The first edition of this book is dated 1903. The edition used is dated 1916. The publisher was The Religious Tract Society, London E.C. The number of pages is 313.

General information

This is another excellent book by Mrs de Horne Vaizey, dating from the end of the nineteenth century. While of course it is dated in its references to the world around its actors, yet nevertheless their emotions are well-described, and no doubt are timeless.

In some ways the world around the people in the book is recognisable today, in a way which a book written thirty or forty years before would not have been. They have electricity, telephones, trains, buses, and many other things that we still use regularly today. Of course one major difference is that few people today have servants, while middle-class and upper-class families of the eighteen nineties would certainly have had them. It was a passing joke in the book that it was surprising that the butler, on discovering a young couple kissing, did not say, “Allow me, madam.”

Today we travel by aeroplane, while in those days, and indeed for much of my own life, we travelled by ship and train. It was normal when travelling back to England from India to disembark at Marseilles, and come on to the Channel Ports by train, perhaps even spending a week or two in Italy, en route. I have done it myself.

So it is not so very dated after all. But I do think there is a real value in reading the book. Oddly enough, I think that a boy would benefit from reading any of the author’s books, more than a girl would, because it would give him an insight into the girlish mind which he could not so easily otherwise obtain. N.H.