A Type of Beauty
This is the story of Kathleen, or as she was familiarly known, Kate Newton. Her short life was dazzling in both its variety and drama. She is perhaps best known for her love affair with the French artist Jacques Tissot, which caused a huge scandal in the conservative society of Victorian England. Their passionate relationship takes centre stage in A Type of Beauty, but the elements of her life before that are equally interesting.
The book opens with Kate forced back from London to her childhood home of India to marry a man she has never met. Her life quickly unravels, partly through her own honesty, and soon she is back in London with an unconsummated marriage, pregnant by another man of the worst moral character, and with a divorce pending. But Kate is a courageous woman of independent thought, and she quietly refuses to bow to the societal restrictions of the day. When she travels to Paris with her sister, she finally meets happiness in the person of Jacques Tissot. Theirs is an instant and intense chemistry, and together they manage to overcome a variety of obstacles to end up together in London. Kate becomes his artistic inspiration and domestic companion before tragedy strikes once more.
Patricia O’Reilly renders the emotional landscape of the Victorian era with a sharp wit and vivid imagination and creates the fascinating character of Kate Newton with the subtlety of an artist’s palette. Highly recommended.
