The Maidens' Lodge
None of Self and All of Thee, (in the Reign of Queen Anne)
By Emily Sarah Holt
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The story opens in 1712, and is a story of the habits, customs, loves
and hates of a gentle family of those days. We pay particular attention
to two young women, Rhoda and Phoebe. Of course your reviewer never did
live in those days, but the style of life of these minor grandees seems
to ring true, as one would expect of this skilled author. As with her
other historical novels, the reader seems to feel pulled into the
contemporary scene of those days and that class: their foolish airs and
graces, their ambition, in most cases, to marry at or above their
"station".
Amid a welter of other minor grandees appears one Mr Welles, who is
said to be well placed with an income of three thousand pounds a year,
to be compared with one of the players in the story, a curate with 21
pounds a year with which to bring up his large brood. But he turns out
to be greedy, and makes a bid for one of the two young women, who, he
imagines, is to inherit a large and valuable estate. But he has made a
mistake, and much of the latter part of the book deals with the way in
which he tries to recover his position, and is, of course, rebuffed.
NH
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THE MAIDENS' LODGE
NONE OF SELF AND ALL OF THEE, (IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE)