Poor Eleanor is so naive. Aged 19, when this novel opens, she loves nothing more than reading novels, especially those with a Cinderella-ish flavor to them. When she is not immersed in her favorite pastime, she dreams of finding love and romance in her own life.
Enter Frederick Coombs, the son and heir of an Earldom. He is kind, charming, and has wonderful manners. He takes the time to talk to shy Eleanor at a party, drawing her out. She likes hiim. He comes to tea. He returns for more tea. Even her father, a shrewd man used to hard bargaining, is charmed by this handsome young man. In no time at all he pops the question. Naturally Eleanor is thrilled .And so they marry, dear reader.
If this were a Jane Austen novel, the story would end there. But what happens next is chilling. For Eleanor is subjected to abusive behavior on the part of her mother-in-law and husband. These charming people have rather strange beliefs. They do not think a mother should spend much time with her child. Instead, they believe that the child should be brought up by a nanny, who has managed to impress a duchess or two. When Eleanor, still recovering from the birth of her son, realizes that she is only going to be allowed to spend twenty mintues a day with him and becomes distraught, everyone, including the doctor, threatens her with the prospect of being locked up as a sure tonic for her “madness.”
Terrified, Eleanor makes herself conform the the strictures of this aristocratic British family. Imagine her dismay when her husband informs her that their son will leave the family home at the age of seven to be educated at a private boardiing school as a preparation for Eton. What is Eleanor going to do? She has so little time left to spend with her son.
Fortunately, her father, a rich businessman, decides to treat her with tickets on board the Titanic. Eleanor is thrilled as it means that she sees it as an opportunity to spend time with her son. For her father’s tickets are just for herself and her husband, her son and two servants. Of course she has to work very hard to convince her reluctant husband and domineering mother-in-law that her son Teddy will be traveling with her to New York (and back) without the nanny. But somehow, she manages to do that.
Of course, everyone knows what happens to the Titanic. Because Eleanor and her party are in first-class, they are offered the life-boats first. However, the men have to stay behind until those first boats are filled with women and children.
And so, Eleanor becomes a widow.
Not long after Teddy was born, Eleanor was coerced into signing a document that stated that in the event of Frederick’s death, Frederick’s parents (not Eleanor) would become Teddy’s guardians. And so Eleanor hatches a desperate plan to take on the identity of the young woman who acted as Teddy’s nanny aboard the Titanic. All she knows about this woman is that she disappeared into the bowels of the Titanic to fetch her savings, that her name was Molly Morton, and that she had relatives waiting for her in New York.
If you are wondering whether this story about the strange goings-on in the British aristocracy could be true, you only have to look at the experiences of the Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) of Austria (1837-1898), who had a similarly domineering mother-in-law who took away her three eldest children before handing them off to paid staff to look after them.. Such traumatizing experiences probably contributed to the mental health issues that Sissi suffered from all her life.
It is also true that aristocratic young men had been leaving their families of origin at the ages of seven or eight for around a thousand years. These young boys were sent to another aristocratic household to learn their fighting skills from the lord of the manor, and their manners from his lady. For example, the young Richard III (1452-1483) was sent away from his mother at the age of eight to train in the household of his cousin Richard Earl of Warwick (1429-1471), in 1460, shortly after his father died.
Although a similar story is told in the the 1997 movie TITANIC, I highly recommend this novel as author Frances Quinn has told a compelling story about the mores of the British aristocacy, a brave bid to escape a the cruelties of an aristocratic gilded cage, and how the protagonist Eleanor/Molly finally makes peace with her past.
