bourgeois Betts

Perhaps it's because I haven't read any Betts for about a year, but I was struck by how bourgeois and cliched the book is (I read part of Britannia all at Sea today). Here are examples from the chapter I read:
Britannia is not wealthy, but she notices her companions' "long evening gowns, beautiful garments such as she had often gazed at in Fortnum and Mason's windows or Harrods". I admit I've gone and looked at the gowns in Fortnum and Mason and in Harrod's, but I find it odd that a nurse would do so "often" when her family isn't wealthy. It seems pointlessly aspirational, or like some weird self-torment.
Of course, Jake's family eats off "exquisite china" with seventeenth-century silver for a formal dinner. This dinner hits almost every cliche from the mid-twentieth century that I can think of: lobster soup, roast leg of pork with spiced peaches (served on "a great silver dish" and carved amid what must have been the most banal carver/surgeon jokes imaginable), and then mangoes in champagne as a sweet, served with champagne. All they needed was caviar and, perhaps, baked Alaska, and we could have had a food cliche BINGO.
In other bourgeois, upper-middle-class news, Britannia and Jake play Chopin on the piano, and Britannia receives a Gucci scarf from Jake.

One Pair of Feet

I've just finished Monica Dickens's One Pair of Feet this evening. It's fairly funny, telling about Dickens's first (and, as it turns out, only) year of nursing school. She went during World War II, which puts her training not too far off that of Betty Neels. I was struck by the similarities: weeping junior nurses in the sluice, tyrannical (or fair and kind) Sisters, remote surgeons. I don't know that I'd recommend it, because Dickens uses some of-her-time but racist phrases occasionally. But I thought of Betts and longed to read some of her books with competent Sisters after reading One Pair of Feet!

avocado pears

On Thursday I was talking with some friends. One of them, a fellow Anglophile, mentioned avocado pears. I asked what they are, because Betts heroines eat them sometimes. I've always had a mental picture of some interesting fruit plate, possibly including pears, shaped to look like a pear.
Well, it turns out that an avocado pear is - an avocado. How anticlimactic! I'd have to check the OED to suss out how they got that name, given that pears have seeds and avocados don't. Weird.

the Betts mission statement

This is practically a mission statement for every dysfunctional relationship Betts ever wrote: "He was arrogant and ill-tempered and just about the horridest man she had ever met, and she loved him with all of her heart."
That's from Britannia All at Sea, p. 63, but that sentiment comes up several other times in other Bettses. It's problematic because while the Betts hero usually has a loving moment at the end of the book, it rarely is enough to make up for his bad temper and arrogance in the rest of the book. Why these women think that the Betts heroes will continue to be good people, instead of reverting back to their usual ways, is anyone's guess. I mean, some of these men are practically Dr. House, and we all know how that goes - any unguarded moment of kindness is balanced by a solid week of bad temper.

a sampler motto

Here's a sampler motto for every Betts heroine to stitch:
"He was a tiresome man and she couldn't stand the sight of him, although she loved him with all her heart."
(An Apple from Eve, p. 180).

beef without mustard

In chapter 4 (p. 78), Euphemia tells Diana that "I should think that being married without having children was like eating beef without mustard." To which Diana replies, "What an extraordinary thing to say!"
I don't usually agree with Diana, but - beef without mustard? Hunh.

Betts can't write dialect...

...and here's a sample of what I mean from chapter 2, p. 34. It should be noted that this scene is not set in London, despite the Dick-Van-Dyke-in-Mary-Poppins quality to this dialect: "Got to get 'his breakfast most mornings and cook 'im a meal at night, but 'e's almost never 'ome for 'is lunch and I'm ter suit meself 'ow I'm ter work."

driving is difficult!

Yesterday I was a bit busy, so I didn't post about this bit in chapter 2 (p. 32): "Euphemia stood in the open doorway, staring after him as he climbed into his Bentley and drove away. Part of her mind registered the fact that he did this with a calm skill and careless ease, just as though he were mounting a bicycle."
This makes me wonder whether Betts was a nervous driver, because this idea of a Betts hero driving off without fuss comes up more than once - Never Too Late mentions this as well, if I recall correctly. (And I'll be scared if I do recall correctly, honestly). But seriously - Tane drives a Bentley; it doesn't seem likely that he would have bought it if he were a nervous driver. One hopes that every driver on the road has "calm skill and careless ease"!

her person

For the first time since I started this blog (so, okay - a book and a half), Betts uses the phrase "her person" (as in, "Amabel was conscious of a warm glow deep inside her person", p. 116). I always find this phrase amusing. Of course, I know what the phrase means, but to me it always sounds as though she's got a minion. Better yet, the "doctor's large person" comes through the door a few pages later; does he have a small person, too? Who's Amabel's person? How did she get one, and where do I get one?

Shades of Enid Blyton!

In chapter 3, p. 77, Great-Aunt Thisbe serves Oliver and Amabel a high tea which even an Enid Blyton character would have cherished: "The table was elegantly laid, the teapot at one end, a covered dish of buttered eggs at the other, with racks of toast, a dish of butter and a homemade pate. There was jam too, and a pot of honey, and sandwiches, and in the centre of the table a cakestand bearing scones, fruitcake, oatcakes and small cakes from the local baker, known as fancies."

off-the-peg dresses

Ok, so here's the strange things about Betts fashion: she's always dismissive of dresses that are "off-the-peg", but all of her characters wear them. I was inspired to write this by a description of the dress Amabel wears to eat dinner with Oliver in chapter 2: "...[Amabel] got into a jersey dress, which was an off the peg model, but of a pleasing shade of cranberry-red..." (pp. 43-44). The alternative to off-the-peg is couture, which by definition means custom fittings, if not custom-making and custom design. So all those times her heroines go on a shopping spree at Jaeger or Harrods, they're buying off-the-peg. The only heroines who wear handmade clothes are the poor ones, who have people in the village hand-make their dresses.