A short review as I’m just off to a Eurovision party!
I think Palladian (1946) might be my final Elizabeth Taylor novel (though, now I write that, unsure I’ve read In A Summer Season) – it was one of her first and, as the Wikipedia page tersely notes, most clearly shows the influence of Jane Austen.
That’s evident from the name of the heroine onwards: Miss Dashwood (Cassandra) is a young woman whose parents have both died, and who goes off to be a governess at Cropthorne Manor. Governesses in the mid-1940s are not quite what they were in the 19th-century, of course, and she is part of the eccentric family quite quickly.
Who is there? Precocious young Sophy, who will be Cassandra’s pupil and who speaks of missing her mother, though she died in childbirth. There is Sophy’s father, Marion (!) Vanbrugh who is a charming, slightly selfish widower. His cousin Margaret is there, a woman keen to shock others, particularly her mother Aunt Tinty – the housekeeper, of sorts, who is plagued by any number of anxieties. And finally Margaret’s brother Tom, who drinks voraciously and with occasional melancholy. Between them, they feud and make up, they reveal secrets and conceal others, they make life hard for each other for both good and bad reasons. Plenty of incidents happen, but it is the sprawling dynamic between these well-drawn, infuriating and fascinating characters that makes Palladian interesting.
The plot does lean a little towards melodrama, and perhaps the influence of Northanger Abbey is as present as any other of Austen’s novels. But what makes this novel so quintessentially Elizabeth Taylor is her brilliant prose. There are lovely scenes of nature, and then there will be a slyness that undercuts every pose the characters try to adopt. Not many other authors would write ‘Mrs Turner smoothed – or hoped to smooth – her skirt’, or ‘”She has a heart of gold,” she added unkindly’. It was those moments that made this novel most special to me. Another example:
“Did you do all your cooking on it?” She looked at Cassandra with a new expression on her face, of wonderment, perhaps, or respect.
“Well, after my mother died, my father and I seemed to live on bread-and-butter.”
The look faded.
I don’t think this is among Elizabeth Taylor’s very best novels, and I will admit that a lot of the very-good-but-quite-similar ones have merged in my mind, and this will join them. But as I re-read her works, I’m sure they will each become more distinct – and now that I’m getting to the end of my Taylor shelf, it won’t be long before re-reading starts.