An Inconvenient Grand Tour (Victorian Grand Tour)
1854: Lady Eleanor Barrington needs a good marriage to put an end to the scandal caused by a scurrilous anonymous engraving of her father. A vicar who unexpectedly inherited an earldom, his real mission in life is the acquisition of paintings for the National Gallery in London – hence the Grand Tour – and the campaign to establish a National Portrait Gallery. Eleanor sets her cap at Lord Chelmsford but, on the family’s tour, is attracted to the witty but mercurial Percy Hauxton, talented like Eleanor in music but liable to get the wrong end of the stick romantically.
Catmull writes lively, engaging dialogue and has an appealing sense of setting when she describes the minutiae of the places her characters visit: the practical difficulties of navigating the Great St Bernard Pass, the handmade toys in an Austrian Christmas market, and the statuary of the Schӧnbrunn Palace gardens. Catmull evidently has significant musical expertise, for her descriptions of Eleanor and Percy’s piano duets are made vivid by her understanding of the dynamics of proximity, nerves, and timing. She takes some historical liberties but is candid about these in advance, though some oddities remain: the planned purchase of Michelangelo frescoes in Florence (they’re all in Rome, and pretty impossible to get back to London anyway), the reference to the English Channel as an ocean and a painting described as being a Lorrain rather than a Claude. An epilogue signals a subsequent book, but steals Eleanor’s thunder somewhat. This is an enjoyable read with an attractive heroine and a hero who is a diamond rather in need of a good polish.
