Book Review: Betsy and the Great World
Aug. 19th, 2023 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAlthough Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown is forever my favorite Betsy-Tacy book, it’s followed up at a close second by Betsy and the Great World, in which young Betsy heads off for a year in Europe!
She sets sail in January of 1914 , and, despite occasional bouts of homesickness, has a wonderful time. She plunges into a shipboard friendship so enthusiastic that her new friend invites her to stop at the Azores for a few weeks, which she refuses reluctantly: she is on this trip to experience the art and culture of Europe, but oh, the charm of those islands!
Betsy starts experiencing the art and culture of Europe in Munich, where she stays at a student pension where she was supposed to meet a friend of her sister Julia… only to find that the friend has flitted off to Italy! At first Betsy’s terribly lonely, but she’s never down for long, and soon makes two great friends: Tilda, a talented Swiss singer, and Helena, a baroness. The only problem is that the two won’t meet each other! The social gulf between them is too vast, they explain. Betsy, as an outsider, can be friends with them both, but they can never befriend each other.
Betsy loves Munich: the city is so beautiful, so charming, so cozy. But so infested with officers! And the officers are so entitled! The bathtub in the pension is near the officers’ suite, and they refuse to let anyone else use it. But Betsy insists, so one day when the officers are away from the dinner, the entire pension more or less escorts her down to the tub to have a bath… Crazy American!
But Betsy is deeply puzzled by their deference to the officers. Why do the Germans have so many officers when there will never be another war?
Then she’s off on further travels! To Sonneberg, the doll capital of the world; to Oberammergau, home of the Passion play, where she reunites with Tilda, and they agree to meet again in 1917. To Venice, where the nephew of the owner of the pension falls madly in love with her, and they float through the city on a gondola singing hit American tunes, for the young man grew up in America until he was fifteen.
Betsy likes him a lot… but all the time she can’t forget Joe Willard. They were at the U together (that is, the University of Minnesota), but then he went off to Harvard, and in his absence Betsy started going around with a chap named Bob; going around so often that the college paper printed a cartoon teasing them about their devotion. When Joe saw it, he grew icy, and their correspondence tapered off to nothing.
But in Paris, Betsy finds an opportunity to write to him again: she meets a famous author, an acquaintance who crossed on the same steamer as Betsy, and the famous author mentions that Joe Willard wrote the best article about her most recent book. Well! That’s a good reason to write to Joe, isn’t it?
And then off to London, where Betsy falls in with a whole crowd of friends at her boarding house, and they have a wonderful summer boating and walking and laughing in England, until it all comes tumbling down with the declaration of war.
She sets sail in January of 1914 , and, despite occasional bouts of homesickness, has a wonderful time. She plunges into a shipboard friendship so enthusiastic that her new friend invites her to stop at the Azores for a few weeks, which she refuses reluctantly: she is on this trip to experience the art and culture of Europe, but oh, the charm of those islands!
Betsy starts experiencing the art and culture of Europe in Munich, where she stays at a student pension where she was supposed to meet a friend of her sister Julia… only to find that the friend has flitted off to Italy! At first Betsy’s terribly lonely, but she’s never down for long, and soon makes two great friends: Tilda, a talented Swiss singer, and Helena, a baroness. The only problem is that the two won’t meet each other! The social gulf between them is too vast, they explain. Betsy, as an outsider, can be friends with them both, but they can never befriend each other.
Betsy loves Munich: the city is so beautiful, so charming, so cozy. But so infested with officers! And the officers are so entitled! The bathtub in the pension is near the officers’ suite, and they refuse to let anyone else use it. But Betsy insists, so one day when the officers are away from the dinner, the entire pension more or less escorts her down to the tub to have a bath… Crazy American!
But Betsy is deeply puzzled by their deference to the officers. Why do the Germans have so many officers when there will never be another war?
Then she’s off on further travels! To Sonneberg, the doll capital of the world; to Oberammergau, home of the Passion play, where she reunites with Tilda, and they agree to meet again in 1917. To Venice, where the nephew of the owner of the pension falls madly in love with her, and they float through the city on a gondola singing hit American tunes, for the young man grew up in America until he was fifteen.
Betsy likes him a lot… but all the time she can’t forget Joe Willard. They were at the U together (that is, the University of Minnesota), but then he went off to Harvard, and in his absence Betsy started going around with a chap named Bob; going around so often that the college paper printed a cartoon teasing them about their devotion. When Joe saw it, he grew icy, and their correspondence tapered off to nothing.
But in Paris, Betsy finds an opportunity to write to him again: she meets a famous author, an acquaintance who crossed on the same steamer as Betsy, and the famous author mentions that Joe Willard wrote the best article about her most recent book. Well! That’s a good reason to write to Joe, isn’t it?
And then off to London, where Betsy falls in with a whole crowd of friends at her boarding house, and they have a wonderful summer boating and walking and laughing in England, until it all comes tumbling down with the declaration of war.
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Date: 2023-08-19 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-20 11:32 am (UTC)