The Methods of Lady Walderhurst

Emily Fox-Seton #2

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

She quite beamed as she reached the happy conclusion. She was such a simple, normal-minded creature that it took but little to brighten the aspect of life for her and to cause her to break into her good-natured, childlike smile. A little kindness from any one, a little pleasure or a little comfort, made her glow with nice-tempered enjoyment. As she got out of the bus, and picked up her rough brown skirt, prepared to tramp bravely through the mud of Mortimer Street to her lodgings, she was positively radiant. It was not only her smile which was childlike, her face itself was childlike for a woman of her age and size. She was thirty-four and a well-set-up creature, with fine square shoulders and a long small waist and good hips. She was a big woman, but carried herself well, and having solved the problem of obtaining, through marvels of energy and management, one good dress a year, wore it so well, and changed her old ones so dexterously, that she always looked rather smartly dressed. She had nice, round, fresh cheeks and nice, big, honest eyes, plenty of mouse-brown hair and a short, straight nose. She was striking and well-bred-looking, and her plenitude of good-natured interest in everybody, and her pleasure in everything out of which pleasure could be wrested, gave her big eyes a fresh look which made her seem rather like a nice overgrown girl than a mature woman whose life was a continuous struggle with the narrowest of mean fortunes.

-Taken from "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst" written by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Genres: Classics, Romance, Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Fiction, Victorian, Gothic

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1901

About the author

Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911).
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 4 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan M. Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.
Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townesend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.
In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a warning at the beginning of the book that the editors had kept the content in it's original form, not editing for political correctness. So, you get some of the language regarding people from India and people of color in general. However, it was much more open minded than other books written at the time. Also, many of the characters are horribly sexist (even though it's written by a women). It ends up being a sweet story overall, but lacks the wonderful quality of some of her other works.


Second reading: a lot of the sexism is tongue in cheek. It is a book of its time. But, I still love her writing. I enjoy re reading her when I need something soothing.

[LadyCalico · Rating 2 out of 5]

I watched PBS's The Making of a Lady and the opening credits said it was based on The Making of a Marchioness. My elderly ears missed some important dialogue at the end, so knowing I had this book as a free Kindle download, I decided to read it to tie up the loose ends. Got to the end and discovered that I had only the first segment of a two-part story and it was just kind of a big nothing that hardly made up 10% of the PBS movie, with all the suspense, plot, and action saved for the next segment. I checked Project Gutenberg and found the rest of it and finished. But, oh, was the second half wordy, wordy, wordy...and rambling...and redundant. The author kept going off on tangents about human nature and her personal theories about men and women that got so garbled that I doubt if the author herself even knew what she trying to say. I must have been feeling masochistic because I read some of the more garbled paragraphs three or four times to see if I could make any sense of of them--nope, should have just skimmed over them. The PBS version changed a lot of the plot and characters and was so different that I never did get my questions answered by reading the book--and except for my disapproval of their making some of the good characters into baddies, I would suggest watching the PBS movie, it was a better story.

[Jennifer Nennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read "The Making of a Marchioness" first

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

*This review contains some spoilers*
This was one the rare instances when the movie surpasses the book. Both Emily Fox-Seton books focus largely on characterization and not a lot of plot. This book seems to rise to a climax, with the Osborns trying to poison Emily, but then she just leaves town and everything is okay, easy as that. Except Frances Hodgson Burnett realized she had several chapters to go and had already killed the major conflict, so she switched the Walderhurst's perspective and has him return home to find Emily has practically died in childbirth. A few pages of manufactured tension later, the very last chapter ends abruptly with Hester returning to England and telling Emily that Ameerah basically killed Alec. The last sentence of the book is Hester taking a bite of a scone while Emily stares at her. The end.
In summary, the characters are interesting but not entirely believable, the plot needed some major work, and there are also racist elements. I may rewatch the movie — which improves the plot so that there is actually a climax — but will not be rereading the book.

[Katherine Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a few chapters, I was sure I had seen a Masterpiece Theater production similar to this story in 2018 or 2019 however I wasn't aware the plot was based upon this book. It is a sequel about an interesting woman whose fortunes in England are lost and how she has to work, working mostly with the aristocracy in an administrative, clerical way. A titled older man decides she is for him but she becomes the target of his nephew who wants to prevent her from giving him an heir. The nephew, married to an East Indian woman, uses her attendant, establishing the book's atmosphere as suspense and terror. The Masterpiece Theatre show didn't have the resolution that the book had, which I think was far fairer to the East Indian women presented and could map out better the really reserved but surprising relationship she had with her husband.

[abigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

all i can say is, watch the movie instead. the fact that the screenwriters took such a mangled, anti-climactic story and turned it into a fabulous & tense thriller is a credit to their talent (certainly not ms francis’). the books were long, drawn-out, and tended to dwell entirely too long on the size of emily’s frame & her innocent, naïvely loving ways. by the end, i was thoroughly fed up with emily, and began to share the sentiment of the osbornes, namely, that she should fall off a horse.

[Athos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much melodrama here, although there were a few interesting parts about abusive relationships and what people can be driven to. It was all in very decorous language, which means that most significant things were to be read between the lines. I also found the author's condescending tone towards most of the characters a little distancing - as if the reader and the author were always observing the drama from a superior vantage point.

[Sesika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the sequel to The Making of a Marchioness. Very enjoyable. Very pleasing story with bits of suspense. I own the MP3 format disc with both stories if anyone is interested in listening to the story. It is read by a full cast.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a more enjoyable read than the previous book. The main character is very obviously a slice of the past, but the story is appealing and the intrigue gives it more depth. Though it isn't a fast-paced, action-packed story, it is a pleasing book to read.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second part, depicting what happens when Emily marries Lord Walderhurst. Fairly racist in a few parts but I’ll chalk that up to it being written in the early 1900s. It bothered me, I won’t lie. But the overarching story is interesting. Would love to see it readapted in today’s society.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting plot-line but sort of predictable. Dark and Gothic. Not nearly as good as Jane Eyre or Northanger Abbey. I could not wait for it to end.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up to 3. The building of tension was okay, but the ending just sort of fizzled.

[Josefina Myrman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Njae, va? Men den sista meningen får 4 stjärnor. Jag skulle vilja rekommendera båda böckerna i serien bara för den meningen.