Helpful Score: 1
This is by the granddaughter of Charles Darwin and I can't recall how I came to know of its existence, but it is filled with humor--at least one laugh on every page is the impression it left with me. The author has a keen eye for the foibles of her relatives and other people she came in contact with, and the peculiar things some of them said. She delights in their eccentricities, but is always gentle.
I was able to find the book in the library system, but loved it so much that I just went and ordered a second-hand copy on Amazon so I can enjoy rereading it at will.
The book contains many pen and ink drawings, too, which are also often very funny. One of my favorites shows the nursery, with a little boy washing his hands, a nursemaid doing the hair of an older girl, and a girl of maybe 8 or so kneeling underneath the table, praying fervently. The caption says, "The first prayer. 'Please, God, let Miss Ratcliffe be dead before we get to dancing class.'"
Another caption, under a drawing of the head and shoulders of a man who proposed to Raverat's mother but was refused: "Mr. T., from the photograph which....His
hair and beard were considered very attractive, and his legs fortunately don't show here."
Be sure, too, to check out the picture of "Aunt Etty ordering dinner (in bed) in her patent anti-cold mask," which she designed using a tea strainer stuffed with antiseptic cotton batting. The mask was worn like a muzzle and appears to have been cone-shaped.*
There aren't many books that have been able to make me laugh out loud. This is one of them. If anyone reading this review has been made to laugh by Georgette Heyer's mysteries and Regency romances, or--better yet--by Booth Tarkington's wonderful coming-of-age book, Seventeen, then you mustn't miss this one.
* Allow me to quote just a bit of Raverat's description of Aunt Etty: "I have been told that when Aunt Etty was thirteen the doctor recommended, after he had a 'low fever', that she should have breakfast in bed for a time. (This next sentence is in italics, which I cannot reproduce here.) She never got up to breakfast again in all her life."
I was able to find the book in the library system, but loved it so much that I just went and ordered a second-hand copy on Amazon so I can enjoy rereading it at will.
The book contains many pen and ink drawings, too, which are also often very funny. One of my favorites shows the nursery, with a little boy washing his hands, a nursemaid doing the hair of an older girl, and a girl of maybe 8 or so kneeling underneath the table, praying fervently. The caption says, "The first prayer. 'Please, God, let Miss Ratcliffe be dead before we get to dancing class.'"
Another caption, under a drawing of the head and shoulders of a man who proposed to Raverat's mother but was refused: "Mr. T., from the photograph which....His
hair and beard were considered very attractive, and his legs fortunately don't show here."
Be sure, too, to check out the picture of "Aunt Etty ordering dinner (in bed) in her patent anti-cold mask," which she designed using a tea strainer stuffed with antiseptic cotton batting. The mask was worn like a muzzle and appears to have been cone-shaped.*
There aren't many books that have been able to make me laugh out loud. This is one of them. If anyone reading this review has been made to laugh by Georgette Heyer's mysteries and Regency romances, or--better yet--by Booth Tarkington's wonderful coming-of-age book, Seventeen, then you mustn't miss this one.
* Allow me to quote just a bit of Raverat's description of Aunt Etty: "I have been told that when Aunt Etty was thirteen the doctor recommended, after he had a 'low fever', that she should have breakfast in bed for a time. (This next sentence is in italics, which I cannot reproduce here.) She never got up to breakfast again in all her life."
