Victoriana

A BLESSED GIRL (340 pp.)--Lady Emily Lutyens--Lippincott ($4).

The Rev. Whitwell Elwin was no ordinary Victorian clergyman. He was rich enough to demolish his parish church and build a new one, bold enough to design the blueprint himself. When Elwin's parishioners fell ill, "his Rev" (as he was called) was their doctor; when his wife had children, he acted as midwife. He had amiable eccentricities, such as cutting the Communion bread "into small squares, some for the communicants and some for his canaries." But the favorite hobby of this self-assured, broadminded parson was corresponding with growing girls, listening to their troubles and helping them with affectionate advice.

Emily Lytton, daughter of Lord Robert Lytton, British Ambassador to France, and granddaughter of Author Bulwer-Lytton, became one of Parson Elwin's "blessed girls" in 1887. Emily was as rare a bird in her way as Elwin in his: she was in angry rebellion against the Victorian way of life. Urged to become maid of honor to Queen Victoria, Emily snorted: "I must indeed have fallen low to considered just the type to keep company with the royal family."

His Rev was 71, Emily 13, when their correspondence began. Two years passed Before it grew into the steady exchange that makes A Blessed Girl one of the most entertaining and instructive volumes of Victoriana to appear for years.

The Sexes & the Plants. Emily's every etter was an outpouring of her heart. At first, most of her problems were the typical but painful ones that torment the growing girl. Why, she asked his Rev tearfully, was she so nervous, so tongue-tied, so resentful? Why could she "hold a baby in any position . . . without letting it fall, and yet, if I take up a . . . glass, it is ure to drop from my hands and break?" "There is no mystery in the matter," answered he cheerfully: "You are attentive to the baby and not to the glass.") How could she learn to stop biting her nails, not to "grin in an idiotic kind of way," to endure deafening small talk ("Those who live near railway stations," replied his Rev, "soon cease to hear the puffs and screams ... of engines.")

Like every well-bred young lady, Emily spent much of the year at house parties, expected to display her charms to eligible bachelors. Emily was bored to death; to kill time and tedium, she took to botany. One day she overheard staid old Lady Ampthill discussing this choice with Sis ter Betty. The result is a dialogue of priceless, period perfection: Lady A.: Did you see the flower show at the Temple? It was so beautiful, such lovely begonias.

Betty: I myself think those double flowers are always hideous, but of course it was a wonderful show. I went with Emily, who is a botanist, and she told me many amazing things about flowers.

Lady A.: Oh, I suppose she doesn't go in for it very thoroughly.

Betty: Oh, indeed she does. Very thoroughly indeed. She does nothing else now.

Lady A.: But I believe botany is very improper when you go in for it thoroughly?

Betty: [That] is just the fun of it. Emily tells us such amazing things about the sexes of the plants. All sciences are improper when you go in for them thoroughly.

Lady A.: How about astronomy?

Innocence & Scoundrels. Emily was 18 when the fundamentals of botany proved to be just as dangerous as Lady Ampthill had suggested. Poet Wilfrid Blunt, "a strikingly handsome" married man of 53, attempted to seduce her in the best tradition of Victorian villainy. Blunt wore Arab dress and exuded a virile masculinity breathtakingly different from the jam and waxworks of everyday life. "He took me through the park to a wood which was very pretty," Emily wrote his Rev. He at once took my hand and kissed it and stroked it, said he adored me, which I told him I was very glad of. as one did not get adored every day. He said he had loved me for two years. 'What a long time!' I remarked 'Yes. isn't it?' he said."

On reading which, his Rev wrote hastily: "I begin to be a little suspicious."

Three days later, the suspicion was confirmed. Poet Blunt caught Emily alone, enfolded her in "a very hot embrace" and said: " 'Emily, might I come and see you in your room?' I replied indignantly: 'Certainly not!'. . . His remark could only have one meaning, I'm afraid."

For three long years, Emily, Blunt and his Rev fought a ding-dong struggle, resolved only when Blunt's own daughter pitched into her father with Amazonian fury. Poor Emily emerged still a virtuous girl, but heartbroken. "With my reason and my conscience," she cried to his Rev, "I am obliged to own him a villain . . . [but] my heart cries out . . ."

His Rev lived to see Emily happily married to young Architect Edwin Lutyens. (She is now 80 and edited the letters herself.) To read A Blessed Girl is to understand the why and wherefore of the Victorian novel, with its passion for brazen scoundrels, innocent girls and rescuing heroes. Such conflicts were not mere fiction; they were the very spice of Victorian life. Emily herself found it hard to decide whether her reaction to her tragedy was "happiness or misery," but her mother, respectable Lady Lytton, was not undecided at all. Wrote Emily: she was "bitterly disappointed that it has all come to nothing and is dying to bring us together again."

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