Mrs. Molesworth (1839–1921)

And so, to ‘this beautiful country of France’ once again with Mrs Molesworth and one of her favourite storytelling structures, the story wrapped up within another tale. The central story is that of Edmeé (daughter of the Count de Valmont and the young girl in the little old portrait itself) and her experiences of the French Revolution told in a handwritten written memoir.

As a novel for older children Mrs Molesworth was quite clear of the moral of her story: ‘cruel as were the leaders of this revolt, frightful as were the deeds they committed, it is impossible, and it would altogether be unjust, to blame them and their followers alone … and certainly the misdeeds which were at the bottom of this most terrible of quarrels, were far more on the side of the upper classes than of the lower.’

From the bucolic estate of Edmeé’s childhood, Valmont-les- Roses in Touraine, the narrative takes the reader to the triumph and fear of revolutionary Paris. There is an eery appearance of a mob singing and dancing to La Carmagnole as well as reflections on the condemned approaching their ‘ghastly journey to death’. ‘Some of them appeared ‘strong in despair, some fainting and unconscious as if already dead, a few, but very few, shrieking wildly for mercy to their brutal keepers - others, many even, with looks of sweet resignation and noble courage, to whom the guillotine was indeed but the gate of Heaven.’

Can Edmeé and her mother escape the guillotine? As a character comments to good Pierre Germaine, Edmeé’s peasant foster-brother, ‘Madame Guillotine will tell you; she’s the only Madame now!’

This novel was later reissued with a different title Edmeé: a tale of the French revolution.… (plus d'informations)

What survives of a literary career after the author’s death, monumental societal changes and the fluctuations of fictional styles and fashions? Mrs Molesworth was born in 1839 and did not die until 1921, although her writing career had effectively ended before the start of the First World War.

Her most republished works were Carrots (1876), The Cuckoo Clock (1877) and The Carved Lions (1895). Dent’s Children’s Illuminated Classics (from the 1960s) republished both the latter two as well as Charlotte M. Yonge’s Little Duke. Choosing between Cuckoo Clock and Carved Lions is hard but this reader would have to plump for the latter as well as asking for the inclusion of The Story of a Year.

While some of Mrs Molesworth’s fantasy works require a certain indulgence with their copious doses of whimsy, sentimentality and the fantastical, The Carved Lions always, always charms and soothes because of its roots in the ordinary everyday world of Manchester (Mexington) before she deploys her magic. Even the dreary old city can produce a touch of suburban pleasure for this story’s heroine Geraldine.

'It was not a very cheerful prospect before us – the gloomy, dirty streets of Mexington were now muddy and sloppy as well – though on the whole I don’t know but that they looked rather more cheerful by gaslight than in the day.'

That’s without the kindness of the Miss Fryer the Quakeress, ‘confectioner, or pastry-cook … she was grave and quiet, but we were not at all afraid of her, for we knew that she was really very kind.’ There is Geraldine’s fondness for two carved wooden lions in the entrance of Cranston’s furniture shop, ‘a pair of huge lions carved in very dark, almost black, wood they were nearly if not quite, as large as life, and the first time I saw them, when I was only four or five, I was really frightened of them. …But when mamma saw that I was frightened, she stopped and made me feel the lions and stroke them to show me that they were only wooden and could not possibly hurt me. And after that I grew very fond of them, and was always asking her to take me to the lion shop’.

But Geraldine’s world, where comfort can be found in ordinary things, is shattered when the family has to separate and Geraldine is sent unhappily to a school called Green Bank. She runs away from school, finds Cranston’s and once it is closed dozes by the side of the lions. It is then that she begins to hear the brother lions talking about her unhappiness and their plan to comfort her. Their stratagem involves a ride through the night sky – ‘overhead in the deep blue sky innumerable stars were sparkling’ - to reunite her magically with her family across the seas.

Here Mrs Molesworth mixes fantasy with psychological truth – a distraught and sorrowful young girl needing comfort and reassurance. For this reader at least The Carved Lions is a perennial favourite and especially because this enchanting tale begins in the muddy streets of Manchester.… (plus d'informations)

In this interesting novel Mrs Molesworth takes on the voice of a clever talented working-glass young woman. Martha Heatherdale, aged twenty-one, has just left her first position as the children of the affluent Wyngate family (with their oodles of trade money) have all grown up. She has recovered a little from the death of her fiancée – ‘it was hard to bear, and it changed all my life for me. I never could bring myself to think of another.’ But should she stay a little longer with her mother and father in their cottage or go out into service once more?

Then she sees the children of the Penrose family who are staying in the village with Mrs Nutfold (who takes in lodgers at Bramble Cottage) and disapproves of their unpleasant nurse. Martha’s response to the shortness of Nurse Sharp is telling and professional, ‘No one should be a nurse, or have to do with children, mother, who doesn’t right down love them in her heart.’ This is her vocation and career. There is Elizabeth (Bess), Lalage (Lally) and Baby and their disabled cousin Francis (he has ‘the rheumatics in his poor leg’ ).

Nurse Sharp had all along ‘not been meaning to stay longer than suited her own convenience.’ Hearing of a better job she went off at once abandoning the children. Mrs Nutfold calls in Martha to help and she willingly agrees. When their exasperated mother Lady Penrose eventually arrives, seeing the confidence between children and nurse, she offers Martha the vacant position. It is accepted with only a modicum of hesitation.

Mr Heatherdale is against the acceptance as he was sorry for Martha ‘to leave so soon and go so far’. The Penrose property is in Cornwall. Mrs Heatherdale is all for the acceptance. Low wages do not matter because what matters are ‘A good home and simple ways among real gentlefolk’. The Wyngates were nice, but their vast fortune was tainted by its origins. The children she approves too, as they ‘are good children and not silly spoilt things, and straightforward and well-bred’. Martha has already realised from simple observation that they are also in need of help and support – Lally needs to brighten up and orphan Francis is always, and rather oddly, treated dismissively by his aunt Lady Penrose.

There is a slight mystery about the family as Lady Penrose warns ‘we have a large country place that has belonged to the family for many hundreds of years; but we are obliged to live plainly and the place is rather lonely.’ Overworked in helping her husband Sir Hulbert get on and tired of trying to make ends meet in the shabby genteel ways of the poor gentry, Lady Penrose exclaims ‘Oh dear! what a contrary world it seems.’

Looking back in retrospect and from retirement, as Mrs Molesworth ventriloquises, Nurse Heatherdale tells of the children’s emotional development, her importance to their happy growing up and shares whatever happened to the old Penrose fortune of long ago.… (plus d'informations)

Here is a Mrs Molesworth novel with the delicacies of Victorian class distinctions at its heart although Celestina Fairchild with ‘her innocent mind’ is too young to understand the precarious position her family occupy. Besides she’s far too concerned with her tiny dolls ‘Eleanor and Amy still reposing on the hearthrug’.

Mr Fairchild, her father, is the proprietor of Seacove’s only bookseller’s and stationer’s in Pier Street, the principal thoroughfare in the little town. Seacove is a seaport ‘though not a very important one.’ Mr Fairchild is not very strong and worries about his enterprise when a new vicar for Seacove is announced and that is the Rev. Bernard Vane. The sea air it is hoped will help Mr Vane grow stronger and he arrives with his wife and three children Rosalys, Randolph and sparky, uncomplicated and tearaway Biddy. They are the rectory children.

In her anxiety Mrs Vane depends on Rosalys and rather despairs of Biddy, ‘as merry and thoughtless as can be.’ Her younger daughter receives more sympathy from Smuttie the family dog. ‘And off she set, her short legs exerting themselves valiantly for Smuttie’s sake. He of course could have run much faster, but he was far too much of a gentleman to do so, and stayed beside her, contenting himself every now and then by stopping short to look up at her, with a quick cheery bark of satisfaction and encouragement.’

Settling into the town the rectory children visit the Parade* and the bazaar and there’s Celestina choosing furniture for the doll’s house she doesn’t yet own: ‘the child stood absorbed, weighing the comparative merits of the blue and pink cotton chair seats, and of dark and light coloured wood.’

Biddy, who needs a friend, warms to Celestina. Is this a friendship that both families can approve? As Mr Fairchild warns his daughter ‘don’t you be getting any nonsense in your head of setting up to be the same as ladies’ children.’ As their acquaintance tentatively increases Mrs Vane rather envies Mrs Fairchild’s Celestina who has a biddable and obedient nature while Biddy seemingly grows wilder.

For any doll’s house fans (I’m looking at you Queen Mary, Princess Marie Louise and Colleen Moore) there is a wonderful reprise of the children’s first encounter in the bazaar when an old doll’s house is done up, despite Walter Crane’s awful illustration of the scene. With a renovated doll’s house being celebrated by all the children Mrs Molesworth closes her final page.

* This novel was first published in 1889. Commenting on the Parade Mrs Molesworth wrote that the southern Vane children had not experienced such shopping before. ‘For London shops were not as magnificent forty years ago as they are now’ implying her novel was set in about 1850. Walter Crane’s illustrations reflect the publication year.… (plus d'informations)