A tiny book full of the recollections of a beloved family home.
Plot
Descended from the famous Henry Thornton, Forster takes a look at the family home Battersea Rise, hub of the political Clapham Sect during the time of abolition in England and place of a family’s earliest memories of delight.
Morality
The little book opens with the quaint and loving poem of Henry Thornton to his daughter Marianne, entreating her to come visit him, which is noted as a little unlike him, for the man tended to be stern and wary of the follies of life. All characters glimpsed in this brief treatise are upright and moral.
Spiritual Content
The tone of the book is one of earnest longing to regain the magical moments captured in the house of Battersea Rise, a sort of powerful nostalgia, particularly since the house is no longer standing, and was once the focus of the family’s earliest memories. Upon visiting once, William Wilberforce proclaimed of the place, “Oh, the beauty of it! Oh the goodness of God in giving us such alleviations in this hard world!”
Violence
There is no violence to speak off.
Drug and Alcohol Content
None.
Sexual Content
None.
Crude or Profane Language or Content
None.
Conclusion
This is the first chapter of Forster’s domestic biography “Marianne Thornton,” but it was published separately to be distributed among his close friends. It takes a memory and a plot of land since turned over to modern development and brings back to life the homestead of his ancestors, the influential family of the Thorntons. Nostalgic, delightful, throbbing with memories and excerpts from the house’s inhabitants, this tiny book makes it worth the hunt to find it.
This review is brought to you by Jenny.
