Talk:A Group of Noble Dames

Reviews
The Nation, July 23, 1891: These tales of "dear dead women" of the last century, to which Mr. Hardy has given a slight seeming thread of connection by putting them into the mouths of different members of "one of the Wessex' Field and Antiquarian clubs," have much the same sort of fascination that one feels in reading the tales of the Arabian Nights. They are told with an inborn gift for story-telling which seems to cost the teller neither study nor effort, and which never wearies the hearer in listening. Unlike others which have a more dramatic interest, stories of this kind may be laid down at almost any point without uncomfortable sensations of suspense, and may be taken up again at any time without a flagging of interest. If they seldom touch the deeper springs of sympathy or emotion, they appeal to a practical experience of human nature in a great many different phases. When, however, he does describe, it is with clearness and decision: "Her virtues lay in no resistant force of character, but in a natural inappetency for evil things, which to her were as unmeaning as joints of flesh to a herbivorous creature."

As is inevitable in a collection of stories of very unequal length and finish, some of these heroines are brought more clearly face to face with the reader than others. Betty, first Countess of Wessex, will live longer in the memory than any of the other titled ladies whose histories follow hers. There is a mixture of pathos and humor in the means the eighteen-year-old heiress devises for escaping from the strange husband to whom, by a custom of Eastern barbarity, she has been married at twelve; and the far-sighted bravado by which the philosophic courtier seeks to make an impression on his obdurate young wife is most ingeniously conceived. The neatly pointed sarcasm of which the writer shows such complete mastery lends a zest to the whole group of stories. For the rest, the designer has dine his work well in the pretty and original cover of the volume, and the few illustrations are pleasing and suggestive