Sally Scarth

by Naomi Jacob

During the Victorian era, Sally Scart, a young orphan, enters the service of an earl and falls in love with her son. But when she becomes pregnant, the social prejudices separate the couple.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Naomi Eleanor Clare Jacob was an English author, actress and broadcaster. Daughter of Nina Abbott.

The British lesbian author Naomi Jacob (1889-1964) had been a teacher, a suffragette, a playwright and an actress, but ultimately achieved her greatest success, beginning in the mid-1920s, as author of some 75 popular novels, plus women's magazine series, advice books and at least one biography. She moved to Italy (where a significant portion of this book is set) in 1930, and at one time reportedly had an unrequited crush on Una Troubridge, longtime companion of Radclyffe Hall. (In Diana Souhami's biography of Hall, Ms. Jacob is described thusly: "She was Jewish, large, wore tweeds and clubbish ties and liked a drink.") She is remembered today best as -- well, actually, she's barely remembered at all.

Reviews

[Deb Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book, because I found it on the shelves of my parents' house when we were clearing it after my Dad had died. The book is inscribed at the front "To Margaret, December 1949, from Mr and Mrs Clifford". They were family friends and my mother would have been sixteen years old. I'm not sure whether reading it was due to the appeal of the story or to the fact that she had once held it and read it. There was no dust jacket, consequently no blurb or even an outline of the story.

I don't know what Mum thought of the book, but I found it surprisingly 'readable' - I was interested in what happened to the characters and how they changed over time. That's not to say I thought it particularly well-written, because much of the dialogue is written in what is supposed to be a Yorkshire dialect. Neither that, nor the speech of the gentry was easy to read. There are quite a few phrases in quotation marks for no obvious reason.

Essentially the story is about Sally, a child rescued from an orphanage by the local earl. She goes to work in service for him (it is set in Victorian times) and has an affair with his son. Of course, she gets pregnant, and marriage is out if the question, due to their stations in life, though both want it. What follows is the story of her life, very moral, in that she succeeds through hard work and not a little luck, but is always conscious of the great deception of passing off the earl's grandson as her hastily-wed husband.

The story goes up to just after the end of the Boer War, a turning point in Sally's life and in the world. The author makes some good points about how wars are fought for the greed of the few, while affecting the common people far more deeply.

I doubt if its still in print, but if you get the chance to read this old-fashioned book, then take it.. If you know me, I might even lend it to you!