George Frederick Watts, Eveleen Tennant
A virtuous young lady falls in love with a Byronic hero, her brother with their pretty cousin.
Here is another novel by Walford, for whom see Novels 018, 066, 121, and 174.
“The incidents are as interesting as is consistent with probability, and . . . the principal characters behave and talk like ladies and gentleman. . . . Walford has a keen appreciation of the irony of life.” Athenaeum, October 13, 1877.
Walford has a “faculty for observing certain types of society, which to a more careless eye would present no salient points to be seized and tabulated”; she can “take a perfectly commonplace mortal out of a crowd, and so . . . set him before a reader that the truthfulness of the presentation shall be at once recognised, and the individual become a personal acquaintance.” Academy, November 3, 1877
A contrasting view:
“There is an air about the book, a pretentiousness, an aplomb, which led us to feel that there must, somehow, be something in it. . . . Unquestionably there is something about it different from other novels; but we are unable to say that this difference is in its favour. The story never gets hold of us, and the characters come like shadows, and so depart.” Observer, October 14, 1877
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