Talk:The House Of A Thousand Candles

Reviews

 * The Outlook 2 Dec 1905:
 * A lively and exciting plot-story. Probabilities are frankly set aside at the outset, and the reader, once free from their thrall, will enjoy himself greatly in the search for treasure which follows. The story is told with spirit, and the people in it are alive—in one case, even though dead.


 * The Literary Digest, 17 Feb 1906
 * Mr. Meredith Nicholson's "The House of a Thousand Candles" is not a historical romance, but an eloquent testimonial to the fidelity with which its author has studied the historical romances of the good old-fashioned school. Memories of Alexander Dumas, of Harrison Ainsworth, of G. P. R. James, and of kindred spirits to whom nothing was impossible for mortal hero to attain, flash into mind as one traverses this labyrinth of mystery. The familiar quartet of "each for all and all for each" fame has its replica in a hero who leaves D'Artagnan a mile behind, two inconceivable Irishmen, and a robust representative of the church militant; there are plots and counterplots, duelling and sieges, secret passages and hidden treasure, ghostly footsteps, a head villain, and a complete corps of subordinate villains who dote on assassination and revel m perjury; finally, there is a heroine, a trifle too modern for the ancient type perhaps, but none the less with a decided gift for conspiracy on her own account. For setting, a castle of truly mediaeval aspect, a marvel in architecture and particularly impressive' when its thousand candles (more or less) are lighted Nothing is wanting to recall the old-school romance save—the time and the location. The time is to-day, the location the State of Indiana.


 * Think of it! A Dumas-Ainsworth-James romance in up-to-date Indiana, with the newspaper, telephone, telegraph and railway in active service and constables and justices of the peace in plenty. But what are a few anachronisms between an author of lively imagination and an audience eager to be amused? Thus and therefore the merry game goes on, until the house of a thousand candles nearly tumbles about the ears of its murder proof inhabitants, the long-sought fortune is unearthed in a sensational, if conventional way, and we hear the tinkle of distant wedding bells. The critic may grumble, the gentle reader inwardly declare, "How absurd!" but critic and gentle reader alike will hardly put the book down until the last shot has been fired in the very teeth of the law of twentieth century Indiana—and the last hair-raising problem solved.


 * On this point all the reviewers seem unanimous. The New York Tribune, while affirming that the story "is never for an instant convincing, or even plausible," admits that "the book is undeniably interesting, provided one seeks nothing but an evening's distraction." The New York Mail rails at the improbabilities involved, but at the same time confesses that "finish it you will, once you have begun it," The San Francisco Chronicle congratulates Mr. Nicholson on being able "to hypnotize the reader so that his common sense does not reject the improbable incidents of the story." The Independent deems the tale "common in type, but unusual in quality," and the Brooklyn Eagle praises the author as a "master of construction." All of which may help to explain why "The House of a Thousand Candles," despite its impossibilities, has won its way into the select circle of the "six best sellers."