Talk:True Tilda

Reviews

 * The Bookman (UK) October 1909: "Q." at his best is always good reading, and in "True Tilda" he is at his very best. Tilda is a child acrobat, a nobody's child, who has developed in the hard discipline of the show world an amazing independence and resourcefulness. The book deals with her rescue of a baronet's son from the Holy Innocents' orphanage at Bursley, an appalling institution which it is to be hoped has no original in real life, and her journey across England to the boy's home on the Bristol Channel. How Arthur came to be lost and how Tilda found him, the reader may be left to discover for himself. The story of Tilda's Odyssey is so delightful and so full of quaint characters that it would be a futile and ungrateful task to discuss the details of a plot which it must be confessed is a trifle sketchy. But Tilda herself is absolutely true. We know her and love her, for her unconquerable good temper, her audacious resourcefulness, and her loyalty to her friends. "Q." has the real romance writer's gift of translating us for a moment into a world of his own creation. His characters are real, not because they are like any one we know in everyday life—in fact, they are not a bit like the people we meet ordinarily—but they are real because "Q." has made them so. The genuine creative artist as contrasted with the mere observer, the recorder of details, convinces us by the vitality of his creations. This was the secret of Dickens's power: he always created his own world. Mr. Quiller Couch has something of this Dickensian creativ'e power, and something too of the Dickensian cheery optimism. His characters are capital company, they take life cheerfully, and make the best of each other and of themselves. Among a crowd of delightful people, one of the best is the lovelorn bargee who calms his despair by writing "potery"—as thus;

Excellent too are the Mortimers, strolling players always on the verge of bankruptcy and always buoyed up by the hope that an undiscerning world will some day recognise the greatness of Mr. Mortimer's Othello and Mrs. Mortimer s Ophelia. The awakening of Tizzer's Green to the possibilities of Shakespearean drama is told in "Q.'s" gayest vein. Then there is Mrs. Lobb, the fat lady of Gavel's Circus, always wondering what Mr. Lobb would have been like had he ever existed, and mournfully recognising that as an artist she must sacrifice everything to her "art." Last but not least, among a host of other friends there is "Dolph," Tilda's incomparable dog. It is a fantastic, happy, and enchanting world which Mr. Quiller Couch has created for us, and Tilda's journey ends all too soon.