Mon 26 May 2014
A Review by Dan Stumpf: MARGERY SHARP – The Tigress on the Hearth.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
MARGERY SHARP – The Tigress on the Hearth. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1955. No US edition.
At 125 smallish pages, with wide margins, big type and illustrations no less, this is not so much a novel or even a novella as a shaggy dog story about Victorian manners and murders.
Young Hugo Lutterwell, is a member of the landed gentry, hunting in Albania of all places, who gets separated from his party and fires a shot in the air to locate them. However it seems he’s not a terribly proficient marksman because his shot misses the sky and kills a farmer’s dog. Hugo suddenly finds himself mobbed and about to be killed by the farmer when a lovely young woman jumps into the fray, fatally knifes the farmer, and escapes with Hugo.
In less time than it takes to tell (as they say) the two are happily married and back in England, where Hugo finds it a bit difficult to explain to his bride that although he’s very grateful to her for saving his life, and it was wonderful of her to do it, knifing a man isn’t the sort of thing one admits to in polite society.
He finally manages to convey to her that there are things a gentleman simply doesn’t do, but a lady is not bound by conventions except that she shouldn’t talk about killing people, a coda that leads to years of wedded bliss — until a local scoundrel starts making trouble for Hugo, who cannot retaliate because (as he explains to his wife) there are some things a gentleman simply doesn’t do….
But….
What follows is a short, cheerful and pleasantly amoral bit of foul play, followed by a spot of polite detecting and a sedate wrap-up in the coziest tradition. Tigress on the Hearth is a slight thing, but I think I’ll remember it.
May 26th, 2014 at 12:04 pm
Thank you for an enjoyable review.
“The Tigress on the Hearth” is so obscure it is not listed in the author’s Wikipedia article. I had never heard of it. It sounds fun.
Have only read some of Sharp’s fantasy series about “The Rescuers”: charming light-hearted works.
My Mother loved both Margery Sharp and Rumer Godden, two writers of British Gentility she regarded as ideal reading.
May 26th, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Yes, this is certainly an obscure book. I looked, and Al Hubin does not include it in his CRIME FICTION Bibliography, which from Dan’s review does not surprise me.
There is one other review of this book online. You can find it at
http://fleurfisher.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/the-tigress-on-the-hearth-by-margery-sharp/
The reviewer’s opinion is very much the same as Dan’s. She says in conclusion:
“This is a very short novel, but it really is a gem.
“A lovely mixture of adventure, romance and social comedy, made quite wonderful by Margery Sharp’s humour and intelligence, and by lovely. lovely storytelling.
“The only thing it lacks is an enterprising publisher to bring it back into print …”
As you say, Mike, Margery Sharp may be remembered most for her books in The Rescuers series:
http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/childrens/the-rescuers/
May 26th, 2014 at 1:21 pm
Margery Sharp authored several novels that were turned into successful films. Cluny Brown with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones. Julia Misbehaves with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, Cesar Romero, Nigel Bruce and Elizabeth Taylor, based on The Nutmeg Tree. Both charming.
May 26th, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Sharp was a fine writer and this ‘comedy of manners’ sounds like a good read. Sharp came out of a generation that was making sharp jabs at the manners and morals of the Victorian era, and sounds as if she skewers the ‘code’ pretty well here.
May 26th, 2014 at 3:19 pm
I stumbled onto this the back-handed way I do most of my book-finding these days.
A while back I picked up an old copy of THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS (January 7, 1956) because it had a nice article on Olivier’s film of RICHARD III. Leafing through it just for fun, I came upon a review of TIGER and, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, managed to locate a reasonably-priced copy.
Talk about serendipity!