Novel 340: Mrs. Wilfrid Ward, One Poor Scruple (1899)

 

Marcus Stone, An Offer of Marriage

 

A worldly woman struggles to reject her Catholic upbringing.

Josephine Mary Ward (1864-1932), a granddaughter of the Duchess of Norfolk, wrote some eleven novels between 1899 and 1932, of which this was the first.

“The description of an old Romanist county family is excellent. . . . ; a distinctly able book.” Athenaeum, April 8, 1899

“Mrs. Wilfrid Ward is in a position to write of Catholic society from the inside, and she has done so in a remarkable novel with a candour that will render her work attractive to thoughtful persons beyond the pale. . . .  it is excellently written and every character is well drawn. Notable too is its absolute fairness, which leaves the reader to weigh the heroine’s scruple for himself, aided but not biassed by the author. . . .  as a whole . . . a book that should make its mark.” Saturday Review, April 8, 1899

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Crossword 335: Is That a Dog I Hear?

 

John Collier, Love Me, Love My Dog

 

I used to have a dog.  I loved him, and he loved me.  But since he left this sad world, I’ve found dogs annoying:  the little yappy dogs next door yapping their little yaps all the yappy day, the muscle-y dogs lunging at me on the sidewalks, the sweatered and bootee-ed stroller dogs that complicate my efforts to regard their owners with the respect I try to confer on all humankind—they annoy me.  Now, my old dog had his bad habits.  He would leave his scent everywhere. He would shed all the time.  He would try to kill the plumber.  But he had a deep, rich voice, respected pedestrians, would have scorned to wear bootees—was, in short, just a better dog than the dogs of other people nowadays. This puzzle is dedicated to his memory.

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335-Is-That-a-Dog-I-Hear?.puz

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335 Is That a Dog I Hear?

Novel 332: Elizabeth Anna Hart, Miss Hitchcock’s Wedding Dress (1876)

 

Thomas Benjamin Kennington, The Wedding Dress

 

A dressmaker crashes a ball in the dress she was hired to make.

For Hart, see Novels 006, 140, and 239.

“The incidents are slightly improbable, but cleverly strung together. . . .  The sooner the story is dramatized the better, for after reading the book we want to see the play.” Boston Globe, March 7, 1876

“An impossible story, with some very painful incongruities, and not a few betrayals of intellectual feebleness on the part of the author. And yet we imagine that there are many respectable three-volume English novels without half its brightness, and ingenuity, and readableness; many novels, of apparently much more thought, without anything like the natural quality, the insight, and even the poetry of this entertaining little book.” Scribner’s, May, 1876

The heroine’s charm is such as to “disarm any critical faculty which the reader may possess, which is fortunate, as otherwise sensible persons might feel obliged, in justice to themselves, to declare it was all nonsense all together.” Athenaeum, September 2, 1876

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Crossword 331: Or Else

 

John William Waterhouse, Magic Circle

 

It has lately come to my attention that the Internet is infested with a great many people who have wrong opinions and do bad things.  And I have to ask myself—and invite you, dear solver, to ask yourself as well—does not our use of the Internet render us complicit with these wrongheaded people and responsible for these bad things?  I fear it does. So I’ve decided that if the Internet does not remove these people within a reasonable amount of time, I will withdraw from it myself and invite you to do the same.  Reform, Internet, or else!

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331 Or-Else.puz

331 Or-Else.pdf

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331 Or Else