The Regency era definitely wasn’t just home to fictional firebrands like the Bennett sisters and so many other romance novel heroines since. Andrea Penrose tells the real-life story of Lady Hester Stanhope, an adventurous woman who became a well-respected and well-known historian. The Diamonds of London is never dull or leaden, though it does rewrite history… and ends Hester’s lifestory just as it’s about to get interesting.
Knowing it’s the most sure-fire way to escape her father’s house and spinsterhood, Hester Stanhope heads to the marriage mart knowing that the best way to ensure her future is to marry a rich, influential man. Instead, Hester forges an alliance with her politician uncle, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to get out from under her immediate family’s thumb, becoming his hostess and his personal secretary.
Through Pitt, Hester becomes involved in the London Society, where George Brummell rules the roost. She becomes fascinated with history and antiquarian matters and begins to become entrenched in their midst as a taste-maker and advice-giver. This launches Hester into the glittering world of high society.
She meets with several men. Distant relation Thomas Pitt, Second Lord of Camelford, the volatile ‘half-mad lord’ who takes her on an odyssey of self-indulgence. Levenson Gower, Lord Grenville, the man Hester believes is her perfect match b ut whose passion might not be reserved for her alone, and Sir John Moore, whose dashing ways seem to portend a happy future for Hester – until tragedy strikes. Will any of them provide her with the love she yearns for – on her own terms?
The author readily admits that she has re-written a bit of Hester’s personal history to make the story more ineresting, but that’s no excuse to linger in the mire of the most romantically fraught, though not the most interesting, portion of Hester’s life. The Diamond of London spans from 1799 to 1810, and ends just as she and her brother board a frigate which will take Hester to the Middle East, where she will become a known and respected historian and archeologist and will build an independent, though ultimately completely cash poor, life for herself. It’s the equivalent of ending ET after he gets captured by the government! Hester went to Turkey on archeological digs, but the book cuts off before this happens! We get little glimpses of this in the wraparound chapters, but nothing more.
Instead, the novel concerns herself with how she came to be and the men who molded her – from her Uncle, to Brummel, to her lovers. It gets soapy and melodramatic, miring her in England and focusing in on her admittedly meagre romantic life and tries to stir up scandal and passion. While these moments are entertaining, they are not as interesting as, say, how she involved herself in the region’s religious fighting by hiding refugees from purges. Or how she took part in the first archaeological dig in Palestine. Or how, after a fortune teller told her she was destined to marry the messiah, she pursued Ibn Saud in the hope of being made his queen. Bryon hated this woman! How can you reduce her to a couple of non-starter love affairs!?
But let’s comment on what the novel does. Detached from history, it’s a fine, emotional, melodramatic affair about a woman untying herself from the mores of her time to go get the goodly squab of her dreams. Of the three love affairs included in the book, the last two actually did happen to Hester, and have been mentioned as a primary reason she clung to her independence (she did not, apparently, sleep with any of the Pitts).
On those terms, The Diamond of London is a decent enough read. But it does miss the forest for the trees.
Note: This book contains an on-page suicide attempt.
Sensuality: Subtle
Publication Date: 01/2024
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