Flaming June
Vaizey Mrs. George de Horne
English
We will print you a perfectly bound paperback of your selected title and send it to you at your nominated address
Below is a summary of Flaming June
Flaming June
By Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
________________________________________________________________________
This book is a little different from most of the others from this
author. The cast of the story are just a shade older than we are used
to in Vaizey books, and there is no one who is afflicted with a
disabling disease, such as the author herself suffered from. I suppose
you could describe the setting as the upper-class Mayfair set.
The scene opens in the house of a tidy old spinster, living in a tidy
little seaside town, in a row of large houses of similar people, sharing
private access to a well-kept garden. A rather stable existence.
There is also a nice young American girl, over in England as part of her
education, no doubt. Her father has become very rich in America, but he
is the brother of the tidy old spinster, on whom, and to whose dismay,
he has imposed Cornelia's visit. Cornelia is simply not used to the
standards of English behaviour, for instance chaperones, and not gadding
about with young men. Cornelia has quite enough pocket-money to do as
she pleases. But her aunt is proved right in the end, for among all
these nice well-brought-up people there is a baddy, which is revealed
only towards the end. NH
________________________________________________________________________
FLAMING JUNE
BY MRS. GEORGE DE HORNE VAIZEY
CHAPTER ONE.
Somewhere on the West coast of England, about a hundred miles from the
metropolis, there stands a sleepy little town, which possesses no
special activity nor beauty to justify its existence. People live in it
for reasons of their own. The people who do _not_ live in it wonder for
_what_ reasons, but attain no better solution of the mystery than the
statement that the air is very fine. "We have such bracing air!" says
the resident, as proudly as if that said air were his special invention
and property. Certain West-country doctors affect Norton-on-Sea for
patients in need of restful change, and their melancholy advent
justifies the existence of the great hotel on the esplanade, and the row
of bath-chairs at the corner. There are ten bath-chairs in all, and on
sunny days ten crumpled-looking old ladies can generally be seen sitting
inside their canopies, trundling slowly along the esplanade, accompanied
by a paid companion, dressed in black and looking sorry for herself.
Occasionally on Saturdays and Sundays a pretty daughter, or a tall son
takes the companion's place, but as sure as Monday arrives they
disappear into space. One can imagine that one hears them bidding their
farewells--"So glad to see you getting on so well, mother dear! I
positively _must_ rush back to town to attend to a hundred duties. It's
a comfort to feel that you are so well placed. Miss Biggs is a
treasure, and this air is so bracing!..."
The esplanade consists of four rows of lodging-houses and two hotels, in
front of which is a strip of grass, on which a band plays twice a week
during the summer months, and the school-children twice a day all the
year long. The invalids in the hotel object to the children and make
unsuccessful attempts to banish them from their pitch, and the children
in their turn regard the invalids with frank disdain, and make audible
and uncomplimentary surmises as to the nature of their complaints as the
procession of chairs trundles by.
In front of the green, and separating it from the steep, pebbly shore,
are a number of fishermen's shanties, bathing machines, and hulks of old
vessels stretched in a long, straggling row, while one larger shed
stands back from the rest, labelled "Lifeboat" in large white letters.
Parallel with the esplanade runs the High Street, a narrow thoroughfare
showing shops crowded with the useless little articles which are
supposed to prove irresistibly attractive to visitors to the seaside.
At the bazaar a big white label proclaims that everything in the window
is to be sold at the astounding price of "eleven-three," and the
purchaser is free to make his choice from such treasures as work-boxes
lined in crimson plush, and covered with a massed pattern in shells;
desks fitted with all the implements for writing, scent bottles tied
with blue ribbons; packets of stationery with local views, photograph
frames in plush and gelatine, or to select more perishable trophies in
glass and china, all solemnly guaranteed to be worth double the price.
At the photographer's, a few yards farther along, a visitor can have his
portrait taken a yard square, the size of a postage stamp, or on a
postcard to send to his friends. Ingenious backgrounds are on hand,
representing appropriate seaside scenes in which the sitter has nothing
to do but to press his face against a hole on the canvas, and these are
extensively patronised, for what can be more convenient than to stand on
solid earth, attired in sober, everyday clothing, yet be portrayed
splashing in the waves in the spandiest of French bathing costumes,
riding a donkey along the sands, or manfully hauling down the sails of a
yacht!
Mr Photographer Sykes is a man of resource, and deserves the prosperity
which is the envy of his neighbours. Mrs Sykes wears silk linings to
Back