Review: Miss Lockharte’s Letters by Barbara Metzger (1998)

A seriously peculiar book, wildly implausible and with a veritable tsunami of anachronisms but very, very funny, for all that.

Here’s the premise: Miss Rosellen Lockharte has fallen on hard times. Her clergyman father has died, leaving her penniless, and although her uncle tried, rather half-heartedly, to introduce her into London society, his daughter’s machinations got Rosellen compromised and banished in disgrace. Since then she’s been eking out a poor living teaching penmanship to the daughters of the aristocracy at a rather shady girls’ school. An outbreak of influenza at the school makes her so ill that she’s convinced she’s going to die. As a last act before death, she decides to write to all the people who, in one way or another, set her on this road to poverty and illness, to tell them (after listing all their transgressions) that she forgives them. Except for one, Wynn, Viscount Stanford – his crime is too heinous for forgiveness.

Rosellen survives the influenza, but several mysterious accidents leave her even worse off than before. But help is on its way, in the shape of most of the people she wrote to, but particularly Viscount Stanley, who is the first to actually reach her in her paltry attic room. He’s brought flowers and is ready to beat a hasty retreat, but a single tear as he’s about to leave makes him decide to help her. He whisks her away from the school, thinking he’ll send her to one of his more distant estates to recover and be looked after, but after various mishaps, he gradually develops a new plan – he’ll take her to London, to the care of his mother and sister, and introduce her into society and… well, we can see where this is going. This is one of the pleasures of the story, Wynn’s gradual realisation that, however prickly and spirited and independent Rosellen is, she’s exactly right for him.

I’m going to be honest, and say that credibility isn’t this book’s strongest suit. The ‘accidents’ that befall Rosellen and her miraculous escapes from them are almost too silly for words, some of the characters are pretty silly, too, not to mention the dog, and Wynn’s determined refusal to believe that someone is trying to kill her is really carried too far. But the moment when he realises the truth is just perfect. “You could have been killed,” he says, horrified. “I could have lost you.”

The romance, once it gets going, is the strongest part of the book. The plot is distinctly wobbly (why does the villain keep trying to murder Rosellen even when the reason for it is gone?), the loose threads are more or less tied up at the end almost as an afterthought, and I’m still not entirely clear where the fifty pounds came from, or why. As for historical accuracy, forget it. But it’s the funniest book I’ve read for months, and that alone makes it worthy of four stars. Here’s just one sample that made me laugh out loud:

‘Uncle would turn purple with apoplexy at the price of Rosellen’s ball gown. Aunt Haverhill would go ashen at the low cut. Clarice would turn green with envy. Rosellen was pink with pleasure.’