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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Snobs
by Julian Fellowes |
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Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Kind Snobs is the debut novel by
screenwriter, actor and director Julian Fellowes,
best known for his academy award for the I did not see a great deal of Edith in
the months after she had returned from her honeymoon although they were in I didn’t see them at all in the
build-up to Christmas and I was just beginning to feel myself drifting out of
their circle when I received a letter tucked into a card, not from Edith but
from Charles, asking me for a day’s shooting in January. It was to be a
Friday so I was asked for dinner and the night on the Thursday and, since
nothing further was specified, I was presumably intended to vanish after the
shoot to make way for the arrival of Saturday’s guests. The lateness of the
invitation meant that someone had chucked, but it was no less attractive for
that and I knew (for once) that I was going to be free on the date in
question. I had already been booked to be villain-of-the-week in one of those
endless boy-and-girl-detective series, which was due to start five days after
the date proposed so I wrote back accepting and received, almost by return,
directions by road or rail. These told me which train to be on if that was
how I would be travelling or alternatively to
arrive at the house at about six o’clock. I enjoy shooting. This I know is as
difficult for one’s kind-hearted I knew the way well enough, as I had
often been down for weekends with the Eastons, but
getting out of Having no desire to join in — the
committees one is forced to attend are bad enough — I settled into a
surprisingly comfortable velvet-and-gilt William Kent armchair in the Marble
Hall. I didn’t have very long to wait before the door opened to release some
of the members, muttering fawning farewells to Edith who was in the process
of showing them out. She broke away. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you
were here.’ ‘I’m rather early so I thought I’d wait
instead of coming in to spoil your fun.’ She sagged her
shoulders with a comic sigh. ‘Some fun!’ she said. ‘Come and have a cup of
stewed tea.’ Ignoring the nods and smiles of the departing ones, she led the
way back into the room. They did not object to this treatment. Far from it.
The net result of her cutting them in order to greet me was simply to make
them include me in their deferential smiles as they sidled towards the
staircase. I imagine they thought that I too had been touched by the golden
wand. The remaining members of the committee,
the usual collection of provincial intellectuals, tightly permed
councillors and farmers mad with boredom, were in
the final stages of leaving. Some of them had that dilatory manner of
collecting their things together, which betrays a resolve to ‘catch’ somebody
before they go. The prey that most of the lingerers were after was, of
course, Lady Uckfleld, who was ensconced in a
pretty, buttoned chair by the chimneypiece, surrounded by admirers. A few of
the aspirants, disconcerted by the competition, made do with five minutes of
Edith and left. I approached my hostess, who rose to greet me with a kiss,
which was a kind of signal to the entourage that the audience was over. ‘Goodbye, Lady Uckfield,’
said a black councillor in a baggy artist’s smock, ‘and thank you.’ ‘No, thank you.’ Lady Uckfield spoke with her usual intimate urgency. ‘I gather
you’re doing the most marvellous things down in Cramney. I hear it’s simply buzzing. I can’t wait to come
and see for myself.’ Her companion beamed, shedding his
Socialism on the spot. ‘We will be most glad to see you there.’ He retreated,
wreathed in smiles. ‘Where’s Cramney?’
I said. Lady Uckfield
shrugged. ‘Some ghastly little place in By the time I made it to my room, my
things had been unpacked and my evening shirt, tie, socks and cummerbund lay
waiting for me. There was, however, no sign of my clean underpants. I hunted
around through various drawers and was just in the process of searching under
the bed when I heard a voice behind me. ‘What can you be
looking for?’ I turned and saw Tommy Wainwright standing in the doorway that
connected my room, aka the Garden Room, with its
larger neighbour, the Rose Velvet Room, where Tommy
was billeted. Actually, despite these impressive titles, the chambers
themselves were rather small, having been squeezed into a sort of mezzanine
floor at one side of the house. They had been created by the architect as
part of an arrangement to provide a score of secondary bedrooms while only
messing up one end facade of the house. Consequently, despite the fragrant
names, these chambers overlooked the stable yard, had eight-foot ceilings,
and faced north. We hunted around for my missing
undergarment for a bit, then gave up, abandoning it
to its fate. Presumably, to this day, a rather old pair of pants is still
wedged at the back of some drawer in the Garden Room of Broughton Hall. Tommy
retreated to his chamber and returned with a small bottle of Scotch and two
tooth glasses. ‘Essential equipment for hotels and house-parties,’ he said,
and poured us both a slug. ‘Are they mean
with the booze?’ I asked. I have often been surprised at the fantastic
discomfort and deprivation the grand English are prepared to put their
friends (and total strangers) through, particularly in my youth. I’ve been
shown into bathrooms that could just about manage a cold squirt of brown
water, bedrooms with doors that don’t shut, blankets like tissue, and pillows
like rocks. I have driven an hour cross-country to lunch with some grand
relations of my father, who gave me one sausage, two small potatoes and
twenty-eight peas. Once, during a house-party for a ball in Hampshire, I was
so cold that I ended up piling all my clothes, with two threadbare towels,
onto the bed and then holding all this together with a worn Tommy shook his head in answer to my
question. ‘No, no. They’re not mean at all. Not a bit of it. Lord U chucks it
down everyone’s throat. It’s just too complicated to try and get a dressing
drink.’ We sat and gossiped for a bit and I
asked if Tommy had seen a lot of the Broughtons. He shook his head. ‘Not really. They’re
always down here. I must say, I’m quite surprised that Edith is content to
coddle the village and give away prizes without taking a breather but the
fact is they’re hardly in London at all.’ I too found this slightly unlikely.
Particularly as the young couple were still living
in the big house with Charles’s parents. There had been plans to renovate one
of the farm houses when they were first married and I asked Tommy if he knew
how it was coming along. ‘I’m not sure they’re going on with
that,’ he said. ‘I gather they’ve gone off the idea.’ ‘Really?’ ‘I know. It’s funny, isn’t it? She
wants to stay here and her in-laws are delighted so Brook Farm will probably
be finished quickly and let.’ ‘Do they have a flat in the house,
then?’ ‘Not as such. Some sort of upstairs
sitting room for Edith and Charles has his study, of course. But that’s it.
Rather like one of those American soap-operas, when they’re all worth a
hundred million and they still cram together in one house with a big
staircase.’ I shook my head. ‘I suppose Charles
likes the set-up here but it seems rather tiresome for a bride.’ Just as Charles, like all his breed,
was not immune to the sense of getting ‘special’ treatment wherever he went —
in fact, as Edith had already observed, he resented its being withheld from
him — so I could understand that, after a lifetime of pretending he was
unaware of the extraordinary baroque surroundings of his life, it would be
hard actually to give them up. The English upper-classes have a deep,
subconscious need to read their difference in the artefacts
about them. Nothing is more depressing (or less convincing) to them than the
attempt to claim some rank or position, some family background, some
genealogical distinction, without the requisite acquaintance and props. They
would not dream of decorating a bed sitting room in Putney without the odd watercolour of a grandmother in a crinoline, two or three
decent antiques and preferably a relic of a privileged childhood. These
things are a kind of sign language that tell the
visitor where in the class system the owner places him or herself. But, above all things, the real marker for them, the absolute litmus
test, is whether or not a family has retained its house and its
estates. Or a respectable proportion of them. You may overhear a nobleman
explaining to some American visitor that money is not important in England,
that people can stay in Society without a bean, that land is ‘more of a
liability, these days’, but in his heart, he does not believe any of these
things. He knows that the family that has lost everything but its coronet,
those duchesses in small houses near Cheyne Walk,
those viscounts with little flats in Ebury Street,
lined as they may be with portraits and pictures of the old place (‘It’s some
sort of farmers’ training college, nowadays’), these people are all déclassé
to their own kind. It goes without saying that this consciousness of the need
for the materialisation of rank is as unspoken as
the Masonic ritual. Of course, the Broughton position was
an unusually solid one. Few were the families in the 19905 that held their
sway and the day would dawn when Charles would enter Broughton Hall as its
owner. Still, listening to Tommy, I suspected he might have dreaded the
possibility that people, awe-struck as they shook his hand in the Marble
Hall, could make the mistake, on finding him at home in a chintz-decorated
farmhouse sitting room, of thinking that he was an Ordinary Person. In this,
however, I was wrong. Tommy shook his head. ‘No, Charles
wouldn’t mind. Not now he’s used to the idea.’ He paused for thought and then
decided against it. ‘Oh, well. I must get changed.’ We assembled for dinner in the drawing
room that the family generally used, a pretty apartment on the garden front,
much less cumbrous than the adjacent Red Saloon where we had gathered for the
engagement dinner. There were a few vaguely familiar faces besides Tommy.
Peter Broughton was there, though apparently without his dreary blonde. Old
Lady Tenby’s eldest daughter, Daphne, now married
to the rather dim second son of a ‘What would you like to drink?’ Lady Uckfield stood by my elbow and sent Jago
off to fetch a glass of Scotch and water. She followed my glance. ‘Heavens!
Eric seems to be making very large small talk.’ I smiled. ‘Who is the lucky recipient
of his confidences?’ ‘Poor dear Henri de Montalambert.’ For some reason or other, I knew that
the Duc de Montalambert
was a relation of the Broughtons by marriage. His
was not a particularly smart dukedom by French standards (they, having so
many more than we do, can afford to grade them) since it had only been given
by Louis XVIII in 1820, but a marriage in the 1890s to the heiress of a
Cincinnati steel king, had placed the family up there alongside the Trémouilles and the Uzès. Lady Uckfield had referred to him in the manner in which one
speaks of an old family friend, but since she always disguised her true
feelings about anyone, even from herself, I was, as usual, unable to gauge
the true degree of intimacy. ‘He looks a bit dazed,’ I said. She nodded with a suppressed giggle. ‘I
can’t imagine what he’s making of it all. He hardly speaks a word of English.
Never mind. Eric won’t notice.’ She accepted my laugh as tribute and then
rebuked me for it. ‘Now, you’re not to make me unkind.’ ‘How long is Monsieur de Montalambert staying?’ Lady Uckfield
pulled a face. ‘All three days. What are we to do? I’m still at ozè est la plume de ma tame,
and Tigger can hardly manage encore. Henri married
a cousin of ours thirty years ago and I doubt if we’ve exchanged as many
words since.’ ‘Is there an English-speaking duchesse,
then?’ ‘There was. But since she was deaf and
is dead, she cannot help us now. I don’t suppose you speak French?’ ‘I do a bit,’ I said with a sinking
heart. In my mind’s eye, I could see the re-shuffling of place cards and the
endless, sticky translated conversation that lay ahead. She caught my look. ‘Cheer up, you’ll have Edith between you.’ She darted one of her
flirtatious, birdlike glances at me. ‘How do you find our bride?’ ‘She’s looking very well,’ I said. ‘In
fact, I’ve never seen her prettier.’ ‘Yes, she does look well.’ Lady Uckfield hesitated for a fraction of a second. ‘I only
hope she finds it amusing down here. She’s been the most marvellous
success, you know. The trouble is they all love her so much that it’s
frightfully hard not to rope her into sharing all the wretched duties. I’m
afraid I’ve been rather selfish in unloading the cares of state.’ ‘Knowing Edith, I bet she enjoys all
that. It’s a step up on answering a telephone in Lady Uckfield
smiled. ‘Well, as long as it is.’ ‘She seems to have given up ‘Yes,’ she said briskly. ‘If they’re
happy, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’ She drifted away to greet some new
arrivals. It struck me that I had missed some nuance in the coiled recesses
of Lady Uckfield’s perfectly ordered mind. Fellowes captures characters, scenes and
dialogue with wit and precision. He falls short on plot and some boredom can
set in during the middle third of Snobs.
His biting fun becomes contagious, and even you, dear reader, with your
limitations, will appreciate it. Steve Hopkins,
May 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the June 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Snobs.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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