A Thimbleful of Hope
In 1864 Violet Rayfield’s father is a prosperous Dover ship owner. She had hoped to marry his most promising apprentice, William Noble, but her father’s new partner, Arvin Brooke, is pressing Violet to marry him. When the Dover Belle goes down in the English Channel with the loss of crew and passengers, Mr Brooke stands by her, and the marriage takes place. It is short lived: he is on board and loses his life when a second disaster in the Channel drives Mr Rayfield to suicide. Thereafter the story is Violet’s as she faces the task of keeping the family together and, all too soon, from starvation – her mother, her unmarried sister, herself and her own baby son, Joe. Her husband having been revealed as a bigamist, Violet has been publicly disgraced as an unmarried mother and an object of ridicule and contempt. The nadir is reached when bailiffs arrive to take over Violet’s home and its contents. She manages to retain her precious sewing box and finds one-room accommodation; starvation is staved off with the baker’s leftovers. The sewing box gives Violet the wherewithal to use her talent as a seamstress, but the situation is precarious even after the unlooked-for reappearance of William Noble.
The novel demonstrates the terrifying rapidity of disaster where poverty may be a misfortune, but destitution is regarded as poisonous contagion to be avoided. This is a high quality, thought-provoking story.
