(p. 70) Some reviews of Children of the Desolate when it came out in August 1916: The Scotsman: It should be difficult to miss the note of distinction in this story which both in conception and in execution shows skilful and conscientious workmanship.

Miss Matheson follows the career of her study from infancy to maturity; shows her an impulsive, passionate, and imaginative child; traces the development of her artistic gifts - which border on genius - side by side with the growth of an idealistic nature, marred by vanity and petulance; and, finally, leaves her as a great artist, with a happy family of children whom she has adopted in obedience to the Madonna spirit within her.

[15] Leeds Post: The woman whose figure dominates "Children of the Desolate" ... by C. M. Matheson, is a strange and complex personality.

She is blessed - or cursed - with a vivid imagination, she is a creature of impulse, capable of infinite good or unutterably bad things.

Brought up without sympathy or understanding, she loses all self-control, she obeys the worst impulses, she marries a man for whom she has no love, nor even respect, for the sake of his money, and she tastes the bitter fruit of a loveless marriage.

The heroine is a high spirited, emotional, artistic girl, intensely modern, beating against the walls of a narrow, provincial home environment.

She has a lover in Ben, a young farmer, and she is also made love to by a fascinating philanderer [a well-read London artist], Ross, who tries hard to persuade her to go with him in an irregular position.

She flies to London, and there meets with strange [interesting] experiences before her ultimate return to Dartmoor to pick up the broken thread of her life.

She flees to London by train, and as the story unfolds becomes well acquainted with an actress flatmate, a prominent designer of gowns and women's clothes who falls in love with her, artists, aristocrats and revolutionaries.

On an unusual business arrangement she visits a country estate in Yorkshire, but after taking part in a joyful and dramatic fox hunt that ends in disaster she cannot bare to stay.

The novel tells the story of the heroine's remarkable life starting with her birth in the 1890s on a stormy night at her parents' house in the Cornwall countryside.

The story is engaging from the heroine's childhood in the Cornish countryside, to the fashionable girls school with its cliques and conflicts, the country estates of her later teens, her unhappy marriage into wealth and privilege, her extra-marital affair, and the extreme moral dilemma she faces at the end of World War One.

It begins with one of them, disgraced and dismissed insurance adjuster Roger Dalton, being sentenced to three years in prison for stealing (embezzlement) from his employer.

Indeed, as he turned to step from the dock and pass from the court that bitter afternoon, he straightened his shoulders and drew himself up as if with pride and satisfaction - as though what he had done was a worthy achievement."

She is a bright spiritually inclined Roman Catholic, who shows not the slightest regard for the moral teachings of the church.

Miss C. M. Matheson, a promising author of the younger school, has for nearly a year been acting as under-herdsman on the Prince of Wales's farm on the Duchy Estate at Stoke Climsland, Cornwall.

Miss Matheson, whose 'A Generation Between' and 'Children of the Desolate' (Fisher Unwin) - the latter published this year - have attained wide popularity, has proved a capable understudy in the management of the famous herd of pure-bred Shorthorns owned by the Prince, taking a share in all kinds of work, heavy and light."

Illustrated Western Weekly, 23 December 1916: "Miss Matheson, a well-known writer, is a "herdsman" on the Prince of Wales' farm at Stokeclimsland.

Matheson, the novelist, who is filling the position of under-herdsman on the Duchy Farm in Cornwall, has taken to her work so kindly as to find it quite engrossing.

She is buried a short drive from Porth Veor Hotel at the cemetery at St. Columb Minor Church, Cornwall, England.

The short article continues letting us know that afterwards "the Prince motored back to Princetown, which was reached in time for tea."

[26] At a drama presentation of the Princetown Women's Institute, September 1920: "... For the nine acted scenes, of which the most interesting were of the French revolutionary trial from Dickens's 'Tale of Two Cities,' the audience was much indebted to Miss.

C. M. Matheson (Plymouth), who charmed the spectators in her successive roles of Milliner, Rustic Lover, 'Evremond,' victim at the Bloc, Nun, Jewel Thief, and Gypsy.