Word: mudlark
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...MUDLARK (305 pp.)-Theodore Bonnet-Doubleday...
...this breezy tale about a seven-year-old ragamuffin who wandered into Queen Victoria's dining room one evening, and thereby briefly set the Empire on its ear. Since it appears that something like this did happen once upon a time, Author Bonnet's job in The Mudlark was to fluff up the fact into a light historical novel. This, with the help of a lot of imaginary speeches and caperings by the Queen, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, he has done well enough...
Little Wheeler, who started the whole thing, was a "mudlark" who worked the Thames for the leavings of the tides. He didn't know much, but one of the things he knew was that the Queen was the mother of her country; motherless Master Wheeler made up his mind to see her. So past the Windsor Castle guards he slipped one foggy November night, into the castle yard, and then, startlingly, down into an open coalhole. When the grimy urchin eventually groped his way upstairs and surprised the Queen at her dinner table, she forgot her composure sufficiently...
There is just enough ingenuity in The Mudlark's conception and skill in its writing to sustain a fine long story. Author Bonnet has chosen to pad it outrageously in order to fill the regulation-size novel. The book suffers as a result, but it is pleasant enough for an afternoon of hammock reading...