Lady Bobs, Her Brother, and I: A Romance of the Azores

by Jean Chamblin

Excerpt from Lady Bobs, Her Brother, and I

The street vender, as he walks bare footed with his baskets swung over his shoulder, gives a call that is music to the ear.

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1905

About the author

Jean DuPuy Chamblin (Nevada, 1876 aft. 1950), with family roots in Virginia and France, dedicated her life to theater, writing, and activism. She achieved episodic success as an actress, playing alongside actors and actresses such as Tyrone Power Sr. and Mrs. Fiske (in 1899, at The Fifth Avenue Theatre, in Becky Sharp, with the role of Marquise de Steyne). In 1919 she traveled to France to work for the American Expeditionary Force as Secretary of the National War Work Council of the YMCA. She traveled multiple times throughout her life, both in the US, as an actress, and abroad, especially in Europe.

In 1902 she visited the Azores, as did her character Kate perhaps escaping the realization of her obscurity as an actress. She left New York on the steamer Dona Maria, passed through Faial, São Jorge, and Angra do Heroísmo, and arrived in Ponta Delgada around May 8, 1902. She stayed there until the end of July, at the Hotel Brown, where she met the owners. She made the obligatory excursions to Sete Cidade and Furnas, immersed herself in the life of Rua do Bесo, participated in and photographed the Festas do Espírito Santo, and took notes for her fictionalized, almost autobiographical and epistolary travel narrative. She published it 1905, at Putnam, after it had been serialized in The Critic. Aside from the screenplay for the silent film Back to the Simple Life, from 1914, no other works by her are known.

Reviews

[Annadwolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘And no matter how far these children will wander as men, it is not the Azorean heart to forget his family hearth. It is this love of home and their own people that has made that most beautiful word of theirs, saudade. We have no word for that; it is full of longing, and loving, and home.’ (158)

‘I leaned against the bank and laughed as one can laugh only in the open mountain air, where the sun is shining’ (122)

[Natacha Glautier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mooi boekje om nog even na te genieten van onze reis naar de Azoren. Beetje pride en prejudice op de Azoren. Kostuumdrama van begin 20ste eeuw door de bril van een vrouw die het allemaal met een korreltje zout neemt.