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This is another excellent book by Mrs de Horne Vaizey,
dating from the end of the nineteenth century. While of
course it is dated in its references to the world around
its actors, yet nevertheless their emotions are
well-described, and no doubt are timeless.
In some ways the world around the people in the book is
recognisable today, in a way which a book written thirty or
forty years before would not have been. They have
electricity, telephones, trains, buses, and many other
things that we still use regularly today. Of course one
major difference is that few people today have servants,
while middle-class and upper-class families of the eighteen
nineties would certainly have had them.
Today we travel by aeroplane, while in those days, and
indeed for much of my own life, we travelled by ship and
train. It was normal when travelling back to England from
India to disembark at Marseilles, and come on to the
Channel Ports by train, perhaps even spending a week or two
in Italy, en route. I have done it myself.
So it is not so very dated after all. But I do think there
is a real value in reading the book. Oddly enough, I think
that a boy would benefit from reading any of the
author's books, more than a girl would, because it would
give him an insight into the girlish mind which he could
not so easily otherwise obtain. And as the young ladies of
this book are trying to sort out whom they should marry,
matters do get quite girlish. N.H.
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