Thanks, I Think I'll Pass

Robert Gottlieb, reviewing John Sutherland's Lives of the Novelists:

I’m grateful to him for resuscitating Florence Barclay, who, although she hasn’t lasted, gave us, in her tremendous 1909 best seller The Rosary , one of my favorite heroines. The Honorable Jane Champion, after rejecting the man she loves because she is far too plain for this lover of beauty, rushes to his side after he is blinded, pretends to be a nurse, is recognized by him through her glorious singing of Ethelbert Nevin’s famous song “The Rosary,” and helps him morph from England’s greatest portrait painter (a hard act to keep up when you’re blind) to England’s greatest composer

Fun fact: Nevin in 1940 was commemorated on a 10-cent postage stamp.  No word on whether it effected any cures. 

.