Did ever a book have such an unpromising title? I can only suppose that by the time Frances Hodgson Burnett published it, in 1913, she was famous enough not to need to grab readers with snappy titles. But maybe she thought it would be intriguing, and maybe she was right. I happened upon it among the Kindle books on my iPad the other day, and couldn't think where I'd got it or why or when. I've since discovered it was because it had been recommended by the lovely Elaine of Random Jottings, who like me is a lover of the old and forgotten in the way of books. Anyway, having loved Frances Hodgson Burnett ever since before I could read, when my mother read me The Secret Garden from her own childhood copy, I plunged in regardless.
So -- T. Tembarom. Such is the name of a young boy born in New York, the son of a feckless English father and a soon dead mother. In fact it's not really his name, which is Temple Temple Baron, but that sounds so strange to the ears of his contemporaries that he adopts a more acceptable alternative. Having to bring himself up on the New York streets from the age of ten would probably scar most people for life, but T.Tembarom, as well as having much natural intelligence, has been born fundamentally good, to naturally grow straight, as Burnett puts it, and nothing will change that. He steadily betters himself, and by his early twenties has got a good job as the society editor of a newspaper, lives in a nice, if simple boarding house, and has fallen in love with a fellow lodger, Little Ann, whose Lancashire father is desperately and unsuccessfull trying to sell an important invention. When he gets a raise, he and Ann start to talk seriously about marriage, but then something happens that will change both their lives forever.
On the doorstep one day appears a lawyer from England, with the astonishing news that TT's father had been the heir to a massive estate in Lancashire, and that he must come to England to assume the title and the wealth that goes with it. Somewhat unwillingly he agrees, seeing really that he has no option, though he'd rather stay in New York and marry Little Ann -- who, however, says he must wait a year and see if he still wants to marry her at the end. Although she doesn't want to believe it, she fears that he will be changed, and will want to marry a beautiful aristocratic lady such as appears in the fashionable magazines. So off he goes, taking with him Mr Strangeways, a mysterious man he picked up off the street one day with several thousand dollars in his pocket and an apparently irretrievably lost memory.
Everyone in Lancashire, from the servants to the villagers to the local aristocracy, thinks they know what to expect -- a brash, uneducated American who will be highly offensive to their sensibilities. So the great joy of this absolutely delightful novel is in watching everyone's preconceptions being defeated. TT is entirely loveable, and has soon taken under his wing his poor elderly relative Miss Alicia, whose life is totally transformed. He makes friends with a local Duke, who really understands and appreciates him, and -- well, in the end, everything turns out just fine, though perhaps not exactly as was originally envisaged.
I loved every minute of this. I've been reading a lot of crime novels lately for various reasons, and this was just wanted I needed to wash my mind clean. I've tried a couple of Burnett's adult novels -- The Making of a Marchioness and The Shuttle -- and they were OK, but I thought this one was better. As you may have spotted, it's a sort of return to the theme of her very first huge success, Little Lord Fauntleroy, which I'm actually reading at the moment and finding far less sickly sweet than its reputation. But what interested me the most about it was the way in which Burnett used the novel to provide a demonstration of her most deeply held beliefs. She was a follower of Theosophy, which I've always thought of as a sort of spin-off from Hinduism, though Wikipedia shows me that it has a long history in the Western world. But it seems to me that TT's irradicable goodness must owe something to this system, which also includes a belief in reincarnation. On that, there's an interesting throwaway moment when TT gets to know a clever young crippled boy in the village and finds it impossible to believe that the boy is only ten. Burnett comments:
He was in fact ten hundred, if those of his generation had been aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade of his present incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of the use of his legs.
There's really nothing not to like in this novel, and what's more it is entirely free to download on Kindle, though I shall be looking out for a lovely printed copy like the one in the picture.