A short, soft covered book in A4 format, printed, I believe, on demand by Amazon. Quite good quality paper and large, clear, well-spaced type. But virtually none of the packaging which you expect in a regular book. Beyond the title of the book on the first page and a mention of Amazon on the last page, the pages in between are just continuous text. No contents page and no chapter headings, not even any page numbers in the ordinary way, just periodic numbers of the sort which can be seen in the illustration. The Arabic numbers jump up with gaps of around five, while the Roman numbers are sequential - and if the Arabic numbers are those of pages in a real book, it must have been a very small book, with very small pages.
Checking with Amazon, I was unable to find this particular edition, among the large number of regular editions. Not was I able to find a television version which would work on our television - which surprised me, as the book had struck me as a good subject for a costume drama. Indeed, the only one there was both in US format and starring a lady who looked neither dim nor plain, unfortunate since a good part of the point of the book was that the leading lady was both, mitigated by her having both money and expectations.
I have no idea whether the text is accurate or not, perhaps I ought to check. But I would be annoyed to find that they had taken liberties, or even been careless, given that there are no warning notices to that effect. Gutenburg is a bit different as I imagine that they are not-for-profit largely staffed by volunteers, but Amazon has the dosh to do it properly.
A tale of a wealthy society doctor who had married a girl both brilliant and rich, a girl, who, having already lost an infant son, died shortly after giving birth to a daughter. A daughter who was calm, kind and decent, but rather dim and rather plain. Looked after, in some large part, by the doctor's widowed sister, much given to fevered planning and plotting on behalf of her niece, planning and plotting which did a great deal of damage. The daughter is wooed and won by a charming but entirely unsuitable young man without visible means of support. The daughter has her mother's money, but the doctor makes it clear that all his money, by now a great deal more, will go elsewhere if she marries the unsuitable man. And so the story rolls on, and the daughter does not marry the unsuitable man but carries on, for the next fifty years or so, living with her unsuitable aunt.
I was struck by the characters of the two leading women, characters of a sort which I do not think I have come across in any of our own 19th century novelists, with the planners and plotters which I can remember from Jane Austen and George Eliot being just plain silly rather than silly and dangerous.
I associated to remittance men, a breed which I believe were reasonably common up to the time, say, of the second world war. Whereby unsatisfactory men were paid a modest income by fathers of susceptible daughters on condition that they took themselves off to parts foreign, preferably somewhere far away like Australia or Patagonia, and to leave their daughters alone. Presumably some of these men managed to clock up several such fathers, so making quite a decent living out of it.
In this case, the father achieved much the same result by being firm - and without having to pay. But I await the BH judgement as to whether he was right. What is a father supposed to do when a much-loved daughter is hell-bent on marrying someone who is clearly going to turn out to be a very bad thing? Perhaps I should turn to the example depicted by Agatha in 'The Mystery on the Blue Train' for further guidance as I do not recall Simenon depicting anything of the sort. At least, not so far.
PS: the image looked fine in the original on the laptop and was perfectly legible when enlarged, but I was not at all sure what the Blogger software would do with it. So I had it on its side on the large screen downstairs, snipped the thus enlarged page from that, and then rotated it back upright. We shall see.
Reference 1: Washington Square - Henry James - 1881.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/some-impressions-of-bargh.html.
Reference 3: http://www.gutenberg.org/.
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