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A review by glyptodonsneeze
The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
5.0
The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The "shuttle" is a weaving metaphor. I'd forgotten entirely about that kind of shuttle until FHB described it clicking and clacking figuratively back and forth across the loom like a steamship or a telegraph wire between England and America, bringing saucy Americans and the staid British closer together as a recurring theme in a Frances Hodgson Burnett novel, along with gardens, a crippled child, rags to riches, twists of fortune, and obvious villains. I loved it, and everything there is to love about FHB is stuck in this one, fairly long, story of two sisters; but, alas, poor Rosalie! Rosalie and Bettina Vanderpoel, heirs to the Vanderpoel fortune, are both beauties, but Rosalie inherited all the stupid; or, Bettina is smart as a whip, and even at the tender age of eight, when her nineteen-year-old sister is about to marry the dastardly Sir Nigel Anstruthers, Bettina can see past his accent to the dissipated creeper inside. But poor, stupid, pretty Rosalie is in love with a titled gentleman and goes off in a boat to Sir Nigel's dilapitated country estate, where he keeps her isolated and breaks her spirit and, it's implied, beats her, when he's not drinking and carousing on the continent for months at a time, living off Rosalie's allowance while she languishes and her babies die. By the time Bettina is old enough to visit Rosie on her own, no one in the Vanderpoel family has seen Rosalie for a decade or so. Mrs. Vanderpoel thinks Rosie is too busy having a jolly good time in Europe and has forgotten them. Mr. Vanderpoel has his doubts about Sir Nigel, but he's too busy being a steel baron and establishing Carnegie libraries and doing whatever the fictional rich do to investigate it properly. Bettina needs to see for herself how Rosie is and takes a steamer over, a trip of a week or so that FHB herself made many times. On the boat, there's a bit of an engine fail and Bettina and a red-haired second-class passenger of muscular build and well-groomed mustache turn out to be the only sensible people on the boat.
You'll notice that Rosie's Anglo-American marriage sounds a little Downton. FHB's biographess, Ann Thwaite, says "The Shuttle was very much a story of its time. In 1909, it was to be estimated that more than five hundred American women had married titled foreigners and some two hundred and twenty million dollars had gone with them to Europe." So this contemporary imagination of Edwardian issues can be something to entertain you while you're waiting to see if Lord Grantham makes out with Daisy. The figurative shuttle is the steamships and the telegraph, and the power of the telegraph here is staggering. When Bettina arrives at Sir Nigel's country estate and finds Rosalie a prematurely aged grey lump of a woman with her crippled son at her side, trembling and weeping because she'd thought her family had forgotten her, Bettina says, "It's noon. We could go to the telegraph office in the village post office and telegraph father and have an answer and tickets to New York by three," that's reality. It's not Snapchat, but the telegraph enabled instantaneous communication. New York and rural Britain were a wire away. No waiting for a mailboat sailboat.
Rosalie is too damaged to countenance a return to New York and, if she ran, sexist English law might lose her custody of her crippled son Ughtred. Sir Nigel struck Rosalie while she was pregnant, and Ughtred came out a hunchback. FHB never explains why the boy's name is Ughtred, but naming a child "Ughtred" is like kicking that fetus in the shoulder all over again. Sir Nigel's estate is entailed, otherwise Sir Nigel would have traded it for booze, so everyone realizes that if they can wait out Sir Nigel's death, Ughtred will inherit the manor and so it's worth sticking around there and preventing Sir Nigel from selling the last remaining candlestick. Fortunately, Sir Nigel left some months ago and didn't mention when he'd be back, so Bettina is free to repair her sister and repair the manor house as well, and improve the village by hiring the underemployed denizens in the building project. Bettina manages the remodel admirably, having unlimited funds and the business savvy of the first Reuben Vanderpoel. She also bumps into the red-haired man from the boat, who turns out to be another penniless noble, and they get acquainted over the sickbed of a slangy American typewriter salesman who's suffered a bicycle accident. Bettina and the red-haired Lord Mount Dunstan are both vehemently opposed to international marriages, Bettina because of her sister, and Lord Mount Dunstan because he's probably read about Consuelo Vanderbilt in the papers, so, of course, the only obstacle to their immediate and overwhelming attraction is themselves.
When Sir Nigel stumbles out of his carriage at the manor and finds the gates repaired and the gardens tidy, he pretends to be pleased while developing a creepy attraction to his young sister-in-law, who looks like a more striking version of who Rosalie was before he ruined her. Bettina is trapped between a rock and a hard place: she can't leave Rosalie to Sir Nigel's abuses, and she can't stay indefinitely because he's a crazy person. They all pretend to get along through the hops harvest, when Bettina needs to take a ride to work out some Lord Mount Dunstan issues. She rides farther than she should, wears out her horse, sprains her ankle, and Sir Nigel finds her waiting out the night in an abandoned cottage on the moor and threatens to rape her because she's inflamed his passions, and, just when you think Lord Mount Dunstan is about to ride up and rescue Bettina in the storm, she self-rescues. Go Bettina!
http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-fine-long-book-and-benefits-of-short.html
You'll notice that Rosie's Anglo-American marriage sounds a little Downton. FHB's biographess, Ann Thwaite, says "The Shuttle was very much a story of its time. In 1909, it was to be estimated that more than five hundred American women had married titled foreigners and some two hundred and twenty million dollars had gone with them to Europe." So this contemporary imagination of Edwardian issues can be something to entertain you while you're waiting to see if Lord Grantham makes out with Daisy. The figurative shuttle is the steamships and the telegraph, and the power of the telegraph here is staggering. When Bettina arrives at Sir Nigel's country estate and finds Rosalie a prematurely aged grey lump of a woman with her crippled son at her side, trembling and weeping because she'd thought her family had forgotten her, Bettina says, "It's noon. We could go to the telegraph office in the village post office and telegraph father and have an answer and tickets to New York by three," that's reality. It's not Snapchat, but the telegraph enabled instantaneous communication. New York and rural Britain were a wire away. No waiting for a mailboat sailboat.
Rosalie is too damaged to countenance a return to New York and, if she ran, sexist English law might lose her custody of her crippled son Ughtred. Sir Nigel struck Rosalie while she was pregnant, and Ughtred came out a hunchback. FHB never explains why the boy's name is Ughtred, but naming a child "Ughtred" is like kicking that fetus in the shoulder all over again. Sir Nigel's estate is entailed, otherwise Sir Nigel would have traded it for booze, so everyone realizes that if they can wait out Sir Nigel's death, Ughtred will inherit the manor and so it's worth sticking around there and preventing Sir Nigel from selling the last remaining candlestick. Fortunately, Sir Nigel left some months ago and didn't mention when he'd be back, so Bettina is free to repair her sister and repair the manor house as well, and improve the village by hiring the underemployed denizens in the building project. Bettina manages the remodel admirably, having unlimited funds and the business savvy of the first Reuben Vanderpoel. She also bumps into the red-haired man from the boat, who turns out to be another penniless noble, and they get acquainted over the sickbed of a slangy American typewriter salesman who's suffered a bicycle accident. Bettina and the red-haired Lord Mount Dunstan are both vehemently opposed to international marriages, Bettina because of her sister, and Lord Mount Dunstan because he's probably read about Consuelo Vanderbilt in the papers, so, of course, the only obstacle to their immediate and overwhelming attraction is themselves.
When Sir Nigel stumbles out of his carriage at the manor and finds the gates repaired and the gardens tidy, he pretends to be pleased while developing a creepy attraction to his young sister-in-law, who looks like a more striking version of who Rosalie was before he ruined her. Bettina is trapped between a rock and a hard place: she can't leave Rosalie to Sir Nigel's abuses, and she can't stay indefinitely because he's a crazy person. They all pretend to get along through the hops harvest, when Bettina needs to take a ride to work out some Lord Mount Dunstan issues. She rides farther than she should, wears out her horse, sprains her ankle, and Sir Nigel finds her waiting out the night in an abandoned cottage on the moor and threatens to rape her because she's inflamed his passions, and, just when you think Lord Mount Dunstan is about to ride up and rescue Bettina in the storm, she self-rescues. Go Bettina!
http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-fine-long-book-and-benefits-of-short.html