I love Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire series, and this book finds our favorite county families deep in the blackouts, rationing, deprivations and non-stop war work of WWII. Several reviews note this is darker than previous books, and I agree, but it is fitting that characters would stop at certain points and reflect on those they have lost; not that these very proper British gentry with their stiff upper lips would ever do something so embarrassing as wallow in self-reflection and self-pity, of course! That's just not done; as the saying goes, the Right Sort of People - Thirkell's books are shockingly snobbish by today's standards of who those people are - Keep Calm and Carry On.
It was especially moving to me when Thirkell reflected on the difficulty her elderly characters face trying to deal with their world vanishing forever; yes, they are dreadfully politically incorrect, referring casually to any dark-skinned foreigners as the "n" word, which is always a jolt and gobsmacks the modern reader. But it is moving when Miss Bunting, or "Bunny", a beloved longtime governess to the best county families, reflects quietly at Christmas toward the end of the book on her charges that have been lost, and acknowledges that many more may not come home from the fighting. At the same time, Thirkell so bitingly and hilariously sums up scenes and characters that I find myself laughing out loud! Two such scenes, just to give a taste -
Mrs. Marling and her adult daughters visit their cousins the Leslies for tea at Holdings, their family home. Lady Emily Leslie is aging and delightfully dotty, a million thoughts and comments going in different directions, and her adult daughter Agnes is soft, motherly, and totally besotted with motherhood and her 5 children. Between the children, the flaky but adorable Lady Emily and the oblivious Agnes, the Marling party begins to feel overwhelmed and seeks to extricate themselves:
"Mrs. Marling felt that the family atmosphere of Holdings was closing round her like treacle and she and her party would gradually be absorbed and live there unnoticed till they died. It was now or never. She stepped over the hassock and said good-bye to Lady Emily."
And this hilarious but refreshingly unsentimental introduction to a chapter about Christmas at Marling Hall:
"Most of the principal characters in this book being by now thoroughly uncomfortable in their various ways, Christmas did its best to bring on the culminating point of horror." Sounds harsh to sentimental American ears, but she goes on to irreverently and humorously explain the joys of tons of family, servants, dogs, and luggage descending on the Hall, as the residents try to put on a traditional English Christmas among the deprivations and shortages of war. I love her humor, her warmth, and her sharp (but never vicious) wit - delightful!
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