Other editions of book The Shuttle

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

CHAPTER ITHE WEAVING OF THE SHUTTLENo man knew when the Shuttle began its slow and heavy weaving from shore to shore, that it was held and guided by the great hand of Fate. Fate alone saw the meaning of the web it wove, the might of it, and its place in the making of a world's history. Men thought but little of either web or weaving, calling them by other names and lighter ones, for the time unconscious of the strength of the thread thrown across thousands of miles of leaping, heaving, grey or blue ocean.Fate and Life planned the weaving, and it seemed mere circumstance which guided the Shuttle to and fro between two worlds divided by a gulf broader and deeper than the thousands of miles of salt, fierce sea—the gulf of a bitter quarrel deepened by hatred and the shedding of brothers' blood. Between the two worlds of East and West there was no will to draw nearer. Each held apart. Those who had rebelled against that which their souls called tyranny, having struggled madly and shed blood in tearing themselves free, turned stern backs upon their unconquered enemies, broke all cords that bound them to the past, flinging off ties of name, kinship and rank, beginning with fierce disdain a new life.Those who, being rebelled against, found the rebels too passionate in their determination and too desperate in their defence of their strongholds to be less than unconquerable, sailed back haughtily to the world which seemed so far the greater power. Plunging into new battles, they added new conquests and splendour to their land, looking back with something of contempt to the half-savage West left to build its own civilisation without other aid than the strength of its own strong right hand and strong uncultured brain.

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This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1908. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII. IN THE BALLROOM. Though Dunstan village was cut off, by its misfortune, from its usual intercourse with its neighbours, in some mystic manner villages even at twenty miles' distance learned all it did and suffered, feared or hoped. It did not hope greatly, the rustic habit of mind tending towards a discouraged outlook, and cherishing the drama of impending calamity. As far as Yangford and Marling inmates of cottages and farmhouses were inclined to think it probable that Dunstan would be "swep away," and rumours of spreading death and disaster were popular. Tread, the advanced blacksmith at Stornham, having heard in his by-gone, better days of the Great Plague of London, was greatly in demand as a narrator of illuminating anecdotes at The Clock Inn. Among the parties gathered at the large houses Mount Dunstan himself was much talked of. If he had been a popular man, he might have become a sort of hero; as he was not popular, he was merely a subject for discussion. The fever-stricken patients had been carried in carts to the Mount and given beds in the ballroom, which had been made into a temporary ward. Nurses and supplies had been sent for from London, and two energetic young doctors had taken the place of old Dr. Fenwick, who had been frightened and overworked into an attack of bronchitis which confined him to his bed. Where the money came from, which must be spent every day under such circumstances, it was difficult to say. To the simply conservative of mind, the idea of filling one's house with dirty East End hop pickers infected with typhoid seemed too radical. Surely he could have done something less extraordinary. Would everybody be expected to turn their houses into hospitals in case of village epidemics, now that he had established...

The Shuttle is a 1907 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, republished in 2007 by Persephone Books. One of Burnett's longer and more complicated books for adults, it deals with themes of intermarriages between wealthy American heiresses and impoverished British nobles.The title of the book refers to ships passing back and forth across the Atlantic and creating alliances between England and America like the weaving of a shuttle: "As Americans discovered Europe, that continent discovered America. American beauties began to appear in English drawing-rooms and Continental salons... What could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by adoring fathers sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin to rule these lands also?" Burnett made the transatlantic voyage thirty-three times, which was a lot for the era.Marriages between English aristocrats and American heiresses were common and of considerable public interest at the time. Some of the best known of these alliances was between Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill, who were the parents of Winston Churchill, and between Consuelo Vanderbilt and the 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1895. Burnett would have read the gossip around the marriage of the Marlboroughs and other sources, such as Titled Americans: A list of American ladies who have married foreigners of rank, which included: ‘A carefully compiled List of Peers Who are Supposed to be eager to lay their coronets, and incidentally their hearts, at the feet of the all-conquering American Girl.’The building and grounds of ‘Stornham Court’ were modelled after Great Maytham Hall, near Rolvenden in Kent, which had a beautiful garden that Bettina starts restoring in The Shuttle and which also inspired the titular garden of The Secret Garden.Angelica Shirley Carpenter writes in In the Garden, Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett that Burnett's depiction of Sir Nigel's abuse of Rosalie mirrors the abuse that Burnett herself suffered at the hands of her second husband Stephen: "All the classic signs of abuse, which were not so well-known in Frances's lifetime, are catalogued in The Shuttle. Sir Nigel isolates Rosalie from her family and friends, refusing to let her parents see her when they visit England. Stephen tried this with Frances too."

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.