The Red Cross Girls on the French Firing Lines

[osprey_archer]

I just read an awesomely awesome ridiculous book from 1916. It's called The Red Cross Girls on the French Firing Line and is about the adventures of four young women who go to France to be Red Cross nurses, although there's much more sightseeing in Paris, touring the rear trenches (where the soldiers have somehow managed to grow a garden!), and living in an awesome little house on the grounds of a tumbledown chateau than actual nursing.

And naturally there are ridiculous, ridiculous romances. My personal favorite was between the stern Bostonian Eugenia (things I've learned from early twentieth century fiction: do not name your daughter Eugenia. It never helps) and the dashing young French captain Castaigne.

The first time they meet Captain Castaigne thinks Eugenia is the most disagreeable girl he ever met, which naturally means he will be madly in love with her ere long.

The second time they meet, it's on a dark road at night and Captain Castaigne thinks Eugenia is a deserter or possibly a German spy and sends his trusty hound to knock her over so he can interrogate her.

The third time they meet, Eugenia has just been knocked on the head with a bit of shrapnel which knocks her unconscious for five hours or so but otherwise evidences no ill effects, only to wake up to find Captain Castaigne's trusty hound pacing anxiously around. He fetches - drumroll! - the grievously injured Captain Castaigne!

And they are STUCK BEHIND ENEMY LINES!!!

So Eugenia takes him back to the little house on the grounds of the chateau (to which chateau, incidentally, Captain Castaigne is heir, although he never mentions it because he stands firmly behind republican France and therefore is a suitable spouse for a strictly raised Bostonian girl), where she nurses him back to health until the Germans retreat and Captain Castaigne's mother, who is the current owner of the chateau and possessed of awesome dignity, takes charge of his care.

And then Eugenia and Captain Castaigne meet a fourth time, by a pool that one of Eugenia's companions has named The Pool of Melisande, and he confesses his love and Eugenia is all "It's just GRATITUDE you're feeling, you'll forget about me in six months because you are WAY out of my league of attraction."

"Never!" cries Captain Castaigne.

And thus the book ends. And I CAN'T FIND THE SEQUEL ONLINE ANYWHERE WOE.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You get to write the fanfic ending!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm just not sure how to top "having to nurse Captain Castaigne back from NEAR DEATH while hiding him from the Germans behind enemy lines." Where do you go from there? What would convince Eugenia that his feelings are true?

The problem is that he already owes her everything; he would be dead if it weren't for her. So he has to even things up somehow, but I don't really want to have him rescue her from NEAR DEATH and then they fall into each others' arms. That just makes it seem like they're both marrying each other out of gratitude.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Indeed, what I was going to suggest! You know you want to.

Have you read Countess Kate? It's in your time period. It's about a young girl who becomes a countess for ridiculous and unlikely family reasons and how she copes with it. And it's drenched in Victoriana, yet it's not half so twee as I thought it would be.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Right time period, wrong continent! But I may read it anyway, because Americans did read a lot of British novelists and Charlotte Yonge was VERY popular.

Also, it's hard to go wrong with "So now you're a countess!" stories. (No, I lie. It's super easy to go wrong with stories like that. But the premise is still golden.)