The Light Heart by Elswyth Thane, one of the Williamsburg Novels

Title: The Light Heart
Author: Elswyth Thane
Publication: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, hardcover, 1947
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: America, Great Britain, Germany

Description: The fourth Williamsburg novel is about Phoebe Sprague, daughter of Sedgwick from Yankee Stranger and great-great-granddaughter of Julian Day, hero of Dawn’s Early Light. An aspiring writer, she has just turned 21 and is invited to travel to London with her Murray cousins for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. Her family thinks travel will broaden her mind and get her away from her tedious cousin Miles, but when Miles learns she is leaving he proposes and she accepts. This is unfortunate because on her first night in England she meets Oliver Campion, Thane’s most devastatingly attractive character. He is also engaged but although that doesn’t stop them from falling instantly and convincingly in love, they are too honorable to break their engagements. Phoebe also meets Rosalind Norton-Leigh, who becomes her closest friend. The book follows Phoebe back to America and Rosalind to marriage and life in Germany, until the war ends communication, and Phoebe, sensing something is wrong, tries to rescue Rosalind although she realizes it may be dangerous to interfere.

My Impression: Elswyth Thane is one of my favorite authors and although the books are dated in some ways, she is a wonderful storyteller who makes the reader care passionately about her characters:

He pointed away to the left, where the silver thread of the river showed. “That path leads to a little temple among the trees on the riverbank,” he told her. “It’s sheltered on three sides, and if we walked down to it, which shouldn’t take much over five minutes there and back, I should kiss you – just once – and we’d either of us ever forget it as long as we live. So you see how right you are to stop here.”

Phoebe’s eyes rested a moment on the path where it wound into the shadow of the trees. Then she moved deliberately down the steps like a sleepwalker and with Oliver at her side started towards the riverbank.

While a modern reader might not understand why Phoebe cannot break her engagement (and one wishes she had consulted her family, most of whom would have told her to go ahead), both she and Oliver are portrayed as honorable people who try to make the best of a bad situation by respecting their commitments, despite being very tempted:

And Phoebe, standing quietly in his embrace, her face hidden in his coat, was thinking without any astonishment, Here it is for me – the laughter and shamelessness and the shine – the confidence, each in the other, the reckless loss of time and space, the froth in the blood, the gay, giddy slide towards oblivion – what Gwen had, and Dinah, here it was for her, not with Miles – it would never happen to her with Miles . . .

Oliver’s eventual wife is the closest thing this former bestselling series has to a villainess – she trapped him into an engagement in the first place and treats him badly once they are married. Rosalind is also in a bad situation, married to a German prince who comes to regard her as an embarrassment once his country is at war with Britain.

I am reading (and loving) Dead Wake, The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson and was reminded of The Light Heart because after Phoebe becomes a successful writer, she sails on the Lusitania in 2015 because she is worried about not hearing from Rosalind. I know this book so well – and the Lusitania chapter is so vividly told – that when Larson describes Boston Brahmin bookseller Charles Lauriat, Jr. packing his favorite Knickerbocker suit for the voyage, I immediately remembered that Phoebe makes a friend on the ship who also wears a Knickerbocker suit – Elswyth’s research is equal to Larson’s any day! I doubt he is familiar with Thane but I am tempted to send him a copy of this book, as I recently acquired an extra. Of course, I got distracted from Dead Wake, which my book group will discuss by Zoom on Tuesday, by needing to reread Thane's Lusitania chapter – and then reread The Light Heart from the beginning to the end. You know how that happens!

This may be the Thane I love best. One of the first stops on my first trip to England was the Tate Gallery in London which Phoebe and Oliver visit together. I have to admit that during this reread I noticed a few bits that make a 21st reader shudder, principally the way the black servants in Williamsburg are described and the fact that Phoebe and Rosalind perform a dance in blackface at a fundraiser. It is historical fiction, however, and Thane is writing about early 20th century characters and how they would have behaved at that time.  Should we pretend these things didn't happen?  Although I may have made it seem like a romance, Thane is a historical novelist so her setting includes the carefree world before WWI and the American attitude to war when it begins. My mother would add that Thane does not hide how much she despises the Germans but if you'd lived through two world wars, maybe you would too!

This is my seventh book for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by The Intrepid Reader. Although I don’t normally encourage people to read a series out of order, this book can stand alone. Used copies are not hard to find and it is just $.99 on Kindle.

Source: Personal copy