Betty in the Wild: West Coast, USA

So, back from Alaska, where apparently I missed an anonymous Betty, I found Seattle awaiting my return with all kinds of delights in store.  First, my 80-something godmother is living in a high-rise for the elderly with sweeping views of Lake Washington.  I gotta get me some of that, though I suppose when the day comes I may feel a pang.

That's Bellevue over on the other side of the lake -- stay tuned.  Cruise ship somewhere to south.

Betty Ter Ophetmeer moved to Seattle in the 50s, in her 20s, after seeing a travelogue on the Pacific Northwest at an East Coast US movie theater.  She took a train west and checked into the YWCA, got a job and a home and a husband and five sons, in more or less that order.  I gave her Betty Beth's cast-off Cassandra by Chance to leaven her usual reading of Flannery O'Connor and Langston Hughes and such.  She reports enjoying it and finding another Betty book somewhere around the place.

Note fog.  More in a minute.  Cassandra may stumble into a lake given the low visibility; Benedict is not troubled by fog.

Right!  Betty Beth!  We met in Bellevue for dinner, and she gave me the scarf you see below and a bag o' books to distribute as I see fit.  Army Betty, I'll be home in a week or so.

Cocktail is mine, all mine, and I had to eat the extra brandied cherry so Betty Beth (l) would not risk driving Mr. Beth's car while under any sort of influence due to wheels.  Wheels within wheels, that is.

 Did I mention that, Seattle being Seattle, on my first morning there we had a torrential rainstorm, with the unusual added feature of lightning and thunder, and that on my second morning there the fog was so thick I could barely see my balcony railing?

Lake Washington, out there lurking.  Look out, Cassandra!

Lovely visit.  Betty Debbie could not join the Betty dinner because she puts family first or some such thing -- how Betty of her -- and she had a son visiting whom she hadn't seen in two years.  A great big grown-up boy like that; how much could he have changed?

In case Olivia needs a fall-back occupation and likes the look of the PacNW, as who would not?

But southward ho, and Betty Keira is next to provide a bed for the night, a fab dinner (rub the potatoes with olive oil and roll in kosher salt before baking; oh so yummy) and a charming family.  Plus, I met Betty Kylene!  Squee!  But none of us had the presence of mind to snap a pic.

The Demon Baby having declined to do the honors, we used the camera auto-timer.  The book is A Summer Idyll, as it features the worst house guest ever, which I am not.  Though awfully good at inviting myself...

Betty Keira recommended heading more-or-less straight west before turning south along the Pacific coast, and she spoke with authority.  That route took me to the Tillamook Cheese Factory.

Not Gouda, but probably cheddar, as in Gorge.

I choked down an ice cream in Cordelia and Army Betty's honor.

 I'm pretty sure this is an Oregon ocean view, but it might be northern California.  Either one is well worth a visit if you have the chance.  The Oregon ones especially are chilly and windy enough that someone might propose to you there.

Octavia's cruise ship off to the west somewhere.

This is definitely a California beach, and those are elephant seals unless Betty AnoninTX says otherwise.

Amabel and Oliver visit the seashore, though he doesn't propose there.  In Betty's yet-to-be-discovered 136th novel, they show up as crossover characters, with an abandoned seal pup in the back of the Bentley.

 A random river in California, except this one gets a roadside scenic viewpoint, unlike most.

Gijs's first wife ran off with an American!  Maybe to a random California river!

Santa Barbara, California, is a great place for unsuitable girlfriends and former fiancees to find better matches, or for unsuitable first wives to meet untimely ends.

It is always summer in Santa Barbara!  Big Slice, Tishy!  Plus, those dark dots are frogmen.  Why do no Betty heroes scuba dive to the rescue?

Random stranger in Santa Barbara agrees to pose with Tishy and Jason.  He little knows...

Former Army Corps of Engineer turned civilian builder of Anchorage parking garages, now resident in Seattle.  You see how it all ties together?

Betty by the Numbers: Cross-over Characters

You know this moment, right?  You’re reading along in your current Betty, and the hero says to the heroine, “I’d like you to meet some friends of mine,” and you think, “Oooh, oooh, please let them be Clotilde Claribel Fothergill-Fox and her husband, Eduard Everard Tait-ter Teylingen!”  And it is!  Or it’s someone else you’ve met in a prior volume, and when the H&H drop by for their visit, Domus opens the door, and Bep brings the tea tray, and Charlie and Beauty thump welcoming tails against the flowered carpet in the exquisite-yet-lived-in drawing room, where Clotilde Claribel has cast down her knitting on a Regency piecrust table in order to play a rowdy-in-a-well-mannered-way game of Happy Families with Eduard Jr. and his little sister, Maisie (real name Megan Matilda, but we call her Maisie in honor of the ward maid who helped bring us together).  Yaaay!!  From all these warm details, and the way Doctor Baron gazes adoringly at his cashmere-and-silk swathed wife, you know there really is such a thing as happy ever after! 

Yay!  Perfect bliss is attainable!

These are cross-over characters, and they appear in 32, or 24%, of Betty Neels’s novels.  The first such occasion is in the third novel, Blow Hot, Blow Cold (later Surgeon from Holland and then Visiting Consultant) (1969), wherein Sophy has the pleasure of meeting Max’s dear friends Coenraad and Adelaide, from TGB’s very first outing, Sister Peters in Amsterdam (1969).  At that point, they have a baby boy (copyright dates, I’m sure, not premature Brighton visits).  A few books later, Coenraad the Younger, nicknamed Champers, has an 18-month old sister, Lisa, and Adelaide has a Bath bun in her oven (or maybe a Baarn bun) when Deborah and Gerard visit with the Blankenaar van Essens in 1973, in Stars Through the Mist.

Aderaad (get it?  Like ‘Brangelina’ and ‘TomKat’?) are not the only couple to appear in multiple future volumes.  Three others also make two cross-over appearance, and Chrisert of Not Once But Twice (1981) re-appear not twice but three times, the last cameo in 2000’s Dearest Eulalia, when Christina is a handsome 45-year old who has pledged her affection to Duert to the extent of three sons and one daughter, all of them offstage.  We did meet the kiddies tangentially in 1999’s A Good Wife, but then there were only two sons and the daughter, all grown enough to pass trays of titbits.  So at 44 she birthed her final babe, with three well-grown siblings ahead of him?  Yikes.  A Good Wife also offers a poignant moment when Serena meets the ter Brandt children’s puppy, by which we may infer that Thomas, Duert’s dog in 1981, has gone to the Happy Hearth beyond our mortal reach.

Puppy ter Brandt senses danger!  She will relax when she realizes it’s only Serena, come to help sort woolies for the jumble sale.

So in all we count five multiple-recurrers, for 5% of the books.  There’s another 23 couples who chalk up a single future visit, for 17% of our total hero/heroine headcount.  So 28 couples make 34 appearances in 32 other books, which I can explain by noting that four books include visits from two sets of hey-I-know-yous.  Dearest Eulalia is the last book to include cross-over characters, and one of the double-features:  we get both Christina and Duert and Daisy and Jules (Dales?  Juisy?) from the prior year’s Discovering Daisy, along with three-week old Julius.  (Julius is named not for dad, as is usual in Neelsland, but for dad’s dad, but then, it’s practically the same name.)

The other three books with multiple special guest stars are all from the early 1970s, with Aderaad and Domigail (Saturday’s Child, 1972) both showing up in Stars Through the Mist (1973); the BH,BC/SfH/VC crowd and the Saturday’s Child crew both popping up in The Gemel Ring (1974); and the van Amstels and the van Beeks (Uncertain Summer, Tabitha in Moonlight, both 1972) both mixing and mingling with the van der Graafs at The End of the Rainbow (1974).

I am starting to feel dizzy as I consider the task of interconnecting all the connections here – Aderaad met Max and Sophy, and also Gerard and Deborah, and Maphy met Everard and Charity, who also met Gerorah...

A cup of tea with my feet up, and I felt ready to tackle the overlaps again.  I found it easier to do by expanding my crossover chart.  There are 18 clusters of crossings-over, from ten simple two-book matches – like Hariso show up in A Matter of Chance (1977), and then we never hear about any of them again – to the six-book hopscotch of Chrisert appearing in A Girl Named Rose (1986), whose H&H have a cameo in The Doubtful Marriage, plus we see Chrisert in A Good Wife and Dearest Eulalia, the latter of which also offers the visit, mentioned above, from Daisy and Jules.  All clear now?

Not actually me, nor actually tea.  But the spirit of the thing is right.

Look at the chart, please, for visual clarification.  I think it helps, especially page three.

Interesting to note that, although 33% of Neels heroes are UKish (UKean?  anyway, 32% English and 1% Scottish), only 7% of recurring heroes are English – Gerard Grenfell and Guy Bowers-Bentinck (Heidelberg Wedding, 1984, and The Chain of Destiny, 1989).  We’ve got slightly less of a disparity on the receiving end:  four, or one-eighth, of the books that host cross-overs have English heroes.  Still, this inter-book visiting is primarily the prerogative of the Dutchmen.  I wonder if Betty liked them better?

The most plot-essential cross-over characters are Georgina and Julius from Damsel in Green (1970), who are critical to the evolving romance of Tishy and Jason in A Small Slice of Summer (1975), as are the baby Ivo van den Berg Effert, who enables both hero and heroine to show off their infant-caring skills, and toddler Polly, whom Tison must rescue from goring, thus clearly demonstrating they’re made for each other.  We also catch up with Julius’s cousins, including Karel, whom Letitia loves like a brother but how could Jason know that, and the peace and serenity of both Dalmers Place in Essex and whatever the vdBE estate in Maarternsdijk is called, plus of course the Leggs, the Stephenses, Ginger, Toto, Robby, Andersen and Flip.  Honestly, A Small Slice of Summer is about 30% Georgina and Julius.  Good thing I love them so. 

Not this...

...more like this

Another critical crossover is Chrissy and Duert’s in A Girl Named Rose (1986), as they provide the badly-injured Duert, Jr. whom Gold Medalist Rose Comely must nurse.  Yes, that’s right – Chrissy is a skilled nurse herself, but she’s highly preggers with the second of her brood of three or four, and therefore needs an assist.  She returns the favor by inviting Rose back to Den Haag for a vacation where she can meet her Sybren again, for the additional pining and cross-purposing that eventually leads to marriage.  And then Rose pays it forward when she routs old friend and troublemaker Nikky van Wijk from the van Kempler drawing room.  (Nikky is striving to raise even further the doubtful-quotient in The Doubtful Marriage (1987) of Matilda and Rauwerd.)  How does one rout an old friend and troublemaker, you ask?  Rose’s method is to brandish a baby-carrier, speak a few home truths, and not take any guff.

One of the most poignant crossovers has got to be Sarah and Hugo’s (Fate is Remarkable, 1970) visit to the van Amstels (Uncertain Summer), during which TGB introduces the year-old twins Hugo (of course) and Rosemary, named for the congestive-heart-failure afflicted patient, Mrs. Brown, whose final months Hurah made happier with cat-care, garish cabbage-rosed wallpaper and copious quantities of tea.  Her dying words:  “Me name’s Rosemary – it’s a nice name for a little girl.”  Another good one, many years and volumes later, is when Fran Manning van Rijgen leaves The Secret Pool to visit her Old School Friend Lucy Lockitt, The Girl with Green Eyes (1990), during which visit she reveals that her and Litrik’s daughter is named Lisa, in memory of the baby’s sadly-deceased big sister.  Talk about poignant.  On a side note, I believe this is the only cross-over where the heroine knows her predecessor character – in every other case, we meet through the hero.

“Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.”

Overall, Mrs. Neels kept her characters reasonably sociable; 38% of her books, 51 in total, include characters who will meet their literary successors in a later book, who do meet their literary predecessors from a prior book, or both.  In fact, eight of her novels – that’s 6% – hit that “both” threshold.   Check the chart for details, will you?  I need another tea break, or possibly a medicinal sherry.

Also not me; also not tea; nor yet sherry.  And yet...

Betty by the Numbers: Marriages

Harlequin author Catherine Spencer has a story on the Harlequin website of a modern-day marriage of convenience – her widowed dental hygienist, with two young daughters, married the widower of her best friend, who had two young sons.  They thought it would be best for the kids, so they created a happy family for several years and divorced after the kids were grown.  Sounds better than Consuelo Vanderbilt’s experience in being threatened and emotionally blackmailed into marrying the Duke of Marlborough to satisfy her mother’s social ambitions – that marriage ended after two sons and eleven years, though the divorce didn’t happen for another 15 years, and then they managed an annulment five years after that, apparently on grounds that the bride married against her will and the groom did it for the money.  It makes a love match sound rather appealing, doesn’t it?

 

The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, 1895 – the former Miss Vanderbilt needed the veil because, though famously beautiful, she is rumored to have cried throughout her wedding.

That said, any rich, Dutch doctor who needs a gracious hostess for his dinner parties and mousey Mama to his flighty late-wife’s children is welcome to call on me – assuming he doesn’t mind a little wear on the tires, if you will.  I am great at all that hostessing stuff, and Betty Beth has already volunteered to take the kiddies for a few hours a week, and I would be suitably appreciative – no gushing – of shopping sprees at Harrod’s and a devoted household staff.  (Drifts off into pleasant daydream....)

Actually, only one quarter of Betty’s marriages are convenient.  I tend to avoid the MOC stories, as the premise is so utterly and unbelievably unhappy to me.  “As I am now almost forty, and you are 26, we’re probably both willing to spend the rest of our lives without so much as speeding past the Brighton city limits.”  Oh, no, we are not, bucko.  We’ve never been there, and we understand that mutual affection, respect and a socking great allowance paid quarterly are important components of a successful union, but we’ve heard a few things about Brighton, and frankly it sounds worth exploring in the right company.  Anyway, it turns out I’ve been avoiding fewer books than I realized – and The Vicar’s Daughter (1996), which includes a MOC, was off the list anyway because I hate when the parents die in car crashes (sorry, Once for All Time).

My favorite marriage scenarios are the ones where he proposes near the end of the book, but not so near that we don’t get to see the wedding.  Cassandra by Chance (1973) is the first of seven – just 5% of the stories offer us an invitation to the wedding of two entirely happy, mutually loving people – but what a wedding: “on a cold blustery January day in the little village church on Mull... overflowing with flowers.”  The bride wears blue, to match her sapphire engagement ring.  (And seems to have her new mink coat on over the blue dress.  Am I misreading that?)  After a jolly reception at her sister’s, they change into sheepskin jackets and walk briskly up the hill to Ogre’s Relish, planning for a mixed half-dozen of baby ogres and ogresses.  Happily, there is no mention of awkward social moments with would-be suitor and minister Mr. Campbell conducting the service.

 

A sapphire-blue wedding dress – perhaps a skosh chilly for Mull in January.

 

This one will work well if he gives you an heirloom aquamarine.

If you haven’t read Philomena’s Miracle (1978) recently, do go back and tuck through those last few pages of wedding-prep and aisle-walk.  They really make a VHEA, although I do wish Betty didn’t harp so on our heroines’ looks, as if that were the primary and proper criterion for love.  If you’ve never read Philomena’s, you have a treat in store.  I’m less enamored of Eugenia and Gerard’s Heidelberg Wedding (1984).  Hands up who’d want to be proposed to, without warning, at the door of the chapel and swept in, handed a bouquet, and pointed toward the officiant.  We skip a lot of years after that, and then get four wedding scenes in ten books in 1997-2000.  Perhaps Harlequin/M&B was paying extra for satin and lace – and flowers.  Always flowers.

 The wedding chapel at Heidelberg Castle, pre-be-flowering.

With the usual caveats, I count 34 MOCs, or 25% of the 135 books.  Five of them take place early in the story, 23 happen about halfway through, and six occur toward the end – including that of the beautiful Sophie and her Rijk, who marry for convenience on page 137, and discover they really, truly do love each other on page 188, after rescuing a small child from drowning and freezing and straightening out all the confusion as to just what the curiously-likeable Irena means in Rijk’s life.

Given that seven marriages take place in the final paragraphs, that leaves 94, or 70%, to occur after the curtain falls upon our satisfyingly-snogging hero and heroine.  As the milkman in Last April Fair (1980) says “to no one in particular” after squeezing and wriggling past a blissfully-unnoticing Phylly and Pieter, “it’s a very good morning for some of us, and that’s a fact.”

While we have limited glimpses into their Afters, about 27 couples (MOC and non-MOC) show up in subsequent books, and 100% of them are blissfully happy together.  If I know anything about social sciences (and I don’t), that’s a statistically-significant sample.

Finally, let me quote from Kate Fox’s anthropological work Watching the English, recommended on this site by Betty Andrea, and many thanks to the said Betty for the tip.  Here’s Ms. Fox on weddings in England:  “We know that a wedding is supposed to be a joyous event, but in our usual Eeyorish fashion, we really see it as an ordeal, an occasion fraught with difficulties and dangers (or, as the ever-cheery Debrett’s puts it ‘a minefield for the socially insecure and a logistical nightmare for the organisers’ and, for good measure, ‘a source of inter-family tension’).  Something is bound to go drastically wrong, and someone is bound to be mortally offended – and because of our belief in the magical disinhibiting powers of alcohol, we know that the veneer of polite conviviality may crack, and the inevitable family tensions may erupt into unseemly tears and quarrels.  Even if stiff upper lips are maintained on the day, there will be grumbles and recriminations in the aftermath, and in any case, even at best, we expect the whole ritual to be rather embarrassing.”

According to Fox, the English practice “negative politeness,” which involves taking great care not to threaten the privacy of others.  This and other factors make them chronically uneasy on social occasions, like wedding receptions.  (“Positive politeness,” as practiced in the US and most western European cultures, involves seeking to include others in community – or invading their privacy.)

Britannia All At Sea

Britannia All At Sea did not have a good name with The Founding Bettys. Betty Debbie called to divvy up a month's worth of reviews a few weeks ago. One by one the books were taken until...oh, did you hear something? What was that?...just the sound of Betty Keira falling on her sword. Brittania All At Sea. That one where the girl practically has to arm herself with snares and an elephant tranquilizer gun to land our hero, right? Um, not exactly. This is yet another book that upended my derision and scorn to become very well liked indeed. Does Betty Neels rock or what?
P.S. The cover art. Bikes? Okay. Interesting heroine? I grant you. Hero? While not ugly, per se, he has too much hair for a self-respecting RDD.

Britannia Smith, 24 (but carries herself like a confident 35), is a splendidly built Staff Nurse at St. Jude's. She's engaged in a spot of multi-tasking in the sluice room--comforting a shattered student nurse and directing traffic. She doesn't know who that vast giant of a man is who wants to get on the ward but he'd better come up the other stairs like all the regular riff-raff and look smart about it.
Professor Jake Luitingh van Thien is ultimately worth all the trouble it will take to write that name out on checks for decades to come. He describes himself to Brittania less than an hour into their acquaintance as 'getting on for forty, unmarried, rich and something of a hermit; I need please no one.' Well. Hello, Mr. Fussy-britches. I'm imagining Kurt from The Sound of Music stepping out from the line and saying, "I'm Kurt and I'm incorrigible." and daring Sister Maria to do her worst.
They fall promptly in love with each other and it's not just about looks either. Haven't they just colluded to save that poor student nurse from false specimen-dropping charges (Wait. Is that poo? Does she mean poo?) wherein traits like loyalty, discretion, generosity and self-disinterest were on full display? Being in love is not going to make our Brit nurse tongue-tied and giddy though. If Jake has bad manners, well then, Britannia is going to educate him in the Miss Smith School of Manners and Butt-Kickery. Britannia manages to thread the needle--neither needlessly catty nor boringly meek. As evidenced by the time she wrinkes her nose at him in church and makes a face, she's practically a master's thesis in cheeky.
Jake, not letting the grass grow, invites her to a swanky meal at the end of her very long day. Bacon sandwiches at Ned's--greasy spoons and plastic tables evidently epitomizing London romance in the same way aggressive panhandlers and street mimes spell it in Paris? Jake gives her the third-degree concerning her marital prospects and dating status then asks if she's in love. "Yes," she said briefly, and wondered just what he would say if she told him it was himself. ...He observed in a nasty smooth voice, "I suppose I am expected to say what a lucky man he is." She puts him in a half-Nelson and makes an exit. (Okay, sure she didn't but you can't get the image out of your head now.)
Shoot. Now they'll never meet again and she's wasted her chances. But Fate is in an interesting mood and she gets an opportunity to accompany a friend to Holland on her two week vacation. She asks her parents if she should go and we are treated the the most delightful three-way dialogue about the Professor's 'suitability'. It puts me forcibly in mind of the famous "Who's on First" skit.
Editor's Note: I remember thinking that this was way way more stalker-ish the first time I read it but upon...ahem...mature reflection I rather admire Britannia for it. She has met the man she wants to marry. That man is in Holland. She must go to Holland. Betty Debbie likened it to lurking around the classroom doors of the fella you wanted to have ask you to the Homecoming Dance on the principle that proximity leads to opportunity. Britannia isn't going to chase Jake...she's just going to make chasing her a little less difficult for him.
In Holland, they meet under less than ideal circumstances. She's always on a bike. The weather is always crummy. Jake is always jumping into his Rolls (after shouting at her) and tearing down the Dutch equivalent of the inter-state leaving her to pedal on without him.
"You're not fit to be out on your own."
"...You can come with me if you like...nothing like fresh air to blow away bad temper...oh well, perhaps you can't cycle anymore." Snap.
Just when it seems like they will never make headway and that he's doomed to only see her in dumpy anoraks and sweaters for the rest of eternity, he shows up with his bike. Ah-ha! The cheekiness paid dividends. Or maybe it was calling his manhood into question...
Before you know it she's meeting his mother and Madeleine, a trendily dressed beanpole with a personality to match. And then on page 84--84, mark you! No good can come of mutual declarations of love on page 84!--he tells her that he'll never marry the beanpole because it's Britannia who makes the sun rise in the east, makes unicorns spring from baby tears and lollipops rain from the sky. Seriously though, he's quite eloquent but, though she says she returns his love, she's having none of it.
What!?
Editorial Note:
This was the other thing that nearly drove me to drink when reading this book. She spends all this time creating opportunities for him to fall in love with her and then when he tells her he has fallen 'more than a little in love with her' (a phrase which ought to be banned from proposals of marriage hereafter) she, to use a Betty-ism, funks. But upon re-reading I think Britannia had a point which, if you will grab your chair and inflatable pillow and hunker down for a spell, I will be happy to explain.
1) He is much, much richer than she had any reason to assume when she decided to do a spot of man-chasing. Britannia is the 'jug-of-wine-loaf-of-bread-and-thou' type and has to adjust herself to the inadequacy of her upbringing in preparing her for a life like his (which she only finds out about 30 minutes before his proposal). She has a good point.
2) Having decided so firmly that she loved him and wanted to marry him, it looks as though her chasing (mild though it was) is paying off. Eek, she must be thinking to herself, I shot him with my tranquilizer gun and now it doesn't look like a fair fight. What if she is merely a passing fancy for him? What if she 'caught' him? Also, good points.

And so we move on to the second portion of the book which I refuse to waste a ton of time on as it in no way lives up to the truly wonderful first act. It slows waaaaaay down and gets a little dreary.
Jake continues to try to persuade Britannia to marry him and she continues to refuse. We do get some lovely spots of snogging to relieve the tedium of her monotonous refusals and a very frustrated doctor.
On the very last day of her holiday she takes a bike ride to take one last look at his castle. Cast aside the dubious sense it makes to be bike riding in Holland in December...No, don't cast it aside. It's the whole point of the next episode which leaves her with a badly sprained ankle, nausea, a concussion, facial bruising and two (not one but two!) fainting spells. Happily, Jake knew just where to look for the future Mevrouw Professor Jake Luitingh van Thien.
Faster than you can say 'convenient plot device', it is decided that she has to stay in Holland--at Jake's. Like a sherpa on his way to the summit, he carries her around an awful lot. But he is a little aloof--she did, after all, plan to abandon him entirely and he's understandably miffed (if still determined to make her his wife).
On St. Nikolaas she is allowed to come downstairs to the family festivities--dressed like an invalid. The only beanpole in the ointment is that Madeleine is there. Britannia is offered no better explanation than, "She always comes." Like hayfever and the seasonal flu, she always comes. (Sounds like it's time to take some Benadryl...)
After dinner, Jake proposes again (in a really lovely way) and this time Britannia is persuaded to accept. "That's better." He kissed the top of her head. "Now let us be sensible and assess the situation." He paused: "Well, let us be sensible presently." But it's still only page 154 and I worry about those two crazy kids...
The engagement is not to be made official for a week or so but things seem to settle down. Britannia is still worried about entertaining on a massive scale and caring for the Weesp china but as long as she has Jake's absolute and unconditional love...
Suddenly, that is cast into doubt. Madeleine hasn't wasted the best years of her life to come in second to some anorak-sporting, tea-swilling, British bumpkin. She makes one last throw of the dice by showing up at the castle with tears and evidence. No, let's go back and capitalize that: EVIDENCE!
The letter begins, 'Mijn lieveling...' and ends, 'all my love, Jake.' Madeleine is happy to translate. I know what you're thinking but while it is easy enough in retrospect to suggest that Britannia demand the letter (not just peeks at the intro) and trot over to the Dutch to English Dictionary for hours of painstaking translation, at the time she was upset.
Jake returns to find Britannia nothing more than miserable and confused (not accusing or Weesp china-throwing or anything) and he flips his lid. (And I don't blame him too much either--he was simple-minded about Madeleine's ability and desire to muddy his waters and spent a lot of time press-ganging Britannia to accept him and his millions.)
He practically drags Britannia back to England by her hair (30 minutes to pack her things!) no matter how she tries and tries to talk things out. She is dumped at her fuddled parents' house and he wipes his hands of her.
Less than a fortnight later she is thinner and pluckily working out her notice on the Geriatric ward. Up walks Jake (with an appropriate number of pages left in the book to make it stick this time) to engage the old lady Britannia is putting to bed in a spot of conversation. "I hope that when Britannia here is your age, my dear, she will be as charming as you, and yes, I have come to fetch her; she's my girl, you see..."
Gulp. They retrench to Ned's (bacon sandwiches) and he makes her agree to marry him tomorrow.
Whew.
The End

Rating: This was so much better than I remembered. I began it in such a grumpy mood ("Oh, it's the one where she has to chase him down.") and wasn't twenty pages in before it had me laughing out loud. The first 85 pages feel like something out of a Fred and Ginger musical--the kind where if they're not singing and dancing they're slanging like fishwives. The remaining 130 pages were not as good but I don't quibble with the writing or the plot (though I don't love, love it). Rather it's a pacing problem. The Mighty Neels peaked 60 pages too early. First half: Acerbic and effervescent courtship. Second half: Doubt and Anxiety and Bodily Injury. Final pages: Cute as a bug's ear. Britannia will have a interesting personality to manage in her husband but she is more than up to the task. I give this one a boeuf en croute.

Food: Speculaas , roast leg of lamb with spiced peaches, bacon sandwiches at the beginning and end of the book, cheese on toast, disguised eel (it would have to be), lemon sorbet and a pipkin (I want a pipkin!) of soup.

Fashion: Hospital nurse's cape, autumn colored tweed suit, short dark green dress, long pink dress (her go-to in Holland), a vast and elderly blue guernsey sweater that he makes her meet his mother in (Un. For. Give. Able.), a Gucci scarf and countless anoraks. Madeleine wears a red fox fur jacket and suede skirt.

Uncertain Summer--1972

Uncertain Summer, to be understood fully, should be cross-referenced with The Hasty Marriage. I know that many of you are not big fans of the later book (Betty JoDee, I'm looking at you). One protagonist falls in love with the wrong person right out of the gate, is casual to the point of rudeness to the person who loves him, is jilted, contracts a MOC, and learns to love again. The Hasty Marriage, told from the perspective of Laura (the innocent party trying to make her husband fall in love with her), it is a difficult read (I still love it, Betty JoDee. ;P). Uncertain Summer is the exact same plot but told from the perspective of the jilted fiancee (this time a female). She must make do with her MOC and The Great Betty treats everyone so gently that Serena (blind for an awfully long time) isn't someone you want to hit in the head with a brick too much (as some wish to do with Reilof throughout THM--he's nasty where she is thoughtless).
Also, can I get a shout-out for the cover art?

Serena Potts, a 24-year-old Casualty and Accident nurse, has just been hit on. She must get that a lot. She's a petite, dark-haired dish.
Hey, baby, am I having a heart attack or did I just fall in love?
Sweetheart, am I dying? Because you sure look like an angel. Etc., etc.
The man with the smashed up leg and smashed up E-Type Jag looks up from his delirium and says, "What a beautiful little gypsy girl." Of course, he had the good taste to say it in Dutch first, establishing his Hot Foreign Guy bona fides. (An accent instantly making a man gain one full grade level above similar domestic brands.) His name is Laurens van Amstel and he is a doctor from Zierikzee, Holland.
Could this be our hero lying romantically prone on the Cas room gurney? Alas, no. Driving the wrong way down a one way street and wrecking an auto that, along with Shakespeare and the Magna Carta, ranks as a cultural endowment of the Sovereign Nation of Great Britain to the Peoples of the World does not a hero make.
So if he's not the hero he must be The Fink.
In a manner not calculated to make me think well of my sex, Serena promptly loses her head and her heart.
Crossing the hospital lobby at the end of her shift she spots a beat-up Mini. Ah. There's our hero unfolding himself from its Lilliputian cavity. It's Laurens' cousin. Gijs van Amstel. And if Laurens is The Destroyer then Gijs is The Builder.
Before we know it, Laurens is rushing Nurse Potts off her sensible feet. Oblique references to True Love (in caps with hearts and arrows drawn metaphorically around it) and his hope (demand) that she drop everything and spend eternity in his embrace does not make her gag. Maybe an unusually heavy breakfast is keeping all that bile down...Everybody has their own way of expressing misgivings of the glib-tongued charmer but my favorite is Staff Nurse Joan. "But ducky, be your age..."
In the mean time, Gijs-what's-his-name (for that is how she thinks of him and (mortifyingly) treats him) travels to and from Holland and allows Laurens to use him as a remote Taxi service. He takes Serena to her home (no small distance) and fetches her back again and all she can do is moon over Laurens and be as casually dismissive to Gijs as possible. Happily, as far as rudeness goes, this is Serena's high water mark.
Editorial Note:
I grant you that Reilof's intentional awfulness in The Hasty Marriage was way worse than Serena's amateurish efforts but both protagonists are coming from the same place emotionally.
Laurens asks Serena to come to Holland and quit her job. Is he proposing? It sounds awfully like it but, like some elusive wad of Flubber, he is difficult to pin down. For his part, Gijs is furious at his cousin for snaring Serena. He knows it won't work out and Laurens is playing ducks and drakes with with everybody's happiness.
I have to skip a ton but while in England, Gijs is very kind to Serena and lets Laurens take the credit for his thoughtfulness. He charms her family, most particularly Mrs. Potts. Also, for the first time you see Serena as a worthwhile person when she wishes she could strangle the life out of a baby beater. Gijs sees it too and I'm happy he finally has a rational reason to love her.
But the days until she travels to Holland are counting down. While shopping for her trip she gets involved in an accident on The Underground (Can I call it The Tube? Am I allowed?). Gijs is there to patch her up (a lovely symbol of his role in the tale) with 8 tiny stitches by her eyebrow.
When Laurens (on his leg again and driving the inevitable (and possibly doomed) E-Type Jag) shows up to collect her, the best he can muster is "Hey babe, the disfiguring scar had better fade."
Against Gijs' advice (who I imagine was sick with worry to think of placing Serena in Laurens' careless care), he drives her home to Zierikzee. Serena gets a chilly welcome from the darkened house and an even chillier one the next morning from his dipped-in-formaldehyde mother.
Serena: Why does you mother think this is going to be a short visit? We're getting married, right?
Laurens: Did that disfiguring scar affect your brain? Cool it babe. Even though I implied enough devotion for you to quit your job and traverse a major body of water doesn't mean I'm ready to power down my Acme Wild-Oat Sower.
Serena is confused by his distant manner and when an elegant blonde shows up at a party she is convinced that Laurens is playing the field.
Serena: Who is she?
Gijs:...an only child--poor girl. I'm sorry for only children, aren't you?
S: Yes I think I am.
G: Ah, at last I have found something about myself in which you can show some interest--I am an only child.
She said woodenly, not caring in the least: I'm sorry. Did you find it very lonely?
It helps, if you don't want to rattle the teeth right out of her, to remember her real and spontaneous care over the battered baby. She's got feelings but isn't' capable of civility today.
When Serena happens upon Laurens and Adriana (trust me, she's not worth our time) in a public clinch, it is Gijs who rushes in with an implausible explanation. What's that cousin of mine doing, kissing my girl?
But Serena is so relieved that she fails to see the cracks in his Piecrust of Falsehood.
Such a shame that so delicate a pastry is doomed to shatter. When Serena discovers an irrefutable piece of evidence that Laurens is The Fink King (snogging in the garden with what's-her-name) she turns on her heel and runs up the driveway. If only Gijs would be there!
Wasn't Adriana his girl? Didn't he tell her there was nothing going on? To which he replies with the best line ever. "Lies, wicked lies." Betty Kylene made a sampler for me (see left) sharing just that homily. (Above and beyond the call of Betty.) If I were a neglected wife of Neelsdom, I would do more samplers in this vein while sitting in the soft glow of a pink lampshade...
Gijs becomes her bulwark against further humiliations (as though he knew Laurens would not turn out well), collects her things, proposes to her and takes her to his parents' house--which is, in contrast to Laurens' Fudgesicle mother's house, a haven of welcome and kindness.
Editor's Note:
The Great Betty doesn't just whip through this episode. Mother van Amstel is especially darling. Betty takes time with everything and, thus, makes the happy ending happier. With in-laws like these...
But I digress...He proposes to her!? Standard pre-nup pep talk:
I don't like you like that. I'm not batting for the other team. (Yes, allusions to his 'normal man'-ness.) We'll be great friends. (Yada, yada, yada--I love you forever.)
She thinks it over which is when you know that she never really loved The Fink King in the first place. How could she contemplate moving to the same town and marrying his cousin/partner if she had a speck of real feeling for him? How could this girl, who surely doodled Mrs. Serena van Amstel, marry someone with the exact same name? Sure, Gijs is her safe harbor but if that's all it was, wild horses couldn't send her back to Zierikzee.
They travel back to England and stay at the home of Hugo and Sarah van Elvens (Fate is Remarkable--Meet the twins!). Upon reaching her home, she agrees to marry him only when he gets in his car to go. Gijs, you can't go! (Which ought to have told her something.)
At The Big Fat British Wedding (Gijs insists!) Laurens rates an invitation (so imagining Camilla Parker Bowles glowering at Princess Di in her heirloom lace) which would be reason to lace up the trainers and run, run, run from the van Amstel family. But when all is said and done, Gijs screeches into a lay-by for a bit of post-matrimonial snogging. "I haven't thanked you properly for [the pearls] yet--they're fabulous." He pulled into the side of the road and stopped the car. "Do thank me properly," he begged, and turned to her, a wicked gleam in his eyes. Hmmm. That affable union is not without compensations.
They settle down so well. He may have a hidden passion for her but he's not moody or aloof. He gives her a Basset hound named Gus, he lets her come on his rounds, they share a life. But always in the background is the lurking psychopath in the woods--Laurens. He finally comes back to work in the practice and, while Serena is happily substituting for a missing receptionist, he tears a strip off her. "I don't really think you mean to speak to my wife in that fashion, do you?" (President Andrew Jackson fought a duel on less provocation.) Laurens proves himself more boring to Serena than yesterday's leftovers. When did that happen?
Soon after, Gijs has a home delivery to attend that goes on until dawn. We are given what is one of the sweetest dawning realizations in all of Neelsdom--doubly treasured as Serena was so unworthy of his regard in the early stages. When Serena fetches Gijs tea, she sees the harsh early morning sun show up lines and furrows on his face and she suddenly knows that Laurens is hardly a flicker of a glimmer of a shadow of a speck. She loves her husband. Now what to do?
Gijs begins avoiding her--almost the first time he has been anything less than natural and candid. It is my contention that he senses some change in her and does not trust his self-control. Remember, he is a 'normal man'.
Here's the rest of the book in bullet points:

• Little Timmy is trapped in a well...er...no. Rather, a couple of children (why is it always children, Betty? Why?!) get trapped in the famously rotted sub-floors of Holland. Serena to the rescue!
  
• Gijs gets a few calls from Adriana--Who? Oh, yes, the blonde plot device.
• Tante Emilie (Laurens' embalmed mother), drawing her snobbery around her like a too small shawl on a too cold day, queers Serena's pitch by implying that Adriana (who really cares about Adriana?) loves Gijs...if only he were free.
• Oh, and Betty thumbed through her Atlas and found Laurens' a 'very good post in Pittsburgh'. ( I am not here to say anything bad about Pittsburgh but do you really think that a Fink King like Laurens' would seek a job in the Rust Belt? Methinks Betty closed her eyes and spun the globe on this one.)
• Serena, her addition faulty (2+2=5), convinces herself that Gijs needs to be free.

So, she ups and offs to England only to find Gijs in Hugo and Sarah's parlor. Explanations follow. Adriana needed Gijs to give her some vaccinations for her move to Pittsburgh. (Get your own husband, toots!) Also, he tells her that he fell in love with her at first sight in the hospital lobby and determined to marry her on the way to Laurens' room. How adorable is that?
Kisses and a planned week at Hugo's Scotland cottage. (Which has seen a lot of implied conjugal relations.)
The End

Rating: Lashings of whipped cream. And thank heavens for it. Betty Debbie and I made most of our July posts have something to do with Summer and most of the books were very ho-hum. How bleak was my Neels in July. How joyful I was then to dive into this one. Serena isn't an idiot. She's human and a little slow. The whole first half is her constructing her own gallows. The second act is her marching up them. Gijs is perfect from beginning to end. We get a lot of his point of view. He's waiting for Serena but rarely retreats into that aloof shell that most RDDs adopt. He grins. He kisses. I. Love. Him.
Laurens is also a credible villain. A Daisy Buchanan type--reckless and feckless, he adores being adored. I didn't buy Tante Emilie's sudden machinations at the end but I shan't quibble.
I skipped so many fun details that it kills me.

Food: Corn flakes, creme brulee, ham off the bone, new potatoes, apple pie and cream, a Charlotte Russe that falls apart on the night of their first dinner party, Gorkas Norge (Cucumber and anchovies and cream cheese and sour cream and caviar. I triple-dog-dare Betty Debbie to make this.), Pott's Point Fish Pot (which I cannot take seriously), Bavarian Cream, and rookworst.

Fashion: Clotted cream pleated skirt, corn-colored dress, Laurens' over-fussy dress shirt, her dream wedding dress (organza and a little net veil), her actual wedding dress (cream silk with tight sleeves and a high round neck and her mother's veil), a peach pink chiffon, cream gauze dress over silk with a pink velvet sash, and a little pink suit (with straw hat) to simultaneously lift her spirits and run away from her husband in.