The Wife and the Lover is not about a wife who has an affair, as I first surmised. “Lover” in this case refers to a unrequited love, or chivalric love. We first meet the darn-near-perfect hero, Sir Edward Harcourt, talking with his guardian and mentor, Lord Fanshaw. Fanshaw warns Sir Edward, who has recently inherited his baronetcy, to think twice before marrying the beautiful and accomplished Cecilia Fitzallard. Lord Fanshaw does not object to the fact that Cecilia does not come from a distinguished family, or have a large fortune; the problem is that she is rather too full of herself, and apt to take offence where none was intended.
     Sir Edward, however, is head-over-heels for Cecilia.
   Lord Fanshaw’s own wife Horatia accidentally proves that the lord had a point; when Horatia makes some joking remarks about Cecilia, which are carried back to her by a character helpfully named Tabitha Wormwood, Cecilia is incensed. She demands that Sir Edward cut off ties to the Fanshaws immediately and forever.
    Our hero can’t do it; he owes the Fanshaws, especially Lord Fanshaw, “both gratitude and esteem." Cecilia, accusing him of not loving her enough, breaks off the engagement. Sir Edward leaves his affairs in the hands of his steward and goes abroad to heal his broken heart.
    Cecilia has many other admirers, including a visiting German count who is a renowned soldier back in the German principality of *****. Count Falkenstein had an “unfavorable opinion” of “women in general, nor could he forbear to express his disapprobation of the freedom which the English ladies, both before and after marriage, enjoyed.”
    A little foreshadowing here: we are told that the count is honorable, brave, handsome, and noble, but he expects unquestioning obedience from a wife. After he and Cecelia are married, he writes to his relatives back in Germany to assure them that she is not like the other outspoken English ladies: “My lovely bride has a just conception of the gentle duties of her sex, and adores that nice sense of honor which cannot tolerate the levity too prevalent in a country where the fair sex enjoy almost unlimited liberty,”
    So, are we setting up for a story where the heroine realizes, too late, that she threw away a wonderful man and rashly married a tyrant? You might think so. You might assume that the narrator is going to take Cecilia’s side in what follows.

​    A Summer at Weymouth is a novel written in imitation of the immensely popular A Winter in London by Thomas Skinner Surr (1806), which I reviewed here. The novel touches on many of the preoccupations of the day, but first we have to talk about the fact that a love-rival for the heroine is biracial and nobody has an issue with this. “[A]lthough his dark complexion discovered him to be on one side the son of an Indian, the regular beauty of his features, the sensible expression of his fine dark eyes, and the symmetry of his graceful form adorned by the most polished manners rendered him the admiration of all who beheld him.” He is “skilled in the Persian, Arabian, and Indostan music, and sung the songs of those languages with great expression.”  He also dances divinely. Our main heroine, Stella Fitzalbion, knew him from boyhood and has a crush on him.
     George is the adopted ward of the Earl of Charlewood and was raised along with the Earl’s own children. He returned to India at 18 to fill a "lucrative and honorable post" and acquired a “considerable fortune.” He “knows only that [his parents] died when he was an infant, but has never heard who they were.”
    Hmmm… a man of color, of unknown parentage, accepted into society? What is the answer to the mystery which clings about him?
     ​    ​Young George happens to meet Mr. Russell, an older merchant returned from India, who is struck by George’s strong resemblance to the Rajah Abdalla. Mr. Russell goes on to mention that many years ago, a fire broke out at the Rajah’s palace, and the women of the palace, “all ran out terrified, wives and children, among a regiment of European soldiers” who had come to help fight the fire.
    Mr. Russell goes on to add that months later, Abdallah mourned “the death of a favourite daughter, [the Princess Roseatenissa] who was to have married his brother’s son; which marriage had been delayed on account of her ill health, occasioned by her extreme terror on the morning of the fire. That young lady was, they said, a perfect beauty, and very accomplished…”

   ​“'More domestic scenes? More village anecdotes? More fireside conversations?'” To these questions we will answer in the affirmative…."
    This is how Mrs. E.G. Bayfield opens her novel The Splendour of Adversity, a domestic novel and it’s why I picked it to read. I wanted to see another example of a domestic novel, set in a country village, like Jane Austen's Emma. Austen's novel is famous; this one, published two years earlier, is forgotten, but they both represent a conscious move away from melodramatic "sentimental" novels with their abductions, forged wills, and mislaid foundlings, in favour of situations that were, as Austen would say, “probable” and close to real life.
      Splendour opens with a chat around a whist-table in a quiet village, as some local widows and spinsters talk over the late rector of their village and the arrival of the new one. His name is not "Knightly," as one lady had announced, but Knightwell. And it turns out that Jane Colyer, a quiet spinster who has been living in Hazlebury for a few years, already knows him.
     We then flash back to the reason why Knightwell and Jane were unable to marry. Rev. Knightwell was on the point of proposing, but his brother died and he had to take care of his widow and four children, so he couldn't afford to begin a family of his own. Now that he's moved to Hazlebury, Mr. Knightwell and Miss Colyer reunite as friends “and thus did the estimable pair emulate and encourage one another in the exercise of superior virtue.” She helps educate the children, especially the oldest girl, Albinia. Their mother the widow is “destitute of any internal resources," unlike Mrs. Elton in Emma, who is blessed with them. The Widow Knightwell wants to enjoy the social life at some seaside resort instead of living quietly at the rectory. If I tell you she rouges her cheeks (!) then I've told you everything you need to know about the artful hussy...