A positively wolfish appetite for books

     The Small Person used to look at them sometimes with hopeless, hungry eyes. It seemed so horribly wicked that there should be shelves of books - shelves full of them - which offered nothing to a starving creature. She was a starving creature in those days, with a positively wolfish appetite for books, though no one knew about it or understood the anguish of its gnawings. It must be plainly stated that her longings were not for "improving" books. The cultivation she gained in those days was gained quite unconsciously, through the workings of a sort of rabies with which she had been infected from birth. At three years old she had begun a life-long chase after the Story. She may have begun it earlier, but my clear recollections seem to date from Herod, the King, to whom her third year introduced her through the medium of the speckled Testament....
     Religious aunts possibly gave it horrible little books containing memoirs of dreadful children who died early of complicated diseases, whose lingering developments they enlivened by giving unlimited moral advice and instruction to their parents and immediate relatives, seeming, figuratively speaking, to implore them to "go and do likewise," and perishing to appropriate texts. The Small Person suffered keen private pangs of conscience, and thought she was a wicked child, because she did not like those books and had a vague feeling of disbelief in the children. It seemed probable that she might be sent to perdition and devoured by fire and brimstone because of this irreligious indifference, but she could not overcome it...
     Little girls did not revel in sumptuous libraries then. Books were birthday or Christmas presents, and were read and re-read, and lent to other little girls as a great favor.
    The Small Person's chase after the Story was thought to assume the proportions of a crime...
     "That child has a book again!" she used to hear annoyed voices exclaim, when being sent up or down stairs, on some errand, she found something to read on the way, and fell through the tempter. It was so positively unavoidable and inevitable that one should forget, and sink down on the stairs somewhere to tear the contents out of the heart of a few pages. . .   

There is something enchanting about meeting a fellow reader across the years. This is from Frances Hodgson Burnett's The One I Knew Best of All, a memoir of her childhood in the 1850s (it was published in 1893). This particular chapter has a happy ending, with the Small Person discovering, in "a large old-fashioned mahogany bookcase" called the Secrétaire, shelves and shelves of stories inside the "substantially bound and serious-looking books" that fill it.

Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter, she read fast and furiously. She forgot that she was perched on the ledge, and that her legs dangled, and that she might fall. She was perched in Paradise - she had no legs - she could not fall. No one could fall from a Secrétaire filled with books, which might all of them contain Stories!

I had been reading William Still's The Underground Railroad, his record of the fugitive slaves that passed through Philadelphia on their way to freedom in Canada. He began the work to document these individuals, which might help them find their families again later. His is an invaluable record, but it isn't concerned as much with how the fugitives escaped and made their way north, or how the Railroad operated. That's the part of the story that I want to read, so I think I'll set it aside for now in favor of a more general history of the Railroad.

A well-woven tale

The Shuttle, Frances Hodgson Burnett

I was so intrigued by a review of this book over on Shelf Love that I went straight to ABE to look for a copy.  I was lucky enough to find a 1907 hardback, for less than $10.  And as a bonus, it has an inscription: "Mother from Owens  Xmas '07,"  which made me wonder not just about Mother and Owens, but also the other hands through which this book has passed since 1907, before ending up in Houston.  I love finding an inscription, especially for a gift (though I loathe underlining and margin notes).

Jenny at Shelf Love described this book as "plotty," which is an understatement.  The plot involves two sisters, Rosalie and Bettina Vanderpoel, daughters of an Upper Ten Thousand family in New York that seems to be modeled on the Astors.  Rosie, the elder, marries an English baronet, Sir Nigel Anstruthers, who put up a good front before the wedding but turns out to be impoverished, a libertine, and an abusive husband.  Betty, only eight at the time of the marriage, dislikes Sir Nigel intensely and makes her feelings plain.  (In one loose plot element, Sir Nigel also has a sister, Emily, who is mentioned once but is never referred to again.)  Sir Nigel takes Rosie home to England and his equally unpleasant mother, and her family loses almost all contact with her.  Twelve years pass, and Betty decides to go to England to see Rosie.  What she discovers there, and what she does about it, make up the bulk of the story. 

I was sorry that the hateful Dowager Lady Anstruthers had died some years before Betty's arrival, because I was looking forward to seeing her get her comeuppance.  But Betty has her hands full with Rosie and Sir Nigel, their son Ughtred, various villagers, county neighbors including the mysterious Lord Mount Dunstan, and a delightful American on a bicycle tour.

I have to say that "Ughtred" may be the most unfortunate character name I have yet come across.  I can't figure out if it's meant to be Celtic or Olde Englishe, but it's awful.

In addition to being plotty, this book is wordy.  I don't remember this from others of Burnett's books, but her phrasing is convoluted and her sentences are long. I frequently found myself lost in the verbiage, which made for slow reading.

Betty Vanderpoel is a consciously literary tourist in England, as I tend to be myself: "It was the England of Constable and Morland, of Miss Mitford and Miss Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot...The village street might be Miss Mitford's, the well-to-do house Jane Austen's own fancy, in its warm brick and comfortable decorum."  The frequent discussions of American and English characteristics and habits reminded me of both Isabella Bird's and Anthony Trollope's 19th century American travelogues.  I was also reminded of Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan's account of her marriage to The Duke of Marlborough, The Glitter and the Gold, as well as one of my favorite O.Henry stories, "The Marquis and Miss Sally."

I was left with one question: what about Mr. Ffolliott?  I can imagine a whole scenario leading to a satisfactory ending, but someone will have to take the first step.  It will probably have to be Betty, now that I think about it.