Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946
Description
A passionate heroine defies the English class system in this novel set in 1875 London--perfect for lovers of Edith Wharton and Downton Abbey. Around the corner from the elegant townhouses on Albion Place is Britannia Mews, a squalid neighborhood where servants and coachmen live. In 1875, it's no place for a young girl of fine breeding, but independent-minded Adelaide Culver is fascinated by what goes on there. Years later, Adelaide shocks her family when she falls in love with an impoverished artist and moves into the mews. But violence shatters Adelaide's dreams. In a dangerous new world, she must fend for herself--until she meets a charismatic stranger and her life takes a turn she never expected. A novel about social manners and mores reminiscent of Edith Wharton, this story of love, family, and the price one must pay for throwing off the shackles of convention is also a witty and incisive dissection of the "upstairs, downstairs" English class system of the last two centuries. … (more)
Media reviews
Wings - The Literary Guild Review
The witty pen that wrote Cluny Brown tells of people living in the Mews from 1875 to modern blitz-torn London. The heroine is Adelaide with a penchant for alcoholic lovers. Her first, Henry, dies from what Adelaid tells the coroner was a fall. Then there is Gilbert an ex-actor with whom she
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operates a puppet theatre. An amusing combination of the period piece and modern novel. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
For sheer engrossing story-telling and hard-to-put-down-ness, this book is going to be very near the top of my list this year. I started reading it the day it arrived in my mailbox from a generous LT friend, thinking I'd use it to fill in those snatched reading intervals when I didn't have time to
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get lost in something deeper. It turned out to be the book I couldn't wait to get back to. The story begins and ends in Britannia Mews, which came into existence to serve as stables and living quarters for the coachmen of the tenants of the fashionable houses of Albion Place. Over the years the character of the mews changes repeatedly, reflecting changes in English society, becoming a slum, then a bohemian retreat from Victorian conventionality, then a fashionable address in its own right, and finally a brave pocket of survival during the bombing of London during World War II. Changing along with the location is Adelaide Culver Lambert, who we meet as a pampered child of Albion place giving a penny to a ragged girl she encounters during a forbidden foray into the mews. When Adelaide elopes with her drawing master at the age of 21, her life becomes inextricably entwined with that of Britannia Mews. My copy of this book came with a reprint of the original Book-of-the-Month Club description of the novel. I can say nothing more to the point than this: "Britannia Mews described quietly and competently the evolution of character and customs in England from Victoria to World War II...in all its pages there is not a single dull or turgid moment." Recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member Sarahursula
Britannia Mews is a novel rooted in a particular place, the mews dwellings 'to accommodate the carriage-horses, coachmen, and other respectable dependants of the ten houses in Albion Place.' Like Helen Ashton (in Bricks and Mortar and The Half-Crown House) Sharp follows the fortunes of her central
Adelaide Culver is the opinionated little Victorian miss whose life will be entwined with the mews for the rest of her life. Without revealing the plot, Adelaide is a young girl ill at ease with middle-class restrictions and who pushes at the acceptable rules of engagement between a young lady and the world at large with an almost wilful sense of recklessness and adventure. Her story goes veers from the genteel pages of 'The Girl's Own Paper' and 'The Woman at Home' to the macabre pages of 'The Police Gazette' .
Happily married herself, Sharp was fascinated by women's marital choices and romantic alliances and Britannia Mews has its difficult girl (not the archetypal bad) in Adelaide and the good Victorian girl in Alice her pretty cousin. There's Adelaide's fascinating aunt Mrs Burnett, who 'looked richer than the richest person the Culvers knew'. Belle Burnett is beautiful, wealthy but divorced. Miss Yates is the serious girl with a fondness for practical good works who tries to befriend Adelaide and is rebuffed with a 'a curious, fleeting, but quite definite sensation of regret'. Adelaide is taking a different path. Her path includes the revolting Mrs Mounsey known as 'The Sow', the unreliable Henry Lambert and the intriguing Gilbert Lauderdale and the novel stretches from the 1870s until the Second World War. This is no comfort read but do take it up because it is so worthwhile. Sharp's novel is a retelling of a Victorian morality tale told to frighten wayward girls in the schoolroom, told with a feminist sensibility and also a respect for old-fashioned grit and making the best of one's situation. An awkward, foolhardy heroine but one to remember.
The review is part of Margery Sharp Day 2015 celebrating the 110th anniversary of her birth organised by Fleur in her World.
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character through her relationship with this architecture and place. Adelaide Culver is the opinionated little Victorian miss whose life will be entwined with the mews for the rest of her life. Without revealing the plot, Adelaide is a young girl ill at ease with middle-class restrictions and who pushes at the acceptable rules of engagement between a young lady and the world at large with an almost wilful sense of recklessness and adventure. Her story goes veers from the genteel pages of 'The Girl's Own Paper' and 'The Woman at Home' to the macabre pages of 'The Police Gazette' .
Happily married herself, Sharp was fascinated by women's marital choices and romantic alliances and Britannia Mews has its difficult girl (not the archetypal bad) in Adelaide and the good Victorian girl in Alice her pretty cousin. There's Adelaide's fascinating aunt Mrs Burnett, who 'looked richer than the richest person the Culvers knew'. Belle Burnett is beautiful, wealthy but divorced. Miss Yates is the serious girl with a fondness for practical good works who tries to befriend Adelaide and is rebuffed with a 'a curious, fleeting, but quite definite sensation of regret'. Adelaide is taking a different path. Her path includes the revolting Mrs Mounsey known as 'The Sow', the unreliable Henry Lambert and the intriguing Gilbert Lauderdale and the novel stretches from the 1870s until the Second World War. This is no comfort read but do take it up because it is so worthwhile. Sharp's novel is a retelling of a Victorian morality tale told to frighten wayward girls in the schoolroom, told with a feminist sensibility and also a respect for old-fashioned grit and making the best of one's situation. An awkward, foolhardy heroine but one to remember.
The review is part of Margery Sharp Day 2015 celebrating the 110th anniversary of her birth organised by Fleur in her World.
Show Less
LibraryThing member BeyondEdenRock
Every time I pick up one of Margery Sharp’s books I find both things that are wonderfully familiar and things that make each book feel quite distinctive.
This particular book, that I plucked from the middle of her backlist, sets out the story of one remarkable woman and one London Street. It makes
“There had always been this quality about Britannia Mews, that to step into it from Albion Alley was like stepping into a self-contained and separate small world. No one who passed under the archway ever had any doubt as to what sort of place he was entering — in 1865, model stables; in 1880, a slum; in 1900, a respectable working class court. Thus, when an address in a mews came to imply a high degree of fashion, Britannia Mews was unmistakably smart.”
Adelaide was born late in the 19th century, the only daughter of a very well to do family, she was brought up in a fashionable row of London townhouses called Albion Place, and she grew into an inquisitive and independent thinking young woman.
Her family’s carriage and horses were housed nearby in Britannia Mews. There was a row of stable for the horses on one side of an alley, there was a row of coach-houses on the other, and over the coach-houses there was living accommodation for the coachmen and their families. The residents were sensible working class people, who worked hard and took a pride in their homes, but they were worlds apart from the grand residents of Albion Place.
Adelaide loved her life, her home, and her extended family; but she came to realise that she didn’t want the conventional life that her mother was mapping out for her. Maybe that was why, when she found herself alone with her drawing master and he flirted with her quite outrageously, she saw a grand romance and began to plan to elope.
They were married before she learned that Henry Lambert wasn’t the man she thought he was; that he was better at talking about art than creating it; that he flirted with all of his students; that he was dissolute, penniless and saw nothing wrong with living in squalid rented rooms at Britannia Mews.
The Mews had deteriorated into a slum as fewer of the residents of Albion Place thought it necessary to keep their own coach and horses.
“Adelaide was very little of a fool: she had gone into the Mews as thought with her eyes open, prepared for the worst; she would have laughed as much as Henry at the idea of calling or being called on; but she had expected to be able to ignore her surroundings. They were to live in a little world of their own, in a bubble of love and hope, whose elastic, iridescent walls no squalor could penetrate. Within a week she discovered that while she could see and hear, such isolation was impossible.”
Many young women in that position would have allowed their family to rescue them from their dreadful situation, would have wept because they had made such a terrible mistake, but not Adelaide. She picked herself up; she tidied and polished and cleaned; and she did her level best to set her husband on the right track.
That was one battle she couldn’t win, but fighting it changed her life, and she began to change her life. She lost her husband but she found a new love and she found herself at the centre of a rich community of characters at Britannia Mews.
That came about in an extraordinary way. Henry Lambert left behind a valuable legacy: a basket full of exquisite, hand-crafted marionettes that had been his greatest work, that had been his pride and joy. Adelaide hated them, but her new love saw wonderful possibilities.
‘To step under the archway, in 1922, was like stepping into a toy village—a very expensive toy from Hamley’s or Harrods: with a touch of the Russian Ballet about it, as though at any moment a door might fly open upon Petroushka or the Doll, for the colours of the doors, like the colours of the window-curtains, were unusually bright and varied; green, yellow, orange. Outside them stood tubs of begonias, or little clipped bushes. The five dwarf houses facing west were two-storey, with large downstairs rooms converted from old coach-houses; opposite four stables had been thrown into one to make the Puppet Theatre. The Theatre thus dominated the scene, but with a certain sobriety; its paintwork was a dark olive, the sign above the entrance a straightforward piece of lettering…People often said that the theatre made the Mews.’
Adelaide loved it but she missed her old life. She would have loved to live in her parents’ new country house, but she knew that to go home she would have to give up her independence and admit that she had taken the wrong path in life, and she could not bring herself to do that. But she couldn’t quite let go of her family, they couldn’t quite let go of her, and certain members of her family were drawn to the wonderful puppet theatre at Britannia Mews.
The story follows Adelaide, her family, her neighbours and her puppet theatre thorough the Second World War, until she is a very old lady and a younger generation is making new plans for the people and the puppets of Britannia Mews.
That story was compelling, it loses focus a little when the story moves to the next generation, but it picks up again in the war years and for a beautifully pitched final act.
This is a quieter, more serious book than many of Margery Sharp’s, but there are flashes of her wonderful wit, and many moments that have lovely, emotional insight. She acknowledges some people have good reason to not like Adelaide, but I am not one of them. I loved her and I loved her story.
It works because the puppet theatre was a wonderful idea and its realisation was pitch perfect.
It works because it is populated by a wonderful array of characters, who take the story in some interesting and unexpected directions; and it is so cleverly crafted that it reads like a fascinating true story – a tale of people that lived and breathed, a chapter of London’s history – that had been plucked from obscurity to delight a new generation of readers.
I am so glad that I chose this book to read to mark Margery Sharp's birthday.
This particular book, that I plucked from the middle of her backlist, sets out the story of one remarkable woman and one London Street. It makes
Show More
a wonderful entertainment, and, along the way, it says much about how English society changed between the reign of Queen Victoria and the Second World War.“There had always been this quality about Britannia Mews, that to step into it from Albion Alley was like stepping into a self-contained and separate small world. No one who passed under the archway ever had any doubt as to what sort of place he was entering — in 1865, model stables; in 1880, a slum; in 1900, a respectable working class court. Thus, when an address in a mews came to imply a high degree of fashion, Britannia Mews was unmistakably smart.”
Adelaide was born late in the 19th century, the only daughter of a very well to do family, she was brought up in a fashionable row of London townhouses called Albion Place, and she grew into an inquisitive and independent thinking young woman.
Her family’s carriage and horses were housed nearby in Britannia Mews. There was a row of stable for the horses on one side of an alley, there was a row of coach-houses on the other, and over the coach-houses there was living accommodation for the coachmen and their families. The residents were sensible working class people, who worked hard and took a pride in their homes, but they were worlds apart from the grand residents of Albion Place.
Adelaide loved her life, her home, and her extended family; but she came to realise that she didn’t want the conventional life that her mother was mapping out for her. Maybe that was why, when she found herself alone with her drawing master and he flirted with her quite outrageously, she saw a grand romance and began to plan to elope.
They were married before she learned that Henry Lambert wasn’t the man she thought he was; that he was better at talking about art than creating it; that he flirted with all of his students; that he was dissolute, penniless and saw nothing wrong with living in squalid rented rooms at Britannia Mews.
The Mews had deteriorated into a slum as fewer of the residents of Albion Place thought it necessary to keep their own coach and horses.
“Adelaide was very little of a fool: she had gone into the Mews as thought with her eyes open, prepared for the worst; she would have laughed as much as Henry at the idea of calling or being called on; but she had expected to be able to ignore her surroundings. They were to live in a little world of their own, in a bubble of love and hope, whose elastic, iridescent walls no squalor could penetrate. Within a week she discovered that while she could see and hear, such isolation was impossible.”
Many young women in that position would have allowed their family to rescue them from their dreadful situation, would have wept because they had made such a terrible mistake, but not Adelaide. She picked herself up; she tidied and polished and cleaned; and she did her level best to set her husband on the right track.
That was one battle she couldn’t win, but fighting it changed her life, and she began to change her life. She lost her husband but she found a new love and she found herself at the centre of a rich community of characters at Britannia Mews.
That came about in an extraordinary way. Henry Lambert left behind a valuable legacy: a basket full of exquisite, hand-crafted marionettes that had been his greatest work, that had been his pride and joy. Adelaide hated them, but her new love saw wonderful possibilities.
‘To step under the archway, in 1922, was like stepping into a toy village—a very expensive toy from Hamley’s or Harrods: with a touch of the Russian Ballet about it, as though at any moment a door might fly open upon Petroushka or the Doll, for the colours of the doors, like the colours of the window-curtains, were unusually bright and varied; green, yellow, orange. Outside them stood tubs of begonias, or little clipped bushes. The five dwarf houses facing west were two-storey, with large downstairs rooms converted from old coach-houses; opposite four stables had been thrown into one to make the Puppet Theatre. The Theatre thus dominated the scene, but with a certain sobriety; its paintwork was a dark olive, the sign above the entrance a straightforward piece of lettering…People often said that the theatre made the Mews.’
Adelaide loved it but she missed her old life. She would have loved to live in her parents’ new country house, but she knew that to go home she would have to give up her independence and admit that she had taken the wrong path in life, and she could not bring herself to do that. But she couldn’t quite let go of her family, they couldn’t quite let go of her, and certain members of her family were drawn to the wonderful puppet theatre at Britannia Mews.
The story follows Adelaide, her family, her neighbours and her puppet theatre thorough the Second World War, until she is a very old lady and a younger generation is making new plans for the people and the puppets of Britannia Mews.
That story was compelling, it loses focus a little when the story moves to the next generation, but it picks up again in the war years and for a beautifully pitched final act.
This is a quieter, more serious book than many of Margery Sharp’s, but there are flashes of her wonderful wit, and many moments that have lovely, emotional insight. She acknowledges some people have good reason to not like Adelaide, but I am not one of them. I loved her and I loved her story.
It works because the puppet theatre was a wonderful idea and its realisation was pitch perfect.
It works because it is populated by a wonderful array of characters, who take the story in some interesting and unexpected directions; and it is so cleverly crafted that it reads like a fascinating true story – a tale of people that lived and breathed, a chapter of London’s history – that had been plucked from obscurity to delight a new generation of readers.
I am so glad that I chose this book to read to mark Margery Sharp's birthday.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kylekatz
!946. This is my favorite Margery Sharp so far, my fourth. Adelaide is a girl from a moderately well-off family who runs amok. She decides to run off with her drawing instructor whose prospects are not promising. He soon takes to drink and abuses her. They live in Brittania Mews, which was
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originally built as stables for the nice houses around it and lodging for the servants, but soon became derelict after the horses had gone. There is some murder, blackmail, and miscellaneous shenanigans before she starts a successful puppet theatre in the Mews, of all things, and is part of it gentrifying and becoming quite a fashionable address. She is another of Sharp's queerly independent women, with little contact with her family, just sort of doing her own thing. Indomitable. Show Less
LibraryThing member Limelite
Sigh. Not for me. I found the novel too mundane and the heroine uninspired. Dare I say insipid? Dare I say suffering from a paucity of humor? Not for lack of effort on my part! I'm grateful that it is an audio Chirp book because I could let it play on and on from my laptop, allow myself to be
Thankfully, I rarely get "skunked" by a book to this degree. But Sharp's novel did have the deleterious effect of putting me off reading anything for quite a while. Luckily, I have been rescued from the doldrums by a mother lode of excellent Santa Thing books and am excited to get back to my lifetime habit, having shed the clingy cobweb mess of filthy Victorian London and its little suburb of sour downtroddens who writhe in the decaying row houses of Britannia Mews, a neighborhood where everything is downhill from elsewhere.
But, rejoice! A bit like the heroine, I have seen better days again. Only mine are much better among my mini-stack of new gifts to revel within!
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interrupted and called away while the narrator continued her workman like job of speaking into empty air, and not have to pick up a tree book, hunt for the right page, and force myself to go on, word by word, with reading the story.Thankfully, I rarely get "skunked" by a book to this degree. But Sharp's novel did have the deleterious effect of putting me off reading anything for quite a while. Luckily, I have been rescued from the doldrums by a mother lode of excellent Santa Thing books and am excited to get back to my lifetime habit, having shed the clingy cobweb mess of filthy Victorian London and its little suburb of sour downtroddens who writhe in the decaying row houses of Britannia Mews, a neighborhood where everything is downhill from elsewhere.
But, rejoice! A bit like the heroine, I have seen better days again. Only mine are much better among my mini-stack of new gifts to revel within!
Show Less
Awards
Notable Books List (1946)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1946
Physical description
377 p.; 21 cm