The Port of Adventure

"Nick thought her adorable in her gray motor bonnet"

The Port of Adventure is mostly typical Williamsons — part romance, part travelogue, and a dash of adventure — but something about it leaves an Elinor Glyn-ish taste in my mouth. Maybe it’s the girl from Europe (sort of) traveling through the U.S., as in Elizabeth Visits America, or the unhappy marriage to a European prince, as in The Reason Why and Three Weeks, or the villainess’ generally Glyn-ish aspect, or the red-haired, green-eyed writer who seems like she could have been based on Glyn herself. So, yeah, there are lots of reasons, and much as I enjoy the Williamsons, they don’t compare well when they try to edge into Glyn’s territory. They don’t have her flair for melodrama, or the sharp sense of humor that makes it bearable.

Still, I got pretty invested in the relationship between princess-by-marriage Angela, traveling as a young widow, and former cowboy Nick, using his new oil fortune to see more of the country. They really do seem to have things in common, beyond both being rich and good-looking, but it’s hard to believe that two people can simultaneously instinctively understand each other and constantly misinterpret each others’ actions. Also, there’s a scene where Nick rescues Angela from stampeding cattle in the canary yellow car he named after her, which is probably the most hilarious thing ever to happen in a Williamsons book.

The Riddle of the Sands

The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers, is a spy novel from 1903 about two Englishmen who know they’ve stumbled upon some kind of secret regarding Germany’s naval plans, but aren’t quite sure what it is.

Carruthers, the narrator, is a clerk in the Foreign Office. As the book begins, he’s stranded in London after the social season has ended, and he’s pretty bitter about it. His vacation comes too late to join any of the house parties to which he’s been invited, so he ends up accepting a dubious-sounding invitation from Davies, an acquaintance from college who is yachting in the Baltic. When he arrives, Carruthers is shocked to find that Davies’ yacht isn’t shiny and adored with lots of brass fittings. Also, although he went to some effort to find a bunch of things Davies asked for — a stove, rigging screws, a prismatic compass — Davies says he probably won’t need them, and Carruthers comes to suspect that Davies only asked for them so that he could indulge his passion for throwing things overboard.

My Father’s Dragon…

…is now available on Project Gutenberg.

Actually, it may have already been there–the “Recently Posted or Updated EBooks” feed doesn’t actually specify which is which. I think it’s new, although UPenn’s Celebration of Women Writers has had a version up for a while.

Any excuse to reread it, though, and a Gutenberg eBook is a pretty good excuse. It’s fully illustrated, and, well, completely wonderful in every way. Read it. Find a kid to read it to. Pull out your paperback copy — I have two — and smile at it, because you just can’t help it. Read the sequels. Be happy.

Happy Captain Blood Day!

So, September 19th is the day Peter Blood is sentenced to slavery in Barbados — if he’d been tried any sooner, he would have just been sentenced to death, instead of having the opportunity to become the coolest pirate ever. So you should celebrate, preferably by reading — or rereading — some Sabatini. Here are a few suggestions.

Under Two Flags

Under Two Flags, by Ouida, is the mother of all books about running off to join the foreign legion, although technically when Bertie Cecil leaves England for Algeria, he joins the Chasseurs d’Afrique, a cavalry regiment.

Bertie is an officer in the Life Guards, which seems to mean that he gets to hang out with other aristocrats a lot and never has to fight, unless some jealous husband challenges him to a duel. Bertie is languid and elegant and perfectly suited to this lifestyle, but his family, although excessively aristocratic, is not well-off, and Bertie is the second of three sons. The elder brother is the heir to Royallieu, the family estate, and the younger, Berkeley, is their father’s favorite. Berkeley has a gambling problem, and, what’s worse, a weak mouth or chin or something, which is how novelists indicate that someone is going to turn out to be evil in books like this. Yes, it’s another inexplicably evil younger brother.

Bertie manages to float along on absolutely no money at all for a while, winning horse races, hanging out with his friend the Seraph, and and coming up with sneaky ways to spend time with his mistress, Lady Guenevere.Meanwhile, Berkeley is getting ever deeper into debt, and he somehow thinks it’s a good idea to try to borrow money from Bertie at the same time as he whines about how Bertie is even more extravagant and deeper in debt that he is. He also — horror of horrors — asks Bertie to borrow money from Seraph for him, because he has no inborn sense of honor. Whatever. Bertie might be better off if he had less of an inborn sense of honor.

The Galloping Ghost

The Galloping Ghost is the second book I’ve read by Roy Judson Snell. The first was The Blue Envelope, which was an adventure for girls set in Alaska. I thought it was okay, but I questioned Snell’s choice of title: the blue envelope is largely irrelevant.

Can I say he’s got a problem with irrelevant titles after only two books? Because the ghost of the title is just a deus ex machina that occasionally drops by to give the detectives a clue to the mystery, and he’s not even as helpful as the detectives’ boy assistant Johnny, who basically provides the solution to the mystery by accidentally stumbling on clues near the local florist at every opportunity. His luck is so good that the book would only be half as long as it is now if he didn’t keep withholding information for no apparent reason.

The First Sir Percy

I’m not exactly sure why I chose to read The First Sir Percy, the book following The Laughing Cavalier, but I suspect it had something to do with The First Sir Percy being only abut half as long as its predecessor. Anyway, I’m glad I did.

Diogenes, Frans Hals’ Laughing Cavalier, is back. He has, since the last book, discovered that his real name is Percy Blakeney, and he also, for no reason except that Baroness Orczy seemed to feel it was necessary, has been knighted. He acts much more like his eponymous descendent now. He pretends to be stupid and cowardly –  as well as blind and drunk — and even starts using some of the same exclamations as Sir Percy. He’s not really Sir Percy, but he reminds one of him, which is a big help.

The Laughing Cavalier

I forget, now, whether The Scarlet Pimpernel was my first adventure novel. I’m pretty sure that I read it before The Three Musketeers, The Four Feathers, The Prisoner of Zenda, or Scaramouche (my first Sabatini). So there was this time when The Scarlet Pimpernel was the only great adventure novel I had read. And it coincided with a time in my early teens when I was just discovering the wealth of reading material available on the internet. And during that time, I came dangerously close to joining the online Scarlet Pimpernel fandom.

See, I found this website called Blakeney Manor, and they had the texts of about twenty Scarlet Pimpernel sequels and prequels. Which is, you know, a lot of books. For free. Somehow related to a book that I loved. And if the first one I read hadn’t been so silly, I might have read them all. So I’m pretty thankful that I decided to read them in chronological order, and that the one I started with was The Laughing Cavalier.

Captain Blood Day, 2008

It was not until two months later - on the 19th of September, if
you must have the actual date - that Peter Blood was brought to
trial, upon a charge of high treason.  We know that he was not
guilty of this; but we need not doubt that he was quite capable
of it by the time he was indicted.  Those two months of inhuman,
unspeakable imprisonment had moved his mind to a cold and deadly
hatred of King James and his representatives.  It says something
for his fortitude that in all the circumstances he should still
have had a mind at all.  Yet, terrible as was the position of this
entirely innocent man, he had cause for thankfulness on two counts.
The first of these was that he should have been brought to trial at
all; the second, that his trial took place on the date named, and
not a day earlier.  In the very delay which exacerbated him lay -
although he did not realize it - his only chance of avoiding the
gallows.

My Friend the Chauffeur

I enjoyed Secret History Revealed by Lady Peggy O’Malley so much that I immediately went in search of another book by the Williamsons. My Friend the Chauffeur is different from either Peggy O’Malley or It Happened in Egypt, but I think I’m beginning to get a feel for how the Williamsons write.

The chauffeur in question is not actually a chauffeur. He is Lord Terence Barrymore, an impoverished Irish nobleman (the Williamsons are obviously very fond of impoverished Irish noblemen, as they have appeared prominently in all three of the Williamson books I have read). Terry’s best friend is an English baronet named Ralph Moray, who spends his winters at the Riviera, where he edits the English newspaper. Sir Ralph, in an attempt to make some money for Terry, has placed the following advertisement in his paper:

“WANTED, LADIES, TO CONDUCT. An amateur automobilist (English, titled) who drives his own motor-car accommodating five persons, offers to conduct two or three ladies, Americans preferred, to any picturesque centres in Europe which they may desire to visit. Car has capacity for carrying small luggage, and is of best type. Journeys of about 100 miles a day. Novel and delightful way of travelling; owner of car well up in history, art, and architecture of different countries. Inclusive terms five guineas a day each, or slight reduction made for extensive trip. Address—”