Monday, January 31, 2011

The Daughter of the Manor--1997

 'Leonora wondered where the money was to come from.  Dinner parties cost money.  They could pawn the silver, she supposed with an inward chuckle; on the other hand she could make an enormous cottage pie and offer it to their guests...'
That's our girl--Leonora Crosby, daughter of the ramshackle manor, engaged to be married to Tony 'something in the City' Beamish and crushed under the weight of financial burdens and her parents' unrealistic expectations.
 She's hit a bad patch and metaphorically taken a nasty spill.  She's also stepped on some ice wrong and actually taken a nasty spill.  Both her bottom and her soul can feel the cold, wet awfulness of reality seeping in.
Enter the hero.  (What?! Our hero is not her intended?  To which I answer, 'His name is Tony, is it not?')
He skids to a well-bred halt in his great, socking something-or-other and takes in all that fallen loveliness, suffers her rudeness and is charmed when she apologizes.  Charmed but, alas, not enchanted.
Dr. James Galbraith (a man with a name that all but screams, Come with me and be my love and we shall all the pleasures prove...), the newly engaged G.P. for the area, tells us right at the outset that Leonora is 'not a girl he could be interested in'.  My, my his pride is climbing a mighty tall ladder...
For her part, she is a little embarrassed to have met him in such a way, is thrilled to have a 'something in the City' kind of fiance to dangle on her arm and tells him, 'I am never ill.'
Editorial Note: She says it a couple of times and I kept waiting for La Neels to strike her down with a case of exhaustion or measles or even a horrible flu but she stays as healthy as a horse for the duration. 
So let's discuss Tony instead.
This novel can be bisected into two parts.  Before, (with) Tony (BT)and After Tony (AT).
Before she throws his can to the curb, Leonora puts up with flying visits, intermittent phone calls (and no letters, love or otherwise), pompous discourses on subjects ranging from 'Why I am the most important person in the room' to 'Why you should pay more attention to me', and appallingly dismissive comments that set the seal on his scum and villainy, such as, 'Don't bother your pretty head...'  Of course her mother loves him.
And let me tell you about that piece of work...Father, not quite a villain, adores his daughter so much that he'll let tradition and pride make her old before her time.  Mother, meanwhile, hardly ever complains outright about the things they lack (new clothes, bridge money and...oh, um...an intact roof) but flits (even that word sounds too full of purpose and point) around avoiding all the unpleasantness of life in a moldering ruin. 
So, for Leonora, life BT is an unending juggling act of meeting everyone's needs but her own.
Is it any wonder, then, that Buntings, the newly purchased home of Dr. Galbraith, calmly presided over by Cricket (!), is, in contrast, an oasis of civility and comfort?
But the manor isn't all that bad, thinks Tony 'something in the City' Beamish.  With a good deal of money poured into fixing it up, the old people carted off to a modern home (...where Sir William would be less likely to contract pneumonia, he tells Leonora while employing his puppy eyes), and it could be a gathering place for all the other 'somethings in the City'.
And then Leonora finds out.  (Release the Kraken!)
Pouring out her troubles to an admiring and still charmed (but still un-enchanted) Doctor Galbraith (who never liked Tony and thought Leonora was a good deal too good for him), he suggests following Tony to London and getting explanations from the source.  Oh, and he'll give her a lift. 
She opts for the Blitzkrieg approach and before we know it she's chucking her engagement ring at his flummoxed head (You mean you didn't want to be wed for your material goods and shoe-horned into a life of urban misery?)
Leonora supposed she was happy the engagement
was broken but, just too late, had a brainwave about
a cake that would have saved the day.
 Doctor Galbraith is once again there to mop of her tears and respond matter-of-factly.  (All he knows of his own motives at this point is that he'd thought of Beamish as a 'lucky man' to be engaged to Leonora, that he is hostile to Tony and that he was watching a train wreck in the making.)
Mother is crushed.  (Isn't it always about Mother?)  Father seems to be aware that he's not been paying attention.  But no one really helps matters.  Mother even begins thinking of match-making between Leonora and James (as long as there's a stray man with a Rolls lying about unclaimed...) which makes her daughter want to go into hiding.
And she does for a little bit.  Though Tony continues to skulk about...
...until James asks her to be a part-time, temporary receptionist for him.  It turns out that being a daughter of the manor is a transferable skill-set.  She knows everyone for miles, knows how to deal with complaints and upsets...She's a gem.  So James asks if she wouldn't mind working for him for keeps.  And since that leaky roof isn't fixing itself...
Tony makes one last try and James gets to dump tea all over him (awe. some.) and Leonora gets to keep her dignity intact.
Of course, if one wanted to snog in a
cupboard and Peter O'Toole wasn't about,
 James was not a shabby substitute...
It isn't until James is having a weekend away to visit his sister that he twigs to why he wants to see Leonora dripping with diamonds and why he wants to chuck her mother from the top of the stairs and why his manservant, Cricket, is nearly moved to tears when she visits for meals.  He's in love. 
Life After Tony is pretty great but now that lovely, gentle, undemanding relationship is thrown off the skids.    She is aloof and he is confused but they'll get there.  But first his sister is coming to check her out.  They play-hide-and-seek which is, in this case, not entirely a euphemism for snogging in a cupboard...Leonora has a dawning realization while James walks her home from this excursion.
Nanny gets ill.
James advertises for a part-time receptionist (but he has one!) and Leonora is fit to be tied.  He finally sacks her outright and she demands an answer to the $64,000 question 'Why?!'  Happily, he offers to explain.  But first we'll have a break for a medical emergency. (A barn roof collapses with children inside which begs the question, 'What did The Great Betty have against children?')
But when that's cleared up (you know, aside from the ruined lives of all those families...) they adjourn to Buntings where he proposes.  But what about Mother and Father and Nanny?  (Yes, yes, is Mother to be dipped in boiling oil or merely defenestrated?  Enquiring minds want to know...)
James' answer, superficially similar to Tony's 'Don't worry your pretty head', is its polar opposite in meaning and intent.  'Will you leave everything to me?'
The End

Rating: I was deep into this one before I decided that I really like it quite well.  There are almost nonexistent sparks between our hero and heroine initially, but what saves this from being boring is the Terrible Machinations of Tony 'something in the City' Beamish and the Sensible Un-knotting of Her Love Life from Leonora.  Sure, she's a watering pot while severing her engagement with that awful slug of a man but her great good sense is a comfort and a prop to the reader even while she's grizzling into a certain British G.P.s wool suit coat.
After Tony (ugh) is disposed of, things pick up between Leonora and James nicely.
One of my favorite things about the book is getting a peek at how she holds the manor house together by being thrifty, hard-working and unfailingly patient with her self-absorbed parents.  How could James fail to fall in love with that?
We're handing out a lot of these lately but I give it a boeuf en croute.

Food: Leonora is hard-up but gets a lot of mileage out of eggs.  She makes souffle and scrambled eggs and omlettes.  We also get scones, grilled sole, mushroom and garlic soup eked out with chicken stock, Melba toast, oxtail soup, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, apple tart, artichoke soup, cheese pudding, baked potato piled high with baked beans (which The Great Betty passes off as comfort food), his and hers beverages (beer and lemonade in that order), corned beef pie, and junket with clotted cream.  Cricket, over the moon that Leonora has come for lunch, breaks out a mortar and pestle to make some anchovy paste stuff.

Fashion: Our poor heroine doesn't show to her best advantage while wearing shabby tweeds and wellies, an elderly mac, an old blue dress, a sensible pinny, a scarf, and a bathrobe.  Her party dress is a dire-sounding modest silver-grey velvet (and I'm all for modest but you just know that neckline is under her chin).  She wears a stone-colored jersey dress to drop Tony...erm...like a stone.  And Janice the Un-Wed Runaway  Mother wears shorn locks in vibrant and improbable chestnut, a stud in one nostril, long, dangling earrings and the shortest skirt Leonora had ever seen.

17 comments:

  1. This one wasn't bad, just boring. Really boring. Boring enough that I ended up skimming it. So boring, I actually have nothing to say, other than my mind wandered to my proposed ratings scheme(s).

    I give this one a Dull Mushroom Crepe (fabric rating) or a Third Story Bedsit (housing rating).

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  2. I was more bored by the relationship (until Beamish was tossed over) but I really liked all the bits with her running the house and managing her awful family and fiance. Also, she's just so sensible that I gave her high marks for that.

    I think that one thing that would have help more is if the hero had been more intentional about his help. ('I love her so I have to help her out of this jam.') It would have added a poignancy that it lacked.

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  3. Betty Barbara here--
    I enjoyed Leonora and James, though both had their Dawning Realizations just a little late for me.
    However, I really got mentally sidetracked by the financially feckless father-good ole' Sir William.
    Just what did he do to "lose all his money"? Take it all out of the former, nicely conservative, income-producing funds? What stupidity did he commit? And it is obvious that there is some income-groceries have to be bought, utilities paid, Nanny paid, etc. He took out a mortgage--so how is he ever going to pay it back? Are they living on what he was able to borrow? I tell you, I worried...
    Good old dad was a total ostrich--with no real money, the house will continue to deteriorate and Leonora may well have to sell it when she inherits. I think Dad should have taken the American Millionaire's offer. But, too late now.. And I think that James would be incredibly stupid to pump a whole lot of money into the place once he married Leonora.

    Now Tony was a rat, there is no doubt; he wanted the property more than the girl. But--he had a very good idea on what to do with Ye Olde Family Manor. Too bad his presentation lacked finesse.

    You want to know what Betty had against children (always putting them in peril, etc). I want to know what she had against parents: For every one set of loving, decent parents, we get 5 vague, useless fathers and 7 "poor-little-me" mothers. And here we get one each. It is amazing the Leonora turned out so well!

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  4. The financial aspects of the plot make NO sense whatsoever -- which I don't hold against it, by the way. What I do object to is the whole thing lacked the vibrancy I expect from The Canon. The Great Betty says Sir William couldn't possibly leave his house, but as we've seen with Downton Abbey (on PBS recently), you don't "own" a place like that, you hold it in trust for the next generation. In which case, Sir William was a piss-poor steward and didn't deserve anyone's sympathy. He couldn't have been very old -- what did he do with his time?

    But the other odd thing was, what was up with James Galbraith? He'd clearly just popped out of an oyster shell or something -- rich, driving a Rolls Royce with Cricket in the back seat -- as he moves into the village, buying the conveniently vacant Other Big House and taking up as the local GP. What's his story? Where's the consultancy? Where's the pied-à-terre in London? Where are his lovely parents? Oh, well, he's got 5 sisters, so that counts.

    I actually read the Thursday book A Kind of Magic before this one, and frankly, it's much better with pretty much the same plot.

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  5. Betty Barbara here--
    Betty Magdalen--I believe that dear old dad is in his early 60's, totally useless mom is 8-10 years younger. And you ask a good question: what did he do with his days??
    Ha! you are also right re: lack of back story for James. But I hadn't really noticed--too busy worrying about the money!

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  6. Rabbit-trailing here, Magdalen (and anyone else who watched it - still available on PBS.org, btw) on Downton Abbey, was I the only one gagging at the Mrs Miniver story-stealing in last week's episode? They did it so much better in Mrs Miniver, too!

    But I did enjoy the first season - looking forward to the rest.

    me<><

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  7. I was just a might bit hopping mad about the Mrs Miniver rip off too. I brushed it off knowing it was from the movie and not the book which I am highly possessive of, I even named my house Starlings.

    While Downton Abbey is fun it is also a bit smutty and it bugs me that they are calling it "Masterpiece Classic" doesn't classic imply some sort or age, or quality not just old dresses?

    And WHY, WHY, WHY does Masterpiece insist and slipping gay characters into every performance they can get away with it?

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  8. I have problems with Downton Abbey, but mostly because Julian Fellowes keeps putting his thumb on the scale. Poor Lady Mary isn't allowed to be one thing (good, bad, or indifferent) long enough for us to care what happens to her.

    I've not seen Mrs. Miniver, but I looked it up at Wikipedia to understand that it's the flower show bit you were talking about. This quote caught my attention, from the vicar's sermon after the German attack kills people:
    "And why? Surely you must have asked yourselves this question? Why in all conscience should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness? Why these? Are these our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed?"
    Boy, that could have been said about the people shot in Tucson, couldn't it?

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  9. Actually, we know that James' parents are in Canada with the twins, the two youngest sisters of the family. What they're doing there, I have no idea, but there they are. O! Canada ... I kind of get the feeling that Ms. Neels saw Canada as the new India, colonial outpost of the Empire.

    And as the sole person on the planet, apparently, who isn't watching Downton Abbey ... I know enough that the family on DT is noble, which isn't quite the same as landed gentry, which is what I think Sir William, et al., are.

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  10. Betty Janet, I think we have to remember that Canada's head of state, since Feb 6, 1952, is none other than Queen Elizabeth II., officially titled Queen of Canada (French: Reine du Canada).
    Betty Little Know-All Anonymous

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  11. Oui, je sais cela. Je suis une canadienne honoraire, selon de mes amis Canadien sur Twitter et Facebook. (Yes, I know that. I am an honorary Canadian, according to my Canadian friends on Twitter and Facebook.)

    What I meant was that people in her books tend to pop off to Canada the way they would once have gone off to India. At least it seems that way to me. YMMV.

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  12. Gone off to India - makes me think of colonial times... (Makes me think of A Passage to India, the movie. We saw it at the cinema. GREAT movie.) What I meant was that Canada seems to be a Betty-approved place whereas the United States... Or is it just Americans who don't get Betty's Seal of Approval?

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  13. I loved the polar bear pic and caption in the review! While the Founding Bettys' reviews are extremely well-written, the illustrations included in each review are also extremely appropriate and funny (the Sean Connery pic in another review comes to mind). I thought it wasn't very credible for a General Practitioner (GP) to have the usual RDD/RBD trappings of a Rolls, big house and a butler. For the first few chapters, I wondered if James was a famous consultant who was taking a strange sabbatical of some sort as a break from his normal routine but since he was still a GP by the end of the novel, I concluded that his wealth must have come from his family background. And is it just me, or do the others also find that the RDD heroes are usually more charming than the RBDs? Could this be a subconscious result of The Great Betty having a Dutch husband herself?

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    Replies
    1. I would really like to know about the source of the family wealth, but some things just have to be accepted. I think the RDD's are more appealing than the RBD's. Not too sure why, but I tend to accept whatever Betty writes.

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  14. I think that with their amazing names they are fairy tale magical whereas the British doctors, particularly to a British reader, need too much suspension of disbelief . . . Remember Sir Thomas Latimer, mid thirties and knighted for the greatness of his contribution to whatever his specialism is?

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  15. The RDDs are far more dynamic than the RBDs in that the former need to be active in courting their intended. RDDs have a limited time in which to acquaint themselves with the heroine, they then need to contrive a 'respectable' circumstance to lure the heroine to Holland and finally the Tour of Love to assess whether or not the heroine would be happy in a foreign land.

    RBDs tend not to work as hard to woo the heroine. Chapter Eight they have their dawning realisation as they need Chapter Nine to 'put a ring on it'. LOL.

    While not quite 'boring', Daughter of the Manor certainly is quite stagnant. Leonora never escapes the confines of her little village. No long term resolution is proffered for the financial woes and thus Leonora is where she was at the start caring for two inept parents.

    We didn't quite realise the financial angle would be so fascinating to others. The precariousness of the family estate is a well worn trope in M&B so we didn't give it much thought. It is usually brought about by the father's inability to see the virtue of a diverse investment portfolio and the mother's spendthrift habit. This being the late 1990s let us assume he is the victim of the Dot Com Bubble.

    We assumed the father obtained a reverse mortgage so the estate would be lost to Leonora of his death anyway.

    Slimely as Tony was, he suggestion to restoring and running the estate wasn't unreasonable. It couldn't survive remaining as a private family home.

    James was bit of a non-entity. Neels invented him just to end the story of domestic drudgery.

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  16. Well, and then James will repair the manor, hire people to take care of Leonora's parents, and those useless people will live happily ever after, not even learning a bit of the lesson - and Leonora, living in the same village, will always be in their slavery... Poor James – the only person with common sense there (well, not fully, if he agreed to marry whole Leonora's family – joking, of course!)

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