Betty by the Numbers: The Founding Bettys’ Ratings

Shall we begin with several rousing cheers for Betty Debbie and Betty Keira, the Founding Bettys, who so assiduously worked and worried and read and dreamed and finally brought us the marvelous wonderment that is everyneelsthing.blogspot.com, a/k/a The Uncrushable Jersey Dress.  What a joy and a treasure they have unloosed upon the world, however misguided Betty D. may be about The Fortunes of Francesca (1997) or ditto Betty K. in the matter of Heaven is Gentle (1974).  So here’s to the Founding Bettys, who read 135 books with care and attention, and rated each of them with a magnificently-imagined scale-of-Betty-food (except Betty Magdalen reviewed Fate is Remarkable).  Hip, hip, hooray!  Hip, hip, HOORAY!  Hip, hip, hippety HOORAY-O-RAMA!!!



Betty Debbie's T reads, “You encourage me to fend off the encroaching years;" Betty Keira's reads, "Emily took instant exception to his pink frilled shirt."

Ithe Founding Bettys.  Now, about those ratings...

  

Almost two-thirds of the Neels oeuvre warrants, in the FBs view, a boeuf en croute or better.  One suspects a smidgeon of partisanship.  Zero, that’s right, zero, rate a tinned soup or digestive biscuits, and only 6% rate a cheese board or below.  The average score is something like a small serving of boeuf en croute with a large mince pie for afters (7.75).  The median score is boeuf en croute (8).

Time out for a quick reminder on the rating system:

The best books warrant a lashings of whipped cream rating, which equates to ten points out of ten.  A handful get lashings-plus.  Then, in descending order, we have:

9	queen of puddings	delightfully named, but really just super-custardy bread pudding with jam underneath and meringue on top
8	boeuf en croute	most excellent if you like beef...
7	mince pies	if genuine mince, with suet and organ meats and other disgusting yuk, I’d rather have tinned soup; if just nice fruits and booze and minimal citron, I may take seconds
6	treacle tart	bleargh
5	madeira cake	tasty, but too often dry
4	the cheese board	gosh, I love a good cheese board, but I suppose if you’re comparing it to a confection of meringue, almonds, cream and chocolate, it may lack something
3	beans on toast	DELICIOUS served hot with cheese melted on top, but quite unpalatable if allowed to get soggy
2	digestive biscuits	actually quite tasty, but unfortunately named
1	tinned soup	typically very salty, and no real flavor of whatever it’s supposed to be – especially sad with things like asparagus

So, here we go:  four books, or 3%, warrant lashings-plus:  Blow Hot, Blow Cold/Surgeon from Holland/Visiting Consultant (1969) – lashings of whipped cream with cherries on top; Winter Wedding (1979) – mountains of lashings of whipped cream; Caroline’s Waterloo (1980) – lashings of whipped cream with a cherry on top; and A Christmas Romance (1999) – lashings and lashings of whipped cream.  Note the broad range of publication dates; note too that we have 75% nurses, 75% Dutchmen, 25% MOCs, average heroine age of 24 and average hero age of 38, all of which are reasonably representative of the broader canon.  There’s 50% barons represented here, which is a bit high, but probably not to an expert on statistics.

The unadorned, regular-sized lashings go to 13 books, from 1970’s Fate is Remarkable to 2001’s An Ordinary Girl.  That’s 10% of the total.  After the lashings, the curve starts to go a bit top-heavy, as 24% of the books, 32 in total, get the coveted Queen of Puddings rating.  Two, in fact, get a bit higher, as Cassandra by Chance (1973) warrants Queen of Puds with a dollop of whipped cream, and Roses Have Thorns (1990) gets the pudding with a full serving of cream.  

Betty Kylene dishing up a heaping helping of Hannah, or maybe An Ideal Wife.

Down a rung we go, but still up on the top-third of the scale, and we get 36 books, or 27%, earning boeuf en croute or slightly better.  Both the beginning Betty, Sister Peters in Amsterdam (1969), and the final one, Emma’s Wedding (2001), win 8’s from our judges.  Six books win ratings like the “boeuf en croute with dollop of queen of puddings” awarded to Heaven Around the Corner (1981), although I vote “tinned dog-meat soup with a scummy crust” for that one.  Cheerfully and respectfully, I vote “tinned dog-meat soup with a scummy crust.”  And non-fat sour cream with chokecherries for afters.  But I’m on board with most of the others.

So we have covered 63% of our novels, or 85 books, as we descend unto the mince pies.  There are 16 books, or 12% of the total, in or near this category.  There’s some confusion with the volumes No Need to Say Goodbye (1989) and The Awakened Heart (1993), as the former is rated treacle tart for the first half and Queen of Puddings for the second, and the latter rated just the opposite.  Turning up my hem to tot up some maths, I get an average of 7.5, or mince-pies-plus, for each.  Grasp a Nettle (1977) was a bit simpler, as it rated halfway between pies and beef.

Now we arrive at the quarter of the novels that rate the lowest, with 34 books remaining.  Eighteen of those, or 13% of the oeuvre, are in the treacle-tart segment.  These range all the way from 1971’s Tangled Autumn (but I love Sappha!  the causeway!) to 2001’s Always and Forever.  They also include two 6.75 scores, for Last April Fair (1980), “almost mince pies,” and The Right Kind of Girl (1995), “mince pie that’s been dropped on the ground.”    Did I mention Ithe Founding Bettys?

There are just seven madeira cakes (5%) and five cheese boards (4%).  The cheese-board scores include the unfortunate The Edge of Winter, which was headed for a boeuf en croute, but sadly detoured into a tinned-soup ending, resulting in a score of... hand me that apron and a pencil, please... 4.5.  The cheese boards are all from the mid-1970s (1973-1976).

A mere three books warrant beans on toast:  Winter of Change/Surgeon in Charge (1973), A Small Slice of Summer (1975) (WHAAAAT?!? so wrong!), and Not Once but Twice (1981).  They are followed by the sad and lonely The Gemel Ring (1974) in last place at a 2.5, or midway between beans on toast and digestive biscuits.  You can sense Betty Debbie’s more-in-sorrow as she wields her pen on this one:  “I honestly don't know what rating to give this book. I could never work up any liking or sympathy for Everard.  He was rude, insulting, hyper-critical, irritable and cranky...when he wasn't being mocking and supercilious.  The best things about him are things (cars, Gemel Rings, good looks)...but none of those really add up to any kind of real reason to fall in love with him.  His one redeeming feature is that he operates a rest home (which is all well and good, but Charity didn't know that when she fell in love).  The character of Charity was lovely - as long as we ignore the 600-pound gorilla in the room.  Why would a smart, talented, good looking Olivia fall for such a putz? There was no saucy flippancy to her remarks...she comes off sounding a wee bit desperate.  I did love Mr. and Mrs. Boekercheck (very awesome) and Corrie Blom was a brief, but fun, interlude.  Granny was also fun, she's got one of the best lines in Neeldom (speaking of a girl that Everard had dated)...’she's only half alive and the live half isn't at all to my liking.’
“I think I will have to resort to doing maths again.  Mr. and Mrs. Boekerchek get a queen of puddings, Corrie - boeuf en croute, Granny - lashings of whipped cream, Charity - treacle tart (I would have rated her higher if I thought she would be happy with Everard) and Everard - a great big ‘tinned soup.’  Overall it lands somewhere between digestive biscuits and beans on toast (for me...).”

Let’s have it, Bettys – where do you uncover the coagulated aroma of tinned soup in the oeuvre?  How many of the Novels Neels earn mountains of lashings with cherries and berries and chocolate shavings from you?

Hilltop Tryst - 1989

I remembered really not liking Hilltop Tryst...it was among one of the last Betty Neels I read.  I couldn't remember what exactly bothered me about it, so I approached it with some trepidation last week. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.

Beatrice got to the hilltop a little too
early on Midsummer's morning.

Beatrice Browning (26 going on 27) and Oliver Latimer (35 - ish) meet on the morning of Midsummer's Day. It's love at first sight for him...like at first sight for her. She's a tall gorgeous glass of water - looking for a tiny bit of excitement...which she doesn't see in the placid Dr. Latimer.

Beatrice's life is anything but exciting. Instead of training to be a veterinarian like her father, she is his assistant. Lots of on-the-job training, but no room for advancement either. Her lack of career leaves her open and available to take on such mundane jobs such as 'Acting Companion' to Great-Aunt Sybil - who she is not fond of (the feeling is mutual). Great-Auntie should probably have been set adrift on a convenient iceberg years ago, but failing that, she spends her time bad-mouthing her family and medical professionals. After a visit to a noted cardiologist in London (that would be our boy Oliver), a suitable companion is found. Or rather, a suitable companion is sent. Oliver just so happened to know someone.

Papa Browning, the village veterinarian, has a heart attack. It's sure a handy and convenient thing that Oliver is a cardiologist. Oliver suggests to Beatrice that she hire a locum. It's really a shame that he doesn't know a handy vet who happens to be at loose ends for a few weeks, because, well, you'll see.

The agency sends a man. I suppose we must call him a man, although he is more closely related to the reptile kingdom.  Think of a snake with opposable thumbs.

Colin Wood, he of the showy yellow sports car with lots of luggage, several tennis rackets and a set of golf clubs.
Colin Wood, young and exciting. Danger, danger, danger...(I'm saying this with a fake Australian accent).
Colin Wood, sniffing around the veterinary practice account books.
Colin Wood, plotter of mercenary marriage to the unsuspecting Beatrice...until she overhears the Phone Conversation O' Doom wherein he outs his true mercenary motive for chatting up Beatrice.
Colin Wood, stalker extraordinaire.

Papa Browning takes on a new partner. NOT Colin. Colin stays on in the village - much more handy for his new hobby - stalking Beatrice.  It gets so bad that Beatrice can barely stick her nose out the door. What's a girl to do? Oliver suggests a pretend engagement! Beatrice demurs - what will his fiancee think? What fiancee, you ask? Yup, there isn't one, it's that hoary old plot device wherein the hero states he plans to marry soon...zzzz.

Colin practically attacks Beatrice in the middle of the village - Beatrice is saved by Oliver - whom she calls her 'fiancee'. Oliver assures Colin that the announcement will be in the Telegraph the very next day. Which it is.

Oliver invites Beatrice to go on a two-week lecture tour with him (and his assistant, the delightful Miss Ethel Cross).
Colin has taken to writing impassioned letters to Beatrice. Beatrice is so over him by this time - the letters don't even mean anything to her.

Lecture Tour O' Liking or Great Hotels of Europe. Two weeks at the finest hotels in Utrecht, Cologne, Copenhagen and Brussels...Just as Oliver drives away from dropping her back at her house - finally, finally! Beatrice realizes she's in love - but since she has endowed Oliver with an imaginary fiancee, there's nothing she can do about it.


Chasing burglars was just a way to let off
a little excess steam, after all, she couldn't
bring herself to chase Oliver.

 Great-Aunt Sybil's suitable companion has to take a week off for a family emergency. Beatrice is press-ganged into being an acting companion again. A day or two before she's due to go home, she wakes up and finds a robber stealing the silver...Beatrice chases him down in her dressing gown - Oliver providentially drives by and knocks him down for her (I'd wager Beatrice could have done it herself, after all, she was gaining on him). Great-Aunt Sybil is deeply mortified that Beatrice stooped to running around in public in a state of 'undress'. Oliver doesn't want to hear anyone give his fake fiancee a bad time, so he hustles her back to the family home.

If she wasn't already in love, two weeks of forced Oliver Drought would have certainly make her heart grow fonder...as it is, she's in such a muddle about her feelings for him, the faux engagement, his imaginary fiancee and life in general that she scampers into hiding the next time she hears the gentle purr of his Rolls. Two can play the sneaky game...Oliver pops up unexpectedly and asks her why she hid. Em-bar-ass-ing, much?



Sorry Colin, the better man is going to win this time.

 The Return of Colin. Like yesterday's split pea soup, Colin won't stop repeating. He's also stepped up the stalking to include cornering her in her own house and accusing her of having a fake engagement (true) AND being in love with Oliver (true)...and then telling her that when she marries him, he expects a partnership, a good salary AND a decent house. Oliver rides in on his white charger and routs the reptile once and for all.
Time to wrap it up:

• Visit to Aunt Polly in Cornwall (a whole 3 pages worth).
• Kissing on the street.
• Takes her home...thorough kissing in front of the whole family. Muddled thoughts for Beatrice.
• Proposal on the hilltop where they met. 'I promised myself when we met that one day I would ask you to marry me on this very spot...'

The End.

Miss Ethel always wore her little black
number when she received her employee
of the month award.

Rating:  I'm pretty sure the reason I didn't like Hilltop Tryst before had to do with how monumentally thick Beatrice seemed.  She meets a great guy, then falls for a weasel, then has to get over the weasel, THEN falls for the great guy. Ugh. On closer reading I'm willing to cut her a little bit of slack.  Yes, she's still pretty (very) thick, but she'd been fending off the feeble advances of the local doctor's son for years  - I get the impression she wants a little more zip in her love life, and her first impression of Oliver is that he's pretty un-zippy. Along comes Colin - he's a flash in the pan, but a charmer - in the smarmy, insincere kind of way.  Beatrice is side-swiped by his flattery, and nearly falls for it.  It takes her longer than I felt was strictly necessary for her to get over Colin - especially when he shows his true colours so boldly (and badly). I do love a few of the bit players - Great-Aunt Sybil is fabulously awful (but we've seen her type before), little sister Ella is fun (but we've seen...etc...). Miss Ethel Cross is one of my favorite characters, but considering her limited word count, that doesn't speak too well of the book. All things considered, I found this book both better and worse than I remembered.  Better, in that I understood Beatrice a little more, and worse, in that it takes quite a while for not much to happen. Madiera Cake for me...

Fashion: My favorite outfit, by far, is the 'little black number' worn by Ethel Cross. Beatrice wears a pale rose wild silk bridesmaid dress to her sister's wedding while Oliver is 'wearing his morning coat as if he was in the habit of doing so frequently...it was certainly not hired from Moss Bros.' Blue linen dress and little jacket, pale pink cotton dress with a demur collar, dark blue one piece swimsuit.

Food: Bacon, eggs and mushrooms for breakfast, ham on the bone and potatoes in their jackets, pork pies, duchesse potatoes, strawberry tart, lettuce soup (???), grilled sole, fresh fruit, peach tart, brioche.

An Independent Woman--2001

Jack Kennedy famously said, of a diplomatic trip to France, 'I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I enjoyed it.'  Time magazine quipped, of the visit, 'There was also that fellow who came with her.'  Dear me.  An Independent Woman was doomed in my estimation to be known as the politician I had to glad-hand in order to get to vivacious elan of The Little Dragon.  At least that's how I remembered it...

(* This clever metaphor breaks down, I understand, over the fact that JFK was not just 'Good-looking for a politician.' (Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations...) but very nearly actually handsome.)

...attach the bottom to the top.  Iron.

Julia Gracey is on the floor with a curtain trying to magic a lovely/passable evening gown out of it using no money, no time and probably wrestling with one of those gorgeous vintage Vogue patterns that assumes she took four years of Home Ec. in high school. Happily, Julia is a top-notch needlewoman and she's not going to let a little thing like shoddy materials get her down.
Her sisters, Ruth and Monica, are beautiful and a little helpless and often leave all the crushing, spinster-ensuring details in life to Julia (moving them to their home in London, hooking up the phone, paying the bills, showing a little cleavage to the butcher so they can get cheap cuts...etc.) while they busy themselves with little jobs and little romances. Monica has George the Vicar and Ruth has Thomas the Doctor and Julia...Julia has the booby prize.  What else would you call Oscar the Junior Executive at a greeting cards firm?
A knock on the door won't interrupt her work--and work it is.  She'll have a job turning this tatty fabric into anything worth wearing and all the cat hair will have to be...
'It looks like a curtain.'
That's Professor Gerard van der Maes, 36, come to drop off a package for Ruth from her Thomas.  He's handsome and larger than life and there she is, grubbing on the floor with a paper pattern. 
And his was not a passing comment.  (Well, it was to him.) It somehow manages to be a mandate on her life, her circumstances, her miserable excuse for an 'admirer'...She hates him.
Editorial Note: I hated her instant antipathy the first time I read it but this time I tried to understand her feelings a bit more.  When I was in high school my backpack broke.  Instead of asking for a replacement (our family motto might have been: Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.), I employed a strappy airplane carry-on bag to do the job.  I lacked the elan to carry off really quirky fashions but it sort-of looked right. Things had been going along nicely for a week when a boy in my German class said, 'Is that an airplane carry-on bag?'  That's all he said.  No teasing, no nothing.  I was mortified--In a way only a self-involved teenager can be when they think everyone spends all their free-time thinking about the social mis-steps of their peers.  I loathed that boy.  Such are the feelings of Miss Julia Gracey.

A short time later finds our heroine stepping out of a taxi in front of a hotel in the Drapery.  She looks well--well enough for Oscar and a room full of greeting card sellers (her co-workers.  Her job is writing verses for the inside of the cards along the lines of, 'Gee, I think that you're so sweet and I'm sorry we couldn't meet.  Hope you had a lovely day.  That is all I want to say...'  (Top of my head!)).  It's just too bad that the Professor with his Panzer division of What-Not-To-Wear camera people are waiting in the lobby.  'I can't say I agree with Oscar about your dress, but then I know it's a curtain, don't I?'  He was sorry the moment he had said it; for a moment she had the look of a small girl who had been slapped for no reason at all...  
He wants his own face slapped is what he wants.  Can I even begin to list the depth of caddishness in that remark?  Not properly.  Sufficient to say that the dinner he takes her out to afterward doesn't come anywhere near to making up for that.  The night isn't a total loss for her.  She's dumped Oscar (which bodes ill for her continuing employment but well for her future happiness) and ate really well. 

Attempting to write 'humorous'
cards would be difficult but writing
LOLCats cards would be impossible...

Sure enough, a short time later she receives her pink slip in the mail along with a short note explaining that the firm will be following market trends into the upsetting land of Humorous Cards.
Her sisters both get married.  (I know I'm skipping great swaths but it isn't as interesting as it could be.)  So, Julia has to:

• Arrange and execute two weddings. (A task that has her swimming in sausage rolls)
• Find lodgers who don't smoke, drink beer, drive by Brighton or give her the heebie-jeebies. (Very difficult post-1985.)
• Nurse her sister back to health from the brink of...a low-grade fever.

Ruth has the flu which is always hard but...um...she has no responsibilities.  Her husband can look after himself quite well.  There are no little nippers playing King of the Hill on her abdomen.  There is no angry boss demanding TPS reports...(Do I sound irritated?  I once had a vicious 24 hour flu that attacked on the very week my youngest son discovered stairs.  Mijnheer had a code dump that night.  The only way to prevent death was to park the ottoman in the doorway, flop down on it (while my eyeballs blazed way in their sockets), let myself act as a human jungle gym and pray for death...Any one of you could probably tell a similar tale.) Julia goes along as a companion, making fast friends with Gerard's old Nanny (who has the gift of Second Sight where her former charge's matrimonial prospects are concerned), and then returns to London and sells her house.  What?  Why would she do a thing like that?  It's her only asset!  See, Ruth wants a down payment and Monica wants central heating...I know.  They don't make her do it.  They don't even ask her to do it.  Still, they do plenty of talking behind her back (listeners never hear any good of themselves) and the whole thing bugs me.
The Professor, returned to England just in time to do a spot of rescuing, asks her to go to Holland to watch the cottage (which already has a gardener and a daily woman) while Nanny is in the hospital.  So off Julia goes to Holland!--to put fresh flowers around the cottage and visit the hospital (for this she draws a salary!).  She meets Gerard again who, despite being awfully in love with her, still can't manage to be pleasant and courteous. Here, I have fashioned a dramatization of that event.

Mothers and wives first.  Shapely spinsters to follow...

She returns to London determined to forget him.  He returns to London and chains himself to his desk in a futile effort to keep his hands off her.  (This is when, for me, it finally gets good.)  He allows himself, once he has achieved an air of casual disinterest (three weeks of deep meditation finally pay off!), to go to her and ask for a night out.  For his pains (all the climbing down off the RDD pedestal the world has mounted him onto and the carefully studied nonchalance), she hands him his hat.  No I can't go.  I'm leaving London. No, you may not have my forwarding address...  She's all but burned down her house and brushed away her tracks.  But Gerard (In a part I love.) pours over back-issues of Lady to figure out where she is.
Speaking of burned down houses...The manor house that she works at catches fire.  Gerard flies up (he's a pilot! Discuss.) and I was hoping he'd manage to pull her from the burning roof but alas, some hours later he muscles his way past an officer with the 'My future wife was here' routine and bundles her out of the area and back to Ruth's.

Whatever else was going wrong, knitting would make it right.

From here she decides to rise from the ashes as a small business owner.  (They get a lovely date or two as well.) And I really like this part; Julia scouts locations, consults a solicitor, dips into her capital (from selling the house), rents a shop, orders from wholesalers, and organizes fittings and furnishings in no time at all.  That she is desperately lonely she does not consider.  That she doesn't want to own a woolen/embroidery shop doesn't come into it. She's going to do it...and for a minute (until you realize that this is a Betty Neels book and there's not a prayer she's going to make it) you really believe she will.
The takings are slim and though Julia's organizational talents are savant-level, her marketing talents are nil.
Gerard, anxious for her to succeed but antsy to make her his, lets her have three weeks (he has a biological clock set at three weeks, okay?) and then appears out of nowhere amongst her woolens. He takes her off to Stourhead (another Official Betty Neels Pilgrimage Site?  I think so.) and they enjoy a magical day of near-perfect amity.
The knock on her door in the wee hours of the next morning herald a new dawn of Interdependence for them both.  He's come to ask her to marry him at last.
The End 

Rating:  I remember really not liking this one--for reasons I could not wholly articulate, mostly revolving around the fact that Julia, the alleged Independent Woman, seemed like nothing of the sort.  But after this much closer reading (which is not how an ordinary read, getting the overall vibe and missing the details, would go) I am prepared to admit that the book is nowhere near as objectionable as that.  It's a nicely written if sad book; Julia spends her time wishing that she and Gerard could just get along with one another (but not really striking the right kind of sparks off of each other), Gerard spends his time saying exactly what pops into his mind (which you should never do until after the wedding...) and there are some tantalizing dead-ends (he had a heartbreak a year ago which provides the entire foundation for his grumpiness toward women (which we never hear about!) and a woman with a first and last name is supposed to be chasing him at the hospital (but we never see hide nor hair of her).  Also, the actual number of days the two spend together are very small.
But Julia is quite plucky--she organizes her sisters into wedded bliss, finds gainful employment (who would have expected a fire?), and marshals her resources into a failing start-up. With a few more years of grinding perseverance (which she is entirely capable of) she could be the next Steve Jobs of her own Woolen/Embroidery empire! What a shame Betty Neels had her already marked down for occupational ruin!
I think I'm also a bit bummed about the failure of the set-up to materialize.  Three sisters of marriageable age living together--it sounds like a great fairy tale--but the two sisters get bundled away with all the romance of a load of laundry.
Still, The Great Betty was, like, ninety when she wrote it and there are some wonderful moments, particularly post-DR from the hero's perspective.  (Is that as mind-blowing to you as it is to me?)
So, this is somewhere between a Madiera Cake and a Treacle Tart for me (way, way up from the Tinned Soup of my memory).  In other words...the book is passably handsome...for a politician.

Food: Cheese souffle, sole Meuniere, cornflakes (so she can become wand-like), steak pie, sausage rolls for the first wedding, Kaas broodje, buttered bread and tea, new potatoes, lamb chops, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, game soup, roasted parsnips, lemon tart, potato crisps in a hot bath and a stone, cold egg because her temporary landlady is a shabby-genteel Machiavelli.

Fashion: She fashions a curtain-dress, wears a magnificent shawl, and a pleated skirt with a tweed jacket. A pair of elderly trousers and a turtleneck sweater make him fit the Dutch cottage he owns.  She wears a denim skirt and buys (just in case!) a high-necked and long-sleeved amber silk chiffon dress over a silk slip.

All Else Confusion - 1982

Cover art? Betty Debbie suggests that she looks like she's wearing a Dolly Parton wig and is set to take to the Grand Ole Opry stage to sing the heart out of some honky-tonk song.  Betty Debbie is kind of awesome.

Annis Fothergill, 22, is the kind of country girl you might find in a Ralph Lauren print ad where the languidly affluent pretend to muck about in wellies and prohibitively expensive flannels--the sunlight glistening through their artfully tousled hair.
Jake Royle, 35, (whose very name annoys me in an Alpha Male pin-striped way) crests the hill on his tediously magnificent steed. ('Maidens ho!')
Mr. Royle is not a doctor. He is a businessman. A CEO. He owns a factory. In New Zealand. It manufactures who knows what. We never find out. Betty never tells us. (I have just one question: Is he or is he not employing Oompa-Loompas?)
No matter. He sees our beautifully rumpled heroine and makes himself invisible--watching as she greets her childhood friend Matt, fusses over a broke-down donkey, and promises her birthday money for veterinary hoof treatment.
In all his life, Jake has never met someone like Annis.
Annis has never met anyone like Jake.
On one side there is attraction and curiosity and on the other instant antipathy--a defense mechanism as useless as 'duck and cover' in the event of a nuclear bomb.
Annis takes a temporary job as companion to Mrs. Duvant (Jake's godmother) while she settles into her house in Bath. Of course Jake is pulling the strings here--arranging to keep an eye on Annis and breeze into town to chat her up. (Which ought to indicate that he loves her but it doesn't so don't get too excited.)
But back to chatting up. Boy does he. They have a date and she thanks her lucky stars that she had time and money enough to splurge on a knock-out out-fit. She has a lovely time and when he kisses her soundly at the close of the evening it seems only sporting to kiss him back.
Mrs. Duvant dies. Yeah. Dies. No one bothered to tell Annis about the incurable and imminently terminal cancer that renders her redundant. Still, it is worth a pause to mention that the old lady was carried off at the height of her frippery-purchasing, bridge-playing life and you can't do better than that.
Jake dispenses with all business of death and then takes Annis (who is finally in love with the dingus) for a drive into the country...to meet his parents and grandmother and offer her a proposal of sorts. It's a very casual proposal attached to a mill-stone of elephantine proportions. Some girl, what's-her-name, threw me over when I was poor-ish and young so now I am doomed to walk the earth cursing the name of womankind and hoping I might find a companion to share my wealth but not my bed. Yes. Well, almost. I believe the exact words are 'Six months if you like. See how we get on, getting to know each other, becoming friends, nothing more if you don't want that...That's a promise.' It's a wonder he doesn't offer her a receipt and ask her to sign for delivery.
Editorial Note:
But the part that sticks in my throat is his grandma (whom we are told to like but I stubbornly refuse) disliking the fuss of a big wedding. 'Annis had no doubt in her mind that his granny had had a wonderful and very grand wedding--white satin, orange blossom, bridesmaids, the lot.' And that's when it seems all very cruel (though nearly the same set-up in other books doesn't strike me the same way)--taking an unaffected country girl in her dreamy youth and marrying her because she's very nice to look at and 'fills the bill'. (I know that there are forces at work that he hasn't put his finger on yet--that he recognizes someone he can love--but he doesn't know that when he asks for her hand in marriage.) He can't be bothered with noticing that she told him that the only reason to marry was for love (and that she agrees to do it) and he can't be bothered to notice that she gets a sick pit in her stomach every time he calls her darling--a word which in the wilds of the countryside means cherished sweetheart and in a London flat means 'Thanks for passing the olive tray.' So Jake Royle has a lot of catching up to do before I like him.
They take off to Lisbon for a sort of business/honeymoon which is also Annis' first trip out of the country. He manages to squeeze in time for shopping (a lot of shopping) in between sessions of ignoring her at breakfast and running his multi-national chocolate-making empire in the afternoon. Still, she does the best with what she has--performing all sorts of acrobatics in her new clothes (short of loosening indecorous buttons) only to have her enthusiasms snuffed out by his prodigious apathy.
She sees him one afternoon with a lovely Senora. Jealousy, like that white tiger in the Sigfried and Roy act, turns on her ferociously. To pay him back, she rashly dines in The. Hotel. Dining. Room. (Roxanne! You don't have to turn on your red light.) Jake's hot, swarthy business partner, Roberto Gonzalez (Here, I imagine my caliente Mexican/Dutch husband. You may find your own mental candy. I recommend Andy Garcia. You're welcome.), asks to join her. Enter a furious Jake (bent on tossing a few crumbs of affection (read: money) at his wife). This isn't really an important episode but there are un-pretty feelings all around and no implied conjugal relations to disperse them.
Back in England they settle into the flat (ugh--which in any other book than a Neels one I wouldn't find so objectionable) and Annis divvies up the chores with the daily help--she's to do the shopping and ironing. (Don't you just love her?)
He reminds her that their social obligations will be starting soon and when she expresses misgivings he answers her, 'I shouldn't worry about that, darling, you're pretty enough to get away without making any effort at anything.'
'Oh, do you think I'm pretty?'
(Prepare yourself for the caddish and offhand answer.)
'Why else should I have married you?'
And Annis does carry off the social side without much of a hitch--though readers are given vague generalities when a well-settled cross-over character/future BFF would have suited nicely, indicating that she really will be happy and find friends there. When she has time on her own (to navigate the strange and jarring city life) she does charmingly simple things like stand with a crowd of people to watch a society bride go into a church. These things she doesn't share with her husband, assuming he won't be interested. (And in her defense, he might be beginning to be interested in her but probably not in those little darling details that remind him what a simple and dreamy young girl he married.)
The time comes for Jake to make an extended business trip (Who can take the rainbow, wrap it in a sigh, soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie? The Candyman can...) and he suggests that Annis go to her parents' house for the duration--contrary to his expressed expectations at the time of his 'proposal' (oh, yes. It deserves the scare quotes I'm giving it.).
Don't I fit in with your life in London? Don't your friends like me?' comes the desperate plea from a love-starved wife.
That's when he quotes Tennyson (From that early feminist tract, The Princess, that I mentioned here) with less happy results:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion
(I'm pretty sure that the person in the poem saying it is the one who is supposed to be speaking rubbish.)
So she goes home and is miserable and when he comes again she has have him help rescue her little sister from frightening tinkers. And then Jake hears her telling Nancy (the broken burro) that she'll just have to tell Jake. And how can she when he's given her and her family all those lovely things?
Erm. Tell Jake what?
That she loves him.
But that's not what he thinks.
So he leaves her and goes to Naples...where she follows him!
They take a run out to Pompeii (a partially buried city, frozen at the moment of a single cataclysmic event--as good a symbol of his ability to love as any) and after much sight-seeing she gives him her news.
He tells her that he fell in love at first sight (a nigh-on-indigestible morsel of information) but didn't know it right away. (That's right. It only occurred to him on the drive to the volcano!)
Kissing and a promise to start a conjugal-relations Honeymoon toot sweet.
The End

Rating: I'm not crazy about this one. Our heroine is quite likable--she's got a bit of sauce to her even if she has to swallow her pride in marrying a man who looks through her like she's a plate glass window. She's awfully down-to-earth and charmingly scheming and always says 'sorry' when she's done something mean.
It's Jake that bugs me. Jake and his conventional Harlequin-esque-ness. Business tycoon? Marries a babe? Nurses an imagined slight by an insignificant and lost-to-the-sands-of-history female into semi-misogyny? Lives in a posh London flat? Swanks about with anonymous blondes? (Which would make a great name for a girl-band if you like.) Spends money like it's monsoon season and the tap is running?
I salute her trying out a new paradigm but, at the end of the day, I don't think The Great Betty goes far enough. Annis is the kind to make Jake healed and happy--she's just adorable that way. He'll come home late from his business meetings, have his whiskey, and thank his lucky stars that Annis shed all that baby-weight so quickly. But can he make her happy? The jury is out. He's got a lifestyle I imagine her tolerating but she's clearly the 'run-down cottage in the country with a couple of derelict sheds wherein they might house foundling donkeys' type and I can't help but think she's going to wish she'd held out for Jake's college chum from Zierikzee (with a medical practice and time for snogging) or, failing that, Roberto Gonzolez might do (though I confess that Gonzalez is my least favorite of the Hispanic 'ez' names--for the first week of knowing him, I thought Mijnheer van Voorhees' last name was Gonzalez and I had to really consider if I thought him cute enough to take it.  He was.  But I was more than happy to be a Dominguez instead.).
But I read this more than a week ago and I'm probably being way harsh on the poor man (and honestly, writing the review just egged me on to find all his most awful parts). He gate-crashes adorably at one point and if we'd only got something definite in the way of a dawning realization I'd have liked him much more. So, it's not really bad (if it were a random Harlequin by another author I might have liked it quite well)...I just didn't love it. Madiera Cake.

Food: Chilled melon, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and sprouts ('...very English,' says Betty). Charlotte Russe, oyster soup, spiced chicken with apricots, mac and cheese, lobster patties, tournedos Rossini (which makes me think of weather events and opera all at the same time), pommes de terre Berny, dried cod souffle, balo de mei (on their no-implied-conjugal-relations-honeymoon), beef en croute (!), sherry trifle, steak and kidney pie, souffle Harlequin (twice, I think), and medallions of beef...mmmmm, beef.

Fashion: Her mid-West farmer's daughters outfits comprise wellies, an old coat, flyaway hair, a blue velvet dress (on the dowdy side), and a tweed suit. She buys a blue dress with a ruffle and bronze sandals ('going cheap but nonetheless elegant') for her date with him in Bath. She makes her own wedding dress. Their Shopping Spree of Surrogate Affection yields a good many treasures: pale green crepe de chine, a 'blue thing with pleats', organza in patterned green with a pie-frill neck, a Jaeger three piece of cotton jersey in cream and lime green, a black satin (which tells you as much as anything that Jake is no staid RDD), and a silvery crepe dress (turn that into a pant-suit and an RDD's mother would have snubbed her).

Three for a Wedding--1973

Lots to discuss in this book--many delightful bits but plenty to take issue with.

Gold Medals seem to run in the family. Pheobe Brook, 27, Medical Night Sister, was the leading light of her year and little sister Sybil has just garnered the top honors as well.
Even though the title of the book references Sybil's wedding and it is that same wedding that gets the ball rolling, Sybil is practically a cardboard figure--a hodgepodge of enthusiasms and tantrums ('I can't spend two whole months in Holland! I want to get married! Revolve around me!') and never really gets fleshed out.
Sybil wants to get married and a nurse-training scheme in Holland is getting in her way. So, instead of accepting responsibility for her own actions and telling the hospital authorities that Nick (we're supposed to believe that marriage with a 'Nick' will turn out well?) has proposed, she asks Phoebe to take her place and pretend to be her. Phoebe brings her considerable logic to bear on the situation but Sybil demonstrates her preparedness for marriage thus: 'Oh dear,' she wailed through her sobs, 'now I don't know what I'll do--at least, I do. I shall run away and hide until Nick goes to Southampton and we'll get married in one of those pokey register offices and n-no one will come to the w-wedding!'
Have I mentioned that she's 23?--not 12. And one must assume she won her Gold Medal with hard work and diligence--Well, that or her class was peopled with the criminally moronic, deaf-mutes and dope fiends...Hmm, there's a thought.
So Phoebe agrees.
Phoebe is told only that the doctor in charge is one of those catatonic fellows--sleepy and uninterested. He couldn't possibly remember Sybil from the one time he met her. But he does--at least enough to know that for him she was just another nurse. Phoebe (masquerading as Sybil) however, is, as he scribbles in his ubiquitous notebook, 'A darling English girl. I shall marry her.' Maybe it was the good deal of leg she was showing as she leaned out the window...
Editorial Note:
Mind you, he knows right away that she's not who she says she is and still falls headlong into love. I adore that he's nerdy enough to need a reminder.
But Dr. Lucius (I'm thinking of a chubby Southern boy circa 1952 with horn-rimmed glasses and an overbearing mother) van Someren, 34, is supposed to be married so despite finding him very attractive, Phoebe resigns herself to aesthetic appreciation and philosophical detachment. (Sybil's Nick (who probably, with a name like that, has a criminal record of some sort) told her he had a son so naturally...)
They settle down to a wonderful working relationship. She's a good deal more experienced than a recently-graduated student nurse has any right to be but he is unobservant, right?
Wrong.
The moment he gets her across the Channel and onto Dutch soil (where, conveniently it would be difficult for her to beat a hasty withdrawal) he calls her Phoebe.
Right. About that...
No harm, no foul. He's happy to have her anyway and will even arrange for her to go back to the wedding when her sister ties the knot.
That's a sticky plot morass cleared with almost unseemly haste. We may proceed.
On one of her solitary rambles about Delft she is roughed up by a group of 8-year-olds. Before you go calling her a pansy keep in mind that she was very likely in high heels and they were swinging book bags. (My daughter's could probably take an arm off if swung just so.) One of the young vandals, she was sure, was able to understand her English shouting. Curious.
Lucius, inviting her and another nurse, to coffee at his home (after some fibrocystitis-themed sight-seeing) where she is introduced to (Dum, dum, DUM) Paul--8-year-old hooligan by day, adopted son of Lucius by night! Phoebe offered a hand and smiled. Little boys were, after all, little boys and what was a rude gesture between friends? (Don't you just want to wrap her up and keep her in your pocket?)
She also meets Maureen Felman, a dishy and smug-faced governess. Their dislike is mutual, thorough and instantaneous. (Think Godzilla vs. Mothra) Of a later meeting it is said, 'Here was the enemy, although she wasn't quite sure why (no Dawning Realization yet)--and declaring war too.
But the doctor isn't married. That's the other disclosure of the day. Phoebe is thrilled--she isn't in love with him (well, she is but doesn't know it) but there's a rose-colored intermediary state where she admits to liking him an awful, awful lot.
She goes on night duty and her one compensation is that Lucius picks her up in the morning and they go swimming together in the North Sea. This is Betty Neels code for 'Delightful Post-Work Pick-Me-Up' and Betty Keira code for 'Are You Insane and Trying to Kill Me?' Paul and Maureen come sometimes which is just as fun as it gets with Paul staring at her with dead eyes and Maureen using her as a scratching post. Are there dueling dishy swimsuits? Heck yes.
Phoebe goes back to England for the wedding which I thought we already agreed was a next-to-useless detour. Oh, she gets to wear a pretty hat, find herself uninterested in an old boyfriend and then (finally, at last) unmuddle her way into a dawning realization.
Back in Holland she runs into Paul, unusually verbose and wanting to show her around the town. What's that expression? Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Paul bolts her into an abandoned warehouse.
Let's just sit right there for a spell.
Paul. Locked. Her. In. A. Warehouse.
By the sheerest good luck, Lucius remembers a Squirrel-y Paul from lunchtime and manages to wring her location from him (but only after witnessing his governess lazing about with glossies and booze--not for the first time, mind you). Phoebe, meanwhile, has been amusing herself with morbid scenarios including tramps and hippies (yes, hippies and not the fun kind) and, when he arrives, bursts into tears on Lucius' waistcoat.
'Paul is at home, he will want to apologize to you.' 'Some other time--it surely doesn't matter....' 'Am I to infer that you have some reason for not wishing to meet Paul?' 'Of course not.'
Yeah, it's not like he locked her away and hoped she would starve to death or anything...Oh. Wait.
So she has to go (after such an ordeal) and smooth everyone's ruffled feelings which reminds me of those times when my toddlers have, through sheer carelessness, caused me bodily injury (usually by banging a toy into my head or something) and I've cried out only to find them so stricken by my reaction that they fall to pieces and I have to comfort them. Being a grown-up stinks.
Lucius is making steady progress though. He's kissing our sweet-in-the-face-of-uncertain-odds heroine and dating her often. During one meeting he asks what he should get Paul for his birthday. (See, he's trying to involve her in parenting decisions.) Some mice, she answers, or a dog. (Or boarding school or detention or a cruise around the world...)
Paul thaws considerably when presented with a new (new to him) puppy but Maureen isn't going to take that kind of broadside lying down. (She's been poisoning his mind all along against Phoebe and making threats.) Phoebe walks in on her beating the poor thing to death a few days later. He doesn't die and Maureen concocts some cock-and-bull story for Lucius about a door left ajar and an auto run-in. Phoebe does not contradict or correct her. She doesn't even put her finger on that bony chest and tell her where to get off.
The final act in this little melodrama is when Paul comes to Phoebe a few days later when his father is out of the country. Maureen has locked the dog...oh, heck. She's just evil.
The conspirators break the little dog out of Puppy Prison, flee to Lucius' old nanny's house in Amsterdam (yes, she takes a child away from his home and travels to another city without telling his father) and await The Great and Terrible Day of Judgment.
Maureen has poisoned the well. Lucius thinks Phoebe is a kidnapper. Impolitic words are exchanged. But then we get a swimmy denouement in front of the kitchenware display of De Bijenkorf department store.
I lost my temper--I don't often do that, Phoebe, but you see while I had been in England I had dreamed--oh, a great many dreams.
The End

Rating: I don't re-read this book very often and I thought it was because I didn't like it very much but I find that that's not entirely true. I love the meeting between the principles and accept the absurdity that a 27-year-old woman would let herself be talked into a plot device more worthy of a Disney film. I love the professor, whose working life we get to see more of than is normal--he cares deeply about his patients and is driven to cure them--and he's not as absent-minded as he lets Phoebe believe he is.
Phoebe comes off as a darling but way too closed-mouthed when it comes to the Assorted Evils of Maureen. What/who does she think she's helping by not ratting her out?
Also, I have a problem with Lucius' failure to connect the dots on Maureen--or maybe, I'm annoyed that The Great Betty brings up such weighty issues such as beating a dog to death, trapping a grown woman in an abandoned warehouse and the years long brain-washing and neglect of an innocent child without truly adequate wrap-up. I can't enjoy hating Maureen because I'm worried about all the fall-out.
On those grounds I give this a Madiera Cake.
That said, I adore how gradual and obvious Pheobe's love is for Lucius without her being aware of it and I love all those trips to the beach.

Food: Really not much to discuss. Oranges, ice cream, herring balls (gah!), oyster soup, duckling stuffed with apples, and Gateau St. Honore'.

Fashion: Again, there isn't as much here as in some Neels but The Great Betty uses it to contrast Phoebe and Maureen with a deft hand. Phoebe wears an uncrushable cotton dress and takes 2 swim suits to Holland, wears a delicious-sounding strawberry pink silk number, and she packs a 'pastel patterned party dress which could be rolled into a ball if necessary and still look perfection itself'--as 'a concession to a kindly fate'. She also buys a French silk scarf and laments that she could be wearing 'hot pants and a see-through top' for all the notice he's taking of her. Maureen wears a scarlet and white beach outfit, false eyelashes, and an artlessly simple white dress with gold sandals.