The Brightener

I’ve been going back and forth on whether to post about The Brightener. On one hand, this might be the wildest thing my pals A.M. and C.N. Williamson ever wrote. On the other, the fun will consist of recounting the plot in detail, and I usually try to avoid doing that. Still, I can’t not tell you about this book. One friend I told about it said, “I’ve been worrying about the plot of my book, but actually you can do anything.” Another said, “People really knew about PLOTS then.” My no-spoiler synopsis is: everything happens.

So, if you’d rather be surprised–repeatedly–stop here and go read the book. If you’re not worried about spoilers, sit down. Stay a while. I’m about to recap the first quarter of the book in absolutely bonkers detail.

First of all, there’s a princess. She was Elizabeth Courtenaye, but her grandmother married her off to an Italian prince who very promptly died. This is a favorite gambit of the Williamsons, who love a virgin with the rights of a widow. The grandma promptly dies, too, and Elizabeth is left with nothing but a title, a beautiful and historic estate in Devonshire, and her exceedingly good looks. Oh, and an enemy: a distant American cousin who used to be a cowboy and has red hair and black eyebrows.

On the advice of her lawyer’s wife, Elizabeth rents the estate to the cousin and becomes a “brightener”–a sort of professional society problem solver who can use her title and unimpeachably blue blood for the benefit of her clients–nouveaux riches trying to break into society, or American millionaires trying to marry members of it. Roger Fane is the latter, and he’s in love with Elizabeth’s friend Lady Shelagh Leigh. Her guardians don’t like him, so Elizabeth helps him organize a yacht trip that’s intended to soften them up.

Things take a turn for the weird almost immediately. An object floating in the sea near them turns out to be neither bird nor plane nor shark, but a coffin. They bring it on board, where it will hang out in Roger’s bathroom and make everyone super uncomfortable until they can hand it over to the authorities at the next port. The atmosphere is strained, and Elizabeth is pleased to be able to escape to her stateroom at the end of the day. That is, she would be pleased, if the room didn’t reek of brandy and there wasn’t a stranger in her bed.

On closer examination, Elizabeth recognizes the stranger as the German spy who tried to burn her house down a couple of years ago. I haven’t mentioned this incident because it’s not actually relevant. Linda the former German spy is here because she’s Roger’s wife who faked her death in a train crash years ago, and now that he’s a millionaire she’d like to come back to life and scotch his romance with Shelagh. So Elizabeth goes to find Roger, all, “Hey, awkward thing, your dead wife is in my cabin,” and then Linda the spy pops up behind her and says, “Not anymore, I’m not!” and Elizabeth throws up her hands and leaves them to it. After a while Roger shows up at Elizabeth’s door and he’s like, “So, super awkward thing: my dead wife is in my cabin and this time she’s actually dead.” Linda the spy has poisoned herself and framed Roger for her death.

Scandal and a murder charge seem inevitable, but then Elizabeth has a bright idea: why not put this inconvenient dead body in that very convenient coffin? Whoever’s in there can be thrown into the sea, and if they’re found, no one will think they have anything to do with Roger & Co., because they don’t. So Roger goes away to swap the corpses, but soon he’s back at Elizabeth’s door, because he needs to show her what was in the coffin. It’s not a corpse at all–it’s a pile of heirlooms that were stolen from Elizabeth’s estate. People suspected Elizabeth of stealing the things herself, for the insurance money, but having them show up in an unattended coffin enables her to instantly deduce who was really responsible.

Roger successfully disposes of his wife’s corpse and gets engaged to Shelagh, and as soon as the yacht trip is over, Elizabeth takes her heirlooms off to Devonshire to confront the thieves. This is, for various reasons, a bad idea, and Elizabeth lands herself in a scrape from which she has to be rescued by the cowboy cousin, who maybe isn’t so bad after all. Then she goes on to have several more adventures that strive to be as wild as this one, and almost manage it. I don’t know what else to say–or rather, if I try to say more I’ll end up recounting the rest of the plot. In sum: I recommend this book.

The Heather-Moon

So, hey. Remember me? Remember my favorite married co-writers Alice and Charlie Williamson? We’re back, with The Heather-Moon.

If you don’t remember, Charles Norris Williamson was an early motoring journalist, and he and his wife Alice Muriel wrote a number of novels together. About half of them were about attractive young people sightseeing in motorcars and falling in love with each other. Knowing this about them is more than usually important.

But first, our heroine: her name is Barribel MacDonald, she has a lot of very red hair, and she’s been brought up in seclusion by a strict grandmother. Barrie thinks her mother is dead, but when she finds out that she only ran away to be an actress, Barrie decides to run away, too, and meet her. She almost immediately runs into Ian Somerled, a very nice painter/architect/millionaire who knows that Barrie’s mother is the famous Barbara Ballantree MacDonald, or “Mrs. Bal,” and suspects that lady won’t be pleased to have a beautiful grown-up daughter on her hands.

Somerled brings Barrie to the house of his friend Mrs. Aline West, a famous author who co-writes novels with her brother, Basil Norman. They’re about to set off on a motor tour of Scotland in Somerled’s car, gathering material for their next book. Sound familiar? Aline is in love with Somerled–or whatever passes for love among villainesses–and dismayed to find that he expects to bring Barrie along on their tour–at least until they get to Edinburgh, where Mrs. Bal is starring in a new play.

Barrie and Somerled enthuse over Carlyle and Burns and fairies together, and fall in love. Aline and Basil fight over their book because Basil wants to make Barrie the heroine and also he writes all their best bits, but Aline is the boss of him–at which point I started asking, “Alice Williamson, what are you doing?”

I never got an answer, but I don’t mind, because this is classic Williamsons and I really do enjoy them. If you enjoyed Set in Silver you’ll enjoy this, too–it’s approximately the same book.

Christmas Stories: Angel Unawares

I wasn’t sure I was going to manage any Christmas stories this year, but here’s one, at least: Angel Unawares, by Alice Williamson with, I presume, very little help from Charlie. Based on this and the one other Williamsons Christmas story I’ve read, they like spending their Christmases in the South of France.

The story takes place over the course of a single Christmas Eve (the Unity of Christmastimes!) mid-World War I. Dick Odell is doing something at the American Embassy in Paris, and sends his wife Elinor and daughter Angel to Mentone to remove them from danger. Angel wanders off while her governess is distracted, and finds herself in the garden of the Valois family, where she plays with a kitten and overhears some tedious exposition about the state of the Valois finances (not good). Angel decides to help them out, and when her mother disapproves of her first plan, she comes up with a second one.

Angel Unawares has its moments, but they don’t add up to anything particularly good. What ought to be the most exciting part of the story is the most boring, and what ought to be the most affecting passes too quickly. I liked Angel and her mother, but I wanted more from and for them.

The Guests of Hercules

I love Alice Williamson, but I don’t trust her at all, so when she was like, “Here, check out Mary Grant. She was brought up in a convent in Scotland and she has ‘wild blood.’ I’m going to take her to Monte Carlo!” I was worried.

A.M. and C.N. Williamson, collectively (and probably also individually), loved Monte Carlo, but I normally avoid their stories set there because reading about gambling makes me extremely anxious. I was excited when The Guests of Hercules opened with a wealthy young girl going out into the world after deciding at the last moment not to be a nun–but only for about a minute, because Alice Williamson isn’t, say, Margaret Widdemer, and when her heroines go out into the world alone, it isn’t always kind to them. Also I’ve, you know, read books before, so from the first mention of Monte Carlo, my brain was shouting, “No, stop, she’s going to get addicted to gambling and lose all her money.” Then a little later I began to wonder whether everything was leading up to an attempted murder. I’m actually not sure how I managed to get through the book.

The things I feared happen roughly as I expected them to happen (I have read books before) but Alice Williamson makes it alright.

Vision House/8th Blogiversary

Today is the eighth anniversary of Redeeming Qualities. I’m not doing anything particularly special for the occasion, but it seemed like a good time to wrap up the Williamsons kick I’ve been on. Also — obviously — I want to thank everyone who reads the blog for sticking around. I started this blog figuring writing into the void about the books I was reading was better than talking about them to people who didn’t care, but that doesn’t mean I ever wanted there to actually be a void, and I really enjoy interacting with you guys.

Anyway. Brian said Vision House was his favorite Williamson book, so it seemed like a good one to read next. And…well, I can see why this would be someone’s favorite. It’s not mine. But it’s crazy.

The Golden Silence

The title page: so lovely. The book: so racist.

My top three most appallingly racist things about The Golden Silence — another travel adventure from A.M. and C.N. Williamson — not counting that thing where all the Arabs are kind of evil, are as follows:

1. Liberal use of the n-word, always in reference to someone whose skin is “hardly darker than old ivory.”
2. Referring to drums used by various North Africans as tom toms.
3. The obsessive cataloging of everyone’s complexions.

Winnie Childs, the Shop Girl

Blog update: I’ve been pretty depressed, I guess? I’ve been having trouble finishing books since November, I think. And work is pretty stressful, and even though I can get pretty vehement about mental health problems being legitimate health problems, it’s really difficult to say, “hey, I spend much of my day wanting to cry, and sometimes I skip lunch because I don’t want to have to choose what to eat, so I’m going to take a sick day.” Especially if it’s unlikely a sick day will help.

Anyway. The Williamsons maybe sort of do help.

Williamsons update: It’s official. My favorite Williamsons book is Set in Silver. Sorry, Secret History Revealed by Lady Peggy O’Malley. You’re still the book that made me love the Williamsons, but Set in Silver is better.

Anyway, I reread Set in Silver, and finished it, which was encouraging. And then I read another Williamsons: Winnie Childs, the Shop Girl.

The Adventure of Princess Sylvia / Princess Virginia

So, yeah, The Adventure of Princess Sylvia and Princess Virginia (the latter credited to both Williamsons, the former to Alice) are the same book. According to this advertisement, Sylvia is the original and Virginia is the revision. But, contrary to the advertisement’s assertion, it hardly qualifies as a new story.

Almost everyone’s names are changed, as are some nationalities. The Ruritanian country of Rhaetia retains its name, but its emperor is now Leopold rather than Maximilian. And Princess Virginia adds some American blood to Sylvia’s mix of English and German. Things are a little more up to date — it’s a different English monarch that provides the heroine and her mother with a home, and there’s a sprinking of automobiles in Virginia that aren’t present in Sylvia. The dialog is a little snappier (as Jenn pointed out), and there are places where the plot has been smoothed over a little, making it seem less as if A.M. Williamson made it up as she went along. If you’re going to read one of these, Virginia is better, but again: same book.

The Girl Who Had Nothing

I know I’ve said before that no one ever should have let Alice Williamson publish without Charlie, but I think I’ve changed my mind. I’m still not a fan of To M.L.G., and Shay says that The Adventure of Princess Sylvia isn’t so good either, but I just finished The Girl Who Had Nothing and I’m really glad it exists. (For what it’s worth, while this book is credited solely to Mrs. C.N.Williamson, it was published while he was alive.) This book, though. It’s like a cross between Miss Cayley’s Adventures and The Career of Katherine Bush, and it’s not as good as either of those, but that just means that it’s not as good as the beginning of Miss Cayley or everything but the end of Katherine Bush. It’s better than the less good parts of both of those.

The Motor Maid

Someday I’m going to run out of books by the Williamsons where some people go on a road trip through part of Europe and at least one person isn’t what they seem and someone falls in love with the chauffeur. And on that day I will be very sad.

The Motor Maid has some really, really great bits, but mostly I enjoyed it as a good example of the Williamsons’ mini genre. (Has anyone encountered one of these chauffeurs-and-sightseeing-and-incognito books written by anyone else?) See, on one hand there’s the beginning, which takes place on a train and has a rough parallel to the beginning of Miss Cayley’s Adventures and made me think I might be starting my new favorite Williamsons book, but on the other hand this might be the snobbiest Williamsons book ever.

Set in Silver

After two extremely unsatisfying books, I was beginning to wonder whether I really liked fluffy romances or if I’d just been imagining it. Fortunately, there was a third, less unsatisfying book sitting on my shelves.

Edwardian/WWI-era fiction at Edwardian Promenade

There have been a lot of articles and blog posts floating around lately about what to read if you’re into Downton Abbey. One in particular, which talked about Elizabeth von Arnim apropos of one character giving a copy of Elizabeth and Her German Garden to another, made Evangeline at Edwardian Promenade say, “hey, what about Elinor Glyn?” Which, obviously, is the correct response to everything. And then I read it, and thought, “yeah, Elizabeth and her German Garden was popular when it came out in 1898, but would people really be trying to get each other to read a fifteen year-old(ish) novel by a German author during World War I?” And then we decided that we could probably come up with an excellent list of Edwardian and World War I-era fiction that tied in the Downton Abbey. And so we did.

It’s a pretty casual list, mostly composed of things we came up with off the tops of out heads, a bit of research on Evangeline’s part and a bit of flipping through advertisements on mine, so we’re making no claims to be exhaustive. If you have suggestions for additions to the list, leave a comment.

Lord John in New York

The worst thing about terrible mystery novels — the kind where the hero judges everyone on the most shallow grounds imaginable, and every tenuous connection is treated as a solid deduction — is that you can make fun of the hero all you want for assuming the Egyptian guy he’s found in the phone book (apparently this is a phone book that sorts by nationality?) is the same mysterious Egyptian guy who might have upset the girl he’s fallen in love at first sight with, but in the end you know the hero is going to be proven right.

Reviews at EP: Lord Loveland Discovers America

Now up at Edwardian Promenade: Lord Loveland Discovers America, sequel to Lady Betty Across the Water.

To M.L.G.; or, He Who Passed

I’m fascinated by anonymous novels. I love seeing ads in old Publisher’s Weeklys claiming that a new novel is written by a bestselling author who’s concealing his or her name to see how it’ll affect sales. I think it’s amazing that people used to be able to publish anonymous sequels to other authors’ books. When I can find it, I love speculation about who the real author might be.

To M.L.G.; or He Who Passed is an anonymous novel from 1912 that purports to be the autobiography of a successful American actress. She’s fallen in love with an Englishman, and he with her, but she’s scared to tell him about her somewhat disreputable past face to face, so she’s decided to publish it as a book instead.