Snaith, John Collis. Patricia at the inn; with an historical introd. by W. B. M. Ferguson; il. by H. B. Matthews. $1.50. Dodge, B. W.
6–37964.
A romance founded upon an adventure of Charles the Second when, after the battle of Worcester, he was a fugitive. “At an inn on a lonely coast the rascally landlord entertains unawares the king and two of his loyal subjects, man and wife. The vacillation of the Merry Monarch between his safety and his attraction to the Lady Patsy (although he had seen women ‘younger and more lyrical’), the Stuart witchcraft that held even injured husbands loyal, the cunning escape from the turncoat landlord, whose willingness to betray to the highest bidder led him at last to his horrid deserts, are the main features in the story.” (Nation.)
“The best work in the book ... comes from the author’s dramatic use of the fact that tragedy does not lie so much in circumstance as in the mind of the man involved.”
| + | Ind. 62: 673. Mr. 21, ’07. 200w. |
“A story of perhaps ruggeder texture than many Stuart tales, but otherwise hardly to be distinguished from the rest of the drops in the Jacobite fiction sea which rolls from pole to pole.”
| + | Nation. 83: 539. D. 20, ’06. 150w. |
“The author is one who knows how to give the material a turn out of the beaten path. He is not a mere plot concocter and marshal of incident. He makes his people real flesh and blood, with a due admixture of fire.”
| + | N. Y. Times. 11: 799. D. 1, ’06. 180w. |