In "The School for Saints" -- a somewhat fantastic title -- there is one passage that is beautiful and exceedingly touching. I have seldom read anything more exquisite, more tender, or more true than the description of the lad Robert's first passion of love for the beautiful lady whom he imagined to be the incarnation of all the virtues and who was the star at a Parisian concert hall. All that is charming to the last degree, and I feel grateful to John Oliver Hobbes for having interpreted so truthfully and so pathetically ...
Read More
In "The School for Saints" -- a somewhat fantastic title -- there is one passage that is beautiful and exceedingly touching. I have seldom read anything more exquisite, more tender, or more true than the description of the lad Robert's first passion of love for the beautiful lady whom he imagined to be the incarnation of all the virtues and who was the star at a Parisian concert hall. All that is charming to the last degree, and I feel grateful to John Oliver Hobbes for having interpreted so truthfully and so pathetically the splendor and the anguish of the first boyish passion. "Everybody understands calf love," she makes Henriette remark, but if so, very few have ever done as much justice to the theme as she has done. If she understood other love as well as calf love, she might be the greatest among our women novelists. The story of " The School for Saints" is, in brief, the story of a high-born young man, half French, half English, nurtured on Amadis de Gaul and the Romances of Chivalry, who begins life as the companion of a crippled son of an ambassador, and after various adventures in English politics and in Carlist wars, finds himself in Parliament as a follower of Mr. Disraeli, and the husband of the daughter of the actress who first touched his boyish heart. The first great feature of the book are the interviews with Mr. Disraeli-very well managed on the whole, but too much sugar and too little devil in the old man to make the portrait lifelike. Perhaps in the next volume -for there is to be a sequel, covering ten years of the hero's life-we may see Dizzy more as he was in public and less as he was in private life. The second feature is the description of Prim and of Spain just before the Hohenzollern candidature plunged Europe into war. There is something about the scene where the heroine and the old Carlist Countess, her hostess, set fire to a mill in which they propose to burn themselves to death, and are rescued by the hero. But all that Carlist revolutionary business is very well done, and some of the descriptions are admirable. A novelist who succeeds in utilizing the real Disraeli and the real Prim as persons in her romance has done enough for glory. But John Oliver Hobbes has done more than this: she has created a Lady FitzReeves, who is a very real person indeed. It is interesting to find ladies of high degree so frankly making love to eligible suitors who do not return their affection. -- The Review of Reviews , Vol. 16
Read Less
Add this copy of The School for Saints to cart. $20.85, good condition, Sold by Anybook rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1897 by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. With owner's name and inscription inside cover. In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Grey woven cloth on boards. Backstrip slightly darkened. Slight wear to corners and edges. Gilt design on front cover. Faded gilt lettering on backstrip. Coloured designs and lettering on front cover and backstrip. Tightly bound. Some light foxing but otherwise internally clean. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 750grams, ISBN:
