{"id":5347,"date":"2024-05-09T15:29:05","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T15:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=5347"},"modified":"2024-05-09T15:29:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T15:29:05","slug":"review-the-country-gentleman-by-fiona-hill-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/05\/09\/review-the-country-gentleman-by-fiona-hill-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Country Gentleman by Fiona Hill (1987)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"This is an odd sort of book, one where I hated the heroine for most of it, found the hero incomprehensible and thought many of the events implausible, yet I still enjoyed it thoroughly. Partly, that\u2019s because of its age; it doesn\u2019t conform to modern standards and so I found it surprising in a multitude of ways, and that\u2019s far better than being predictable. There are some spoilers below, so don\u2019t read on if you don\u2019t want to know.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Anne Guilfoyle is a spinster of twenty-eight, living happily in London surrounded by friends, especially her admirer and the man she has loved for ten years, Lord Ensley. Unfortunately, she has only a very small portion and he needs to marry wealth, so he can\u2019t marry her, but they\u2019ve drifted merrily through the years so far, so why should that change? But change it does, for three things happen more or less simultaneously. Firstly, Lord Ensley is about to marry a suitable (and rich) young lady. Secondly, Anne\u2019s lawyer, who has been managing her funds, has lost the lot. And thirdly, she has been left a small estate in Cheshire. You see what I mean about implausible? Two of those things I might accept, but three? No.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, it forces Anne to leave her beloved London (or civilisation, as she sees it) and her equally beloved Lord Ensley, and decamp with her widowed companion, Maria, to Cheshire. Here she finds the house provincial and the nearest neighbour, one Mr Henry Highet, a country bumpkin. He is single and lives with his very managing mother.
\nIt should be noted at this point that Anne is a raging snob. She lives for sophisticated society, of which she is a leading light on account of her incisive wit, and that kind of frivolous banter is sadly lacking in Cheshire. She despises Mr Highet, although when it comes to learning how to manage her newly acquired estate, she finds that he\u2019s both knowledgeable and willing to help her. Thus she discovers that there\u2019s more to him than she\u2019d originally suspected.<\/p>\n

Into this bucolic existence comes the aforementioned Lord Ensley, who\u2019s exerting all his persuasive powers to drag Anne back to London. He misses her, you see, and he\u2019ll quite happily fund her. Some of her other London friends arrive for a visit, and decamp after a couple of days, finding it too dull for words. But she\u2019s beginning to find sources of pleasure, even so far from London, so she sends Lord Ensley away with a flea in his ear.<\/p>\n

So now we come to the spoiler. On the precise day that Lord Ensley is due to marry his heiress, Mr Highet makes a proposition to Anne. If they marry, he will make a settlement on her which will allow her to return to her life in London, and in exchange, he gets her estate. It will be a marriage of convenience only, since he\u2019s perfectly content with his mother for company. For Anne, it\u2019s perfect. She gets her life back, and also the company of her beloved Lord Ensley, who seems prepared to continue indefinitely with their cosy companionship, despite his marriage.<\/p>\n

But why does Henry suggest such a thing? It\u2019s fairly obvious to the reader that he\u2019s in love with Anne, but if so, it\u2019s a huge risk he\u2019s taking. I\u2019m not sure I believe in a man who\u2019s so selfless that he\u2019d sacrifice his own happiness entirely for the woman he loves. After all, once she\u2019s settled in London, she might never come back at all, and his mother certainly doesn\u2019t want her to.<\/p>\n

Of course, once back in town, Anne discovers that Lord Ensley is a shallow, strutting coxcomb, whom she doesn\u2019t even like very much, and this sudden revelation is perhaps the most implausible part of the whole book. She\u2019s been in love with him for ten years, for heaven\u2019s sake, and now she isn\u2019t? Usually when \u2018the scales fall from the eyes\u2019 in that dramatic way, it\u2019s because the object of affection has done something unspeakable, a betrayal of some sort. But no, Ensley\u2019s the same as he\u2019s always been, and we\u2019re supposed to believe that a few months of Henry\u2019s simple country goodness has been enough to effect this transformation? Well, whatever, and it has the desired effect because Anne hotfoots it back to Cheshire for the romantic reconciliation.<\/p>\n

And despite all my grumbles about plausibility, I still enjoyed this enormously. I do like these older books that surprise my twenty-first century self at every turn. So four stars, and I recommend it on the grounds that these issues won\u2019t bother most people in the slightest.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an odd sort of book, one where I hated the heroine for most of it, found the hero incomprehensible and thought many of the events implausible, yet I still enjoyed it thoroughly. Partly, that\u2019s because of its age; it doesn\u2019t conform to modern standards and so I found it surprising in a multitude […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[257],"class_list":["post-5347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5351,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347\/revisions\/5351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}