Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope

Doctor Thorne opens with the events of twenty years before. Henry Thorne seduces Mary Scatcherd, sister of the local stonemason. When she becomes pregnant, her brother, Roger, beats Thorne so badly that he dies. Tried for murder, he is convicted of manslaughter when the facts of the case became known, & serves six months in jail. Henry Thorne's brother, Thomas, is the local doctor, a steady, sober man in comparison with his wicked brother. Dr Thorne pities poor Mary Scatcherd in her sad situation. When Mary's former suitor still wants to marry her & emigrate to America, he does so on the condition that she leaves her daughter behind. Dr Thorne pledges to bring up baby Mary & care for her & Mary Scatcherd agrees.

Twenty years later, Mary Thorne has grown up beautiful, kind & the apple of her uncle's eye. She was sent off as a little girl to be educated but has lived with her uncle since she was 13. She is on terms of friendship with the local squire's family, the Greshams of Greshamsbury. Doctor Thorne is a friend of the Squire & is tolerated by his haughty wife, Lady Arabella, who never forgets that she is a member of the De Courcy family of Courcy Castle. Squire Gresham has squandered the fortune left him by his father. His daughters will have tiny dowries & his only son, Frank, will have to marry well to hold on to what's left of the estate. Marrying well means marrying money & Lady Arabella is soon scheming with her sister-in-law, Lady de Courcy, to bring this about. Lady de Courcy has invited Miss Dunstable, heiress of an ointment fortune, to Courcy Castle, & wants Frank to marry her.

Frank Gresham is a nice boy, that's the only way I can describe him. Fond of his family, conscious of his father's perilous financial position, loyal to his friends & eager to do the right thing. Frank is also in love with Mary Thorne. Lady Arabella has always disapproved of Mary's intimacy with her children, not only because she has no money. Her ambiguous social position is also a problem. The sad story of her parents has been forgotten by many & the young Greshams & Mary herself have no idea that she's illegitimate. However, once Mary is of an age to marry, she begins to ask her uncle questions about her origins.

Roger Scatcherd, the stonemason, has prospered. He is now a rich man, a baronet, living at Boxall Hill, land that once belonged to Squire Gresham, but was sold to pay debts. Scatcherd has been a friend of Doctor Thorne's ever since the terrible events of twenty years before. Doctor Thorne helped Scatcherd's wife & child while he was in jail but the Scatcherds know nothing about Mary. Sir Roger's health is poor because he's an alcoholic. His drinking bouts & irrational rages are undermining his constitution & he refuses to listen to Doctor Thorne's advice. Doctor Thorne has never told Sir Roger about Mary because he fears that the Scatcherds would want to take her away from him. He knows how unhappy Mary would be with Sir Roger & his wife & so he says nothing. However, when Sir Roger, after another bout of illness, makes a new will, leaving a fortune to his sister Mary's eldest child, but without naming the child, Doctor Thorne, as executor of the will, must tell Sir Roger the truth. The will leaves this eldest child the money if he or she outlives Sir Roger & his dissolute only child, Louis Philippe, who will inherit when he turns twenty-five.

Doctor Thorne is faced with a terrible dilemma. He knows that Mary & Frank are in love. He believes it is probable that Sir Roger will soon be dead as he refuses to stop drinking. Louis Philippe is well on the way to emulating his father & could very well die young, leaving Mary a considerable heiress. Sir Roger refuses to amend the ambiguous wording of the will. Should Doctor Thorne tell the Greshams of Mary's possible inheritance in the hope that they will allow Frank to marry her? What if Louis Philippe reforms & lives to a ripe old age? Frank & Mary would be left with nothing.

I loved this book. This was actually a reread as I read the Barsetshire novels over 30 years ago. I was prompted to reread it because OUP kindly sent me a review copy of the new edition. We haven't seen the new TV series here yet but I'll be interested to see it when it makes an appearance. After 30 years, it was like reading a brand new novel anyway. I was especially taken with the good humour of the narrator. I thought of him as Trollope just as I think of the narrator of A Christmas Carol as Dickens & I kept thinking of Trollope standing in the spirit at my elbow (as Dickens writes when the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge). Doctor Thorne is also a very funny book. Whether it's the satire of Lady Arabella & Lady de Courcy's attempts to find a rich bride for Frank & his attempts to evade them or Augusta Gresham's miserable engagement to Mr Moffat which ends with Frank horsewhipping him, much to the Squire's approval, the tone is amused & genial.

Trollope's descriptions are also pithy & very amusing. He describes Mr Winterbones, Sir Roger's confidential secretary as "a little, withered, dissipated, broken-down man, whom gin and poverty had nearly burnt to a cinder, and dried to an ash." He still tries too hard with some of his character's  names, Dr Fillgrave, Miss Gushing, the easily bribed publican Mr Reddypalm & the political agents Mr Nearthewinde & Mr Closerstil. Doctor Thorne himself can be as prickly as his name when he feels he's being slighted & Mary had spirit & wit, she's no simpering young miss. I especially enjoyed her encounter with Lady Arabella where her pertness is on a par with Elizabeth Bennet's when she is confronted by Lady Catherine.There's also a very funny & satirical chapter consisting of letters between Augusta Gresham & her cousin, Lady Amelia. I don't think I remember another Trollope novel where the narrator is so very present with comments & asides.

There are some implausibilities in the plot. I can only think that Sir Roger's brain had been scrambled by drink for Mary's identity to be such a surprise to him. Doctor Thorne had only one sibling, Henry, & Scatcherd knew his sister was pregnant when Henry died. Even though he was told the child was dead, where did he think the doctor's niece had sprung from? Also, I would think that Mary's illegitimacy might invalidate the terms of Sir Roger's will without all the agonising that the Doctor goes through about what to tell the Greshams. Actually Trollope amusingly heads off any legal quibbling by boldly stating that if the terms of the will are incorrect, they've just been wrongly described! The critics had been scathing about the legal detail of his previous novel, The Three Clerks, so he was getting in first in Doctor Thorne. Still, surely Mary Scatcherd's legitimate American children would have challenged the will? Anyway, it's Trollope's story & he tells us in so many words that it's his world & he'll do what he pleases with his characters.

I couldn't help wondering what Wilkie Collins would have done with the same material. Trollope lays everything out for us so that by about Chapter 10 we know all about Mary's parentage, the terms of Sir Roger's will & the potential implications for Mary & her marriage to Frank. We then have another 35 chapters where Doctor Thorne works through every possible moral implication of these circumstances. His scruples won't allow him to neglect Louis when he's made an unwilling trustee of the estate, or raise Mary's hopes by telling her of her possible inheritance.Wilkie would have made a mystery of every part of it with cliffhangers galore & I would have been on the edge of my seat. However, I was surprised how suspenseful the book was, considering that I already knew all the secrets & had a good idea of the ending. I read it over Easter & was glued to my chair for hours at a time.

The Black Sheep - Honoré de Balzac

This is the story of two brothers, their foolish mother, who loves her worthless son & ignores his worthy brother, & about the intrigues that result when an inheritance is at stake.

Agathe Rouget was born in the provincial town Issoudun. Her father favoured her older brother, Jean-Jacques, unfairly believing that Agathe wasn't really his daughter. Neglected & despised, Agathe soon leaves Issoudun, marrying a civil servant, Bridau, & moving to Paris. Two sons were born, Philippe & Joseph; Monsieur Bridau worked himself to death in the service of Napoleon, whom he worshipped, & his widow was let with very little money to live on. Agathe's widowed aunt, Madame Descoings, combines her household with that of her niece & the two women live frugally, their only aim in life to help Agathe's sons.

Although Madame Descoings spoils both the boys, Agathe's favourite son is Philippe. Unfortunately he's a lazy, scheming, dishonest boy who grows up to believe that the world owes him a living, mostly paid for by the sacrifices of his mother. He joins the army, spends whatever allowance his mother gives him, stealing the money if it's not given to him, gambles, drinks, takes mistresses & generally lives the life of a spoiled brat. Cheated of advancement in the army by the downfall of Napoleon, Philippe refuses to serve the restored Bourbon monarchy & becomes involved in a fraudulent scheme to settle in America, losing all his money. All this time, he has ignored his mother, unless he needed money, while she has scrimped & saved, working in menial jobs & going without herself so that Philippe can have what he needs.

Joseph is an artist. He decides early in life where his talents lie & he works hard at his art, not too proud to take on hack work such as copying old masters as he learns & tries to make a living. He loves his mother & is always kind & considerate but Agathe is dismissive of Joseph & his kindness. She sees the life of an artist as vaguely disreputable & expects him to go without if Philippe needs money. Philippe steals from his brother as well although Joseph can't afford to lose a sou.

Agathe has never returned to Issoudun & had no contact with her family but, some years after her father's death, she hears from her godmother, Madame Hochon, that Jean-Jacques has fallen under the influence of a scheming woman, Flore Brazier & her lover, Max Gilet. Madame Hochon warns Agathe that if she wants her sons to inherit anything from her family, she needs to return to Issoudun & fight for her share.

After Agathe left Issoudun, her father, Dr Rouget came across a beautiful child, Flore Brazier, & took her into his home. His motives were far from pure & he groomed Flore, intending her to become his mistress. Fortunately he was too old to take advantage of her & Flore was left at his death with beauty & enough education to know where her own best interests lay. She had no trouble gaining a dominance over Jean-Jacques, who was a simple-minded, foolish man. Flore was soon installed as his housekeeper & did as she pleased. Jean-Jacques was happy enough to have Flore as his housekeeper & mistress but didn't think it was proper to marry her. She fell in love with Max Gilet, an ex-army officer who was said to be an illegitimate son of  Dr Rouget. He was the leader of a gang of young men who called themselves the Knights of Idleness & spent their time playing cruel practical jokes on the townspeople. Flore & Max planned to get as much money out of Jean-Jacques as they can & then run away to get married. Madame Hochon's letter to Agathe threatens to put a stop to their plans.

Agathe & Joseph go to Issoudun as Philippe is in prison, charged as a member of a group of Bonapartists conspiring to overthrow the King. They soon see the danger to any possible inheritance  but are powerless to influence Jean-Jacques or stop Flore & Max. The only weapons they have are goodness, honesty & family feeling. Only when they have retreated to Paris & Philippe arrives to take over the assault is there any chance that the Bridaus will prevail. Only a wicked man like Philippe can possibly counter the plans of two such conspirators.

Evil, in the form of Philippe & Max, seems to have everything its own way. The superficial attractions of good looks & a glib tongue help Philippe in his criminal career but Agathe is to blame as well for her for her blind partiality. Even as Philippe steals from her, Joseph & even from Madame Descoings, she finds excuses for his behaviour. The characters are so engaging. Madame Descoings, with her addiction to the lottery & her belief that her numbers, which haven't come up in the last twenty years, will come up one day. Monsieur Hochon, a miser who unwillingly becomes involved with the Bridaus' quest for justice. Fario, the Spanish merchant who is the victim of one of Max's practical jokes & who takes his revenge. Flore, who rises from very humble beginnings to become the most powerful & feared woman in the town. She uses her looks & intelligence to create the kind of life she could never otherwise have dreamed of, exploiting the stupidity of Jean-Jacques to do so. Only when she falls in love does she begin to lose control.

The Black Sheep is a terrific read. The amused, cynical tone of the omniscient narrator sets the scene for a  family saga, a thriller & a wonderful portrait of provincial life in early 19th century France. The last third of the book reads like a thriller as the plotting & scheming comes to a climax & it's hard to know who to barrack for when everyone is selfish, stupid or greedy & it seems that, again, the good will end badly & evil triumph. It's also a testament to the skill of the writing that I was barracking for Philippe in his battle with Max & Flore, even though I knew what a disreputable, worthless character he was. I raced through the last chapters to find out how it would all end. The Black Sheep is part of Balzac's monumental series of novels, The Comédie Humaine. I've read several of the novels, completely out of order, & I don't think it matters. Characters recur in several of the novels but the books I've read so far stand alone.

Cousin Henry - Anthony Trollope

April marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Trollope & there have been articles galore (just google Anthony Trollope 200 if you don't believe me). I even found a checklist to count how many of Trollope's novels I've read (22 out of 47 so not quite halfway). To celebrate the anniversary, I'm rereading Miss Mackenzie with my online reading group & I also took Cousin Henry off the tbr shelves.

Cousin Henry is one of Trollope's standalone novels. It's not part of the famous Palliser or Barsetshire series & it's not a blockbuster like The Way We Live Now or He Knew He Was Right. It's short by Trollopian standards (under 300pp), has no subplots & is an acute psychological study of guilt & indecision.

The plot is easily told. Mr Indefer Jones, owner of Llanfeare on the coast of Carmarthenshire, is an old man. He has no children & is undecided as to what he should do with his estate. He has made many wills as he dithers between leaving the property to Henry Jones, the next male heir, or to his niece, Isabel Brodrick. Henry Jones is a clerk in London, a very unprepossessing young man with no real vices but he just fails to please. On the other hand, Isabel is the darling of her uncle's eye. She has lived at Llanfeare for some years, mostly to get away from her unsympathetic stepmother. She is loved & admired by all the tenants on the estate & she loves them & the estate in return. However, Uncle Indefer's conscience inclines him to leaving the property to Henry & to leave £4000 to Isabel. Isabel is a noble, proud girl who would scorn to try to influence her uncle in any way. She leaves him to wrestle with his own conscience & never reproaches him. His lawyer, Mr Apjohn, has remonstrated with Uncle Indefer about disinheriting Isabel but to no avail. The only result has been a breach between lawyer & client which contributes to the misery that follows.

The final will seems to be the one leaving Llanfeare to Henry. He has been brought down to visit his uncle in the last months of his life & introduced to the servants & tenants, all of whom take an instant dislike to him. When Uncle Indefer dies, there's talk of a later will, favouring Isabel, having been written & witnessed by two of the tenants. Isabel was with her uncle when he died & he told her that he had made such a will. Mr Apjohn knows nothing of it because Uncle Indefer refused to consult him about it. However, he had told Henry of the will & showed Henry where he had hidden it, in a volume of sermons in the library. After the funeral, the tenants tell their story of witnessing a new will but Henry stays silent. As no later will can be found, the will favouring Henry is read & must stand.

Isabel immediately makes plans to return to her father's house in Hereford. Unfortunately the £4000 her uncle bequeathed her doesn't exist because the old man sold the land that was meant to provide the cash. So, she returns home with nothing. Henry is persuaded by Mr Apjohn to offer Isabel the money as soon as he can get it but she scornfully refuses him. She suspects that Henry knows the whereabouts of the later will. She despises him & has no reservations about telling him so to his face. Isabel is in love with William Owen, but her uncle didn't think a poor clergyman was good enough to marry his heir so Isabel has refused him. Now that she's poor, she refuses to marry him because she's too proud to go to him with nothing. Isabel's father & stepmother don't see why she shouldn't accept Cousin Henry's offer of the £4000 & marry Mr Owen but she refuses. She hates living with her family but her father won't allow her to earn her own living.

Henry, meanwhile, is at Llanfeare. He is tortured by guilt & paralysed by indecision. He knows where the will is hidden, & he can't bring himself to leave the library in case the will is discovered. He knows he should confess & produce the will but he can't. He vacillates between planning to tell all & wallowing in self-pity about his treatment & his dislike for Isabel. He's despised by the servants, who all give notice, & he's too cowardly to go about the estate because he fears the wrath of the Cantors, the tenants who witnessed the will. So he skulks around the house, afraid to leave the library in case the will is discovered but wishing someone would find the will to extricate him from the torment he's suffering.

Mr Apjohn suspects Henry of knowing about the will but can't prove anything. Without the will, nothing can be done. Then, as rumours spread about the will & about the injustice suffered by Isabel, the local newspaper, the Carmarthenshire Herald, prints a series of articles questioning Henry's honesty & his right to the estate. The editor hopes to provoke Henry into a libel action that would see him cross examined in court about the will & exactly what he knows about it. Could Henry commit perjury by lying in court or the even more serious crime of destroying the will? Mr Apjohn enlists Isabel's father & the two men decide to confront Henry & try to prove Mr Apjohn's theory about the will.

Cousin Henry is such an interesting character study. Henry is a coward, snivelling & self-justifying. He spends most of his time cowering from imaginary blows, vacillating between opposite courses of action, avoiding the servants & tenants & crying with self-pity over his situation. However, he's not altogether an unsympathetic character. Uncle Indefer doesn't help by openly disliking him & preferring Isabel. The tenants take their cue from him &, of course, Henry has never had an opportunity to get to know the estate. He's bullied by everyone from Mr Apjohn to the Cantors, despised by Isabel, but he's not evil. He could have destroyed the will & brazened it out but he doesn't do that. He does have a conscience but his fear of the consequences of almost any course of action leave him doing precisely nothing.

Isabel is an even more interesting character. Proud & prickly with a streak of masochism (she plans to work as a housemaid or starve herself rather than accept Henry's offer of money), Isabel prides herself on her moral rectitude. She refuses to blame Henry publicly, even though she is sure that he knows of the later will. She declares her love passionately to Mr Owen but then refuses to marry him. She drives her stepmother mad by standing on the moral high ground, refusing Henry's money, refuses to marry Mr Owen while she can bring him nothing &, as Mrs Brodrick puts it, taking the boots from her own daughters' feet as her husband has to provide for his ungrateful daughter. I sympathized with Henry & Isabel but was furious with Uncle Indefer for being such an old ditherer & creating such a mess. As Mr Apjohn says, the danger in owning property is in leaving heirs & tenants in ignorance of what is to come afterwards. I enjoyed Cousin Henry & I'm looking forward to reading more Trollope in this anniversary year.

John Caldigate - Anthony Trollope

In this 200th anniversary year of the birth of Anthony Trollope, I plan to read at least a few more of his books. I've begun with John Caldigate (picture from here), one of Catherine Pope's Top 10 Trollopes & I think it's now one of mine as well.

John Caldigate has a fractious relationship with his father. Young John has gone to Cambridge & racked up gambling debts with an unscrupulous character called Davis. His father doesn't consider him worthy to inherit his estate &, even though the estate is entailed, he now favours a nephew instead. John has no feelings of family pride & readily accepts his father's offer to buy his reversion to the title. John can then pay his debts & make a new start. He decides to go to Australia with a friend, Dick Shand, & try his luck at gold mining. Before leaving England, John finds himself mildly entangled with two young ladies - Dick Shand's sister, Maria & his cousin Julia Babington. John, however, is attracted to Hester Bolton, the daughter of his father's legal advisor, a man who disapproves of John's flippant disregard for his family name & fortune.

John & Dick travel to Australia second class to save money which excites quite a bit of comment among the first class passengers. John becomes friendly with a pretty young widow, Mrs Smith. Mrs Smith's antecedents are obscure - she claims to have made a living on the stage before marrying unwisely - & everyone warns John against the intimacy. However, by the time they reach Melbourne, John has become entangled with Mrs Smith & they are engaged "unless something happens to part us" as John ungallantly adds. John realises his mistake as soon as he goes ashore but feels obliged to regard himself as engaged, although Mrs Smith has left him free to pursue his gold mining plans without the burden of taking her along.

The two young men travel to New South Wales with a letter of introduction to a friend of a friend, Tom Crinkett. They set themselves up with a claim with the help of another miner & they prosper. Well, John prospers. Dick takes to drink & ends up as a shepherd in the Queensland outback, helped out with money from John from time to time. Mrs Smith, meanwhile, has gone back on the stage in Melbourne & then goes to Sydney with her show, performing under the name of Mademoiselle Cettini.  John hears of her from a former shipboard acquaintance & goes to Sydney to see her. She returns to the goldfields with him & they live together for a time before parting.

Over the next few years, John's fortunes rise & he eventually returns to England with a handsome fortune & a new appreciation of his family estate. John & his father have been corresponding & their relations have thawed so that by the time he returns home, his father is proud & happy to see him. Old Mr Caldigate has become disillusioned with the nephew whom he once favoured over his son & decides to reinstate John as his heir. John marries Hester Bolton, despite the disapproval of her father & her intensely religious mother. Just after their first child is born, John receives a letter from Mrs Smith, signing herself Euphemia Caldigate & demanding to be recognized as his wife. Mrs Smith had bought shares in John's mine along with Tom Crinkett when John sold out & returned home. After John had left Australia, the mine petered out & the unlucky partners asked John to refund some of their money. He refused & the two travelled to England, hoping to convince him in person. As a result of the information they lay against him, John is charged with bigamy & committed to stand trial. Is John really a bigamist or are Crinkett & Mrs Smith trying to blackmail him using circumstantial evidence?

John Caldigate is an unusual Victorian novel because it shows a rather weak-willed young man as a hero. John starts off as an easily-led spendthrift who is sent out to the colonies almost in disgrace. He flirts with a young woman on board ship, makes her promises, lives with her unmarried & then tires of her. He works hard & is good to Dick Shand when he goes off the rails but returns to England with his fortune. He only offers to refund some of the money paid by Crinkett & Smith when he fears a scandal. The fact that he pays them the money tells against him at his trial although his motive, in the end, was honourable. There is genuine doubt as to whether or not he has married Mrs Smith because he has been such a slippery character.

The unravelling of the evidence against Caldigate by a Post Office worker called Bagwax (one of Trollope's silliest names, along with his colleague, Mr Curlydown) makes good use of Trollope's own expertise as a Post Office employee. Unfortunately Bagwax is fond of explaining his theories in minute detail & this part of the narrative drags a little. Our heroine, Hester Bolton, is also a wishy washy character, a very conventional heroine. She does have her moment of glory when she sits in the hall of her parents house for several days, refusing to move when they lock her in to prevent her living with a man who they believe has tricked her into a bigamous marriage. Hester's mother is a wonderful character, her religious convictions so strong that I wondered why she married at all. Maybe her religious leanings came on after her marriage? She doesn't approve of John even before the bigamy allegation & does everything she can to prevent the marriage. When she's overruled by her husband & her stepsons, she almost seems glad to be vindicated, even though it means her daughter's ruin. On the whole, though, this was a great story with enough ambiguity in the storytelling & in the character of John Caldigate to make the trial & its aftermath very suspenseful.

The House on the Cliff - D E Stevenson

The House on the Cliff (cover picture from here) is the story of a young girl who is left with nothing when her mother dies but finds herself & a future in an old house at the seaside.

Elfrida Ware is trying to make a living as an actress. She's not a very good actress but her father, Frederick Thistlewood, was on the stage & her mother, Marjory, worked behind the scenes & there doesn't seem to be very much else that she can do. Frederick has long since left his family & Elfrida & her mother have been living precariously in a boarding house run by the flamboyant Miss Martineau. Marjory has just died & Elfrida's latest part is in a not very good play. She's only staying because of her infatuation with the leading man, Glen Siddons.

Miss Martineau sees an advertisement in the paper from a lawyer looking for Marjory Thistlewood &, knowing Elfrida's story, encourages her to go along & find out what it's all about. Elfrida reluctantly goes to see Mr Robert Sandford & discovers that she has inherited Mountain Cross, her mother's family home. Marjory's parents had disowned her when she eloped with Frederick Thistlewood & her father never forgave her. After his death, her mother desperately wanted to get in touch but all Mr Sandford's enquiries were fruitless. Now, old Mrs Ware is dead & Elfrida has inherited Mountain Cross. Mr Sandford advises Elfrida to sell the house as there's very little money or land. Her grandfather had lost money on bad investments & sold off most of the land. Without the farmland, there's no way to make the house self-supporting.

Elfrida decides to go down to Devonshire & see the house. She's missing her mother, unhappy at the theatre & Miss Martineau has advised her to forget about Glen. Leaving London seems to be the best plan so, Mr Sandford's nephew & junior partner, Ronnie, drives Elfrida down to see Mountain Cross. Elfrida immediately loves the house & is warmly welcomed by all the locals. The housekeeper, Emma Chowne & her husband, Ernie, are very welcoming & seem keen for her to stay on. Even when Elfrida confesses that she has no money, the Chownes offer to stay on for the use of their flat in the house & the chance for Ernie to raise pigs. Ernie was traumatised by his wartime experiences & doesn't speak. He feels uncomfortable anywhere but at Mountain Cross & Emma, who talks constantly, is happy to have them both settled in a familiar place.

Elfrida soon settles in to life at Mountain Cross. She knows she will have very little income when her grandmother's estate is settled but she begins to make a few improvements, knowing in her heart that she will never be able to leave. Everyone in the village wants to make life easy for her. A local man offers to tidy up the overgrown copse & be paid in timber. She's welcomed by the local gentry who had been a little apprehensive about an actress coming among them. Of course, as soon as Elfrida puts on tweeds & a pearl necklace, she's one of them, even though she has grown up living a very different kind of life. This is a D E Stevenson novel, after all. Nothing truly awful ever happens (if you don't count Elfrida almost drowning, not once, but twice).

Elfrida soon has several suitors. Ronnie Leighton is obviously smitten but conscious of the fact that he's very much a junior partner, has no money & is living with his widowed mother who expects him to marry a childhood friend called Anthea. Lucius Bebbington is a neighbour who is kind & helpful with gardening & then Glen Siddons arrives with his neglected young son, Patrick, in tow & settles down for a visit. She even has a visit from her cousin, Walter Whitgreave, who has lived in Canada most of his life & was once considered to be old Mr Ware's heir. Elfrida's lack of money is always there in the background but there's a fairytale ending that puts everything right.

The House on the Cliff  is a gentle story with all the elements that I enjoy in D E Stevenson's books. I especially loved the house. Books with houses in them always interest me & even though Elfrida doesn't transform the house, the house, the countryside, the sea & the people she meets transform her from a lonely, tired waif into a young woman with a future, a home & a family. The Chownes are also wonderful characters. Old family retainers who know all the family secrets & are fiercely loyal to Elfrida from the moment she arrives. The House on the Cliff  was published in 1966 but the atmosphere is very 1930s. This seems to be true of all the Stevensons I've read so far. Unless they're set very specifically during the war, they all seem to be set in the 30s.

I read The House on the Cliff thanks to Open Library. I've only just discovered Open Library thanks to a mention in this review of Stevenson's The English Air at Fleur's blog. When I investigated, I found many ebooks available for loan, including several Stevensons that I haven't read & that are out of print. It's free to sign up & you can read the EPub or PDF ebooks on an ereader that uses Adobe Digital Editions or, if you search on an iPad or tablet, you can read the ebooks in iBooks or Overdrive (thanks to a YouTube video for helping me with this! What did we ever do without YouTube?) I now have yet another wishlist in Open Library with titles by Stevenson, R F Delderfield, Ruth Adam, Angela Thirkell, Catherine Gaskin & Elizabeth Goudge (including her autobiography, The Joy of the Snow, recently read by Cornflower). The books have been scanned from library copies so there are a few glitches (y came out as v) but The House on the Cliff was perfectly readable & I'm so glad to have had a chance to read it.