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Product Description
From the Publisher
ago and was begun in 1900 but frequently abandoned while its author,
Frances Hodgson Burnett, wrote several other books (including, most
famously, The Making of a Marchioness). It is about American heiresses
marrying English aristocrats; by extension it is about the effect of
American energy, dynamism and affluence on an effete and impoverished
English ruling class.
Sir Nigel Anstruthers crosses the Atlantic to look for a rich wife and
returns with the daughter of an American millionaire, Rosalie Vanderpoel.
He turns out to be a bully, a miser and a philanderer and virtually
imprisons his wife in the house. Only when Rosalie's sister Bettina is
grown up does it occur to her and her father that some sort of rescue
expedition should take place. And the beautiful, kind and dynamic Bettina
leaves for Europe to try and find out why Rosalie has, inexplicably, chosen
to lose touch with her family. In the process she engages in a
psychological war with Sir Nigel; meets and falls in love with another
Englishman; and starts to use the Vanderpoel money to modernize `Stornham
Court'.
But The Shuttle, which is five hundred pages long and a page-turner for
every one of them, is about far more than the process by which an English
country house can be brought back to life with the injection of
transatlantic money (there is some particularly interesting detail about
the new life breathed into the garden). It is mainly about American energy
and initiative and get-up-and-go; this is symbolised by G Selden, the
typewriter salesman on a bicycling tour of England, who meets, and charms,
Bettina and her sister and, back in New York, their father. And it is about
the excellent relationship that, curiously enough, many of the heiresses
enjoyed with their multi-millionaire fathers.
Above all it is about Bettina Vanderpoel. She is the reason why this is
such a successful, entertaining and interesting novel - one could almost
say that she is one of the great heroines, on a par with Elizabeth Bennet,
Becky Sharp and Isabel Archer. This is because she is so intelligent and so
enterprising - she has the normal feminine qualities but a strong business
sense, inherited from her father, and instinctive management skills (as we
would now call them). If every man in England married a girl like Bettina
Vanderpoel, we are meant to think, England's future would be as glittering
as America's.
The book's title refers to ships shuttling back and forth over the
Atlantic (Frances Hodgson Burnett herself traveled between the two
countries thirty-three times, something very unusual then) and also to the
weaving of the alliance between America and Britain. `As Americans
discovered Europe, that continent discovered America. American beauties
began to appear in English drawing-rooms and Continental salons... What
could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by
adoring fathers sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin
to rule these lands also?'
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Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
The shuttle of the title refers to the travelling between the US and England that was such a feature of upper class life in the late 19th century. There were many real life examples of the Vanderpoel girls, Jennie Jerome who was Winston Churchill's mother, and Consuelo Vanderbilt, who married the Duke of Marlborough among them. This is an absorbing read, another book I read in one long gulp and couldn't put down.
Though there are some chapters involving ships and the description of ships not once was a bored as this book has so much more to offer it is actually a wonderful social history study and romantic mystery. Nigel Anstruthers travels to America in search of a rich American wife. He has a title and a stately home but absolutely no money, in fact he is in debts up to his eyeballs and beyond and a wife is a means to an end to that. He meets the meek and suggestible Rosalie Vanderpoel and tricks her into believing he is marrying her for love. Once across the ocean she learns that he didn't marry her for that at all and in fact wants her money and to shut her off from the world.
On the other side of the ocean her family are mortified, but Anstruthers hasn't counted on Rosalie's younger and much more forthright and spirited sister Bettina wanting to find out the mystery of her sisters sudden disappearance. The novel then takes you on an epic journey as Bettina grows up and uses all the skills and knowledge she can in order to counter an attack against Anstruthers and whatever may have happened to her sister. The journey is filled with drama, adventure and a brilliant romantic storyline. I loved the evilness of both Nigel and his mother, Nigel in particular is a true villain if there ever was one. Bettina does steal the show with her gutsy determination and quick wit.
This novel really does have everything and you cannot help yourself from turning all the 600 pages in almost one sitting, I was almost unable to put the book down. Plus anyone who can name a character Ughtred is naturally going to be someone I treasure.
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