Palladian (1946)

Cassandra Dashwood, at the age of eighteen is quiet, bookish and, dare I say, a little dull. And, after her father’s recent death, she is alone in the world.

Fortunately Mrs. Turner, her former headmistress, takes an interest in Cassandra, and finds her a post: Marion Vanbrugh is a widower with a young daughter, Sophy, and he needs a governess.

It was so, so easy for Cassandra to cast herself and Jane Eyre and Marion as Mr Rochester.

But reality would prove to be a little different.

Marion was as quiet, bookish and dull as Cassandra. And he was weighed down by his family; an elderly aunt, who kept house quite ineffectually; a cousin, pregnant by her lover, not her husband; another cousin, who was charming but quite directionless; and Violet, his wife who had died but still had a presence.

And they all lived together, their lives stagnating in a crumbling mansion.

It was fortunate that Sophy was charming, and that her father took a great interest in his daughter and her governess …

This is a story with echoes of other authors: Jane Austen in the heroine’s name, and in more besides; Charlotte Bronte in the heroine’s position; Ivy Compton-Burnett in some of the dialogue and relationships; Daphne Du Maurier in the presence, and untold story, of Marion’s wife; Molly Keane in the crumbling mansion; Thomas Hardy in some of the darker moments; and maybe even more that have passed me by when I was caught up …

Not a satire, not a pastiche, but something rather different, and rather more interesting. Something I can’t quite explain.

A dark tale, but the darkness is offset by wry humor and dry wit.

Events unfold slowly, but every sentence brings a new insight, or a new development. There are small, subtle changes, and there is one sudden, tragic, utterly real event that will change everything

Everything is driven by the characters; characters I found difficult to like, but they were pinpointed so accurately that I was always fascinated. Because I understood their situations, their inner lives, their motivations, and what made each of them unique.

And there is a nicely drawn love song threaded through. Though there will not be happy endings for all …

Palladian is a strangely intriguing novel – just as good as I had hoped but not at all what I had expected. ( )

Palladian was a bumpy read, an uncomfortable and imperfect book by a very talented writer finding her way. I felt the presences and influences of so many earlier writers -- all but a few women - Austen, Eliot, Compton-Burnett stand out. I am sure there are many others, but I recognized these because I am most familiar with their work. The prose alternates between a twitchy realism and a pathos too close to melodrama for comfort, almost silly. There are flashes of such wit and humor and detail : "Sodden cattle stood facing north, or hunched in the hedges in the drizzle. The train ripped through the sullen landscape like scissors through calico...." "And we can never be safe unless we believe we are great and that human life is abiding and the sun constant and that we matter." thinks the protagonist, Cassandra. "In books, death is just a sad chapter, and then you turn the page and go on with the next. But really it can't be left behind quite like that. It goes on and on, a sort of nagging paranthesis, coming in brackets at the end of everything that happens...." Cassandra says to Tom, a resident of the house where she is a governess to a not very appealing little girl, Sophy. Because, of course, that is what Cassandra Dashwood is doing, orphaned, educated and poor she finds a job governessing at a 'big house'.... I am not at all sure of what the dates are but i would hazard 'between the wars'. She has already decided before laying eyes on him that she will fall in love with her employer Marion VanBrugh at Cropthorne Manor, and he, of course, is a sad, widowed wreck of a man, good-looking in an effeminate way..... you get the idea. But there is a kind of brutality in some of the prose and a cold-matter-of-factness to some of the characters that is very modern. I wasn't deeply engaged because, frankly, the characters were not particularly rounded, they were part of a formal arrangement, an experiment, if you will, of cobbling together a number of styles and approaches. As if an artist put in one canvas a bit of Brueghel, a bit of Renoir (literally....) and, hm, someone modernist and harsh. Can't think. So it doesn't work, but that doesn't make it not worth reading. ***1/2 ( )

(03 Feb 2012)

Purchased and read for the LibraryThing Virago Group’s Taylor read – I think the only one of her books I didn’t already own. Taylor’s second novel, and her take on Janes Austen and Eyre. Orphaned Cassandra leaves what passes for the real world (school, then a quiet life with her father) for seclusion as a governess, all too ready to fall in love with the master of the house.

Spare, exacting writing mercilessly dissects the characters just as failed medical student Tom draws images of his dissected household, and Taylor does not even flinch from a somewhat shocking death part way through (which is foreshadowed by a sad pet bit that I was glad to be warned about in advance but that I managed OK).

Unsparing and uncompromising as it is, it is a good read, which must have influenced Barbara Comyns in her writing (do we know about this?). Not enjoyable, exactly, but intriguing and beautifully done. ( )

Cassandra Dashwood, quiet to the point of appearing insipid, is a newly orphaned young woman when we meet first meet her. Mrs. Turner, her former headmistress, finds her a position as a governess to teach Sophy Vanbrugh, a motherless young girl who lives with her father, Marion Vanbrugh, in Cropthorne Manor. Through drizzle and damp, Cassandra takes the train to Cropthorne, accompanied by a mouldy, dank book written by Mrs. Turner and The Woman in White (a Gothic mystery by Wilkie Collins). “…drowsy, dully baleful…lulled into blankness of mind…anaeshetised almost by the rain and the darkening afternoon”, so Taylor sets the scene for us, taking Cassandra into the next phase of her life where she has a “very proper willingness to fall in love, the more despairingly the better, with her employer”.

The clues are brickbats, whacking us over the head at this point: we are going into an odd mix of Jane Austen and a Gothic tale, with decided overtones of Jane Eyre, with flashes of brilliant humour laced through. In fact, I think Hardy and a few others might be in there too.

Cassandra finds herself in a dusty, mouldy, ramshackle, teetering on the edge of ruin manor home with a cat who is forever killing birds or mice all over the place, a nanny who has no purpose as a nanny but refuses to slide down the social ladder to become a cook or general dogsbody, and several sponging relatives of Marion Vanbrugh’s, in addition to the child Sophy. These are Dr. Margaret Osborne, his cousin, a caustic and mannish woman who is pregnant by her lover, not her husband; Margaret’s brother, Tom, an alcoholic failed doctor who draws surreal and noir sketches; their mother, the querulous and anxiety riddled Mrs. Vanbrugh, aka Aunt Tinty to Sophy.

The house itself is as much a character as any of the people are, with its all-pervasive damp and mustiness casting a claustrophobic pall over everything despite the former grandeur of its rooms. Its fireplaces can’t begin to throw any heat into its cold halls. Its greenhouse is teetering on the edge of the ruin which must come, out-buildings are locked as too dangerous to enter, its church is as cold as the grave. I kept wondering why no one picked up a pail or a hammer but no, everyone just made endless pots of tea, read or drank.

Marion Vanbrugh himself is effete and delicate, handsome with a woman’s beauty, pale and bookish. Of course he is to be Cassandra’s love—no spoiler, she set her cap in this direction before even meeting him—and they suit each other perfectly. The first thing he wants to do is teach her Greek, the wild man. There is no energy from either of them. They don’t move or rush about or do anything particularly interesting. The one time someone does move with any vigour or sense of life, disaster strikes!

And then there is the formidable presence of Violet, the late lady of the manor. A tale does unfold, things do happen, there are human emotions, but it all seems in slow motion or seen through a veil of cobwebs. No one comes to wind the clocks any more. What’s the point? It’s a wonderful send-up and yet it’s a good story all on its own. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and the dark humour which poked through every now and then. For the key characters aren't stupid, quite the contrary, so despite the external torpor, they are possessed of an inner life--and in the case of some, inner demons.

First of the Elizabeth Taylor's (no, not *that* one!) I've read.

Cassandra, newly orphaned, gets the job of a governess to a motherless young girl. She joins a family that includes the widower, his cousins and aunts, all of whom have their own problems and little foibles. Ripe for falling in love with her employer - for little better reason that she's read it in a book so thinks it's virtually demanded of her - she and Marion do seem to fall in love.

Things happen as a result of her presence, and then removal from the family, not all of it good, but things are said that should have been said years before in a more healthy household.

Did find that Cassandra and Marion were the least strongly drawn characters in the book, but nevertheless this was an interesting first read from this writer ( )