Linda Newbery, author of The One True Thing, on on the lasting appeal of the Big House’ in literary fiction . . .
Mention the big country house in fiction, and countless examples spring to mind. Which do you think of first? Manderley, in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, or E M Forster’s Howards End? L P Hartley’s Brandham Hall in The Go-Between, William Trevor’s Kilneagh in Fools of Fortune or Alexander’s elegant home (unnamed, I think) in Jennifer Johnston’s How Many Miles to Babylon? Examples are countless, with more recent examples including Sarah Waters’ Hundreds Hall in The Little Stranger and Alan Hollinghurst’s Corley Court in The Stranger’s Child.
What’s the enduring appeal of the Big House setting? Maybe it’s to do with the confinement of characters in one location (akin to the ‘closed room’ scenario beloved of crime writers) albeit a spacious and luxurious one. As with Downton Abbey, the country house, especially pre-First World War, can feature the lives of upstairs and below stairs characters, juxtaposed in sharp contrast.
A quick scan of the titles above also shows that writers have often used the Big House as a place that crushes and inhibits its inhabitants. In How Many Miles to Babylon, Alexander’s father tells him: ‘It’s a sad fact, boy, that one has to accept young … the responsibilities and limitations of the class into which you are born.’ Marion, in The Go Between, is expected to make a loveless but advantageous marriage to Viscount Trimingham, her secret, sensuous relationship with farmer Ted Burgess ending tragically. As for the viewpoint character in Rebecca, named only as Mrs de Winter, no one could be more intimidated by the grandeur and rituals of a house than she; yet she learns that her view of her husband’s first marriage is a façade, the house itself symbolically going up in flames at the end. Hundreds Hall, in The Little Stranger, is literally crumbling to bits, the eerie and possibly haunted mansion and the unhappy lives of its inhabitants gradually eclipsed by the liveliness of the modern council estate on its periphery, with flower and vegetable gardens and playgrounds for children. A wooden fence replaces the chain-link one, the new residents not wanting to gaze at the abandoned, derelict house that resembles ‘some wounded, blighted beast’.
So often the Big House seems to show up the defects of those who live in it. The wealth of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park probably comes from slavery, enabling the shallow Lady Bertram and her daughters to live indulgent, self-centred lives. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, the shortsightedly loyal butler, Stevens, has dedicated his life to the smooth running of Darlington Hall, never questioning his employer Lord Darlington’s political associations with pre-war Nazis. Most of the Wilcoxes who inhabit the eponymous house in Howards End are careless of their wealth and privilege and their effect on other lives. Only Mrs Wilcox, who dies early on, seems fully appreciative. ‘To them Howards End was a house: they could not know that to her it had been a spirit, for which she sought a spiritual heir.’
In many Big House novels, the First World War marks a schism, even if not actually present in the story, as of course it actually did for so many establishments used as hospitals or falling into disrepair through loss of sons and heirs and unavailability of workers. Isobel Colegate’s The Shooting Party, set in 1913, is overshadowed by our knowledge that the leisurely way of life at Nettleby Park will soon come to an emphatic end, making us wonder about the fates of the younger male characters. William Trevor’s Fools of Fortune is divided abruptly into before-and-after the pivotal episode – obliquely told – of the torching of Kilneagh by Black and Tans as retaliation for the Protestant family’s Catholic sympathies. The fire kills the father of narrator Willie Quinton’s father and leaves his mother perpetually anguished, seeking revenge.
Without having set out to do so, I’ve featured a Big House in several of my novels, the first being The Shell House, inspired by Copped Hall on the edge of Epping Forest which was devastated by fire in 1917. This at once suggested a First World War story. Keeping the fire but changing the cause, I structured my story around the fictional Graveney Hall, past and present: an aristocratic country home in 1916, a burned-out shell being partly restored by volunteers (like the real Copped Hall) in the present day. Notions of heredity and continuity are central to the Big House story; Edmund, in the earlier sections, newly-enlisted as an infantry officer, is expected to marry and produce an heir. Secretly homosexual, he finds liberation in a new relationship and glimpses of a future away from the confines of class and family expectations, his story alternating with that of conflicted teenager Greg in the present-day episodes.
Set in Stone, which followed soon after, is my homage to the Victorian sensation novel. Here, the Big House is Fourwinds on the South Downs, an Arts and Crafts house built to the requirements of a connoisseur, every detail considered, every door-handle, staircase and fireplace made of the finest materials by the best craftsmen. The only flaw is that the exquisite Four Winds carvings are incomplete: the west-facing wall has no wind sculpture. Young artist Samuel Godwin, employed to teach art to Mr Farrow’s two daughters, discovers that the beauty of the house conceals shame, deception and tragedy for those who live there.
My new novel, The One True Thing, is also set around a big country house, though Wildings certainly isn’t grand or imposing (my working title, when I began it several years ago, was Wildings, but when Isabella Tree’s Wilding began to appear everywhere I had to think again). For Bridget, moving to Wildings when her husband Anthony inherits it, the house embodies an affluence she hasn’t earned and doesn’t particularly want; yet before long, as her marriage falters, her new career as gardener and designer is rooted there. For Jane, Bridget’s climate-aware daughter, the house is an extravagance the planet can’t afford: guzzling oil, poorly insulated, dependent on car transport and far too large for the few people who live there. She assumes that Anthony, wanting continuity, will leave Wildings to his first son, her half-brother; but when he dies suddenly his Will reveals the existence of a son no one knew of, and the house must be sold. Shaken by the loss of both parents while she’s still in her twenties, and realising how much she’s been cushioned by privilege and stability, Jane strives for independence and for the one true thing which will give purpose and meaning to her life. Oh, and the novel contains several glancing references to Howards End, for anyone who wants to look for them.
© Linda Newbery
About The One True Thing by Linda Newbery:
Bridget feels compromised. By marrying Anthony Harper and moving to Wildings, his family home for three generations, she’s abandoned her urban roots for rural affluence and comfort she hasn’t earned. As Anthony becomes increasingly difficult and their marriage founders, she immerses herself in her new career as gardener and designer. Conscience urges her to leave him; but with her identity and status so closely bound to the garden she knows intimately, how can she? Soon circumstances mean that a split with Anthony is at first essential, then impossible …
When Meg, a young stonemason, rents a workshop at Wildings, she wants only to be independent and alone. In the exacting craft of cutting letters in stone she finds meaning and purpose, her one true thing. But in spite of her resolve to avoid emotional attachments, she’s drawn into intense relationships: with Bridget and with Adam, another artist-in-residence whose confident manner and bold abstract paintings mask deep inner conflict. She finds herself caught between competing claims of loyalty, trust and desire.
A generation on, Jane, the youngest Harper daughter, is left aimless and adrift when Anthony dies suddenly, with the surprise in his Will that he had another son, unknown to the family. Now Wildings must be sold. Everything is in turmoil – work, home, her on-off relationship with Tom. Who is the stranger who’s to inherit a third of the estate? Where will she go, and how will she face the future alone? Aware that Meg and her mother each had an absorbing focus for their energy and passion, she is unsure where to find her own – but without it, what’s the purpose of her life?
Now far from Wildings, but bound by a promise to support Jane, Meg is unable to be honest about the secrets she knows from both parents – or thinks she knows. Having thought of herself as the observer who saw everything, she’s forced to realise how much she failed to see – and the cost to herself and to those she loves.
When the ground shifts, where is one true thing to be found?
The One True Thing by Linda Newbery (Writers Review Publishing, £9.99) is available from all good book retailers. Order your copy of The One True Thing online here.
www.writersreviewpublishing.co.uk
The other launch titles for Writers Review Publishing are The Poet’s Wife by Judith Allnatt and David: the Unauthorised Autobiography by Mary Hoffman.
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