First published in 1906, The Shuttle is a story of American industry. Rosalie Vanderpoel, daughter of a wealthy American, marries into a British family of aristocrats, only to discover how truly impoverished-both in money and character-that class had become. After many years with her deplorable husband, she is unable to contact her family back home. Suspicions grow, and Rosalie's sister Bettina heads to England to find out what has happened. Bettina is a smart, modern, witty woman who epitomizes the American character of industriousness and energy. She knows what she wants and has the power and money to go after it. Bettina's money and spunk revitalize the English society she comes in contact with, suggesting on a larger scale that what Britain needs to improve its future is to adopt an American mentality. Those interested in women's literature as well as anyone looking to rekindle their pride in the American spirit will find this an enjoyable read. English author FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT (1849-1924) moved to America in 1865. She became a writer in order to support her siblings after her parents died. Among her most famous works are Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1909).
The Shuttle was first published exactly a hundred years
ago and was begun in 1900 but frequently abandoned while its author,
Frances Hodgson Burnett, wrote several other books (including, most
famously, The Making of a Marchioness). It is about American heiresses
marrying English aristocrats; by extension it is about the effect of
American energy, dynamism and affluence on an effete and impoverished
English ruling class.
Sir Nigel Anstruthers crosses the Atlantic to look for a rich wife and
returns with the daughter of an American millionaire, Rosalie Vanderpoel.
He turns out to be a bully, a miser and a philanderer and virtually
imprisons his wife in the house. Only when Rosalie's sister Bettina is
grown up does it occur to her and her father that some sort of rescue
expedition should take place. And the beautiful, kind and dynamic Bettina
leaves for Europe to try and find out why Rosalie has, inexplicably, chosen
to lose touch with her family. In the process she engages in a
psychological war with Sir Nigel; meets and falls in love with another
Englishman; and starts to use the Vanderpoel money to modernize `Stornham
Court'.
But The Shuttle, which is five hundred pages long and a page-turner for
every one of them, is about far more than the process by which an English
country house can be brought back to life with the injection of
transatlantic money (there is some particularly interesting detail about
the new life breathed into the garden). It is mainly about American energy
and initiative and get-up-and-go; this is symbolised by G Selden, the
typewriter salesman on a bicycling tour of England, who meets, and charms,
Bettina and her sister and, back in New York, their father. And it is about
the excellent relationship that, curiously enough, many of the heiresses
enjoyed with their multi-millionaire fathers.
Above all it is about Bettina Vanderpoel. She is the reason why this is
such a successful, entertaining and interesting novel - one could almost
say that she is one of the great heroines, on a par with Elizabeth Bennet,
Becky Sharp and Isabel Archer. This is because she is so intelligent and so
enterprising - she has the normal feminine qualities but a strong business
sense, inherited from her father, and instinctive management skills (as we
would now call them). If every man in England married a girl like Bettina
Vanderpoel, we are meant to think, England's future would be as glittering
as America's.
The book's title refers to ships shuttling back and forth over the
Atlantic (Frances Hodgson Burnett herself traveled between the two
countries thirty-three times, something very unusual then) and also to the
weaving of the alliance between America and Britain. `As Americans
discovered Europe, that continent discovered America. American beauties
began to appear in English drawing-rooms and Continental salons... What
could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by
adoring fathers sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin
to rule these lands also?'
