisoner — went off on piratey adventures together.

I started this book thinking it was going to be a miserable slog, but once I got a few chapters in, I couldn’t put it down. It’s nice to be able to agree with all of those book-buyers of 1900.

Read To Have and to Hold at Project Gutenberg.

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I haven’t found as many Edwardian motoring novels as I would like, but fortunately if I’m really wanting to read one, I can always turn to the Williamsons. Alice Muriel Williamson was a novelist, and her husband Charles Norris Williamson was an early automotive journalist,and together they wrote novels (she said “Charlie Williamson could do anything in the world except write stories” and “I can’t do anything else”). I’ve read, oh, eight or nine of them at this point, and while not every book contains all of the same elements, I can say pretty definitively that the Williamsons really liked cars, travel, alternating points of view, and people going incognito.

The Lightning Conductor, as far as I can tell, was the first novel they co-wrote — it’s from 1903 — and it contains all of the above. The story is a pretty familiar one: boy meets girl, boy disguises himself in order to get close to girl, boy and girl fall in love, girl discovers deception and boy has to come up with an excuse for being kind of an ass. This story is another thing the Williamsons really liked, judging by the number of times they used it, but they do it so nicely that it’s hard to care.

The girl and boy in question are Molly Randolph, the daughter of an immensely wealthy American businessman, and the Honourable Jack Winston, similarly wealthy but dissimilarly English. Soon after their arrival in England, Molly and her Aunt Mary meet a young man who convinces them that the best way to see Europe is from a car, and sells them his. And it’s 1903 or thereabouts, so even fictional cars break down every fifty miles, but this one is particularly terrible. It’s on one of the many occasions on which it is broken down that Jack Winston comes to Molly’s rescue, passing himself off as his own chauffeur and hiring his car out to her. People in Williamsons books are abnormally prone to disguising themselves as chauffeurs.

Everyone is impressed by Molly’s new chauffeur and his gentlemanly air and his ability to act as a tour guide at all the French chateaus they visit. At times they suspect him (in the guise of James Brown the chauffeur) of having murdered himself (in the guise of the Honourable John Winston), but his skill as a mechanicien makes up for a lot of things.

There are a bunch of moderately forgettable supporting characters, most of them show up for the big reveal at the end, and a lot of filler in the form of long descriptions of scenery — most Williamsons books are half travelogue — but the whole thing is exceedingly enjoyable, and a great introduction to the Williamsons, and to their peculiar sub-genre of early twentieth century romance/adventure.

Read The Lightning Conductor at the Internet Archive or at Google Books.

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Dawn O’ Hara, The Girl Who Laughed

I mean, I feel like probably giving the heroine a nervous breakdown/deathly illness and a lonely life as a reporter on a New York City newspapers is enough, you know? Does she really also need a tragic past involving a dashing, brilliant alcoholic who married her and then went insane? I say no. Edna Ferber says yes, but this is her first novel, so I guess we can give her a pass.

Dawn goes home to Wisconsin to recuperate. Her sister, Norah, and her brother-in-law, Max are happy to have her there, but she doesn’t want to depend on them. It’s not just about being as honorable and independent as every heroine must be — she has to earn money to keep her husband, Peter Orme, in the mental institution to which he’s become accustomed.

Dr. Ernst Von Gerhard, Max’s doctor friend and Dawn’s inevitable love interest (very German, sometimes semi-ironically described as a blond god), says that if Dawn goes back to her life in New York she’ll be dead within the year, so he finds her a job at a newspaper in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee is even more German than Von Gerhard. Dawn sees signs in the windows of stores that say, “English spoken here.” In German. This is one of many openings to talk about the German-ness of Milwaukee that Ferber does not let pass her by. Milwaukee, guys: it is so, so German.

Actually, that’s most of the middle of the book right there. That, and a lot about Dawn  and Von Gerhard heroically trying to supress their feelings for each other. And a sort of excellent bit about an Austrian woman pointing out to her husband that, since she has all the money in the marriage, not to mention all the class, he doesn’t get to tell her what to do. It reads a lot like one of Ferber’s short stories — in a good way, as opposed to a horrifically depressing way.

Things perk up a bit towards the end, when Von Gerhard starts trying to talk Dawn into divorcing the insane husband, which seems kind of low, especially coming from a blond god. She refuses, but probably kind of wishes she hadn’t, especially after she recieves word that Peter has recovered. Soon he shows up, all hollow-eyed and incalculable, and it quickly becomes obvious that his release from the mental hospital was a little premature.

I like Dawn O’Hara. No, really, I do. It’s just that Edna Ferber tends to be pretty unsentimental, and almost scornful of happy endings, and here she’s neither. And in some ways that’s a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with a happy ending, and it’s pretty enjoyable when a writer as good as Ferber wallows in sentiment, but only up to a point. I could only take so many pages of Dawn and Von Gerhard being stoic at each other before I began to hate them both. Dawn eventually won back my affection through the medium of her friendship with disreputable (and tragic) sports reporter Blackie. Von Gerhard…didn’t.

Read Dawn O’Hara at Project Gutenberg.

Visit Melody’s  blog, Redeeming Qualities.