Friday 11 November 2016

Read in 2016 - 40: The Romance of an Old Fool

Published in 1902, after having read several contemporary books in a row (some really good ones, some less so) this came as a refreshingly old-fashioned excurse into a time when elegance was not only emphasized more in clothing but also in language.
(To call something refreshingly old-fashioned may seem a bit odd, if not altogether impossible, but I think you know what I mean.)



This novelette by Roswell Martin Field was as predictable as it was short - but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It has wit, a small set of characters, a simple plot that was easy to follow, and just gently and humorously flows along like a small babbling brook next to a path in the woods on a fine, calm summer's day.

The narrator, John Stanhope, is 48 years old and recently (but not unhappily) widowed. He travels from the big city to the village of his childhood, where he rekindles old acquaintances and makes new ones.
Soon, he comes across Phyllis, the 22-year-old daughter of his old flame, now orphaned. And the inevitable happens: He falls in love...

How this romance of an "old fool", as he calls himself, plays out I am not going to tell you here - read the short (free) eBook for yourself, if you like.

But one paragraph I found particularly poignant, because I read it on the "Day After" on the train to work and found it very fitting:
Mary Eastmann had accepted the situation without comment. She neither congratulated nor demurred, but went on with her household duties with the same method and precision as before.
Men may come and go, hearts may be won and lost, republics may totter and empires may fall, but the grand scheme of sweeping, dusting, bed-making, and cooking knows no interruption.
I find I have that in common with Mary Eastmann, finding comfort in the most banal of household tasks when I'm upset.

What I could find out about the author is sparse: Roswell Martin Field was an American journalist and writer. He lived from 1851 until 1919. (Therefore, he was around the same age as the narrator at the time this book was published - and I wonder how much of the real Mr Field is in the fictional Mr Stanhope.) He wrote several books and sometimes collaborated with his brother, Eugene Field, who was a poet and is much better known.

10 comments:

  1. Thank you for calling my attention to this. I am going to look for it right away. Since our summer home was built in 1879 I looked for books popular in the early years of our cottage but never came across this one.

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    1. It is rather short, so it won't bulge your to-be-read list unnecessarily, Kristi.
      A good idea to read books from a period related to your summer home!

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  2. . . . . . .yes, funny how banal household tasks often provide just what we need to "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again".

    Regarding number of characters in books these days - seems that they are often loaded with them and sometimes it's just a chore to recall who is who - or is it that I'm just getting old and can't keep everything/everyone straight any longer, haha!

    Happy weekend my dear - hope the sun shines and you will enjoy life.

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    1. When a book has LOADS of characters, I tend to get lost easily, too, especially since I am usually parallel-reading two books (one on my kindle on the train, and one physical book in bed before sleeping).

      Happy weekend to you, too! We won't get to see much sun this weekend, I think, but that does not matter - I'll enjoy life nonetheless :-)

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  3. Always interesting to learn about your classic finds - another author I never heard of! I think I'll refrain from downloading this one for now, I have so many on my waiting-list already. (Just had a big clear-out on my Kindle and sent a whole bunch of free ones to the Cloud. The Kindle was so full it was getting slow...)

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    1. I'd never heard of the author before reading this book, either.
      After finishing a book on my kindle, I decide whether to keep it in one of the collections I have created or delete it. Only a few make it into the collections, the majority is deleted. I still have somewhere around 70 books on there, but that's probably nowhere near enough to slow the kindle down :-)

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    2. Meike, after sending probably 100+ or so to the cloud, I still have over 400 titles left on the Kindle :) It should also be noted that some of my titles are/were also "The complete works of..." kind. Not that I ever expect to find the time to read them all... But nice to have them if I want to look something up! (And sometimes when I've been looking for a particular book, I've found the complete works of that author for the same price.)

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    3. Wow - and I thought I have tons of books on my kindle :-)
      Good point, sometimes maybe you just want to look something up, not necessarily read each and every page of each and every book you have stored.

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  4. I'm just stopping in to say hello and that I hope you have a great week. :)

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    1. That's sweet of you, thank you! You too have a great week... or, at least, one as good as possible :-)

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