Book Description

Mr. Channing is devoted to his garden, but it is his youngest daughter Christine who is truly the apple of his eye. When Christine’s fiancé breaks off his engagement to her at the request of his grandfather, Mr. Channing is persuaded by his wife and other daughters to take Christine to Portugal for a holiday. They are charmed by the country where they soon make many friends. Among them, the Baronesa Narvão who invites them to stay in her luxurious mansion. But the Baronesa is not all she appears to be… Note from the Author's Daughter: When my mother, Elizabeth Cadell, wrote her book with the Title of BE MY GUEST, it was, as usual, immediately accepted by Hodder and Stoughton, her British publishers. However, when the book was sent to her American publishers,William Morrow and Co, their opinion was that the parents of the heroine, Christine, and the grandfather of the hero, James, gradually came to occupy a more prominent place in the story than the young couple themselves. William Morrow therefore asked Mrs. Cadell to rectify this, and my mother obliged, rewriting the last half of her novel and restoring Christine and James to the forefront of the story. Thus, COME BE MY GUEST came to be written and was published in America, while Elizabeth Cadell’s original book, entitled BE MY GUEST was published in Britain. I remember that my mother always felt disappointed that the romance between Katherine and Charles had been “edited out” by William Morrow in COME BE MY GUEST. I entirely agree with her, and so I have taken the liberty of reintroducing this couple into the book. To do this I have taken the relevant passages from BE MY GUEST and reinserted them into Morrow’s edition. I feel sure that my mother would have approved of this, and I hope her readers will feel the same way.