Tatterdemalion

Description of book

'Tatterdemalion' is a collection of tragic short stories written by John Galsworthy. The stories are divided into two groups: those set in wartime and those set in peacetime. The first of this is called 'The Grey Angel, where we are introduced to a woman, who by her predilection for things French came from childish recollections of school days in Paris, and a hasty removal thence by her father during the revolution of '48, of later travels as a little maiden, by diligence, to Pau and the then undiscovered Pyrenees, to a Montpellier and a Nice as yet unspoiled. Unto her seventy-eighth year, her French accent had remained unruffled, her soul in love with French gloves and dresses; and her face had the pale, unwrinkled, slightly aquiline perfection of the 'French marquise' type—it may, perhaps, be doubted whether any French marquise ever looked the part so perfectly.