Tryst by Elswyth Thane ~ 1939. This edition: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939. Hardcover (re-bound). 256 pages.
March is not behaving very spring-like at present – it’s a briskish minus 11 Celsius out there right now, and snow has been drifting down all night – so what better time than to read a nice, cosy, ghostly love story?
It’s hard to know how to say it – but – oh, God, if I’ve earned heaven when I die, let me have England first, let me have England instead –
Hilary Shenstone, British secret agent on the troubled Northwest Indian frontier, catches a fatal bullet, but before he pegs out eternally, at the end of a long, beautifully manly, and oh-so-stereotypically-English death scene, he makes the plea quoted above.
God, being sympathetic to Englishmen (as we are so often told), grants his wish, and Hilary’s shade finds itself back in England, sitting on a London embankment, watching a potential suicide being dissuaded from a plunge into the Thames by a compassionate passer-by.
Hilary, being new to the whole business of ghosting, takes some time to learn the ropes, but he quite quickly manages to relocate himself back to his beloved family home, Nun’s Farthing, which has been leased to a scholarly professor for a year, since none of the family (except Hilary, who is often called away on his hush-hush missions) particularly cares to reside there.
The professor-now-in-residence, long-widowed, is accompanied by his dithery spinster sister and his lonely, bookish, social-misfit seventeen-year-old daughter, Sabrina.
(Do you see where we’re going yet?)
Sabrina finds herself fascinated by the locked room which belongs to the absent Hilary; she goes so far as to pick the lock to gain entry, and the room becomes her almost-secret retreat. “Almost”, because tight-lipped, apparently unemotional Mrs. Pilton, the longtime housekeeper of Nun’s Farthing who stays on to oversee the renters, secretly hands over the room’s key to Sabrina, giving her the nod to go in and while away her long days curled up in the sunny window seat, reading her way through Hilary’s large collection of books.
My ex-library copy has seen some hard use. But, though stained and worn throughout, I did not notice any dog-eared pages, so the forbidding stamp which an enthusiastic long-ago librarian dabbed on chapter headings throughout has obviously had its desired effect.
Hilary (in shade form) returns; he becomes immediately infatuated with the sensitively imaginative Sabrina, while she, in her turn, finds herself unable to think of anything else but the man whom she is becoming to know through his possessions and his taste in books.
The news eventually comes that Hilary is dead. Sabrina takes it inexplicably hard; her occupation of Hilary’s old room becomes common knowledge; her appalled and worried father and aunt decide that a move might well be in order, though Sabrina begs to stay…
Stopping right there, I am.
This is a book I would have loved dearly to read as a teenager, and even at this far from teenager-ish age I found it deeply appealing.
Tryst is not particularly well-written, for there are all sorts of gaps in logic and the whole ghost thing is uneven at best. The author is most inconsistent in what her creation is able to do: he can’t be seen (except by dogs, who fearfully growl at him, and cats, who twine about his unseen ankles in feline ecstasy), his writing (as a ghost) can’t be read, he needs to wait for some doors to be opened yet he can pass through walls at will, move items about, and he leaves physical signs of his presence all over the place – a squashed cushion here, a rumpled bedcover there. At one point he even takes a bath!
But I loved it. It’s somehow deeply appealing, despite its inconsistencies, and I happily entered into the tale, squashing my cynical thoughts firmly underfoot.
Marketed (apparently?) to the adult audience of its time, it’s more of what one would consider a teen girls’ novel today. Fine literature Tryst isn’t, but it’s an engagingly effortless read, which is now going onto the guaranteed re-reads section of the keeper shelf, alongside its sisters-in-theme The Sherwood Ring and The Perilous Gard, by Elizabeth Marie Pope.
A full extra point awarded for the Kipling references, in particular the connections to Kim, and to Puck of Pook’s Hill, two books which I hold in the very highest personal regard.
My rating: 9.5/10
Leaves & Pages 
I have not heard of this writer before but you make her book sound lovely, I’ll be looking out for her now. Thank you
I’ve taken a note of it as you’ve given it 9.5. I enjoyed Puck of Pook’s Hill more than Kim.
It’s a quick read, and, I hasten to repeat, not of the highest literary quality. The 9.5 was for its appeal as it stands alone, not coompared to anything else, and it was very appealing. Despite a few possibly troubling elements – the man twice the young woman’s age, the ending which could be very disturbing if one thinks about it too hard… 🙂
It’s The Sherwood Ring, not Sherlock 🙂
Oops – typo!!! Fixed. Thank you. 🙂
I am very fond of Elswyth Thane’s seven-book family saga – look for the Williamsburg series – despite its occasional use of politically incorrect terminology and outdated attitudes. Traces a large interwoven American/English family from the American Revolution up to WW II, set in England and the US. – lots of history, very likeable characters, lovely descriptions of settings.
I love these books, Sue, and re-read the whole lot every year – it’s just like a family visit.
Good – an Elswyth Thane – not that I’m a fan of this one. But I’m now encouraged to think that you might read the Williamsburg novels by this author – my all time favourite re-reads. I hope you don’t miss out on these. I see I have a sympathetic supporter in Sue above…perhaps we’ll read a review before year’s end (just keep in mind that the first in the series, Dawn’s Early Light, is my least favourite – in fact, each of the seven is better than the one before) – happy reading!
Keep nudging! She’s on my radar! Almost time for another round of old book orders, so the odds are getting better by the minute.
I’ve heard of this author for years, particularly from a Georgette Heyer group I used to belong to. But her books have been very hard to find, and expensive when I did find them. Maybe I need to look again. I do love time slip / time travel novels.
This one isn’t time slip as much as it is a traditional sort of ghost story. Everything happens “real time”. 🙂
Never heard of her before but this definitely sounds appealing – good for these March days where you want a really absorbing read to distract you from the resolutely unspring-like weather outside!
Perfect light reading for this non-spring! We just had another 6 inches (maybe more?) of snow. Last year at this time we had flowers in full bloom. Interesting winter, we’ve had. Or are still having!
I used to check this out of my junior high school library over and over again! I still love it as an adult, if only for nostalgia’s sake.
This would have been a great teen read! Very relatable heroine.
Oh goodness, you’re the second among the bloggers I follow to recommend this one. See here: http://anotherlookbook.com/tryst-elswyth-thane/
(I think you’d like her, if you’re not already following her, that is. Though in her review, Hilary dies in a plane crash?)
A hard-to-find book to keep my eye out for. (You DO have luck, eh?)
Hilary has no luck whatsoever! He is mortally wounded by a bullet, then whisked out of the danger zone by a fellow British agent; their plane then crashes, and Hilary expires after a long and very touching death scene. (Later there is some discussion that the would would have been fatal in any event, because everyone is beating themselves up that (a.) they let Hilary go into a ticklish situation all alone, and (b.) that the backup arrived too late to save him.)
So yes, a plane crash is involved!
And I chased down the book after reading a number of recommendations, including the one you referenced. Dangerous people, these fellow bloggers. (Like the certain someone who tipped me off on D.E. Stevenson, naming no names.) 😉
Tryst was a bit pricey, but not on the out-of-reach scale as so many I see listed. I think it came to about $30 Canadian with shipping. It’s definitely a well-read copy, though there seems to be a point where people stopped checking it out. Last library stamp is in 1984, and there is a discard notation from 2003.
I have read this twice–Jane at EDEN ROCK reviewed it a few years ago.Love it.
It certainly has a certain something!
Tryst is not Thane’s best book but it has obsessive fans. Oddly, it was in my elementary school library although not really suitable for under 12s (of course, I read it anyway). The copy I own has traces of my friend Elizabeth’s mascara tears, for which she apologized. Like others, I prefer Thane’s Williamsburg novels which were published in the US and UK. They begin in the 18th century with a young Englishman sailing to the colonies with his father for a new life. In later books, his descendants return to England and I headed to the Tate on my first trip to London to be like her heroine Phoebe (although did not encounter any handsome officers). Another favorite is From This Day Forward about a Broadway star who falls for an ornithologist. In real life, Thane was married to William Beebe, a noted underwater explorer and zoologist.
My only other knowledge of Elswyth Thane is from her “I bought a farm” memoir: The Reluctant Farmer. It was part of my mother’s collection; I’ve read it a number of times over the years. An appealing book, self-deprecating and quite humorous. An author I fully intend to delve into a bit more.
The Williamsburg novels are on my TBR list (thanks to CLM), and it looks as though the first two books in the series are being reissued in May as print and ebooks. I’ll have to hunt down From This Day Forward.
Oh, lovely to hear of more reprints! Do you know which publisher is doing these?
Chicago Review Press, as part of their Rediscovered Classics. According to Amazon, they are due out May 1.
Thank you! Making a note of that.