REVIEW: Princess Candida
Jul. 20th, 2024 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllPrincess Candida: Katharine Oldmeadow, Collins
I wonder if the publishers or someone suggested that Oldmeadow ought to write her own version of ‘A Little Princess’, for there’s a flavour of that to ‘Princess Candida’, although it’s more in the girls own vein, and written with Oldmeadow’s style. Miss Wymer is the headmistress of a small school for girls who wouldn’t fit in in larger schools. The school is at the delightful Magnolia House, which still has a dainty foot in the eighteenth century. It is the start of January, a week before term resumes, when Miss Wymer’s plans for a cosy afternoon are turned upside down when her senior maid and martinet, Eliz, answers the front door. A young girl in the most ridiculous get-up – a fur coat that’s too big for her and a white muslin dress that isn’t suitable for the winter beneath it – has arrived on their doorstep, begging to be allowed to join the school.
She is Candida Dumanoir, a half-French, half-English girl, recently orphaned after the death of her mother. Her mother’s wish was for her to go to an English school, she says, and she has jewels to pay for this education. Miss Wymer’s soft heart makes her let the girl stay the night while she tries to confirm her story. A letter from an elderly priest in Brittany does. Without any relative, only an old maid back in France, Candida, her worldly belongings and clothes inherited from her mother, becomes Miss Wymer’s responsibility and the twenty-first pupil of a select school. (There was apparently no difficulty for a girl of about thirteen with no guardian to travel from one country to another. Different times or different rules in a girls’ book!?)
Still grieving her mother and having led a sheltered life, Candida is a curious little innocent with just enough stubbornness to irritate Eliza. Miss Wymer‘s insistence on obedience and Candida’s circumstances make her stand out from all the other girls once they arrive. They call her Princess Candida, one of them impersonates her, a few of them rag her, and Candida’s ignorance of the first law of school life: thou shall not sneak (for she answers mistresses honestly) means that they all cold-shoulder her. Oldmeadow writes her so sympathetically that the reader realises fully that she doesn’t have a relative in the world. Her well-meaning and kindly headmistress’s efforts to make things better go astray. Candida’s talent as a born dancer and the praise she gets for it putting out the other girls is one example of this.
The juniors scent a mystery – who does Candida think she is? Why is she haunting the attics? They wrongly assume that they are in the kind of book where a royal secretly attends a school. Although they also think that Candida has a Bolshevik uncle because she’s ‘foreign’. (Eliza is pretty racist. as is the gardener, who believes that the current owner of Magnolia House, who lives in China, is on the verge of bringing a horde of pigtailed furriners to overrun his garden.)
It is in fact in the kind of book where the new girl has a secret connection to the house that now houses the school. I mentioned ‘The Little Princess’, well, take away all the references to India and replace them with France and China. Emotional Candida who speaks the English most correct has to learn to be more English and not gush (which is promoted as a good thing) and navigate her way through slang, with little help.
As I said, there’s an obsession with the 18th century in Magnolia House, with the dormitories named after Sarah Siddons, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen (referred to as Sally, Fanny, Maria and Jane by the girls). The history of the Twelvetree family who used to own Magnolia House is slowly related. All the daughters of the house used to be called Magnolia, and the ‘little missus’ broke her father’s heart by running away with a foreigner, and so he disinherited her.
Wise, motherly Miss Wymer is a type you’ll find in other Oldmeadow books, as is Lorraine, the girl who attracts Candida the most, Lorraine, who will break rules and talk slang as much as the other girls, but has a bit more insight and conscience. Responsible head girl Isobel, who is precious about her dignity is also an Oldmeadow type. I thought Oldmeadow could have done more with the girls not being fit for a larger school, but they’re mainly a bunch of traits – the curious one, the greedy one – and quite a few probably would have enjoyed themselves more at Heathcote, the local big school.
What is different (and again an echo of ‘The Little Princess’) is the London setting, with the girls walking in Hampstead Heath and able to visit the National Gallery on one occasion. All comes right for lonely Candida after a run of bad news. I was never sure what was so dreadful about Monsieur Dumanoir, granted, he swept Candida’s naïve, sheltered mother off her feet and didn’t seem to have enough money (although he seems to have come from an aristocratic lineage too), and granted he died after impregnating his wife five times – Candida was the only child who survived, leaving her sick, but was his greatest crime…to be French?
There were flashes of what I like about Oldmeadow’s writing here, she writes about her characters’ motivations well, and Candida is sympathetic despite her tendency to be tragic.
I wonder if the publishers or someone suggested that Oldmeadow ought to write her own version of ‘A Little Princess’, for there’s a flavour of that to ‘Princess Candida’, although it’s more in the girls own vein, and written with Oldmeadow’s style. Miss Wymer is the headmistress of a small school for girls who wouldn’t fit in in larger schools. The school is at the delightful Magnolia House, which still has a dainty foot in the eighteenth century. It is the start of January, a week before term resumes, when Miss Wymer’s plans for a cosy afternoon are turned upside down when her senior maid and martinet, Eliz, answers the front door. A young girl in the most ridiculous get-up – a fur coat that’s too big for her and a white muslin dress that isn’t suitable for the winter beneath it – has arrived on their doorstep, begging to be allowed to join the school.
She is Candida Dumanoir, a half-French, half-English girl, recently orphaned after the death of her mother. Her mother’s wish was for her to go to an English school, she says, and she has jewels to pay for this education. Miss Wymer’s soft heart makes her let the girl stay the night while she tries to confirm her story. A letter from an elderly priest in Brittany does. Without any relative, only an old maid back in France, Candida, her worldly belongings and clothes inherited from her mother, becomes Miss Wymer’s responsibility and the twenty-first pupil of a select school. (There was apparently no difficulty for a girl of about thirteen with no guardian to travel from one country to another. Different times or different rules in a girls’ book!?)
Still grieving her mother and having led a sheltered life, Candida is a curious little innocent with just enough stubbornness to irritate Eliza. Miss Wymer‘s insistence on obedience and Candida’s circumstances make her stand out from all the other girls once they arrive. They call her Princess Candida, one of them impersonates her, a few of them rag her, and Candida’s ignorance of the first law of school life: thou shall not sneak (for she answers mistresses honestly) means that they all cold-shoulder her. Oldmeadow writes her so sympathetically that the reader realises fully that she doesn’t have a relative in the world. Her well-meaning and kindly headmistress’s efforts to make things better go astray. Candida’s talent as a born dancer and the praise she gets for it putting out the other girls is one example of this.
The juniors scent a mystery – who does Candida think she is? Why is she haunting the attics? They wrongly assume that they are in the kind of book where a royal secretly attends a school. Although they also think that Candida has a Bolshevik uncle because she’s ‘foreign’. (Eliza is pretty racist. as is the gardener, who believes that the current owner of Magnolia House, who lives in China, is on the verge of bringing a horde of pigtailed furriners to overrun his garden.)
It is in fact in the kind of book where the new girl has a secret connection to the house that now houses the school. I mentioned ‘The Little Princess’, well, take away all the references to India and replace them with France and China. Emotional Candida who speaks the English most correct has to learn to be more English and not gush (which is promoted as a good thing) and navigate her way through slang, with little help.
As I said, there’s an obsession with the 18th century in Magnolia House, with the dormitories named after Sarah Siddons, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen (referred to as Sally, Fanny, Maria and Jane by the girls). The history of the Twelvetree family who used to own Magnolia House is slowly related. All the daughters of the house used to be called Magnolia, and the ‘little missus’ broke her father’s heart by running away with a foreigner, and so he disinherited her.
Wise, motherly Miss Wymer is a type you’ll find in other Oldmeadow books, as is Lorraine, the girl who attracts Candida the most, Lorraine, who will break rules and talk slang as much as the other girls, but has a bit more insight and conscience. Responsible head girl Isobel, who is precious about her dignity is also an Oldmeadow type. I thought Oldmeadow could have done more with the girls not being fit for a larger school, but they’re mainly a bunch of traits – the curious one, the greedy one – and quite a few probably would have enjoyed themselves more at Heathcote, the local big school.
What is different (and again an echo of ‘The Little Princess’) is the London setting, with the girls walking in Hampstead Heath and able to visit the National Gallery on one occasion. All comes right for lonely Candida after a run of bad news. I was never sure what was so dreadful about Monsieur Dumanoir, granted, he swept Candida’s naïve, sheltered mother off her feet and didn’t seem to have enough money (although he seems to have come from an aristocratic lineage too), and granted he died after impregnating his wife five times – Candida was the only child who survived, leaving her sick, but was his greatest crime…to be French?
There were flashes of what I like about Oldmeadow’s writing here, she writes about her characters’ motivations well, and Candida is sympathetic despite her tendency to be tragic.
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Date: 2024-07-21 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-21 01:57 pm (UTC)