Old Bestseller Review: The Love of Monsieur, by George Gibbs

Old Bestseller Review: The Love of Monsieur, by George Gibbs

by Rich Horton

My original focus on this blog was popular fiction of the first half of the 20th Century -- at best, obscure popular fiction that yet was successful in its time. I've definitely broadened my scope a good deal, but I still have an abiding interest in that sort of fiction -- rarely truly excellent but often interesting.

George Fort Gibbs (1870-1942) was an American novelist, screenwriter and illustrator. His father was a Naval surgeon, and a veteran of the Civil War. The father took suddenly ill in 1882, in Europe, and soon died. George's mother, despondent at her husband's death, committed suicide a year later (in the Anna Karenina manner.) George Gibbs was 13. He entered the Naval Academy, but soon left -- he doesn't seem to have been a good student. He turned to art, and also eventually to real estate, and had some success in both fields. He also began to write for magazines. In 1898 he moved to Philadelphia to work for Curtis Publishing, whose magazines included the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies' Home Journal. Gibbs did cover and interior illustrations for the magazines, and published fiction. He married a Philadelphia Main Line woman in 1901, about the same time he started publishing novels. His novels were generally quite popular, and about a dozen of them became movies (all silents.) He and his wife had three children, all successful to one degree or another. Their eldest son, George F. Gibbs, Jr., was a playwright and amateur musician, but best known as a real estate developer. Their second son, Theodore Harrison Gibbs (called by his middle name) was a sculptor of some note, and he died in the Battle of the Bulge. His daughter, Sally Gibbs McClure, was a dancer, singer, songwriter, and a writer of poetry, novels, and a memoir.

The Love of Monsieur, from 1903, was Gibbs' second novel. I found a copy in an antique store, several years ago, and misplaced it in my garage, where my wife found it looking for something else the other day. I figured I might as well read it -- it's quite short (about 45,000 words) and it promised to be enjoyable romance/adventure fiction -- which turned out to be the case. My copy is possibly a first edition, published in May 1903 by Harper and Brothers. The copyright is shared by J. B. Lippincott -- so I assume the novel first appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. My edition has a frontispiece by Gibbs himself, signed with his mirrored GG. The book is dedicated to M. H. G. -- surely his wife, Maud Stovell Harrison Gibbs.

I've reproduced the cover of my edition (there is no dust jacket, and I don't know if there ever was one) as well as the frontispiece and title page. And I have to say, I do wish we could have novels these days presented as nicely.

There's really not too much to say about the novel. The Monsieur of the title is Monsieur Mornay, a Frenchman of low (illegitimate) birth who is close to King Charles II, and is as the novel opens spending his time in London, gaming and flirting and fighting. He encounters a noble Englishwoman, Barbara Clerke, a wealthy orphan, whom he saves from crashing her carriage. He is intrigued, but she is disgusted, not so much by his ignoble birth as by his dissipated ways. When he manages to gain the favor of a dance and conversation with her, she expresses her disdain.

But -- no surprise! -- she finds herself a bit puzzled that she is having second thoughts. And when her guardian provokes a duel with Monsieur Mornay, she is even angrier ... and then a revelation is made. It turns out that Monsieur Mornay is not in fact illegitimate -- his mother had actually married his father -- who was actually Barbara Clerke's uncle. And her guardian had papers proving that Mornay was actually the rightful heir to the properties he has been holding in trust for Barbara. But Mornay is now wanted for murder -- and is also out of favor with the French King -- so he must flee to America.

The rest of the novel concerns Mornay's time as a "pirato" -- or, officially, a privateer. He never plans to return to England or France, but Barbara Clerke, once she realizes that her claim for her riches is false, and all her wealth is owed to M. Mornay, decides she must renounce it, and attempt somehow to find him and convince him to claim his inheritance. She, of course still hates him as a libertine, but is willing to live in poverty instead of falsely claiming his rightful inheritance. 

The resolution is never in doubt, though the book does offer some piratical adventures, some implausible coincidences, a mutiny and a marooning. (But no worries about the marriage of first cousins!) What can I say? It's popular fiction of its era, and not badly executed. Nothing that really deserves revival -- but I was able to enjoy the book, which amuses and occasionally excites -- and does not outstay its welcome.