Customer Reviews

Modern Chronicle

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How many stories and novels have been written about the pursuance of wealth and position only to find that, once achieved, neither offers much happiness? Well, here's another one. Honora Leffingwell is born into wealth, but when her parents die in an accident, she is raised by a middle-class aunt and uncle in St. Louis. She dreams of the good life, especially of the upper crust in social position, and her chance comes when a rich schoolmate invites her to spend some time at her mansion. Her head spins with the possibilities, especially when she's introduced to a number of eligible bachelors. She chooses to marry Howard Spence, a rising stockbroker. But when Honora realizes he's good at making money (it's his abiding passion) but not so hot in introducing her into society, she grows tired of him. When she meets the handsome and dynamic and well placed Hugh Chiltern, she decides to divorce Howard and marry him. Churchill spends a good deal of time with the details of this divorce, which ends up occurring in Reno, because he's very much appalled by it all.

Honora is aware that her actions will seem shocking to Chiltern's society she so desperately wants to be a part of, but thought they would accept her at last. How wrong she is! They shun her like the plague, and then Hugh turns out to be no knight in shining armor; when he dies in a riding accident, she moves to Paris and spends years repenting her foolish ambitions and destructive ways. And here's where the book should end, but Churchill couldn't imagine a novel without a happy ending, no matter how insincere. So he re-introduces Peter Erwin, a young man Honora had thrown over for Howard because he couldn't offer her the wealth and position she most wanted then to insure his happy ending. But it's terrible, corny and trite, and almost ruins the whole book, much of which has been pretty good. Up to that ending it was, without a doubt, Churchill's best novel. Honora, the main character, is well drawn by the author and retains our interest throughout the story. His satire of Howard Spence's devotion to money-making, no matter how shady the circumstances, is also well done. And the scenes of Chiltern's society people raising their venomous heads in opposition to Honora are powerful. But if only he had left Mr. Erwin out of the book! The book offers an interesting view of the "divorce question," circa 1910, though, and a well-written account of yet another woman (in this case) who learns the hard way that money and society aren't everything.