The Captive Reader

I should think that, by now, there are few among us who are not familiar with The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  From first hearing of it, it’s been the Persephone that I was most eager to read (despite it being an abridged edition).  As a child, I had mixed feelings towards FHB: I adored A Little Princess but nothing bored me more than The Secret Garden.  It seems that I have the same feelings towards her adult novels: I found The Making of a Marchioness to be tedious and unoriginal but now I find it difficult to describe how much I loved The Shuttle.

I could not put it down – I picked it up mid-afternoon and did not rest until I turned that last page hours later.  I, who am usually so disciplined about going to bed at a reasonable hour, read late into the night to see how it ended, sacrificing sleep for such satisfaction.  Honestly, I can’t remember the last time this happened. 

The Shuttle considers the ‘dollar princesses’, wealthy American heiresses who married into the British nobility, giving the young ladies instant social standing and providing their husbands with much-needed funds.  At the beginning of FHB’s tale, young Rosalie Vanderpoel, eldest daughter of a New York millionaire, naively marries Sir Nigel Anstruthers, ignorant that, for him, the attraction of the match is her fortune, not herself.  But Bettina (Betty), Rosalie’s much younger sister, is immediately suspicious of her new brother-in-law.  When the family loses contact with Rosalie soon after her wedding, Betty knows that the cruelty she had glimpsed in Sir Nigel is being directed at her sister and so, as a child, she begins to plan her sister’s rescue and so most of the novel deals with a grown-up Betty carrying out that long-planned rescue.

It’s the character of Betty Vanderpoel that makes this novel so delightful and so memorable.  Betty is perfect.  Not in an obnoxious, insipid way, but in the sense that you can’t help admiring her, wishing there were more people like her in the world.  Indeed, there is an implication that if there were more women like Betty in the world to marry Englishmen, then the nation’s problems would be solved.  She has enthusiasm, intelligence, and a well-ordered mind.  I’m not sure I know how to praise someone more highly.  FHB describes her in equally glowing terms: 

She had genius, but it was not specialized.  It was not genius which expressed itself through any one art.  It was a genius for life, for living herself, for aiding others to live, for vivifying mere existence.  She herself was, however, aware only of an eagerness of temperament, a passion for seeing, doing, and gaining knowledge.  Everything interested her, everybody was suggestive and more or less enlightening. (p. 75-76)

Betty reminded me greatly of Polly from An Old-Fashioned Girl.  But with her money and connections and in a new century, Betty’s options are very different compared to those of her literary forbearers.  For all those people who insist that the talents of intelligent, wealthy women were wasted by not being employed outside of the home, I give Betty as the example that this is simply not true.  The considered management of an estate, the responsibility for those it supports, these are not light tasks and for Betty they are challenges, but ones her training and character make her well-suited to take on.  Betty is a born manager, but managers are needed outside of businesses, they are needed in homes and communities where they will not see remuneration for their efforts.  The respect and admiration she receives was particularly pleasing: male onlookers didn’t seem shocked that it was a woman managing the estate projects, just surprised that they’d finally be tackled and with such efficiency and taste!

When you have such an outstanding heroine, it is only natural that she must have a hero to equal her.  FHB casts the impoverished Lord Mount Dunstan in this role, first introduced during a shipboard crisis, allowing him and Betty to acknowledge one another as like souls in their ability to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs” (indeed, it occurs to me that Kipling’s ‘If’ would be the perfect poem for this extraordinary duo). 

Do you remember muscular Christianity?  Tom Brown et al? FHB repeatedly correlates the admirable physical appearance of leads with their moral superiority, never more so than when the following remark about them is made at a ball:

He is a magnificently built man, you know, and she is a magnificently built girl.  Everybody should look like that.  My impression would be that Adam and Eve did, but for the fact that neither of them had any particular character. (P. 327)

The very Victorian/Edwardian theme of health as a symbol of purity of spirit and moral character is let loose here: both Betty and Mount Dunstan are extraordinary for their physical appearance and, therefore, it follows that they are the most charitable, sensible, ethical characters.  And, of course, they have spirit and energy, traits viewed here as very American and contrasted against the decrepit (both morally and physically) Sir Nigel. 

The book had been going so well until it descended into cheap melodrama near the end, with Betty seeming losing all sense.  I shan’t go into detail, suffice to say that I found Betty’s behaviour extremely unconsidered and out of character.  We’re told over and over again how intelligent and rational Betty is and then she gets herself into this ridiculous situation!  After enjoying the book so much, I was sadly disappointed with FHB for descending to such cheap clichés, unworthy or her heroine or, frankly, of her usually subtle villain.