Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins (George H. Doran, 1918)
A slight and silly but charming book set in London during WWI. Patricia Brent, an intelligent and resourceful young lady, is resigned to her fate as a spinster although she is still in her twenties. She lives as a “paying guest” in a rooming house along with many other sad and thwarted people, and works as a private secretary for a “rising” young member of Parliament (it is doubtful he will ever rise).
One day she recklessly tells her housemates that she is engaged to be married, and thus begins the romantic adventure that leads her to the altar. She presses a strange man in a restaurant into posing as her fiance, and it turns out he is no other than Lord Peter Bowen, one of London’s most desirable and charming bachelors. He immediately falls in love with the Patricia and insists that their pretend engagement is real. This annoys Patricia and she spends most of the book trying to withstand his (charming) courtship, despite all the help he is given by his (charming) friends and (charming) family.
The book is amusing — many of the characters are urbanely funny, including Patricia, who has a wry and cynical sense of humor. But because Peter is so thoroughly charming, Patricia’s obstinancy seems contrived to provide a plot, and this makes the book seem somewhat effortful — it lacks the scintillating elegance and speed of Evelyn Waugh’s early novels (Vile Bodies, Decline and Fall).
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