George Frederick Watts, Rachel Gurney
A stubborn squire mishandles his children and tenants.
Nothing is known of H. Bouverie Pigott except that she wrote three novels between 1862 and 1873, of which this was the second. Its plot is a standard affair of parental ambition crossed by filial willfulness, but the characters are consistent and well defined.
“An easy, natural story made up principally of incidents of family history such as any of us may have met with. . . . The characters, too, are for the most part, fashioned after ordinary types.” Athenaeum, April 15, 1865
“A domestic story of considerable ability and promise, without any particle of sensational or villanous intermixture of any kind or description whatever. This is something new in modern novel writing, and yet the interest of the story never flags. The reader’s sympathies run strongly with the hero and heroine to the very end. The characters are naturally drawn, and are precisely such as may not unfrequently be met with in ordinary life.” Caledonian Mercury, April 29, 1865
A contrasting view:
“It is so painfully harmless that it is the kind of book suited for a good-conduct prize at a young ladies’ boarding school. . . . Taken in judicious doses” it “will probably act as a wholesome soporific during the very hot summer we are threatened with.” Morning Post, April 15, 1865
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