As George Bernard Shaw told us in Pygmalion: The
difference
between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves,
but how she's treated. London's flower girls are the
subject of this unusual and engaging story, A MEMORY OF
VIOLETS, a social study and haunting romance for those who
like historical reads.
In 1876 young Florrie Flynn, of Irish London stock, trots
along after her mother to buy flowers at Covent Garden.
They have to arrive by five in the morning to get the best
blooms, then spend the rest of the day and evening selling
them. Florrie's new baby sister Rosie is carried in the
basket too. Florrie had polio which left her with a weak
leg, but she cheerfully cares for blind Rosie. Then
cholera
takes their mother, and Florrie continues in her stead.
In 1912 Tilly Harper, a young woman from the north, gains
the post of housemistress in a training school for flower
sellers. She's a solitary girl, who enjoys painting
outdoors, and she has worked as a housemaid. A Christian
charity has provided a school to take crippled girls off
the cold streets and teach them to make silk flowers.
Tilly
is prepared to work hard, but nothing could have prepared
her for life in teeming London.
Tilly finds letters written by Florrie years earlier and
by
juxtaposing the girls' lives we build up a picture of the
times and the hardships. Cold and squalor are ever present
for the two flower-girls, and the meal room run by the
charity as a fore-runner to the training school is their
sole source of warmth and kindness in the bustling city.
Unable to work in factories or as maids, the disabled
girls
have no other hope of earning - except for the one trade
they are not prepared to enter. With the city stink,
nosegays and buttonholes sell well. But Rosie is snatched
by an ill-doer, and desperate Florrie cannot find her.
Tilly meanwhile is adapting to working with people with
disabilities from disease or factory accidents. Queen
Alexandra herself takes an interest. Tilly notices young
men for the first time, but would anyone be attracted to
her?
I admire Hazel Gaynor for tackling a difficult subject,
and
one which has largely remained unvisited. The charity run
by the Shaw family does not see the afflicted girls as
people to be exploited, but to be encouraged and raised up
to a better level. Carefully interweaving the stories of
Rosie, Florrie and Tilly, A MEMORY OF VIOLETS is a tale to
be cherished, which brings turn of the century London to
exuberant life. Hazel Gaynor previously wrote The Girl Who
Came Home about a survivor of the Titanic, and I believe
her works deserve wide attention.
The author of the USA Today and New
York Times bestselling novel The Girl
Who Came Home has once again created an
unforgettable historical novel. Step into the world of
Victorian London, where the wealth and poverty exist side by
side. This is the story of two long-lost sisters, whose
lives take different paths, and the young woman who will be
transformed by their experiences.
In 1912,
twenty-year-old Tilly Harper leaves the peace and beauty of
her native Lake District for London, to become assistant
housemother at Mr. Shaw’s Home for Watercress and Flower
Girls. For years, the home has cared for London’s flower
girls—orphaned and crippled children living on the grimy
streets and selling posies of violets and watercress to
survive.
Soon after she arrives, Tilly discovers a
diary written by an orphan named Florrie—a young Irish
flower girl who died of a broken heart after she and her
sister, Rosie, were separated. Moved by Florrie’s pain and
all she endured in her brief life, Tilly sets out to
discover what happened to Rosie. But the search will not be
easy. Full of twists and surprises, it leads the caring and
determined young woman into unexpected places, including the
depths of her own heart.
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