Autumn Passion Flower by Hermione Rivers
Author: Hermione Rivers
Publisher: Johns & Fairfield (UK), Vandemeer &Apfelbaum Inc (USA)
Source book: Private Enterprise by Angela Thirkell (Barsetshire #16)
We first learn of Hermione Rivers and her extremely successful novels about middle-aged women having a chaste fling with a handsome younger man in Pomfret Towers. But although a great many characters in a number of Angela Thirkell’s books seem to have read a selection of Mrs Rivers's books, and they describe the plots at length, we do not discover any of the titles until Private Enterprise.
I am delighted to report that Autumn Passion Flower was chosen by the Middle-Aged Women's Book Guild. Although I can’t remember if it was a Book of the Month or what. Sorry.
Unfortunately Mrs Rivers is not a very nice person. She takes advantage of being related to Lord Pomfret (by marriage) to invite herself to Pomfret Towers for months at a time. Her daughter Phoebe becomes an actress to avoid her (but later marries Lord Harberton or possibly Lord Humberton: sometimes characters get an unexpected name change), and her artist son Julian despises her. She terrorises her publisher Mr Johns, of Johns & Fairfield, into paying her a lot more money than he meant to. However she gets quite miffed when the librarian of the Barchester General Library refers to her book as Autumn Crocus, and tells her how amusing his brother and fellow officers in the Army of the Rhine found her last book.
But, for some reason, Mrs Rivers's books are very successful. She employs a secretary to answer her fan mail, gives away quantities of signed photographs, and has a cuttings agency keep her abreast of her reviews.
Mrs Rivers’s first book, as described by her son Julian: it’s about a middle-aged woman who goes on a cruise to Norway and has a terrific comeback with a young Professor. And there’s a lot about fjords and salmon fishing.
Here’s another described by Sally Wicklow: the one about the woman whose husband is in love with his typist, at least he isn’t really, but it looks like it, and so she goes off to Danzig and goes off the deep end a bit with a man in the diplomatic, but nothing really happens, only when her husband comes to fetch her he thinks she’s looking so jolly young and well, all because of the man she nearly went off the deep end about, that he has a kind of reconciliation, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff about the history of Danzig and the Polish corridor and the old houses and that sort of stuff, absolutely as good as a guide book only better.
Lady Pomfret has read one too: it’s about people in Rome. A woman with a grown-up son who lets herself have a kind of affair with a young American writer. When the characters spoke Italian it was not very correct, says Lady Pomfret, who has spent a lot of time in Italy. Of course the heroine was meant to be herself (Hermione Rivers) but that was so foolish. Everyone knows that although she has made her husband’s - Lord Pomfret’s cousin you know - life a perfect burden by her airs, she is a most faithful wife. In fact I don’t think any man has ever looked at her, so she has hardly had much chance.
The Archdeacon from Plumstead Episcopi has read another; he talks about a book which had, he gathered, been chosen to represent the best of current literature for the year, or month, it is immaterial. The action took place in Buenos Aires with which he was himself intimately acquainted, having been English chaplain there for two years before he came to Barchester. Not only were the scraps of Spanish in the dialogue far from accurate, but the subject was the illicit passion of a middle-aged woman for a young Spanish landowner. And, although the passion was not consummated, said the Archdeacon in his pulpit voice, the moral effect was the same. He had sent the book back to the library. And he was ashamed that an Englishwoman should have written so. Unfortunately the Archdeacon could not remember the author’s name and spoke in front of Mrs Rivers who flushed angrily. Everyone in the room was struck dumb by the awful use of the word consummated.
Mrs Rivers also wrote a book where the heroine, Lady Travers, slim and alluring in her riding kit, wandered, guide book in hand, at Angkor Wat, only too conscious that her heart was blossoming at the sound of the Corsican savant’s voice. The heroine’s husband (Sir Hugh) was a little cold, and her children did not understand her, and her marvellous talent as a pianist was unappreciated, but here, in the tent of the Marquis dei Franchi, who never travelled without his Steinway.... [well, that’s quite enough of that].
And in Happy Returns Mrs Rivers is writing yet another book, about a woman who thought she had Found Love in a young writer who had written a play which ran for one night at a kind of theatre-club all about how one must be BRAVE in Love, which included everyone being as nasty as possible to everyone to express one’s real Self. No title for this one, again. And if the young writer or his play had a name or a title they too might be eligible for inclusion in this blog. Since this is all we know or will ever know about said writer, I think we can safely abandon any further thoughts on the subject.
I don’t think I have read a book quite like one of Mrs Rivers’s bestsellers. They sound fairly rubbishy but rather fun. I imagine if you enjoyed one, you’d enjoy them all. Although perhaps not this last one. If you ask me, Mrs Rivers is trying to bring her subject up to date (into the 1950s) which is not always a good thing.
Luckily in Close Quarters Mrs Rivers is back on her usual form and Mrs MacFadyen, Margot Phelps as was, reads about a beautiful young South American señorita (if that is what they are called) who married a Canadian and pined away in Calgary till her husband found out what was biting her and got a job in Uruguay and on the way there in the plane (or one of the planes possibly) she met an English Diplomat who was Correct but with the Heart of a Boy and owing to being in a plane their love could never be consummated [perhaps Mrs Rivers was not aware of the Mile High Club?] But once a year he sent her a cable signed Forever and she sent him back a faded rose and her husband could not have cared less which made it Far Worse for her because to be Misunderstood would have given her just the pep she needed. But one can’t have everything.
Also by Mrs Rivers Esthonian Equinox and Lad's Love but sadly we know nothing of these plots.
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