In Town House, Country House, Hazel Boswell delightfully recounts many adventures from her mother's childhood more than a century ago. Her mother, Julie, is fourteen at the time of the story and the eldest of seven children: Edmond, Tilly, Alain, Mic, Ethel, and six-year-old Henri. Among those we meet are the children's father, Sir Henri Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, who later became premier of Québec; Oncle Édouard, brother to Henri Gustave and an officer in the British army, who supplied the element of high romance in the children's lives; Mary Ann, their very Irish nurse; and of course Beau Charles, the handsome butler who liked to have his petit coup and whom the children simply adored.