The first post-it that came out of my 1952 Club bowl was Treasure Hunt by M.J. Farrell – the pseudonym of Molly Keane, and my Virago Modern Classic uses both names on the cover, though the newer edition pictured above doesn’t any more. (The introduction to my edition, unexpectedly, is by Dirk Bogarde.) I’ve read quite a lot of her novels in the past and usually enjoyed them, but somehow hadn’t moved her into the highest echelons of my beloved writers. Well, thank you 1952 Club, I think Treasure Hunt might well be my favourite so far.
Treasure Hunt was Keane’s final published novel before a break of almost 30 years, and was based on a 1949 play of the same name – though I have no idea how closely it resembles the play. Certainly, the setting is very static: as in so many of Keane’s novels, we are in an enormous house lived in by Anglo-Irish gentry. As the novel opens, the patriarch Rodney has died – and the lawyer Mr Walsh takes great pleasure in telling Rodney’s thoughtlessly extravagant brother and sister that there is no money left. Hercules and Consuelo (the names in this book!) struggle to take it in, after years of having every luxury at their fingertips:
“Actually, Mrs Howard,” Mr Walsh said with entire satisfaction; this was the moment he had been righteously awaiting. For this he had got out of his bed of ‘flu. “Actually, do you follow me? – the Bank owns Ballyndayne.”
“The Bank?” Consuelo repeated the word as vaguely and prettily as though it meant the bank whereon the wild thyme blows, oxslips and the nodding violet grows, or the one the moonlight sleeps along, none of the hard anxiety usually so emphatic in the word – “The Bank? Oh, just a little mortgage, I expect.” She was practical now, quite the business head. “That’s nothing. That’s rather the thing to have, I understand. Just take no notice – that’s what Roddy always said.”
“I’m afraid,” Mr Walsh proceeded, still with satisfaction, “the time has unfortunately come when the Bank is taking every notice.”
You can see what a lovely wit Keane has in her phrasing. While I’ve enjoyed her other novels, I don’t remember this sort of verbal sparring and ironic lilt to the sentences that reminds me a lot of E.M. Delafield. It’s fun seeing the cluelessness of Hercules and Consuelo, not least because the stakes aren’t really that high. They can no longer drink vintage champagne all day, but they’re not going to be homeless. Their attempts at economising are ludicrous – but there is a fundamental decency to them and a dignity that seems unshakeable.
“But you know we can’t even afford a car.”
This was laughable: “Dear boy, there’s a Rolls in the garage.”
“Yes,” Phillip agreed, “there is. But only one of its gears works.”
“Quite enough, too,” Consuelo commented with a sort of Edward VII grandeur. “Most modern cars have far too many.”
Thankfully the whole household isn’t clueless. Philip (Rodney’s son) and Veronica (Consuelo’s daughter) have plans to help the family keep their home: they want to open it up to paying guests. And you KNOW how I love a novel about paying guests.
Philip and Veronica are not eccentrics, and so perhaps leap off the page less vividly than the older generation – but I love what Keane does with them. She manages to people the novel with ‘normal’ characters and those who are borderline grotesques without it feeling uneven. Philip and Veronica are sensible, thoughtful, driven people who react much as you might expect to much-loved parents/uncle/aunt who behave foolishly – there is a warmth to the novel that means you never feel the generations are antagonists, even when they have very different wishes.
The family that move into the house as the first paying guests are a young woman, her mother and her uncle. They are expecting something rather grander than the house – particularly when Hercules, Consuelo and the complicit servants do their best to drive them away with damp beds and inedible food. Keane sends up this new trio, clueless in their own way, and is very funny at details like the decision-making that led to their journey across the Irish Sea:
In her mind were recreated all the difficulties and horrors of that decision and departure: reading advertisements, answering advertisements, refusals, acceptances, half measures, arguments, letters, agony of decision, agony of indecision, discussion, sleeplessness, arguments: the burden that precedes change, the lack of necessity for change, the absolute necessity for change, the friends who advised for it – creating doubt – against it, creating resolution, advice only sought to strength her in resolution.
It’s a brilliant set up for a novel, and I loved it. Oh, and a key player I haven’t yet mentioned is Aunt Anna Rose. If Consuelo and Hercules are eccentrics, she is plain loopy. She sits in a sedan chair in the living room, firmly believing she is in a train carriage travelling on her honeymoon – all the family accept her delusions, and try to get the paying guests to do so too. Most mysteriously, Aunt Anna Rose refers often to valuable rubies that are in the house somewhere, if only she could remember where she left them. The ‘treasure hunt’ of the title is the decades-long search for these rubies if, indeed, they really exist. Of course, the reader knows a Chekhov’s gun when he/she sees one…
This was a delightful start to the 1952 Club and has made me re-evaluate Molly Keane as a truly brilliant writer. Imagine the wit of E.M. Delafield, the unhinged characters of Barbara Comyns, and the setting and dynamics of Elizabeth Bowen – all put together with something quintessentially Keane. If you’ve never tried her, it’s a great place to start – and if you’ve sampled other novels by Keane, make sure you don’t leave this one unread.
