Resumen
Resumen de La joven Philippa
Para quién es
Readers who like wartime adventure with spies, secret codes and village sieges, and who also enjoy a tender friendship that grows beside the danger. It suits anyone drawn to the French countryside and to August 1914.
De qué trata este libro
The Girl Philippa is a war romance by Robert W. Chambers, the American novelist who died in 1933. He wrote it in the first years of the Great War, and it opens in the last days of July 1914, when Europe is sliding toward battle. It mixes spy adventure, a painter's friendship with a young woman, and a close look at a French border country as the armies arrive.
The story begins with a stolen secret. A new shell is to be shared between the United States and Britain, and its plans are stolen. Two young British officers cross the Atlantic to get the papers back, and German agents chase them across Belgium and Luxembourg. One of them, Halkett, reaches a French market town carrying a thin envelope that many men would kill for. There he picks a stranger to trust, an American painter named Warner.
You get chases, ciphers, a cabaret full of informers, and a village inn that comes under fire. You also get a girl with painted cheeks and honest gray eyes, who is Philippa. Let us start with the envelope and the two officers who set out to save it.
En este resumen
- 1Two officers chase a stolen secretFree
- 2A stranger asks Warner for trust
- 3The cashier at the Cabaret de Biribi
- 4Bullets on the road to Saïs
- 5Soap posters and a Sister's vow
- 6Philippa runs away from the secret service
- 7A false friend, a stolen girl and an airplane
- 8The cellar, the rope and the river
- 9What the story is about: courage and chosen friendship
- 10How the story is told and what to listen for
Idea clave 1 de 10
Two officers chase a stolen secret
The book opens with a murder at Sarajevo and a deal between two governments. The United States agrees to share the secret of the Harkness shell, also called the candle shell, with Britain. In return, Britain will share a submarine seaplane called the flying fish. Before the exchange can be made, the plans and formula for the shell are stolen.
The British Embassy acts within hours. Two young men step aboard the Antwerp liner Zeeduyne just before the gangway rises. Their names are Halkett and Gray, and they play the part of New Zealand tennis champions. They dance, make friends, and bribe nobody, yet within a day they seem to know everyone on board.
Two German gentlemen keep to their stateroom and send odd wireless messages about soap and perfume to Cologne. Every copy of those messages goes to the Captain, who passes them to the tennis players. While one officer watches the Germans, the other searches their luggage. At Antwerp the trap closes in a hotel room, room twenty-three, where the two Germans end up tied and gagged.
The officers part ways. Gray rides off on a motorcycle, and Halkett heads east on foot with the recovered papers sewn into his clothing. Men try to kill him in Holland, in Luxembourg and at a lonely wooden platform near Diekirch, where an ammonia jet hidden in his waistcoat saves him. He understands that the papers matter far more than his life.
The book then turns to France. In the town of Ausone, a stateless cabaret keeper named Wildresse receives a letter from French Military Intelligence. It tells him to watch for strangers and to set the girl Philippa on them. That is how a spy chase becomes a human story.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about La joven Philippa
What is The Girl Philippa about?
It follows a British officer carrying stolen military plans, an American painter who agrees to hide them, and a cabaret cashier forced to spy. Set in the French border country in 1914, it mixes espionage, friendship and love as war breaks out.
Who is Philippa in the book?
Philippa is a young cashier at the Cabaret de Biribi in Ausone. Her guardian Wildresse makes her spy on customers. She does not know who her parents were, and she leaves him to find honest work and the friendship of Warner.
What is the Harkness shell?
It is a secret artillery shell, called the candle shell, whose plans the United States agrees to share with Britain. When the plans are stolen, two British officers chase the thieves and carry the recovered papers across Europe.
When was The Girl Philippa written, and is it a true story?
Robert W. Chambers wrote it in the first years of the Great War and set it in the summer of 1914. The people are invented, but events such as the mobilization and the invasion of Belgium come from history.
Is The Girl Philippa easy to follow?
Yes, it moves quickly. Short chapters, lively dialogue, clear villains and open codes keep the plot easy to follow. Chambers explains each cipher as Halkett works it out, so you can solve the puzzles along with him.