A Bon-Bon of a Book: Ada Leverson’s “The Twelfth Hour”

The Twelfth Hour (Walmer edition)

Ada Leverson’s delightful, feather-light novels are a blend of Saki-like epigrams with the saucy rebellion of  Elizabeth von Arnim’s heroines.  I read  Leverson, best known for the entertaining trilogy, The Little Ottleys, when I need comfort.

Much to my surprise and pleasure, I recently discovered her first novel, The Twelfth Hour (1907), which is as charming as her later efforts. And the plot is hilarious, centering on the romantic problems of three siblings.

Leverson raises the question, Why is love so difficult? If you’re with the right person, how can you be unhappy? But the Crofton siblings all have romantic troubles. Felicity is married to the ideal man, Lord Chetwode, but he is never home: he is at the races or searching for antiques in distant counties. And people have started to notice his absence. She becomes susceptible to the attentions of Bertie Wilton, who is always there, unlike Chetwode.

Ada Leverson

Felicity’s younger sister Sylvia is engaged to Woodville, her father’s secretary, but she hasn’t told her father, who wants her to marry a middle-aged millionaire. Woodville is miserable, but Sylvia insists they wait till her twenty-first birthday.  And I must admit, Sylvia can be irritating: she is utterly unconscious of Woodville’s feelings.

Thank God for Savile, their younger brother, who is as wise about their loves as he is silly about his own (he is still at school but in love with an opera singer). He manages his sisters’ relationships beautifully, and I’m astonished by his clever negotiations.

Ada Leverson

You have to read Leverson’s dialogue to get to know her. Here is an example of Felicity and Savile.

“Look here, Felicity, I want to speak to you.”
“Yes, darling?”
“Does Chetwode know what’s going to win the Cambridgeshire?”
“How can he know, darling? Would it be fair? Of course he has some vague idea. Candid friend he said was the favorite. He says it’s a certainty. But his certainties!…”

Lovely and fun– a bon-bon of a book!

By the way, this is the Walmer paperback edition.  The publisher Michael Walmer reissues out-of-print books of the kind many of us enjoy (rather like Viragos and Persephones). I bought this online, and I must say, it is a much nicer paperback than the one I found of Bird of Paradise, which I read last winter.  I wrote about Bird here.

Fabulous Plot-Oriented Escape Reads: Ada Leverson, Susan Howatch, & Early Henry James

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…and a book!

It isn’t officially the holidays, but you may be plotting your holiday reading, or perhaps taking the break before the holidays.  

Here are a few notes on three fabulous plot-oriented escape reads to add to your TBR.   

bird of paradise leversonAda Leverson’s Bird of Paradise (1914).   Leverson, a friend of Oscar Wilde, is best known for The Little Ottleys (Virago), a witty trilogy which consists of Love’s Shadow, Tenterhooks, and Love at Second Sight. I recently read one of her lesser-known novels, Bird of Paradise, and found it equally charming.

The heroine, Bertha Kellynch, is exceptionally intelligent, fashionable, and very much in love with her husband Percy, who describes her as a bird of Paradise.  Leverson emphasizes Bertha’s uniqueness.  She is not just beautiful: she gives sensible advice. Her lovelorn friend Madeline pines for the affections of a caddish aesthete who lends her architecture books; her snobbish mother-in-law dithers at an at-home party until Bertha steps in to chat with a nouveau riche former chorus girl;  and Bertha deals tactully with her former boyfriend, Nigel, who visits her house a tad too often and makes his wife jealous. We know everything will end well, beccause Bertha is so calm, but there are a few tense moments in this sweet, comical novel.

the wonder worker howatchSusan Howatch’s The Wonder Worker.  About 10 years ago, one of my former English professors taught a class on Howatch’s brilliant six-book Starbridge series, which is slightly reminiscent of Trollope’s Barsetshire series.  Starbridge is a fictitious Anglican diocese in England which seethes with intrigues.

I recently read The Wonder Worker, which is set at St. Benet’s Church in London in the ‘80s.  It is entrancing.  I dare you to put it down!   Howatch describes the chaos of a ministry of healing which goes astray.  The charismatic Nicholas Darrow changes strangers’ lives but neglects his family;  his wife Rosalind, a successful businesswoman, has grown to despise his hypocrisy and wants a divorce; Lewis Hall, a priest who was Nicholas’s former spiritual adviser, has a troubled past and rages in his diary about his ambivalence toward women and hatred of modern times; and Alice, an obese gourmet cook, stumbles into the church to get out of the rain and finds help for her dying aun; she also finds a job as the cook at St. Benet’s.  I couldn’t get enough of this book; it is the first of a trilogy.

9780140390827Henry James’s The American.  Do you like your Henry James with a plot?  That is not his strength, but this early novel  does have action. Christopher Newman, a wealthy American businessman, travels to France and meets Claire de Bellegarde, a beautiful widow whom he wants to marry.   Her aristocratic family does not think he is good enough for her. There are complications and Gothic elements:  dire family secrets,  a mysterious death, ties to a nunnery… you  won’t think this is  James at all.