Paul Gallico's Indomitable Mrs. 'Arris
Photo by LaPorte Images
“For all her frail appearance Mrs. Harris was constructed of alternating layers of steel and leather...”
The character of Mrs. ‘Arris will forever be implanted in my mind as portrayed by Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote fame. By the time I first saw the 1992 Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris film I was already familiar with her as an actress thanks to watching the show at my grandparent’s house.
The movie was my first introduction to the world of high fashion and the name of Christian Dior. I was probably around age nine or ten at the time and the idea of an elderly woman who had worked hard all her life who suddenly had the unreasonable urge to save up and buy a frothy pink dress from an expensive store in Paris with nowhere to wear it except her own living room was totally probable and highly intriguing! It was simply an alternate version of the Cinderella story with a woman 30 years older and a debonair Omar Sharif thrown in for good measure.
A few years ago, I tried tracking down the movie and found it online on YouTube. Then a couple months later, I ended up randomly finding a VHS copy at a used bookstore. I’m one of those crazy people who still owns a VHS player in spite of having perfectly functional modern film viewing equipment, so I bought it.
After watching it again, I finally decided that since it was based on a book I’d probably better read it. The thing is, I’d had the book sitting on my bedroom shelf for years as a kid thanks to a copy my grandmother let me borrow for a while. I’d looked at the pictures and read a few paragraphs but never had read it all the way through. In the course of time the book eventually went back to her and so I assumed that she still had it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find it on her shelf and had no idea where it went when I asked her about it. My library at the time didn’t own a copy, so you can imagine my delight when a few years later we moved and I discovered that our new library system owned ALL FOUR Mrs. ‘Arris books. While I can say that I’m in sympathy with the reasons librarians have for weeding, I can also say, “God bless whichever librarian decided to keep the Mrs. Arris books in circulation.” You’re my hero!
What I love about the Mrs. ‘Arris books is that they portray my favorite story premise: putting an ordinary character in a unique situation and sitting back to watch what happens. The other thing I love about them is that, being on the shorter side, they’re easily read in only a day or two without a lot of commitment.
The books were written in the following order and should be read accordingly if possible:
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris
Probably the most well-known and popular of the series, no doubt due to the fact that ‘Arris rhymes with Paris, it’s also the one that’s the most readily available. Many library systems still have a copy, and even though I believe it’s out of print, it’s not that hard to purchase a reasonably priced copy from Amazon or eBay. I’m still hoping to run across the books secondhand somewhere. Maybe a library book sale of weeded material? One can always hope…
This book can definitely be read as a standalone, so if you don’t have access to the other books, or don’t want to purchase them, giving this one a read won’t make you feel you need a sequel. It stands on its own quite well. I imagine Paul Gallico originally intended for it to be a standalone novel until its popularity prompted him to write the sequels.
2. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to New York
This one I think I enjoyed even more than Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris, not only because she ends up visiting the United States, but because unlike “Paris”, I had no idea what the story would be about or how it would end, though you get a pretty good inkling once you’ve read a couple chapters. The set-up of the predicament Mrs. Arris has to solve kept me interested to discover how it would all play out.
We get to see some of the same characters in this book that we did in Paris, but I won’t spoil it for you as to which ones! Even the famous Dior dress gets to play a minor role toward the end, which I thought was very fitting. (Spoiler: Yes, Mrs. Arris does take her Dior dress with her to New York.)
There also a bit of a hint about a possible romance…
3. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Parliament
This story picks up not long after Mrs. Arris goes to New York leaves off. I read this one in one day, unlike the other two, which I completed over the course of a couple days. All these books are on the short side, probably defining themselves more as “novellas” than novels, but sometimes I think it’s good to mix up the length of the books you read so you don’t get bogged down too easily with larger works.
While I don’t think it’s the best of the Mrs. Arris books, it’s still entertaining and we get to see many of the characters from the previous two books, something which I feel is essential if you’re going to do sequels.
I wouldn’t exactly call this book depressing, but it’s definitely not as upbeat as the previous two. It does end on a happy note, as the others do, and to a certain extent, you’re left to draw your own conclusions without having everything laid out for you.
4. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Moscow
While not my top favorite of the four, I’d say this one rated at least second. I found it immensely entertaining, but it didn’t turn into the favorite that Mrs. Arris Goes to New York was. My top question was how on earth was Mrs. Harris going to make it to Moscow, especially considering her time period was before the iron curtain fell? As usual, I needn’t have worried, as Gallico takes a seemingly impossible predicament and turns it into something that’s actually plausible, considering the characters and the world he creates around them.
My only disappointment in the book was that there was no John Bayswater, who had been featured so prominently in the previous two books. In fact, I was highly suspicious of the fact that Mrs. Arris Takes on Parliament was supposed to be the last of the Mrs. Arris books, considering how it ended AND considering Mrs. Arris Goes to Moscow was written so long after the third book.
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Photo by LaPorte Images