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The
Stone of Chastity
First edition published by London, Collins,
1940
First American edition Little, Brown,
Boston, 1940
1948 New York Avon Pub. Co. (paperback
edition)
1976 AMS Press, (reprint of 1940 Little,
Brown edition.)
'In the small gun-room,
temporarily converted into a study, Professor Isaac Pounce was
even then completing his questionnaire (later to be circulated
through the unsuspecting village of Gillenham) on the subject
of Chastity...'
Thus begins a hilarious romp
through the misadventures of Professor Pounce, who takes a bit
of English folklore, and inadvertantly (in the spirit of science
and in hopes of dazzling his colleagues) turns a sleepy English
village upside down. And who on earth is Carmen (Smith, by convenience)--?
Statuesque, seductive, looking to young Nicholas Pounce like
a Minoan statue he had seen at the British Museum--but with something
of the barmaid in her personality. The truth about Carmen, and
the truth about the Stone of Chastity, will take you on a wonderful
journey through comic literature at its best!
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Three
Companion Pieces
1941 Boston, Little, Brown
1955 London, Collins
Illustrated by Anna Zinkeisen
This is a set of three of Ms. Sharp's
smaller works: The Nymph and the Nobleman, Sophy Cassmajor, and
The Tigress on the Hearth. The first two have been discussed
separately, under their own names. 'The Tigress on the Hearth',
discussed here, was first printed in this collection in America,1941,
then printed as a single novelette by Collins in London, 1955.
The Tigress on the Hearth:
'With an uncouth cry the
Albanian leapt forward and presented his firelock to Mr. Lutterwell's
breast.....He was drunk with the power to kill. His firelock
would have wavered in his hands but for the fact that it was
braced against Hugo's chest. In his own good time, when he had
exhausted his stock of invective, he was going to shoot the Englishman--like
a dog. Hugo took a quick step backwards and struck his heel against
the khan wall. He was cornered.
It has not been mentioned
that Hugo Lutterwell was an exceptionally handsome young man...'
With this startling scene,
'The Tigress on the Hearth' begins. Mr. Hugo Lutterwell, born
and bred comfortably in the peaceful Devon countryside, has found
himself in the violent Albanian countryside and about to be shot.
Sunday dinners with the parson has left him woefully ill-equipped
for this challenge. How he is delivered, (not just by his good
looks) and then psychologically chained for life, makes for a
fascinating tale. In this novelette, Ms. Sharp explores, in her
piquant way, the shadows of non sequiturs--What lies behind
the placid tranquillity of English country life?--
The illustrations by Anna
Zinkeisen are wonderful.
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Cluny
Brown
First edition London, Collins, 1944
American Edition, 1944 Little, Brown,
Boston
Reprint 1946 Philadelphia, Triangle
Books, The Blakiston Co.
French edition Paris, R. Julliard, 1946,
Dutton, Yves Gerard, translator
Movie by same name produced in 1946;
starring Jennifer Jones, Charles Boyer
"Where's Cluny?"
"In bed."
"What, ill?"
"No," said Mr.
Porritt patiently. "She read a piece in the paper, about
how it rested the nerves and toned the system to stay a day in
bed eating oranges."
For a second Addie Trumper
stared, speechless. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes snapped. Both
her husband and her brother braced themselves.
"My stars!" cried
Addie. "Who does she think she is?"
There it was again, the
inevitable question that Cluny Brown seemed always, and so unnaturally,
to provoke....
So who is Cluny Brown?
Enthusiastic niece of a plumber, unlikely parlormaid and curious
witness to England's last gasp of social order, semi-beloved
fiance of a priggish chemist, and finally--a surprising and unsettling
romantic element in the life of an expatriate professor. Quite
simply, she's one of the most delightful characters you'll ever
meet between the pages of a book! You'll also meet the kindly
but dim Sir Henry, his serene wife Lady Carmel (who can always
be relied upon to arrange flowers up to, through, and well beyond
the climax of any crisis, domestic or European) the lascivious
Mr. Ames (who looks like a tiddlywink) and the delicious Betty
Cream.
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Britannia
Mews
First edition, London, Collins, 1946
First American edition 1946 Boston,
Little, Brown and Co.
This novel was made into a movie (of
same name) in 1948 starring Dame Sybil Thorndike as the grotesque
Mrs. Mounsey, Dana Andrews as the faithless Henry, and Maureen
O'Hara as Adelaide.
'Britannia Mews was built
in 1865 to accommodate the carriage-horses, coachmen, and other
respectable dependents of the ten houses in Albion Place...The
Mews contained ten sets of stables, each with a three-roomed
flat above reached by a steep iron stairway outside...The cobbles,
scoured by the water of perpetual carriage washings, rang cleanly
under the horses' hoofs; and the horses themselves shone with
good grooming like chestnuts, or rosewood, or polished iron.
'At half past ten on a
May morning, in the year 1875, Adelaide Culver, aged ten and
a half, issued from the back door of Number 8 Albion Place, and
slipped across the Alley, and entered the Mews. She had no business
there...."
Thus Sharp begins her fascinating
chronicle of the life of Adelaide Culver, as well as the life
and rich history of 'The Mews'. The story spans over three quarters
of a century, and through it she explores the medium of human
character and resilience. Take a pampered middle class child
(with a mind definitely all her own) thrust her into a slum and
force her to live with the varied species of the English 'street
trash'--and leave her no chance of escape--what Adelaide rises
(and falls) to do to survive makes for a compelling story.
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The
Foolish Gentlewoman
First edition, London, Collins, 1948
First American edition 1948 Boston,
Little, Brown
Play by same name (starring Sybil Thorndike)
produced 1949, London
'Sentimental, affectionate,
uncritical, Mrs. Brocken so easily attached herself to persons,
places and even objects that after no more than two days in an
hotel she had a favourite waiter, a favourite ornament, a favourite
view. She had adored her husband, and was very fond of her French
pepper-mill. An old watering-can was dear to her because she
remembered seeing the gardener use it on her mother's rose-beds,
and a new alarm-clock, because it was so nice and bright. She
had thus many small sources of pleasure, inoperative perhaps
on deeper intellects, which, added together, made a sort of comfortable
woolly garment for her mind.'
'The Foolish Gentlewoman"
according to Sharp herself, "has a moral. I meant it to
show that the right thing to do is always the thing that is not
only right, but nearest to your hand." This novel is also
classic Sharp, in that she takes a house in the country, and
fills it--through various humorous circumstances--with a variety
of appealing and gently eccentric characters. Meet Isabel Brocken,
'the foolish gentlewoman', her crotchety bachelor brother-in-law
Simon, Mrs. Poole the housekeeper, a recently demobilized nephew,
Humphrey Garrett, and Jacqueline Brown, whose beauty is only
surpassed by her efficiency. Even with all of this character
mix, everything is serene until the arrival of Tilly Cuff....
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