It’s beginning to look a lot like A Christmas Romance

Those finalists, again, for TUJD Best Christmas Ever (2012 version) are:
  

Damsel in Green (1970)

Caroline's Waterloo  (1980)

A Girl to Love (1982)

When Two Paths Meet  (1988)

The Mistletoe Kiss  (1997)

A Christmas Romance  (1999)

Let us recall a few highlights of that latest-published volume, in which dietician’s assistant Theodosia Chapman manages to meet senior medical consultant Professor Hugo Bendinck, fall for him, adopt a dog with him, lose him (the doctor, not the dog), and win his undying love forever in a mere 103 pages in my 2001 Mills & Boon “Betty Neels Collector’s Edition.”

The story opens just five weeks before Christmas, when it’s cold and wet and dark outside, but cozy and warm in Theodosia’s London studio flat, with its bright cushions and handsome ginger cat, Gustavus.  Theodosia lives alone but plans to spend the holiday with her remaining family:  two elderly and rather unloving great-aunts in a chilly cottage in Finchingfield.  Much of the book’s four chapters concern various preparations for Christmas, greatly enlivened by the assistance of Hugo, whom Theodosia meets at the hospital where she works as a typist.

There’s also an awfully lot of mention of cold:  cold weather, Great-aunt Mary’s face “held little warmth,” cold cottage, underdone beef, cold supper, “not quite hot” bath water, cold feet (literal), chilly church, cold lunch, shivering one’s way to the bathroom, cold sleet, a brief mention of her parents’ deaths, five years earlier, of ’flu.  I am curling my toes and hunching my shoulders just typing about it.  But Theodosia has ginger hair – a bit of fire – and a ginger cat, and the professor’s car and home are blissfully warm, and Christmas is coming...

So off we go to the hospital ball, in a nipped and tucked dove-grey dress from Oxfam, to dance with the professor and ride luxuriously home in his Bentley.  And then it’s time to dash out to Fortnum & Mason’s to do the aunts’ shopping – but wait, the professor is there again, driving us (luxuriously) to that emporium to hand over the shopping list to the food-department experts and spring for a lunch of (hot) omelette and a glass of wine, and resisting “a wish to kiss the tip of her nose.”

And the following weekend, in the Christmas spirit of loving and giving, Theodosia succors an old lady hit by a car.  The professor, coincidentally and fortuitously driving by, ties off gushing arteries and whatnot whilst our heroine chats with the plucky survivor:

“She went and knelt by the old lady, who was still conscious but very pale.  ‘Bit of bad luck,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I was going to me daughter for Christmas...’  ‘Well, you will be well again by then,’ said Theodosia.  ‘The doctor's here now and you're going to hospital in a few minutes.’  ‘Proper Christmas dinner, we was going ter 'ave.  Turkey and the trimmings—I like a bit of turkey...’  ‘Oh, yes, so do I,’ said Theodosia, her ears stretched for the ambulance.  ‘Cranberry sauce with it...  and a nice bit of stuffing.’  The old lady's voice was very weak.  ‘And plenty of gravy.  Sprouts and pertaters and a good bread sauce.  Plenty of onion with it.’  ‘Your daughter makes her own puddings?’ asked Theodosia, and thought what a strange conversation this was—like a nightmare only she was already awake.”

You’ve got to love that, right?  She’s kneeling on the sidewalk, speckled with elderly blood, queasy at the site of the “awful mess” a speeding car can make of a stranger’s leg, and chatting about pudding recipes.  Perhaps not traditionally Christmassy, and perhaps adopting an unloved mutt out of the dogs’ home (which they do that afternoon) isn’t either, but the spirit is certainly right.

Sadly, by Christmas Eve we’re in a fine muddle, the prof having told Theodosia he plans to marry, and neglecting to mention, from some misplaced modesty or inappropriate sense of the dramatic, the you bit – I plan to marry you.  So of course when she sees him laughing with a lovely woman who kisses his cheek, she doesn’t think, “Must be his sister,” but instead grabs the nearest path lab assistant and pretends they’re dating.  And then off home to the sometimes cozy, sometimes chilly bedsit to pack the great-aunts’ gifts and catch the late train.  Except landlady Mrs. Towzer, “Aving a bit of a party this evening; must get meself poshed up,” drops off a letter from those fickle aunts, dis-inviting Theodosia for Christmas! in preference to an elderly archdeacon and his wife recently returned from South America.  A moment’s despondency for Theodosia, and then:

“...she got up, counted the money in her purse, got her shopping bag from behind the door, assured Gustavus that she would be back presently and left the house.”

She lays out her train-ticket funds on three days’ groceries, plus a discounted turkey leg, a small Christmas pudding and a plastic tree.

“...‘We are going to have a happy Christmas together,’ she told Gustavus.  ‘You'll be glad, anyway, for you'll be warm here, and I've bought you a present and you've bought me one, too.

“...The room looked welcoming and cheerful; the holly and the Christmas cards covered the almost bare walls and the Christmas tree, viewed from a distance, almost looked real. The cat food, wrapped in coloured paper, and the box of chocolates were arranged on each side of it and she had put the apples in a dish on the table. ‘Quite festive,’ said Theodosia to Gustavus, who was washing himself in front of the gas fire. ‘Now I shall have a cup of cocoa and you shall have some milk, and we'll go to bed.’”

But Hugo has been busy disentangling lies and grilling great-aunts, and swoops in to bear his love away to his warm Regency house, rendered less quiet than usual by the arrival of family.  Take it away, Betty:

“‘You are spending Christmas with me at home.’  ‘I'm not. I have no intention of going anywhere.... It is most kind of you,’ began Theodosia, and put a hand on his arm.  This was a mistake, for he took it, turned it over and kissed the palm.  ‘Oh, no,’ said Theodosia in a small voice as he wrapped his great arms round her.  She wriggled, quite uselessly, and he said gently, ‘Keep still, my darling; I'm going to kiss you.’  Which he did at some length and very thoroughly.

“‘I have been wanting to do that for a long time.  I've been in love with you ever since we first met.  I love you and there will be no reason for anything I do unless you are with me.’ 

“He gave her a swift kiss.  ‘Now come along.’  He swept her downstairs and as they reached the hall Mrs. Towzer came to see who it was.  ‘Going out, Miss Chapman?  At this time of night?’ She eyed the professor. ‘You've been here before; you seemed a nice enough gent.’  She stared at him severely.  ‘No ’anky-panky, I ’ope.’  The professor looked down his splendid nose at her. ‘Madam, I am taking my future wife to spend Christmas at my home with my sister and her family... ‘Oh, well, in that case... ’Appy Christmas to you both.’

“‘I promise I will never be stern with you.’  He turned to look to her as he started the car. ‘Or our children.’  She smiled and wanted to cry, too, for a moment.  From happiness, she supposed. ‘What a wonderful day to be in love and be loved.  I'm so happy.’  As they reached his house, the first strokes of midnight sounded from the church close by, followed by other church bells ringing in Christmas Day. ... He closed the door behind him, set Gustavus in his basket on the table and swept Theodosia into his arms. ‘This is what I have wanted to do—to wish you a happy Christmas in my own home—your home, too, my dearest.’  Theodosia, after being kissed in a most satisfactory manner, found her breath.  ‘It’s true, it’s all true?  Dearest Hugo, Happy Christmas.’  She stretched up and kissed him and then kissed him again for good measure.” 

The end.

Betty by the Numbers: Families Redux

Betty Barbara posed some questions about dreamy, distracted dads, stable families and bad examples of parentkind in the discussion following the reprise of Judith.  'Ah hah!' I thought, "an excuse for reprising BbtN: Families!"  This was a fun one to research and to write, despite my ragingly powerful preference for the happy families, which include many that are missing a key member or two, like Sophy Greenslade's and Kate Crosbie's.  I do hope you will find it informative, maybe amusing, and perhaps, at times, a bit surprising.

There’s a wide variety of opinion on the Neels families.  Some appreciate the pathos a clinging, selfish mother, great-aunt or granny provides; some enjoy raging against evil stepmothers/sisters/brothers; some find pleasure in a good cry when a cherished daughter’s world is ripped apart by untimely deaths of loved ones by illness or traffic accident.  And then – let’s see what else – well, you can cheer on our heroine as she keeps home and hearth together for needy but staunch siblings and the occasional elder, or you can sink into the warm bath of an intact, independent nuclear family with a shabby but good furnishings, an elderly pet or two, and a garden in need of weeding.

As I went through the list, I discovered a few others.  All told, I’ve categorized the families as:

Adopt Me! – mostly intact nuclear families with a home (usually in the country), a reasonable income from dad’s profession or sensible estate-planning, a few heirlooms and a few pets; the heroine looks forward to going home to be stuffed with cake and discreetly questioned about eligible medicos

Mean People Sxxk – outright cruel, usually step-relatives; the heroine sometimes reflects, “she had tried to love xxx, but...”

Weeping Despots – where someone binds the heroine by ties of ersatz affection, demanding time, money, labor and dainty meals but providing nothing but mean-spirited digs; the heroine often reflects that, “of course she loved xxx, but...”

And Tuppence for Sissy’s New Socks – heroine feels obligated to commit her organizational skills and salary-earning abilities to the maintenance of usually-younger relatives (although Mum may need a hand, too) who appreciate all she does (i.e., the family pitches in with the washing up, and cycles off to school or a genteel job willingly enough)

Orphans – family just isn’t an issue; maybe it was a nice family, maybe she can barely remember them; a cold aunt or grandmother may be in the background

Sudden Impact – the mainstay(s) of our heroine’s family dies in the course of the book, sometimes without warning, other times after a brief illness

Just Us Two – mum and daughter, or a similar combo, living together amicably and helping each other along without emotional blackmail or abuse

Outliers – just can’t seem to cram them in anywhere else

With the understanding that one person’s Meanie is another’s Weeping Despot, let’s see how the 135 books break down, shall we?

ADOPT ME!

Good news for me, as an escapist who wants nice fantasies when reading Betty – the largest category is the warm and loving and (mostly) intact family.  So Yay! for the country GPs, solicitors, vicars and vets who can keep their wives in teapots and well-worn but lovingly-polished quality furnishings, and their kiddies in Wellington boots and buttered muffins.  There’s a total of 45 happy families in the Neels oeuvre, from Adelaide Peters’s pater, Parson Peters, her protective Mum and younger twin brothers in Sister Peters in Amsterdam (1969) to Vicar Selby et al in An Ordinary Girl (2001).  A full one-third of the collection (45 of 135) features these perfectly pleasant people!

Of the happy families, 42 are intact nuclear units; two are headed by widows and one by a widower.  The bucolic English village is home to 41 of them, while three live in London; the Fosters of The Mistletoe Kiss (1997) have lost their happy home in Somerset and are forced to live in London, but make their way, happily ever after, to Dorset before story’s end.  Only one mother is credited with any money-earning capability:  greeting-card illustrator Mrs. Pagett of Marrying Mary (1996); two mothers ostensibly help out with the family B&B, but are never shown exerting effort.

Sure, in some books it’s not all scones ‘round the fire and grubbing happily in the garden, but in Neels-land country living with dad, mum and a clutch of kiddies is endless delight.

Sadly, the happy families began to peter out as Mrs. Neels aged.  In the fifteen books copyrighted 1998-2001, we get only two – just 1%! – whereas exactly half of the fourteen books copyrighted 1969-1972 offer up these aspirational examples of domestic comfort.  Whatever happened?

MEANIES AND WEEPING DESPOTS

Next most common:  The Meanies!  Some people love to loathe them, I suppose – I just loathe them.  They start with Tabitha in Moonlight’s (1972) horrid stepmother and spoilt stepsister pick, pick, picking until the poor woman, who can rock a bikini, has no self-esteem left.  And then they sell Tara!  I mean, Chidlake!  From there, the Meanies just keep going, reaching their nadir with the unspeakable Stepmother Saunders and her foul spawn Basil in The Promise of Happiness (1979), who keep poor Rebecca broke, chained to the scullery, and cowed by vile threats against the welfare of her beloved breakdowns Bertie and Pooch.  That book’s very happy ending could have been improved, so slightly, by Tiele’s knocking down Basil when he attempts to re-kidnap the ridiculous Rebecca-who-doesn’t-like-to-make-a-scene.

Rebecca, cleaning up after Basil, and hoping she’ll find a few farthings under the Aga to help fund her escape with an old dog, an old cat, a crust and a length of string.

So who’s meaner, the flat-out bad guys or the wistfully smiling Weeping Despots?  The classic is the pretty, delicate, selfish mother who spends the housekeeping money on manicures whilst complaining, gently, that her graceless and plain daughter can’t seem to put lobster bisque on the table more than once a fortnight.  It is wrong to blame the victim, but honestly don’t you sometimes want to grab Hannah and her sisters-in-psychological-abuse and shriek, “Just get out!”  And be sure it’s not just Mummy dearest; there are also snooty aspiring-fashion-model sisters, bone-idle dads and maybe even a pathologically narcissistic brother or two.

Mrs. Paige, so beautiful as a girl, posed for the cover of Benny Davis’s 1922 song ‘Poor Little Me,’ which became her theme.  The lyric is better suited to daughter Matilda:  “Nobody ever takes me out/they say I don’t know what it’s all about.”  Except, of course, Matilda never complains.  Incidentally, has anyone in real life ever actually referred to herself as “poor little me” and expected to be taken seriously, as Mrs. P and her fictional sisters do?

There are minor despots, pretty little sisters Joyce and Louisa, in The Hasty Marriage (1977) and Winter Wedding (1979), but it is in Hannah (1980) that the master manipulators begin to shove into more of the books.  A handful of horrors:  the widow Proudfoot of A Little Moonlight (1991), the blackmailing (literal, not just emotional) Mr. Smith and Pretty Little Sister Smith of The Bachelor’s Wedding (1995), and the gaggingly inept whiner Mrs. Paige and her oblivious, invalid husband of Matilda’s Wedding (2000).  Yuck to all of them; I’m going to bleach my keyboard to clean them away.

We could argue who’s passive and who’s aggressive, but in my categorization I get Meanies as the primary family system in 18 books, or 13% of the canon, and Weeping Despots in 14, or 10%.

TUPPENCE FOR SISSY

The despotism of fate keeps many of our heroines tied to loving, plucky family members – and when I say many, I mean 14, or 10%.  We first encounter this tribe in Visiting Consultant (also known as Surgeon from Holland or Blow Hot, Blow Cold, 1969).  The incomparably wonderful Sophy Greenslade has a loving granny and former bâtman to help out at home, but apparently she’s the primary selfless support for younger siblings Lucas, Penny and Ben – all of them bright, helpful and loving.  Nonetheless, early in the story she reflects sadly that she’ll be in her forties before she can live for herself instead of her clan – unless she marries a rich man...

Eulalia Warburton of Fate Takes a Hand (1995) cares for her orphaned first-cousin-once-removed with the help of the semi-retired housekeeper Trottie, though when Trottie breaks her leg, she may seem more trouble than she’s worth – unless the orthopaedic consultant who cares for the old lady winds up taking all Eulalia’s troubles off her generously-curved shoulders... 

“There isn’t a lot/to spare/who cares/whatever we’ve got we share”

We wave good-bye to the Tuppence crowd in 1997, when the pathologically rude Francesca Bowen of The Fortunes of Francesca supports her elderly aunty and bright little brother, protecting them from Uncle and Aunt Evil.  Fortunately for Francesca, the Meanies are not the primary family unit here, although her efforts to shield the meek from the mean seem, after aunty develops a heart condition, terrifyingly unavailing!  They are doomed to imprisonment by the sociopath side of the family, unless an eminent cardiac surgeon arrives in the nick of time...

ESTABLISHED ORPHANS, NEWLY-CREATED ORPHANS AND SEMI-ORPHANS

There are fourteen orphans, tying for third place with the Tuppence for Sissy and Weeping Despot categories at 10% of the canon.  Note, however, that these Orphans only include those orphaned, and more-or-less alone in the world, before our story opens.  Those orphaned in the course of discovering true love are in a whole ‘nother place.  And the clutch that retain one family stalwart are in yet another.

Rich Dutch doctor, rescued stray, little orphan Araminta

Julia Pennyfeather of The Fifth Day of Christmas (1971) is my first orphan, as I give no weight to her dull, smug brother waiting offstage to shove her into a marriage with his dull, smug friend.  He’d be a Weeping Despot if he had more of a hold on her, but she’s no dummy, and takes herself off to Holland.  Henrietta’s Own Castle (1975) features another independent-minded orphan – my second favorite of the group.  My top pick for orphans is the unflappable Sadie Gillard of A Girl to Love (1982), whose parents are long dead and whose story, for our consumption, begins with the clearing up after the funeral of her beloved if improvident granny.  I believe the only orphaned heroine who spends much of any time thinking about her late parents is Cressida Bingley of A Matter of Chance (1977).  Rector Bingley and his wife are quite recently deceased after a virulent flu swept their small village, and on page five Cressida reflects on the deep grief that still threatens to engulf her.  (By chapter two, she’s got her stiffer upper lip re-attached, and a flu epidemic can ravage the Dutch countryside a hundred pages later without her giving a thought to Mum and Dad.)  Another Henrietta (Cowper, of Only by Chance, 1996) was actually reared primarily in an orphanage, her parents having died when she was one, and her emotionally-cold grandmother five years later.

The orphaned-within-the-text, or Sudden Impact, category is for those heroines who begin our story with some sort of parent, and lose him/her/them to illness or accident.  Think of Mary Jane Pettigrew, hieing off to Cumberland to nurse the stricken granddad who more or less reared her, only to suffer his death on page 37 of Winter of Change (1973).  More dramatically (grandpa was 82, after all), think of Margo Pearson, The Vicar’s Daughter (1996), happily pottering about Daddy’s vicarage, lashings of jam on the table and loving parents to appreciate her good sense and jolie laide quality.  Out of nowhere, on page 76, the “pleasant monotony” of life in Thinbottom is forever ruptured when Bob the bobby arrives to inform her that Mum and Father have died instantly in a head-on collision on the A303.  Surely this is awfully grisly stuff for a romance?  At least she gets to mourn for a few pages, and even discuss the late Pearsons with her brand-new husband a few weeks later.

This moiré layered skirt and Victorian jacket are available from a company called Monochrome, which has dubbed the outfit the “funeral doll.”  Not what Margo wore in Dorset, I suspect.

One thing that surprised me in totting up my maths for this review is that only half of the suddenly-bereft move quickly into a Marriage Of Convenience with their (future) heroes.  I had a vague impression that the deaths of loved ones always served as a plot device to justify the MOC, but in fact five of the eleven Sudden Impact-ers don’t get their proposals until the last few paragraphs.

I made a separate category for the demi-orphans and orphans who have family support in the form of a single parent or other relative (or two sisters for Julia of An Independent Woman, 2001).  They won their own section by having an unique dynamic and twelve appearances in the canon.  With the exception of the casually self-centered George Henry Forbes, brother to Christina of Not Once But Twice (1981), these mini-families are as loving and comforting as the Adopt Me! type – but they’re much less likely to be financially comfortable, and so couldn’t keep me in the style to which I should like to become accustomed.

 

 

Kate supporting Mrs. Crosby during her recuperation from appendicitis.

The co-stars of the Just Us Two families include the brother and two sisters mentioned above, a grandmother, a grandfather, a father, two aunts and a great-aunt, and four mothers.  Stand-outs include Caroline’s Aunt Meg of A Girl in a Million (1993), who takes her to Amsterdam in the first place, Esmerelda’s (1976) well-off mum, who can spot a bounder in 20 seconds (hint: he’s a registrar!  his name is Leslie!  he comments on the resale value of heirlooms!), and Grandfather Crump of A Suitable Match (1990), who can teach the recently-orphaned Crichton nephews all about India, since he lived there.  And maybe science, or Latin or something.

OUTLIERS

Seven families just wouldn’t jam themselves into my infrastructure, so have been tainted as outliers.  A Winter Love Story (1998) has a bit of Sudden Impact and a bit of Just Us Two; The Girl with Green Eyes has a comfortable and intact nuclear family that ignores our heroine rather than loving or tormenting her; Cassandra by Chance (1973) has a nice sister but no apparent parents, and it’s not a Just Us Two as sis is married and Cassandra doesn’t consider their home her own.

No, no – not that one!

The aristocratic Honourable Aunt Bess, mini-aristocrat Cousin Oliver and vapid husband-hunting cousin-in-law Margaret of Grasp a Nettle (1977) provide Jenny with a home base and plenty of excitement, but don’t qualify for any clear category.  Enchanting Samantha (1973) has nice grandparents, Jemima of A Dream Came True (1982) has a loving brother, but he’s brilliant enough to win a grant to study at Boston University, so where does that leave her, and finally, before she gets A Christmas Wish (1994), Olivia lives with both a loving mum and a mean granny.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The final analysis (which does not add to 100% due to rounding):

One-third of Neels families are simply lovely, 13% are aggressively mean and 10% are emotionally manipulative.  Heroines strive to hold together 10% of families, have nothing left to hold in another 10%, and cope with the loss of family mainstays in 8%.  Families of two anchor 9% of the stories, and the remaining 5% are un-categorizable, except as weirdos.  I mean, outliers.  I have added to my to-do list, “re-write The Vicar’s Daughter so those poor people don’t have to die,” ‘cause that one is a serious bummer.

The Magic of Living--1974

Leave it to The Mighty Betty Neels to incorporate spastic children into the plot of her mid-seventies romance novel. And not only spastics (which here does not mean your little brother dancing around in your bra) but a stutter too! Is she successful? Did Houdini do card tricks? Heck yes.

Arabella Birch, 22, is a student nurse--orphaned at a young age and raised with her cousins in the care of Aunt Maud and Uncle garblemumblewhocares. She has unremarkable features and pale brown hair--a gentle kind of beauty which, next to her glamorous cousin Hilary, looks like an adorable pair of China flats cast off for some four inch Manolo Blahniks.
Arabella lets the readers know a couple of facts about her family:

• They are very nice. They took her in as a 5-year-old and never grudged the expense.
• Aunt Maud is full of some very helpful advice.
• Hilary is a casual cousin but generally kind.

Editorial Note:
Many years ago I read a criticism of some literature that said, in essence, that the author did too much 'telling' and not enough 'showing'. In this case The Great Betty (at her most genius) has Arabella tell us a lot of nonsense and then quietly shows us how the family really treats our heroine.
So let's find out what home life is really like:

• Aunt Maud's advice is to tell Arabella to buy plain clothes since she will have to support herself someday--unlike Hilary who won't. Also that plain hats should go with plain faces. There is a scene wherein Arabella sneaks a try-on of her friend's wedding hat, too embarrassed to see herself probably look awful in it in front of the other girls. Aunt Maud has a lot to answer for.
• Hilary is not cruel to Arabella. Sure, she annexes every male in sight but it's not as though Arabella really cares about any of them. Nanny Bliss wonders what will happen when this is no longer the case.
• Arabella is used as a gopher and babysitter in ways that the daughter of the house would never be.

So, all in all it's not dungeons, short rations and daily beatings but Arabella hasn't got a clue that she's being used. Not one to play dirty tricks on others, it is inconceivable that she might be treated so.
Hilary, in order to carry on an inexplicable flirtation with a man whose marital status, eye-wear and awkwardly hyphenated name (married, hornrims, Thisby-Barnes) make him sound like a booby prize, wheedles Arabella give up her holidays in order to take her place ushering a busload of spastics to Holland for a summer camp. Sing with me now!
Editorial Note: The Founding Bettys actually have a few siblings whom The Venerable Neels would have classified as 'spastic' but it's not a word people use anymore (at least for any medical condition)--preferring often to use the term cerebral palsy. So, please understand, if I'm laughing (and I am) it's only at the term.
Hilary manages to hog all the limelight and then sends the busload of spastics on their way.
Arabella is managing just fine (even though the other nurse is worse than useless) when the driver up and dies. He dies!
Arabella hastily grabs the wheel to avert an oncoming car and lands them in a ditch. (All this is more heroic and skilled than that just sounded)
But this is Holland and you can't swing a dead cat around without hitting a dishy Dutch doctor. Dr. Gideon van der Vorst, 38, peers at all her gentle loveliness from his perch on the side of the bus and commences the evacuation.
He is witness to her good sense, infinite patience, correct priorities, calmness, helpfulness, good scout-ery and stammer (which doesn't bother him a jot...Honestly, maybe every married pair should meet during a crisis.). She weathers a rescue that resembles something out of a muppet skit.
Gideon quotes some Shakespeare at her ('She has brown hair and speaks soft like a woman...') and takes care of getting everyone to the hospital.
Everyone is fine (except for, you know, the dead fellow) aside from Billy and Sally--they both broke some bones--and will be sent back shortly. Gideon suggests that Arabella bring them to his home for the remainder of their convalescence. She wonders if his wife will feel it inconvenient.
Well, no. He's a bachelor. His little sister Larissa is there to play propriety. (Because Billy and Sally can't move fast enough to break up a spot of late-night snogging, I suppose.)
Editorial Note: The one sentence that best encapsulates the nature of her stay at his home is about an ordinary tea in the sitting room: '...they talked comfortable nothings.' Arabella's stammer almost completely disappears when she is wrapped up in the peaceful cocoon of the doctor's house. A lot of other stuff happens during this relatively quiet time but it is mostly an interlude where the principles are enjoying one another enormously--kissing too. Tellingly, Arabella mentions Hilary (her wonderful cousin Hilary), hardly at all.
But it can't last forever. He returns her to her British hospital after a couple of weeks. She knows that Gideon likes her but not much else. And then Hilary, tripping down the stairs in a blinding glow of mendacious solicitation, meets the doctor. Arabella can see the castles in the air she built up over the previous weeks begin to show signs of structural weakness.
Hilary, up to this point, has been more or less benign--sure there's a pit where her heart should be but she's not been cruel to Arabella, merely unfeeling. And she's not trying to be cruel now (or maybe not trying very hard). Arabella, to her, is a native guide and having lead the Great White Hunter (Hilary) to the herd of wild rhinoceros (RDD) it's time for Arabella to cartoonishly clap her hands over her ears in anticipation of the .50 caliber rifle taking down that noble beast with alacrity. I can almost see her adjusting her bodice and heading into battle.
For his part, it helps the plot tremendously if you understand that Gideon is at first happy to meet Arabella's cousin. All that charming 'Darling-are-you-alright' and 'I'm-sorry-you-had-to-go'-ness is just how he would like to believe Arabella's family would treat her. He agrees to let her make a third in the car as he drives them home for a four day break. See, he thought there was real affection between them and can't make it out at all.
Arabella, the scales now ripped from her eyes with a vengeance, is furious. She sees Hilary as she is and for the first time her stammer becomes a real obstacle to sorting out misinformation (Hilary is practically a one-man Minister of Propaganda) and beating her cousin to the punch.
Editorial Note: I'm not about to spoil the machinations of Hilary the Depraved but, sufficient to say, a close reading will show that the doctor recovers from his Hilary-blindness (which never included attraction even a little) toot sweet. He continues to be around her only to gain access to an increasingly elusive Arabella.
But then Hilary makes a fatal mistake (ah pride, that most deadly of sins) when she tells Gideon that she has to go home to nurse a nigh-on-dead Nanny Bliss. Never mind Arabella--she didn't want to come anyway. She wanted to go shopping!
Which all leads to Gideon practically kicking down Arabella's door (in the nurse's home, mind you!), flinging around plenty of unjust accusations and taking her home to visit Nanny Bliss (who has been calling for her from her perch on the edge of death's door) whether she wants to or not.
The mortification on his face when he realizes that she had a train ticket for the earliest possible trip the next morning ought to give a happy glow for readers who like their Neels heroes to have to dig themselves out of craterous holes with back-hoes. The one benefit is that Gideon won't be fooled by Hilary's lies again.
His next act is to verify that Arabella is not, in fact, interested in the local rector's horrible son as Hilary has hinted (the scene is awesome--Gideon reassures us readers that he knows Arabella so well that one glance at Bertie Palmer Hateful yet Innocent By-Looker is enough to tell him that he's so not her type), engineer a theft of Arabella's passport by delightful means and to abduct her to another country.
Kissing and explanations and Dutch lessons follow.
The End


Rating: The last line reads like that short story Diana Berry submitted for Anne Shirley ('Sweetheart, the beautiful coming years will bring us the fulfillment of our home of dreams...in which we will never use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable.') in that it seems bluntly shoehorned in to fit a just so-so pre-selected title.
But what a silly quibble! I love this book.
At first blush you're thinking, 'Stammer? Really?' Yes, and The Great Betty uses such a skilled hand that you'll be falling in love with it right along with Gideon.
The doctor is so darling. Just when you think that maybe he loves Arabella out of a sense of misplaced pity, our beloved authoress gives us a peek at how much he really needs her. He is charmed--completely charmed.
I felt that Hilary was such an interesting character--not cruel, according to her lights, to Arabella, just horribly self-involved and frank about her goals. She probably would make a good wife for a man willing to spoil her and reconfigure the planetary orbits so that everything revolves around her.
This one earned a lashings of whipped cream and then some...

Food: Arabella struggles with the Dutch breakfast (bread, butter, cheese and jam) as it seems such a poor compromise for hearty English fare (porridge and bacon). Gideon likes rich fruit cake. We get Peach Melba and apple chutney. He brings her champagne when she's pretending to sleep in the car but when she arrives at home everyone sends her to bed--in a rage she drinks some cooking sherry, eats a couple of bananas and has some bread and butter. The lower class Mrs. Burns serves tea laced liberally with condensed milk.

Fashion: Arabella is relegated to shabby tweeds, fawn-colored raincoats, and severe hats because, as Aunt Maud says, 'Plain hat for a plain face.' She owns a jersey dress of honey and cinnamon stripes (love The Great Betty's culinary descriptions), and (in the best shopping trip in the history of Neels) she is persuaded to buy a coral PVC mac 'with a decided swagger', a corduroy pinafore and a coral and brown striped wool dress with a flared skirt. He also gets to see her in her pink quilted dressing gown for good measure.

The Most Marvelous Summer--1991

The Most Marvelous Summer has less than a marvelous title. Never mind that. It's a unique little gem of a story. It's maybe not the best but it takes our Standard-issue Brit Doctor character and peeks behind his magic curtain.When we meet Matilda ffinch (Yes. ffinch. Double ffs. No caps. Surely the folks at Ellis Island would not have let that stand.) she is already in love with the fellow on the other side of the church aisle. At 26, she is a gorgeous redhead with more than a few broken hearts behind her but that's never troubled her overmuch as Mr. Outstanding was not among them.
Her job is as social secretary to the local lady of the manor, Lady Fox, whose snobbery and pretension don't manage to squash Matilda's magnificence. She bustles and trots and sorts her way through her working day and wickedly reminds herself that if anyone has the right to be snobby it's a ffinch over a Fox.
Consultant Surgeon James Scott-Thurlow (Dear me. First double ffs and now a hyphen. Mathilda is about to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. If she were a progressive lass would that make her Ms. ffinch-Scott-Thurlow?...I so digress.) sees her at the Fox manor and then again as he offers her a lift. Matilda isn't about to let the opportunity slip through her fingers. She interrogates him. He snubs her. She is crushed.
Oh. And he's engaged.
She must be wondering right about now if any of the men she declined to marry in the past might just be Mr. Fine or Mr. Passable or Mr. Adequate-Par.
When Roseanne, one of three pock-marked 'unfortunate nose'-ed daughters of the opinionated Lady Fox, has to travel up to London to find someone to marry it is Matilda who must screw her red hair into a French pleat and play chaperone. Lady Fox has some misgivings about sending a babe like Mathilda to engineer Roseanne's social success but there is simply no one else to be had...at the price.
Happily, Roseanne is not so much of a snob and (with a careful make-up) not too pock-marked that she can't attract one passable male. She and Bernard fall in love over paintings at the National Gallery.
And it is in another gallery (Roseanne does like to dabble) that Matilda stumbles upon James. He looks up from his cardboard fiancee' and sees Matilda and is angry (at Fate) and cold.
Their next encounter seems worse. She is rescuing a dog in the gutter when she hears, 'Oh, dear, oh, dear, Miss ffinch helping lame dogs...' How dare she have the gall to be his ideal woman. He's as nasty as possible but rescues the dog with promptitude. In return he receives an 'emerald blaze of gratitude'. This is a fine way to avoid her siren song, he must be thinking. I was perfectly horrid to her!
On the strength of that blaze, he decides to go to a dinner party that he had refused to accompany Rhoda to, just on the chance that she'll be there. That's how it starts, ladies. Just one little gateway drug and soon you're spiraling into Reefer Madness.
The next time they meet I will call The Curious Case of the Severed Fingers. The cook...gah. I can't even say--I think I'm turning green. Anyway, the upshot is that James ends up catching Matilda's barf in a hospital bucket and she ends up cooking for a dinner party that he attends later in the evening. He's furious to find her cooking when she ought to be at the party.
Instead of telling you every little thing, I'm tempted to wash my hands and just say that if their meetings were a category on Jeopardy, this series of events would be an entire column titled: Things That Rhoda Can't Do. (I'll take "Products Rhoda Lacquers Her Hair With" for a thousand, Alex.)
We get such an interesting little detour on the part of The Venerable Betty at this point. She actually tells us WHY our rich doctor is engaged to marry an iceberg and also why he is so aloof and severe:
He had been an only child and had lost his parents in a plane crash when he had been a small boy. He had gone to live with his grandparents, who had loved him dearly but had not known what to say to him, so he had learned to hide his loneliness and unhappiness and had grown up into a rather quiet man who seldom allowed his feelings to show...
(Grab the tissues!) But he's let Matilda see some feelings, albeit unpleasant ones.
Back home, Mathilda decides to sack the inferior Foxes from her services. Roseanne trips down the historical staircase and fractures an arm and double fractures a leg. (Hey, we're going to need a consultant surgeon for that!) I guess the resignation will have to wait.
She nurses Roseanne for another couple of weeks and then is free...for a minute or two. James comes to her house and asks her to companion some random old man--his grandfather in fact. If James is disturbed by her presence (and he is), he's doing an awful job protecting himself.
A man of reserve, not given to impulse, he kissed the face so temptingly close...
And that's the dynamic. She doesn't make him feel very comfortable but he can't resist her either.
James avoids her, or tries to.
Matilda spends her time vacillating between wanting to give Rhoda tips on How To Make The Doctor Happy and having violent daydreams about pulling her hair out by the roots.
They have a beautiful row I won't ruin for you when he returns to his grandparent's house and finds her STILL there. (He'd most likely spent his time away lecturing himself about that kiss and the dangers of consorting with splendid redheads.)
Her next job is at a girls' boarding school...where a darling little poppet named Lucy loves her best. When James shows up at the end of term to collect Lucy is it any surprise? He's her godfather. Rhoda is with him and for the first time this proverb applies: When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war.
Rhoda sees the enemy for what she is and the insults (instead of being a matter of bad manners) start flying in earnest.
By some slim chance, nobody slaps anybody's face.
Matilda is once more jobless but The Great Betty reaches into her knapsack of communicable diseases and pulls out mumps. Rotten luck, little Lucy. Your appearance and health are what Oscar winners would call 'the little people'.
James continues making regular trips to The Land of Cognitive Dissonance wherein the engineering he engages in to meet Matilda regularly is a train that runs on the same track as his denial that his efforts mean anything special.
As she nurses Lucy back to health, James discovers himself anew. He baits Matilda constantly and finds that he enjoys it enormously. How now, Lonely Boy?
When Rhoda, like some Evil Flying Monkey, swoops in to tell Matilda that James plans to send her to the country for further convalescence, she shouts, "I don't know why I put up with it." "Yes, you do, Matilda." And that's when we know that James finally knows the stakes of the game. He loves her. He knows she loves him. We posses our souls in patience.
The remainder comprises:

• The cottage. (Wherein her daydreams are 'peopled by a horde of little Scott-Thurlows' and every time he leaves the kissing gets better!)
• Leaving the cottage. (He wants to tell her something but she's sure he's playing fast and loose.)
• The day she reads of his broken engagement in the newspaper. (And rushes off to see him. But wait. What's that in the rear-view mirror?)
• Kissing!

The End


Rating: I really enjoy this one mostly because La Neels gives us a little more back-story to work with on the hero. He's got some baggage (no, not Rhoda) and even though she's just a clergyman's daughter with a spotty work history, she's clearly in a position to save her Prince Charming. That the Great Betty executes this upside down fairy tale in such a deft way (our hero is still doing the pursuing even if she is slaying his dragons) is a tribute to her skill as a writer. The beginning eddies around in a flotam-manner but the middle and end are...ahem...marvelous. It's not in the her very best work but I totally give The Most Marvelous Summer a boeuf en croute.

Food: Shepherd's pie, a bacon, egg and mushroom breakfast, lardy cake (I've had this!), warm cake (so much better than mucking it up with frosting after it's cooled), watercress soup, toad-in-the-hole, garlic mushrooms, fruit pie and clotted cream. (YUM.)

Fashion: Subdued grey crepe (to off-set the hair), flowery skirts, a rather Thornbirds-sounding white chemise dress that he ogles her in. Rhoda wears vivid scarlet, cherise (must google that color) and green satin. She also wears a scarlet suede jacket over black dress in the country! Lady Fox wears awful headgear, the zenith of which seems to be a floppy tweed hat.

An Innocent Bride--1999

First the title. An Innocent Bride. Ho hum. A total throw-away. Harlequin clearly didn't know what to do with Betty Neels at this point and was trying to signal readers with semaphore flags, neon signs and traffic cones that this book wouldn't have anybody mucking about in Brighton. But it makes our heroine sound a simp...which she is not. No, the book should have been titled The Moss Rose or Aunt Thirza's Legacy or Love and Leukaemia...

Katrina Gibbs, 24 with masses of dark hair, is sprawling across the country road in all her splendid glory. A motorcyclist driving on the wrong side of the road (Horrid American? But I repeat myself...) has knocked her over and smashed her bike.
Enter the great socking Bentley.
Professor Simon Glenville, 'knocking 40' (39), haematologist at St. Aldrick's and rescuer of fair, young maidens happens upon her, plucks her up and carries her back to Rose Cottage where she lives with her aunt Miss Thirza Gibbs--a retired girl's school headmistress and a woman of prickly disposition and rigid principles who never heard a 'Ms.' in her life and would have given it a frigid stare if she had.
Katrina and Simon and Aunt Thirza get off to such a rough start that it's as though they, all three of them, were hapless British bicycles and Fate an ill-mannered American motorcycle.
When Aunt Thirza (an actual Hebrew name meaning pleasantness and delight...instead of ironclad and unchangeable) is referred to a doctor is it really any surprise that her condition needs the leading haematologist in the history of the British realm?
Naturally, she is going to die. And naturally, no one tells her so. Instead of telling the grown woman that she might die of lymphatic leukaemia at any time they tell her she has Anaemia--a universal catch-all disease that will mask the symptoms of her failing health without alarming her in any way. They don't send you to medical school for years on end to tell the naked truth, evidently.
This gives Katrina and Simon an excuse to meet again and for her to weep (again--the American motorcyclist was upsetting) all over his cloth hankies (which she promises to launder and give back).
Simon brings Aunt Thirza, whom he has decided he rather likes, a moss rose for her garden that is already in bud even though it isn't the season to transplant that sort of thing. Dear me. Plants and fatal diseases. If you're thinking of O. Henry's The Last Leaf, well then, so am I. But we don't have to wait until the last blossom withers on the bush for Aunt Thirza to shuffle off her mortal coil. She passes on in idyllic tranquility, possibly thinking that those iron pills were woefully inadequate and intending to pen a stern letter of rebuke to the head of the NHS.
Simon is off on a lecture tour and Katrina finds that during the funeral hubbub she misses his presence most. A head scratcher.
When he does finally find out he hares off to Rose Cottage in time for tears and mucked up lawn hankerchiefs (with attendant and inevitable promises of laundering). He has sensibly brought a meal from (prepare yourself for the best homehelp name ever) Mrs. Peach. He is unable to pin Katrina down on her future plans and as he leaves his parthian shot is to tell her not to marry a fortune hunter.
Fortune hunter. (Snort.) That would require a fortune at the very least, no? Katrina has a few hundred pounds, Rose Cottage, the extensive kitchen garden and...and a fat lot of good it does her. Aunt Thirza, though lovely enough to provide a home for the orphaned 12-year-old (a plane crash carried off the poor parents. Possibly the plane also carried a oily South American gigolo and a run-away Dutch wife needing to be offed for a future Neels novel?), did not exactly launch her wee chick out of the nest with bankable skills.
In a sensible manner, Katrina decides to become a field laborer by day and a respectable lady of leisure by late-afternoon. Aunt Thirza, mindful of proprieties, would have approved. Simon does not.
Coming upon Katrina while dropping Maureen (oh, have I not mentioned that bit of under-rock ooze? Just wait.) at the manor, he grasps one of her work-roughened hands and presents his findings. '...working on a farm, Katrina?...Grubbing potatoes, picking peas and strawberries?' Oh for the love of...What is he, Sherlock Holmes?
And now for Maureen--bright as a penny and twice as cheap. She is a doctor on his medical team--recently joined--and has sights set on Simon. Any actual meddling she does is fairly incidental. A wee spot of water muddying is all. But, in An Innocent Bride, we are privy to the Machinations of Maureen wherein the villainess plots to annex the dear doctor with false displays of keenness, sympathy, helplessness, charity, distress, unreliable cars and an unbelievable cluelessness about the world of public transport. Neither Simon nor Katrina are ever over-vexed by them (though Katrina does think that Maureen is a front-runner for the hand of Fair Simon due to his willingness to shuttle her about) but it is very entertaining to watch her try so hard.
Maureen meets Katrina (always the correct niece of Miss Thirza) running the bottle stall at the village fete. Of course Maureen wins something. 'I always win.' Well, dust off your cosmic irony, kitten. When this hits the fan, Katrina is going to get the most delightful case of schadenfreude ever.
In the mean time, Simon cooks up a plot. He has a little patient with leukaemia (not the same kind as Aunt Thirza) who needs a rest in the country and he also has Katrina desperately in need of agricultural-grade hand cream and a good manicure. As quick as Bob's your uncle he's got little Tracy (with mother Molly) living with Katrina all financed by the lightening fast and flexible bureaucracy of the NHS!
Seriously, she swallows it. Two birds, one stone.
Tracy gives Simon just the reason he needs to keep visiting. (He's always hiding behind cancer victims to do his courting but just go with it.) He does get her alone for a date at Stourhead and a spot of canoodling but this is a rarity.
Instead, the village grapevine pairs Maureen and Simon. 'But he needs a wife like me!' thinks Katrina. Will you look at that. Imagine leaving a dawning realization lying about where just anyone can trip over it...
Little Tracy is deemed 'well enough' to move out. Katrina finds a job as a part-time librarian/seller of home-grown produce. Things settle.
And then Simon tells her that he's in love with her and...shhhhhh, baby, baby, shhhhhhhh...he'd just like to drop in now and then. Shhhhhhh. 'No, don't say anything, just bear it in mind.'
Don't mess things up by thinking she should have set him straight right then and there. There's another 30 pages to go before the contract is fulfilled.
A fire at the manor more firmly roots Katrina's awesomeness and Maureen's deviousness in our imaginations.
A storm occurs in which Katrina is the teensiest bit weenie.
Simon carries her off to his parents' house (He has parents?!) where he introduces her as their future daughter-in-law.
Proposal. (Ahem. The bit about the cart and the horse applies, methinks.)
A rather nice wedding follows wherein she carries a bouquet of moss roses (awww, Aunt Thirza) and Maureen is banished to India.
The End.


Rating: As a whole this book is just somewhere in the middle. The best bits revolved around the horrid Maureen. It's as though La Neels is finally giving us chapter and verse on How Shallow, Awful Girl Nabs Rich Kind Doctor thus filling in the back-story on almost all Engaged RDD plots. Why would a nice well-to-do doctor get himself caught by the Vapid Undead? Refer to the Maureen template and footnotes.
Aunt Thirza's death is handled beautifully. When I die, I'd like to go that way.
The theme is also a winner. Katrina, brought up rigidly by a circumspect spinster, is bound by Aunt Thirza's formality to express her love in a sort of Remains of the Day repressed smolder.
So, I give it a Treacle Tart. It's not brilliant but it does have some unique touches.

Food: eggs, potted shrimps, rack of lamb, rhubarb fool (how can you turn down a rhubarb fool?), almond buscuits, farmhouse cake, orangeade, lemonade, bacon and egg pie, cheese straws, fish cakes, smoked salmon, tiny pancakes with chopped chicken, cold meat and salad, bad sherry, good wine, cucumber and orange salad.

Fashion: Dateless beige coat, jersey dress (!), his cashmere sweater (The Great Neels fails to sell me on the idea of our heroes in sweaters), cream and amber crepe, a positively life-saving rose-patterned frock.