The titular Lady in Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary by Ruby Ferguson (published 1937) had a childhood of wealthy bliss in her Scottish estate in the 1860s and 1870s, as told by the housekeeper Mrs. Memmary, who welcomes the American tourists for a tour of the rundown castle in the 1930s. The tourists are enthralled by the story of Lady Rose, and yet the reader can see that things did not end well for Lady Rose, given that the lovely, large estate is now in ruin.
While much of the story is told through Mrs. Memmary’s narration, the omniscient narration of the tourists visiting the estate gives a frame to the story. The novel as a whole seems to emphasize the contrasting attitudes towards peerage from the 1870s to the 1930s, as Lady Rose is ruined by personal decisions, a result the modern-day tourists cannot seem to comprehend for its unfairness. The shifting attitudes and the contrast between old and new make Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary a novel worth revisting.
I read the Persephone Books version of this 1930s novel. Persephone Books “reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly dating from the mid-twentieth century.”
