Old Bestseller Review: The Rocks of Valpré, by Ethel M. Dell

Old Bestseller Review: The Rocks of Valpré, by Ethel M. Dell

by Rich Horton

I had recently read Ethel M. Dell's The Hundredth Chance, and I went ahead and downloaded another of her books from Project Gutenberg. The Rocks of Valpré (1913) was her third novel, and it was a bestseller, and filmed twice, once silent and then in a 1935 talkie. I should note that the Wikipedia one line description of the plot is wrong. (The only correct phrase is "officer wrongly imprisoned" -- everything else is nothing like the actual book. I believe the plot described is actually that of the 1935 film.) 

As I wrote before, Ethel M. Dell (1881-1939) was a writer of romance novels published between 1911 and her death. She was popular enough -- she made up to £30,000 per year -- that she was routinely disparaged in serious books at the time, and even nonserious books like those of P. G. Wodehouse. Her married name was Savage -- curiously appropriate given some of her sexual themes. She is largely forgotten these days, as with many very popular authors of that era who were considered lowbrow. 

The opening section of The Rocks of Valpré is set near the fictional seaside town of Valpré. Christine Wyndham is a teenaged girl (perhaps 16) staying there with her younger brothers, Max and Noel, and her governess, plus her dog Cinders. Chris likes to go play on the beach with Cinders, wondering if she might meet a handsome Frenchman, and wondering about the Magic Cave of which she's heard. And -- voilá -- Cinders goes running off, and in finding him, who does she meet? A handsome Frenchman named Bertrand de Montwille, a soldier, some six years her senior.

In the way of things, they encounter each other some more, innocently playing and talking. And one day they make their way up to the Magic Cave -- and end up marooned there for a night by the high tide. Naturally this is regarded as scandalous ... though of course nothing happened. Chris does learn that Bertrand (whom she calls Bertie) has invented a special new weapon for France, and has vaulting ambitions. And she does encounter Bertrand in a duel with another French officer ... over a woman. (Her, of course.) Chris feels she might be in love, but after all, she's only 16. And Bertrand knows he is in love, but admits it's hopeless. And soon Chris returns to England.

Several years later, Chris is ready to marry the rich, handsome, and quite honest and good journalist Trevor Mordaunt. Chris is a bit skittish -- the memory of Bertrand is still with her, but she has heard nothing of him since then. She agrees to marry Trevor. What she doesn't know is that Bertrand had been betrayed by the very officer he had been duelling, who is jealous of his success, and has been framed for a crime (selling his new weapon to an enemy country) and sent to prison. One of his only defenders is a British journalist who, in reporting on his trial, became convinced of his innocence. That journalist, of course, is Trevor Mordaunt. 

Chris and Trevor get married, and have a honeymoon, but somehow Chris is not fully committed. There are other issues -- her somewhat rackety brothers, for instance, following on her irresponsible father, have left the family home in terrible shape. Trevor buys it, fixes it up, and gives to to Chris, but her older brother and Chris are both spendthrifts, and continue to take money from Trevor, making it worse by being dishonest. And then Trevor rescues a man at the end of his tether, starving, without money, in the rain in London. Of course this turns out to be Bertrand, who has been released from prison but exiled from France. Trevor hires him as his secretary. 

And, of course, Chris and Bertrand meet, and Chris's attraction to Bertrand is revived. Which sets up the (rather protracted) conclusion, involving blackmail, Bertrand's noble determination to renounce his love for Chris (until the afterlife, to be sure), a chance to prove Bertrand's innoceence, more financial issues, and, crucially, Bertrand's health, which has been ruined by his time in prison. Which, really, serves as kind of a cheating way for Dell to write her way out of the actually rather interesting dilemma she'd left Chris in -- her true love for a very good man, Bertrand, set against her true respect for the very good man she has married, Trevor. 

As I said in my previous review of a Dell novel, she's a good enough writer -- if not really a very good writer -- to hold the reader's interest, and to make us care. I did think this novel went on a bit too long, and, as I noted, kind of cheated its way to an ending. And there's a lot of gushing talk about eternal love extending into the afterlife (which presumably means polyamory once all of them get to heaven), and a fair amount of melodrama. For all that, I think Dell earned the money she made as a writer (which was a lot.)