Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/357

 "ANOTHER BEWITCHING ROMANCE" —The Times, New York

THE PRIDE OF JENNICO

BEING A MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO

BY

AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE

16mo. Cloth. $1.50

"Picturesque in literary style, rich in local color, rising at times almost to tragic intentness, and bristling throughout with dramatic interest." —The Record, Philadelphia.

"There is a wealth of historic detail which lends an interest to the story apart from the romantic love affair between Captain Jennico and the Princess Marie Ottilie of Lausitz. The hero's great-uncle had been one of those lucky English adventurers whose Catholic religion and Jacobite leanings had debarred him from promotion at home, and who had found advancement in the service of Austria, and wealth with the hand of a Bohemian heiress. Such chances were not uncommon with 'Soldiers of Fortune' in the times of Queen Anne and the early Georges. At his uncle's death, Captain Basil Jennico became the possessor of many millions (reckoned by the florins of that land), besides the great property of Tollendahl fertile plains as well as wild forests, and of the isolated frowning castle of Tollendahl with its fathom-thick walls, its odd pictures of half-savage dead and gone Woschutzkis, its antique clumsy furniture, tapestries, trophies of chase and war. He became master, moreover, of endless tribes of dependents, heiducks and foresters; females of all ages whose bare feet in summer pattered oddly on the floors like the tread of animals, whose high boots in winter clattered perpetually on the stone flags of stairs and corridors; serf peasants, factors, overseers, the strangest mixture of races that can be imagined; Slovacks, Bohemians, Poles, to labor on the glebe; Saxons or Austrians to rule over them and cipher out rosters and returns; Magyars who condescended to manage his horse-flesh and watch over his safety if nothing else; the travelling bands of gypsies, ever changing, but never failing with the dance, the song and the music, which was as indispensable as salt to the life of that motley population.

"The story is largely historical, both German and English elements entering into it. The scene changes from the old castle of Tollendahl to an English country house and London club, always maintaining its old world flavor."

"The tale is gracefully told, and owing partly to this fact and to the novelty of the setting given to Basil Jennico's amazing experience, it gains for itself a place apart.... It is an artistic production and it is original."—The York Tribune.

"One of the newest and best novels of the decade."—The Budget (Boston).

"No such piece of inimitable comedy, in a literary way, has appeared for years."—Inter-Ocean (Chicago).

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