Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Virago Press Ltd (2003), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 349 pages
Description
"An instant bestseller when it was published in 1930, this glittering satire of Edwardian high society features a privileged brother and sister torn between tradition and a chance at an independent life. Sebastian is young, handsome, moody, and the heir to Chevron, a vast and opulent ducal estate. He feels a deep love for the countryside and for his patrimony, but he loathes the frivolous social world his mother and her shallow friends represent. At one of his mother's decadent house parties, Sebastian meets two people who shake his sense of self: Leonard Anquetil, a lowborn arctic explorer, who questions his mode of living; and Lady Roehampton, a married society beauty with a string of lovers, who breaks his heart. When Sebastian reaches the brink of despair, it is his self-possessed younger sister, Viola, who opens for them both a gateway to another world"-- "Classic satirical novel portraying high society in England during the Edwardian period"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member ChocolateMuse
This is unmistakably and enjoyably a novel, not a sermon, an essay or an exposition. But it's a novel so strongly about a theme, that it's impossible to discuss it without dwelling on that theme. The book hammers its theme plainly and repeatedly throughout the book - in that respect, it is
The young duke, awakened to the creaking weight of his position in an outdated society, becomes aware of society's flaws: its false morality, its stifling traditions, its heavy yet unnecessary responsibilities and repetitive pleasures. He begins to react to some things as we might in his place - I think of the little scene where Sebastian (the young duke) has just popped in to chat kindly to an old retainer of his, and told him he would be raising his pay to an extra five shillings a week. The old retainer is profusely pleased and grateful. "{Sebastian} felt, rather, that it was he who should thank the old man for rising at five o'clock every morning and for walking three miles, that the bath should be hot by eight and the fires fed throughout the day." Unfortunately, that quote taken out of context seems dreadfully heavy-handed and preachy - please believe that in context, it is not.
It's essentially a story about a young man exploring the world as it is for him, thinking about it, rebelling against and accepting it, sometimes playing with it recklessly, sometimes submitting to its tyranny. It's about a young man of great rank and fortune, intelligent and questioning, living within a society that is doomed, and is beginning to suspect that that doom is approaching.
It is also not merely about Sebastian - in fact the book is broken into seven parts, all except the first are named after the other characters who profoundly influence him, and are influenced by him. The first part is named after Chevron, the Duke's nostalgically beautiful country seat. The others are Anquetil, a free-thinking working-class explorer who first awakens Sebastian to these rebellious ideas; Sylvia, Sebastian's first lover, an older woman of rank; and Teresa, a middle-class doctor's wife fascinated by high society. (Several of the seven parts are headed by the same names.) We see things through the eyes of these characters too, and they tend to mirror and explore our own reactions to things which only seem natural to Sebastian.
In some ways, this book is not unlike Forster’s A Room with a View - set in the same period but within a different class of society, it explores the same themes of awakening and rebellion among the young and privileged in that paradoxical decade before WW1.
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certainly not subtle. But the complexity of that theme, and (strangely, I think) its relevance to most of us, are somehow interesting enough to make that lack of subtlety unimportant. The book is about its title - the people of that glittering period just before the Great War. It explores the strange relationship many of us have with our idea of English high society of that time: a half-guilty attraction to its lavish decadence; a distaste for the outrageous inequality of its class system; a secret love for its beauty and apparent solidity; a fascination with the sense of belonging, rightness, natural order of things that the incredibly rich felt about their place in society; and most of all, that sense of underlying fragility, impending doom, the looming shadow of the War to come. It's a conflicted discomfiture we have toward the period (I speak for myself mainly, but suspect many share it): a shameful love and nostalgia, combined with a rather smug disdain for its arrogance and supreme unfairness. The young duke, awakened to the creaking weight of his position in an outdated society, becomes aware of society's flaws: its false morality, its stifling traditions, its heavy yet unnecessary responsibilities and repetitive pleasures. He begins to react to some things as we might in his place - I think of the little scene where Sebastian (the young duke) has just popped in to chat kindly to an old retainer of his, and told him he would be raising his pay to an extra five shillings a week. The old retainer is profusely pleased and grateful. "{Sebastian} felt, rather, that it was he who should thank the old man for rising at five o'clock every morning and for walking three miles, that the bath should be hot by eight and the fires fed throughout the day." Unfortunately, that quote taken out of context seems dreadfully heavy-handed and preachy - please believe that in context, it is not.
It's essentially a story about a young man exploring the world as it is for him, thinking about it, rebelling against and accepting it, sometimes playing with it recklessly, sometimes submitting to its tyranny. It's about a young man of great rank and fortune, intelligent and questioning, living within a society that is doomed, and is beginning to suspect that that doom is approaching.
It is also not merely about Sebastian - in fact the book is broken into seven parts, all except the first are named after the other characters who profoundly influence him, and are influenced by him. The first part is named after Chevron, the Duke's nostalgically beautiful country seat. The others are Anquetil, a free-thinking working-class explorer who first awakens Sebastian to these rebellious ideas; Sylvia, Sebastian's first lover, an older woman of rank; and Teresa, a middle-class doctor's wife fascinated by high society. (Several of the seven parts are headed by the same names.) We see things through the eyes of these characters too, and they tend to mirror and explore our own reactions to things which only seem natural to Sebastian.
In some ways, this book is not unlike Forster’s A Room with a View - set in the same period but within a different class of society, it explores the same themes of awakening and rebellion among the young and privileged in that paradoxical decade before WW1.
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LibraryThing member alexdaw
I should probably have read this a long time ago. But life is full of unhelpful "shoulds" that don't get you anywhere. I actually think it is better that I read it now - me being ancient and all. The Edwardians is about young Sebastian and Viola, brother and sister, and more importantly part of the
It's set in the early 1900s - before WW1. There's much description of house parties, the social scene in London and it ends with the coronation of George V. And really it does seem terribly antiquated and far removed from reality when you read it. A kind of snapshot into another era.
Except I was reading it just as we were waiting for the Windsors to announce the birth of the third in line to the throne, so it added a certain poignancy to the reading. Or vice versa - I'm not sure which.
One is much struck with how much things have changed. And how much they haven't. By the by, I also saw "Before Midnight" yesterday which for the large part was excruciatingly annoying but had a few good moments. One of them was when an elderly gent intoned something along the lines of "Every generation thinks the end of the world is nigh or going to pot or some such". And certainly that is the case with [The Edwardians]. The older generation is deeply concerned at the loss of the perceived values of the younger set - the rise of the middle classes and the decay of the upper classes. As we sat on our sofas in our lounge rooms waiting for the announcement of the birth we too were tut tutting that the media had ruined everything and how ridiculous it all was - and yet we watched....
Most of the story is taken up with Sebastian's internal struggle to accept his fate as part of the peerage. He chafes at the "prison" that his accident of birth has dictated. He becomes embroiled in a series of unsuitable attachments whilst relishing his role as lord of the estate, tramping through the grounds with his faithful hounds. Will he find a good match? Will he settle down?
I found the last chapter particularly riveting and it concluded very satisfactorily - as often happens in life - with the line "The coach came to a standstill in Grosvenor Square" just as my very own train came to a standstill at Roma Street Station after my holiday in Woodgate. Back to reality and work on Tuesday!
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aristocracy of England. It's set in the early 1900s - before WW1. There's much description of house parties, the social scene in London and it ends with the coronation of George V. And really it does seem terribly antiquated and far removed from reality when you read it. A kind of snapshot into another era.
Except I was reading it just as we were waiting for the Windsors to announce the birth of the third in line to the throne, so it added a certain poignancy to the reading. Or vice versa - I'm not sure which.
One is much struck with how much things have changed. And how much they haven't. By the by, I also saw "Before Midnight" yesterday which for the large part was excruciatingly annoying but had a few good moments. One of them was when an elderly gent intoned something along the lines of "Every generation thinks the end of the world is nigh or going to pot or some such". And certainly that is the case with [The Edwardians]. The older generation is deeply concerned at the loss of the perceived values of the younger set - the rise of the middle classes and the decay of the upper classes. As we sat on our sofas in our lounge rooms waiting for the announcement of the birth we too were tut tutting that the media had ruined everything and how ridiculous it all was - and yet we watched....
Most of the story is taken up with Sebastian's internal struggle to accept his fate as part of the peerage. He chafes at the "prison" that his accident of birth has dictated. He becomes embroiled in a series of unsuitable attachments whilst relishing his role as lord of the estate, tramping through the grounds with his faithful hounds. Will he find a good match? Will he settle down?
I found the last chapter particularly riveting and it concluded very satisfactorily - as often happens in life - with the line "The coach came to a standstill in Grosvenor Square" just as my very own train came to a standstill at Roma Street Station after my holiday in Woodgate. Back to reality and work on Tuesday!
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LibraryThing member Cariola
If you're looking for some insights into aristocratic Edwardian society, this is the book for you. Sebastian, a young duke and owner of a familial estate named Chevron, seems unhappy with his lot in life. Ah, the exhausting boredom of duty! Sebastian seems to want something more than the salons,
Sackville-West, who certainly knew the ins and outs of high society, delivers a subtle but scathing critique of her own kind. While I can't say that I was blown away by The Edwardians, it was an interesting portrait of the duller side of the aritsocracy, with even a little sympathy for their lot thrown in.
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fox hunts, coming-out balls and nights at the opera can offer--but he isn't really sure what that something more is. He begins to search for it through a series of affairs, telling us later that only four of the women he conquered ever really changed him in any way. The first, the renowned but much older beauty Lady Roehampton, taught him that people of his class in society will always put their position before everything else, even love. The second, a married doctor's wife who first encouraged but then spurned his advances, proved top him that middle class women had the same dull concerns with position. The third, the groundskeeper's daughter, was a lovely girl, but a girl who sucked her teeth could never be accepted by his peers. The fourth, a model, attracted him for her bohemian lifestyle, but in the end, she found Sebastian far too dull. Before long, Sebastian realizes that he has settled into exactly the kind of routine that the adventurer Angetil had predicted and warned him about. And he is trapped, with no means of escape.Sackville-West, who certainly knew the ins and outs of high society, delivers a subtle but scathing critique of her own kind. While I can't say that I was blown away by The Edwardians, it was an interesting portrait of the duller side of the aritsocracy, with even a little sympathy for their lot thrown in.
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LibraryThing member Kasthu
I have to admit that I was nervous going into the reading of this novel. I was expecting that Vita Sackville-West’s writing style was going to be very modernist and hard to read. But I was pleasantly surprised, as I usually am when I expect to dislike something.
The Edwardians is set in 1905 and
The plot isn’t very original or groundbreaking, but what it lacks is more than made up for in the characters that populate this book. Vita Sackville-West’s novel gives it’s reader a little taste of upper-class, aristocratic society in the early 20th century—and she reveals the good and the bad of this kind of world. All of her characters, even the superficial and shallow ones, are well drawn, and probably very true to life considering that Vita Sackville-West knew this world very well. Sebastian and Viola seem to experiment with everything that is deviant from the world into which they were born; but it’s all a part of the growing-up process for them.
Vita Sackville’s message about the shallowness of the trappings of the upper-class lifestyle in Edwardian England also comes across strongly; sometimes too strongly. Also, the decision that Sebastian makes at the end seems a little too rushed (I understand why he makes that decision, but it seems too impetuous). As I’ve said, though, Sackville-West’s writing moves very smoothly, and her characters are very real and believable. Sackville-West was very perceptive about the world of which she wrote, and it shows through in this novel.
The Edwardians is set in 1905 and
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1906 (and then in 1910), and features Sebastian, a duke and owner of an estate called Chevron. His family is of the elite, and he rubs elbows with the cream of society, among whom are Lady Roehampton, a matron with whom he has an affair, and an adventurer named Leonard Anquetil, and Sebastian’s mother Lucy and his sister Viola, who strains against the parameters that society has set for her life. Despite his wealth and the privileges that come with it, however, Sebastian feels trapped, and he finds himself faced with a heavy decision to make.The plot isn’t very original or groundbreaking, but what it lacks is more than made up for in the characters that populate this book. Vita Sackville-West’s novel gives it’s reader a little taste of upper-class, aristocratic society in the early 20th century—and she reveals the good and the bad of this kind of world. All of her characters, even the superficial and shallow ones, are well drawn, and probably very true to life considering that Vita Sackville-West knew this world very well. Sebastian and Viola seem to experiment with everything that is deviant from the world into which they were born; but it’s all a part of the growing-up process for them.
Vita Sackville’s message about the shallowness of the trappings of the upper-class lifestyle in Edwardian England also comes across strongly; sometimes too strongly. Also, the decision that Sebastian makes at the end seems a little too rushed (I understand why he makes that decision, but it seems too impetuous). As I’ve said, though, Sackville-West’s writing moves very smoothly, and her characters are very real and believable. Sackville-West was very perceptive about the world of which she wrote, and it shows through in this novel.
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LibraryThing member BeyondEdenRock
History records that Vita Sackville-West wrote ‘The Edwardians’ on holiday, targeting popular success. Her book was a huge hit, it was adapted for the stage, it was translated into several languages, but neither its author or its publisher saw it as having any claim to literary greatness.
They
The author wrote what she knew, and at the very beginning of the book she notes that:
“No character in this book is wholly fictitious.”
If you have knowledge of her and her circle you will appreciate that; and understand that she is looking back at the world that she grew up in, comparing it with the world that her mother knew and the very different world that her children knew; and knowing that, while she loved it dearly, it was fatally flawed.
But it doesn’t matter if you know nothing at all, because the book is such a lovely period piece.
The story opens in 1905, with Sebastian, the nineteen year-old Duke of Chevron ascending to the roof of his country home to escape the guests at his mother’s house party. She loves society, while Sebastian isn’t quite sure how he feels. He is drawn to the glamour of his mother’s social set, but he can’t help being aware of how shallow their lives and their values really are.
His estate, Chevron, is a working estate, and Sebastian loved everything he can see and hear from his high vantage point.
“The whole community of the great house was humming at its work. In the stables, men were grooming horses; in the ‘shops’, the carpenters plane sent the wood-chips flying, the diamond of the glazier hissed on the glass; in the forge, the hammer rang in the anvil, and the bellows windily sighed … Sebastian heard the music and saw the vision. It was a tapestry that he saw, and heard the strains of a wind orchestra.”
It had been that way for hundreds of years, with sons following their fathers into the shops to learn a trade, and with positions within the house filled by the daughters and nieces of those already employed; with staff claiming – and constrained by – their inheritance just as much as the family they served.
All of this is so vividly evoked, and the early chapters are rich with details of the life of the house, the party arrangements, the family, and a veritable army of servants.
One of the weekend visitors to Chevron, Leonard Antequil, didn’t belong to that world; but his adventurous life, including a winter spent alone in a snow hut in the Arctic Circle, and had brought him fame and made him a very desirable guest for the fashionable set.
It may not have occurred to the other guests that he was there as the result of his own of his efforts while they were there only by chance of birth or marriage. Or that he thought little of them.
One night Sebastian invited him up onto the roof, and he spoke to him openly and honestly, sensing his dissatisfaction and urging him to recognise the limitations of his lifestyle and to consider breaking with tradition.
“Very well, if you want the truth, here it is. The society you live in is composed of people who are both dissolute and prudent. They want to have their fun, and they want to keep their position. They glitter on the surface, but underneath the surface they are stupid – too stupid to recognise their own motives. They know only a limited number of things about themselves: that they need plenty of money, and that they must be seen in the right places, associated with the right people. In spite of their efforts to turn themselves into painted images, they remain human somewhere, and must indulge in love-affairs, which are sometimes artificial, and sometimes inconveniently real. Whatever happens the world must be served first.”
Sebastian is torn between his deep love of his home and his knowledge of the truth of Antequil’s words.
The arguments are beautifully expressed and perfectly balanced.
Sebastian regretfully declines Antequil’s invitation to accompany him on his next trip; but he never forgets their conversation.
He is seduced by an older woman, a society beauty of his mother’s generation; when their affair is ended by an ultimatum from her husband he drifts into a shallow life as a man about time; and then he draws a middle-class doctor’s wife into his life, and makes the mistake of inviting her to Chevron ….
“He had tried the most fashionable society, and he had tried the middle-class, and in both his plunging spirit had got stuck in the glue of convention and hypocrisy.”
All of this says much about Sebastian’s world; but it isn’t quite as engaging as those early chapters about life at the family estate.
Meanwhile, the world was changing.
Sebastian’s sister, Viola, knew that, and she was glad.
“For what have our mothers thought of us, all these years?” said Viola; “that we should make a good marriage, so that they might feel that they had done their duty by us, and were rid of their responsibility with an added pride. A successful daughter plus an eligible son-in-law. Any other possibility never entered their heads – that we might consult our own tastes for instance ….”
The author knew that.
The first defection at Chevron, when the head-carpenter’s son chooses a job in the new motor industry rather than follow his father into Chevron’s shops, illustrated that beautifully.
Sebastian was caught up with his own concerns, he was unhappy, but an encounter with Leonard Antequil on the day of the coronation of George V made him realise that he could change his life.
But would he?
I can’t say, and there are lots of details that I haven’t shared.
I loved this book: the prose, the conviction, the wealth of detail, the depiction of society.
That’s not to say it’s perfect. It’s a little uneven, the structure isn’t strong, and much of what it has to say feels familiar.
But it does so much so well, it has such authenticity, and it is a wonderfully readable period piece.
They
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were probably right, but it is a lovely entertainment that captures a particular time and a particular class wonderfully well.The author wrote what she knew, and at the very beginning of the book she notes that:
“No character in this book is wholly fictitious.”
If you have knowledge of her and her circle you will appreciate that; and understand that she is looking back at the world that she grew up in, comparing it with the world that her mother knew and the very different world that her children knew; and knowing that, while she loved it dearly, it was fatally flawed.
But it doesn’t matter if you know nothing at all, because the book is such a lovely period piece.
The story opens in 1905, with Sebastian, the nineteen year-old Duke of Chevron ascending to the roof of his country home to escape the guests at his mother’s house party. She loves society, while Sebastian isn’t quite sure how he feels. He is drawn to the glamour of his mother’s social set, but he can’t help being aware of how shallow their lives and their values really are.
His estate, Chevron, is a working estate, and Sebastian loved everything he can see and hear from his high vantage point.
“The whole community of the great house was humming at its work. In the stables, men were grooming horses; in the ‘shops’, the carpenters plane sent the wood-chips flying, the diamond of the glazier hissed on the glass; in the forge, the hammer rang in the anvil, and the bellows windily sighed … Sebastian heard the music and saw the vision. It was a tapestry that he saw, and heard the strains of a wind orchestra.”
It had been that way for hundreds of years, with sons following their fathers into the shops to learn a trade, and with positions within the house filled by the daughters and nieces of those already employed; with staff claiming – and constrained by – their inheritance just as much as the family they served.
All of this is so vividly evoked, and the early chapters are rich with details of the life of the house, the party arrangements, the family, and a veritable army of servants.
One of the weekend visitors to Chevron, Leonard Antequil, didn’t belong to that world; but his adventurous life, including a winter spent alone in a snow hut in the Arctic Circle, and had brought him fame and made him a very desirable guest for the fashionable set.
It may not have occurred to the other guests that he was there as the result of his own of his efforts while they were there only by chance of birth or marriage. Or that he thought little of them.
One night Sebastian invited him up onto the roof, and he spoke to him openly and honestly, sensing his dissatisfaction and urging him to recognise the limitations of his lifestyle and to consider breaking with tradition.
“Very well, if you want the truth, here it is. The society you live in is composed of people who are both dissolute and prudent. They want to have their fun, and they want to keep their position. They glitter on the surface, but underneath the surface they are stupid – too stupid to recognise their own motives. They know only a limited number of things about themselves: that they need plenty of money, and that they must be seen in the right places, associated with the right people. In spite of their efforts to turn themselves into painted images, they remain human somewhere, and must indulge in love-affairs, which are sometimes artificial, and sometimes inconveniently real. Whatever happens the world must be served first.”
Sebastian is torn between his deep love of his home and his knowledge of the truth of Antequil’s words.
The arguments are beautifully expressed and perfectly balanced.
Sebastian regretfully declines Antequil’s invitation to accompany him on his next trip; but he never forgets their conversation.
He is seduced by an older woman, a society beauty of his mother’s generation; when their affair is ended by an ultimatum from her husband he drifts into a shallow life as a man about time; and then he draws a middle-class doctor’s wife into his life, and makes the mistake of inviting her to Chevron ….
“He had tried the most fashionable society, and he had tried the middle-class, and in both his plunging spirit had got stuck in the glue of convention and hypocrisy.”
All of this says much about Sebastian’s world; but it isn’t quite as engaging as those early chapters about life at the family estate.
Meanwhile, the world was changing.
Sebastian’s sister, Viola, knew that, and she was glad.
“For what have our mothers thought of us, all these years?” said Viola; “that we should make a good marriage, so that they might feel that they had done their duty by us, and were rid of their responsibility with an added pride. A successful daughter plus an eligible son-in-law. Any other possibility never entered their heads – that we might consult our own tastes for instance ….”
The author knew that.
The first defection at Chevron, when the head-carpenter’s son chooses a job in the new motor industry rather than follow his father into Chevron’s shops, illustrated that beautifully.
Sebastian was caught up with his own concerns, he was unhappy, but an encounter with Leonard Antequil on the day of the coronation of George V made him realise that he could change his life.
But would he?
I can’t say, and there are lots of details that I haven’t shared.
I loved this book: the prose, the conviction, the wealth of detail, the depiction of society.
That’s not to say it’s perfect. It’s a little uneven, the structure isn’t strong, and much of what it has to say feels familiar.
But it does so much so well, it has such authenticity, and it is a wonderfully readable period piece.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Smiler69
Chronicling two years in the life of upper crust English society in the first decade of the 20th Century, the novel's principal protagonist is Sebastian, a young duke and heir to the grand estate of Chevron. His widowed mother Lucy's purpose in life is to throw lavish parties for her aristocratic
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friends. During one such party, she invites an unusual guest, the famous adventurer Leonard Anquetil, recently returned from an Arctic expedition. Anquetil takes a great liking to the young man, and asks Sebastian to accompany him on his next expedition, which offer Sebastian of course refuses, but all the same, the explorer has opened up a world of different possibilities for the nineteen-year old Oxford student. When Sebastian takes up an affair with his mother's best friend, Lady Roehampton, no one finds this unusual, least of all Lucy, who believes he's chosen his first paramour well. Sylvia Roehampton is celebrated as the greatest beauty in London, and her exquisite features have been immortalized by John Singer Sargent and other famous painters of the age. But as he flits between Chevron to London and from party to concert to other mistresses, Sebastian can't find satisfaction, and has not forgotten Anquetil and his offer. Sackville-West knew the world she described in this novel intimately, and wrote the story as a criticism of the lifestyle of the Edwardian aristocracy, amid which she spent her own cosseted childhood. I was especially pleased with my timing for this book, being a fan of Downton Abbey which similarly describes the lives of the residents of a grand English estate and which I've been watching every week with rapt attention. Because of this, I was able to vividly imagine the world and people discussed in the novel, which greatly increased my appreciation for it. It was a pleasant read, though it offered little surprises, perhaps because as a classic it must have influenced many other novels since it's publication in the 1930s. All the same, wholeheartedly recommended. The audiobook is narrated by the excellent Carol Boyd. Show Less
LibraryThing member write-review
Flawed, Maybe; Brilliant on Many Levels, Definitely
"Oh that bloody book! I blush to think you read it," wrote Vita to Virginia Woolf, whose press, Hogarth, had published The Edwardians to surprising success. Comparing your work to Woolf's is an ideal way to torture yourself. In Vita's case, double
Of course, Vita faulted herself too much. In its own right, The Edwardians is quite good. It highlights many of her writing skills, skills that put most modern authors to shame. The weaknesses come in the form of a couple of didactic passages, what some may consider excessive exposition, and a predictable and less an organic ending.
However, these criticisms pale when measured against the many strengths and rewards of the novel. These include an insider's observation of high society at the beginning of the 20th Century, the sexual mores of the British aristocratic class, the societal shift in the run up to World War I, and, for those fascinated by VSW, additional insights into her thinking and view of life.
The story is straightforward. Young aristocratic Sebastian is coming of age and is tormented. He feels trapped in the predictable life he sees laid out for him, lord of the manor and all the obligations and constrictions his duke title entails. He is a tightly wound ball of anger and rebellion, though his expressions of rebellion remain confined within his well-off world. He revolts by having liaisons with various women, the two most important of which are Lady Roehampton, Sylvia, best and girlhood friend of his mother (who quietly is "... quite content that Sebastian should become tanned in the ray's of Sylvia's Indian summer"), and, reaching downward, the middle-class wife of a doctor, Teresa. Sybil devastates him by breaking off the affair at the insistence of her husband, for the sake of propriety. Teresa rejects him when he offends her middleclass values of faithfulness and loyalty, which befuddle and antagonize him. Finally, he seems resigned to spending his life fulfilling the role he was born to. Until, that is, he again meets Anquetil, after participating in the coronation of George V, the ceremony rendered in vivid and enlightening detail by Vita.
Anquetil and Sebastian become acquainted early in the novel. Anquetil functions as a critical observer of upper class society, which he disparages with wit and wonder, and as a catalyst to Sebastian's rebellious spirit, as well as that of Viola, Sebastian's sister. It is in this early chapter where Vita dons her lecture robes, as Anquetil launches into a long, though intriguing, disquisition on the choice before Sebastian. Everybody, not the least Sebastian and Viola, esteem the rough and ready explorer Anquetil, who is something on the order of a Shackleton. Vita, who possesses considerable powers of description, paints him as having "A startling face; pocked, moreover, by little blue freckles, where a charge of gunpower had exploded, as though an amateur tattooist had gone mad ..." His association with Anquetil further riles Sebastian. As for meek and mild Viola, by the conclusion of the novel she reveals herself, to Sebastian's astonishment, as the true rebel.
Strict distinctions divided the upper and lower classes in Victorian and Edwardian England. In the sex department, the upper class believed in exhibiting decorous behavior as an example to the lowers who otherwise might cavort in the manner of rutting animals. As for their own sexual conduct, as The Edwardians illustrates, especially Sebastian's mother planning weekend accommodations for guests at the great country house Chevron and dinner seating arrangements, the uppers regularly switched and shared partners, and (a variation on noblesse oblige, perhaps?) extended an appendage down into the lower ranks. (For a peek at the rich pornographic sub rosas activity of the periods, see, for example, the underground Victorian publication, The Pearl.) When found out by a spouse, usually through an indiscretion that created a buzz too loud to ignore, accommodation usually proved the accepted strategy. Thus, Lady Roehampton gives up Sebastian and at the insistence of her husband George leaves with him for a station in the colonies.
Teresa, the morally cinctured doctor's wife, assiduously adheres to the strict code espoused and flaunted by the upper class. Believing he has wooed her and that she has happily succumbed, her rejection of his sexual advances, made at a Chevron weekend with her husband downstairs playing bridge with the biddies, stuns him.
Vita, you may know, rebelled against most every stricture of accepted sexual and spousal behavior. She conducted numerous lesbian and straight affairs, the most famous and most scandalous with Violet Trefusis. She abhorred being addressed as Mrs. Harold Nicolson and she would burn anyone who attempted calling her such to the ground with a look. A bit of knowledge about Vita will increase your delight in reading most of the social passages in The Edwardians.
In the short introduction, Juliet Nicolson, Vita's granddaughter, focuses on the novel as one of societal change. And, indeed, you'll see this theme thread throughout the novel. The privileged, for the most part, ignored it. The class most dependent upon them lamented it. But some, especially Viola, embraced it enthusiastically.
While on the subject of social and societal upheaval and Vita and Harold's unusual life style (delineated artfully in the superb Portrait of a Marriage), Vita's main character names are very telling. Sebastian and Viola, as you probably know, are the brother and sister in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In the comedy, Viola assumes the role of lost Sebastian, dressing like him. And it is Viola in the novel ... well, that's for you to find out. Vita herself often during her affair with Violet dressed as a man, a soldier in fact, and sometimes a wounded one at that. In The Edwardians, you will find how the brother and sister deal with rebellious spirits and change fascinating.
Enough of me prattling on about VSW and The Edwardians: now it is time for you to read and enjoy it.
"Oh that bloody book! I blush to think you read it," wrote Vita to Virginia Woolf, whose press, Hogarth, had published The Edwardians to surprising success. Comparing your work to Woolf's is an ideal way to torture yourself. In Vita's case, double
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the anguish, because they were lovers and Vita admired Woolf.Of course, Vita faulted herself too much. In its own right, The Edwardians is quite good. It highlights many of her writing skills, skills that put most modern authors to shame. The weaknesses come in the form of a couple of didactic passages, what some may consider excessive exposition, and a predictable and less an organic ending.
However, these criticisms pale when measured against the many strengths and rewards of the novel. These include an insider's observation of high society at the beginning of the 20th Century, the sexual mores of the British aristocratic class, the societal shift in the run up to World War I, and, for those fascinated by VSW, additional insights into her thinking and view of life.
The story is straightforward. Young aristocratic Sebastian is coming of age and is tormented. He feels trapped in the predictable life he sees laid out for him, lord of the manor and all the obligations and constrictions his duke title entails. He is a tightly wound ball of anger and rebellion, though his expressions of rebellion remain confined within his well-off world. He revolts by having liaisons with various women, the two most important of which are Lady Roehampton, Sylvia, best and girlhood friend of his mother (who quietly is "... quite content that Sebastian should become tanned in the ray's of Sylvia's Indian summer"), and, reaching downward, the middle-class wife of a doctor, Teresa. Sybil devastates him by breaking off the affair at the insistence of her husband, for the sake of propriety. Teresa rejects him when he offends her middleclass values of faithfulness and loyalty, which befuddle and antagonize him. Finally, he seems resigned to spending his life fulfilling the role he was born to. Until, that is, he again meets Anquetil, after participating in the coronation of George V, the ceremony rendered in vivid and enlightening detail by Vita.
Anquetil and Sebastian become acquainted early in the novel. Anquetil functions as a critical observer of upper class society, which he disparages with wit and wonder, and as a catalyst to Sebastian's rebellious spirit, as well as that of Viola, Sebastian's sister. It is in this early chapter where Vita dons her lecture robes, as Anquetil launches into a long, though intriguing, disquisition on the choice before Sebastian. Everybody, not the least Sebastian and Viola, esteem the rough and ready explorer Anquetil, who is something on the order of a Shackleton. Vita, who possesses considerable powers of description, paints him as having "A startling face; pocked, moreover, by little blue freckles, where a charge of gunpower had exploded, as though an amateur tattooist had gone mad ..." His association with Anquetil further riles Sebastian. As for meek and mild Viola, by the conclusion of the novel she reveals herself, to Sebastian's astonishment, as the true rebel.
Strict distinctions divided the upper and lower classes in Victorian and Edwardian England. In the sex department, the upper class believed in exhibiting decorous behavior as an example to the lowers who otherwise might cavort in the manner of rutting animals. As for their own sexual conduct, as The Edwardians illustrates, especially Sebastian's mother planning weekend accommodations for guests at the great country house Chevron and dinner seating arrangements, the uppers regularly switched and shared partners, and (a variation on noblesse oblige, perhaps?) extended an appendage down into the lower ranks. (For a peek at the rich pornographic sub rosas activity of the periods, see, for example, the underground Victorian publication, The Pearl.) When found out by a spouse, usually through an indiscretion that created a buzz too loud to ignore, accommodation usually proved the accepted strategy. Thus, Lady Roehampton gives up Sebastian and at the insistence of her husband George leaves with him for a station in the colonies.
Teresa, the morally cinctured doctor's wife, assiduously adheres to the strict code espoused and flaunted by the upper class. Believing he has wooed her and that she has happily succumbed, her rejection of his sexual advances, made at a Chevron weekend with her husband downstairs playing bridge with the biddies, stuns him.
Vita, you may know, rebelled against most every stricture of accepted sexual and spousal behavior. She conducted numerous lesbian and straight affairs, the most famous and most scandalous with Violet Trefusis. She abhorred being addressed as Mrs. Harold Nicolson and she would burn anyone who attempted calling her such to the ground with a look. A bit of knowledge about Vita will increase your delight in reading most of the social passages in The Edwardians.
In the short introduction, Juliet Nicolson, Vita's granddaughter, focuses on the novel as one of societal change. And, indeed, you'll see this theme thread throughout the novel. The privileged, for the most part, ignored it. The class most dependent upon them lamented it. But some, especially Viola, embraced it enthusiastically.
While on the subject of social and societal upheaval and Vita and Harold's unusual life style (delineated artfully in the superb Portrait of a Marriage), Vita's main character names are very telling. Sebastian and Viola, as you probably know, are the brother and sister in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In the comedy, Viola assumes the role of lost Sebastian, dressing like him. And it is Viola in the novel ... well, that's for you to find out. Vita herself often during her affair with Violet dressed as a man, a soldier in fact, and sometimes a wounded one at that. In The Edwardians, you will find how the brother and sister deal with rebellious spirits and change fascinating.
Enough of me prattling on about VSW and The Edwardians: now it is time for you to read and enjoy it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Liz1564
The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West is a delicious and decadent look into the last years of the Edwardian Age. VSW was the perfect author to write about this subject since she was raised in the stately Knole, the ancestral seat of the Sackville-Wests and the undisguised model for Chevron.
VSW's
After being crushed by Lady Roehampton's departure, Sebastian tries to seduce the young wife of a London doctor. She is flattered by the attentions of the handsome duke and almost succumbs to his wishes in the silver Queen's Room at Chevron. Only the fear of what "society would say" prevents her from making love with Sebastian on Queen Elizabeth's bed. And she was right. Society would have kicked her to the curb. No discreet withdrawal to the country would have been possible for a middle-class woman.
Phil, the lovely artist's model, didn't give a damn about society and took Sebastian to her bed for the joy of it. When she breaks it off, it is because she said it was time for them to move in; she had no desire to be a part of his circle and he really could not see her as mistress of Chevron, for all of his protests of love.
VSW had great fun writing thinly disguised portraits of the regular visitors to Knole. According to Glendenning's introduction, VSW anticipated her readers trying to attach real names to the characters and making her lots of money in the process. VSW was absolutely right.
The Edwardians has a different fascination for the 21st century reader. Rather than caring about whether or not Lady Roehampton was really Lady Westmoreland, the interest for me was in the dying Edwardian era itself. For example, VSW describes the hours spent by the grand ladies in their dressing room. There were morning dresses and then afternoon dresses or riding clothes or walking clothes. Then there was the all-important toilette for the evening meal with the proper undergarments, tightly laced corset, silk stockings, petticoat, hair, discreet makeup, and jewels. Since it took over an hour to dress for dinner, the statement "We will not dress for dinner tonight" was a genuine boon. What a waste of a woman's time! No wonder they were obsessed by clothes since these beauties were judged by their garments, not their brains.
And then there is the Chevron estate and the grand occasions within its walls. Here is the real core of my interest. The Christmas party for the estate children; the shooting season; the servants' work schedule; the miles of downstairs corridors; the silver furniture in the Queen's Bedroom; the deer in the park; the meals!. VSW is writing about the home she loves and of a time not long dead. This is a final salute.
This is the eyewitness account of a grand house at the time of Downton Abbey. Read it and enjoy a look into period the world will not see again.
VSW's
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hero is Sebastian, master of Chevron. He lives in the mansion with his twin sister Viola and his widowed mother, the current Duchess. In the course of the book Sebastian has one grand love affair with his mother's best friend Lady Roehamptom, attempts the seduction of a starstruck doctor's wife, and flings about London with a free-spirited Bloomsbury artist's model. If Sebastian's affairs illustrate one thing, it is that the rich can do just about anything they want and society happily will look the other way. Only blatant public display will bring any kind of disapproval. So, it is no problem if Sebastian and Lady Roehampton copulate like bunnies as long as no one "officially" catches them. But when Lord Roehampton receives a pack of incriminating letters he is compelled to react and ends his wife's current affair by dragging her out of the country. (Incidentally, Sebastian's mother completely approves of Sebastian's liaison with a woman 21 year older than he. A married older woman who will make no demands on the 19 year old heir is the perfect tutor in the art of love!)After being crushed by Lady Roehampton's departure, Sebastian tries to seduce the young wife of a London doctor. She is flattered by the attentions of the handsome duke and almost succumbs to his wishes in the silver Queen's Room at Chevron. Only the fear of what "society would say" prevents her from making love with Sebastian on Queen Elizabeth's bed. And she was right. Society would have kicked her to the curb. No discreet withdrawal to the country would have been possible for a middle-class woman.
Phil, the lovely artist's model, didn't give a damn about society and took Sebastian to her bed for the joy of it. When she breaks it off, it is because she said it was time for them to move in; she had no desire to be a part of his circle and he really could not see her as mistress of Chevron, for all of his protests of love.
VSW had great fun writing thinly disguised portraits of the regular visitors to Knole. According to Glendenning's introduction, VSW anticipated her readers trying to attach real names to the characters and making her lots of money in the process. VSW was absolutely right.
The Edwardians has a different fascination for the 21st century reader. Rather than caring about whether or not Lady Roehampton was really Lady Westmoreland, the interest for me was in the dying Edwardian era itself. For example, VSW describes the hours spent by the grand ladies in their dressing room. There were morning dresses and then afternoon dresses or riding clothes or walking clothes. Then there was the all-important toilette for the evening meal with the proper undergarments, tightly laced corset, silk stockings, petticoat, hair, discreet makeup, and jewels. Since it took over an hour to dress for dinner, the statement "We will not dress for dinner tonight" was a genuine boon. What a waste of a woman's time! No wonder they were obsessed by clothes since these beauties were judged by their garments, not their brains.
And then there is the Chevron estate and the grand occasions within its walls. Here is the real core of my interest. The Christmas party for the estate children; the shooting season; the servants' work schedule; the miles of downstairs corridors; the silver furniture in the Queen's Bedroom; the deer in the park; the meals!. VSW is writing about the home she loves and of a time not long dead. This is a final salute.
This is the eyewitness account of a grand house at the time of Downton Abbey. Read it and enjoy a look into period the world will not see again.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TRWhittier
An excellent romp through one of England's most ostentatious eras. The Edwardians, while not exactly a page-turner, offers fascinating insights into the discrepancies between those of different social classes.
LibraryThing member janeajones
When the Woolfs' Hogarth Press published The Edwardians in 1930, it became an almost overnight bestseller. It's set in the early 1900s at a ducal estate, Chevron, which is almost a mirror of the beloved childhood home, Knole, of Vita Sackville-West. The protagonist, Sebastian and his sister, Viola,
It's utterly delicious -- both nostalgic and satiric. If you are a fan of Downtown Abbey -- this is your book. Upstairs, downstairs and all around London town: scandals, Prince Edward (barely mentioned but definitely in the background), affaires de couer, a polar explorer, and emancipated young women -- what's not to like?
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are faced with the conflicts of the ancient ways of the aristocracy and the emerging challenges of the 20th century.It's utterly delicious -- both nostalgic and satiric. If you are a fan of Downtown Abbey -- this is your book. Upstairs, downstairs and all around London town: scandals, Prince Edward (barely mentioned but definitely in the background), affaires de couer, a polar explorer, and emancipated young women -- what's not to like?
Show Less
LibraryThing member ellen66
Really enjoyed this story of a world long gone.
LibraryThing member janeajones
When the Woolfs' Hogarth Press published The Edwardians in 1930, it became an almost overnight bestseller. It's set in the early 1900s at a ducal estate, Chevron, which is almost a mirror of the beloved childhood home, Knole, of Vita Sackville-West. The protagonist, Sebastian and his sister, Viola,
It's utterly delicious -- both nostalgic and satiric. If you are a fan of Downtown Abbey -- this is your book. Upstairs, downstairs and all around London town: scandals, Prince Edward (barely mentioned but definitely in the background), affaires de couer, a polar explorer, and emancipated young women -- what's not to like?
Show More
are faced with the conflicts of the ancient ways of the aristocracy and the emerging challenges of the 20th century.It's utterly delicious -- both nostalgic and satiric. If you are a fan of Downtown Abbey -- this is your book. Upstairs, downstairs and all around London town: scandals, Prince Edward (barely mentioned but definitely in the background), affaires de couer, a polar explorer, and emancipated young women -- what's not to like?
Show Less
LibraryThing member lauralkeet
The Edwardians treads ground familiar to fans of Downton Abbey or Gosford Park, and is enjoyable in a similar way. Set on a large estate (modeled almost detail-for-detail on Vita Sackville-West's beloved childhood home, Knole), the story revolves aroun, a young duke named Sebastian, his mother
Sebastian and Viola represent different sides of the author. Sebastian comes of age through sexual experimentation with different types of women. Vita was herself known for erotic exploits. Viola is smart and independent, which Vita most certainly was as well. Other characters in the novel had parallels to family members and friends who would have been known to readers at the time.
This book was a huge commercial success even as it portrayed the end of an era; in fact, the book ends with the coronation of George V following the death of Edward VII. The book was an interesting sort of set piece, but in many ways a "fluff piece" designed for pleasure reading, much like today's beach reads and romances.
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Lucy, and sister Viola. It is filled with illicit affairs, upstairs/downstairs interactions, and all of the societal expectations that come with being a member of the privileged class in Edwardian Britain. Sebastian and Viola represent different sides of the author. Sebastian comes of age through sexual experimentation with different types of women. Vita was herself known for erotic exploits. Viola is smart and independent, which Vita most certainly was as well. Other characters in the novel had parallels to family members and friends who would have been known to readers at the time.
This book was a huge commercial success even as it portrayed the end of an era; in fact, the book ends with the coronation of George V following the death of Edward VII. The book was an interesting sort of set piece, but in many ways a "fluff piece" designed for pleasure reading, much like today's beach reads and romances.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TheAmpersand
Vita Sackville-West is, for better or for worse, remembered more for being the sometime paramour of Virginia Woolf than as an author in her own right. That's only fitting, perhaps, as, even though "The Edwardians" contains a few surprises and is enjoyable in its own right, it's simply not as good
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as even mid-grade Woolf: it's the sort of novel where all the characters are a bit too aware of their own feelings and of the motivations of others and are able to express them much more clearly and eloquently than most people ever do. It's also worth noting, though, that it's different from, say, "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse." While the novel's prose does have a certain modernist freshness about it -- and there's a bit of sublimated homosexuality around, too -- it's more concerned with social structure and manners than with the subjective consciousnesses of its characters. At its most entertaining, it hovers somewhere between sharp social satire and juicy exposé. Sackville-West's central preoccupation seems to be whether the social expectations and customs of the highly privileged class to which she belonged could in any sense be called "real," or whether both the sense of duty and exclusion felt by her fellow aristocrats was a pernicious, paralyzing illusion. Sackville-West had, I suppose, the benefit of considerable hindsight when she wrote "The Edwardians," but she takes pains to show how the world she describes seemed like something of an anachronism even in 1906, the year in which most of the novel is set. Even so, "The Edwardians" reads like a painfully conflicted and very personal sort of book. Both the arguments put forth by the novel's characters and the author's farcical dialogues are contrasted with a great deal of genuine feeling here, in the form of our central protagonist's genuine fondness for Chevron, his family's seat, and for his semi-feudal dependents' own identification with his family and the place in which they work. "The Edwardians" is, in a sense, a novel about place and how our identities can become wrapped up in them. Sackville-West also introduces a character drawn from the rising professional class, which Woolf herself seldom did, whose staid, middle-class morality and thrifty, impersonal view of wealth effectively represents the sort of changes that were on the horizon for British society at the time. The character that the author uses to resolve many of these conflicts seemed a bit unbelievable to me: a sort of personified deus ex machina, but I still found "The Edwardians" unexpectedly insightful and revealing. It's a funny, biting, sad, and slightly tortured portrait of a world that was about to go smash. Show Less
LibraryThing member AlisonY
I abandoned this book 120 pages in a couple of weeks ago, but my abandonment was grating on me so I went back to pick up where I left off.
Second time around I was much more in the mood for it. Although not difficult prose to read, I found it needed a certain amount of concentration, and I think
Eventually, once she'd found a flimsy excuse for lining up all the characters in front of the reader, a story did at last begin to emerge. In all it was light-hearted, poking fun at the first world problems of the elite class in the early 20th century. It was particularly interesting to be reading this at a time when there's all the furore over Harry and Meghan; I couldn't help but draw parallels between the young duke Sebastian, who feels very sorry for himself in terms of the pressure to fall in line with expectations for his position, and our own young Duke of Sussex.
Sackville-West wasn't afraid to poke at the unwritten rules and hypocrisies that existed amongst her own class, so in this regard there was something very fresh in her approach. However, ultimately she was no Jane Austen in terms of prose.
3.5 stars - I'm glad I went back to finish it as I enjoyed it well enough, but I doubt I'll think about it for too long.
Second time around I was much more in the mood for it. Although not difficult prose to read, I found it needed a certain amount of concentration, and I think
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background distraction on my commute originally meant I was drifting in and out of the subject matter and not connecting with it enough. I'll stand by my original opinion of the first third of the book, in that it felt like Sackville-West had the characters lined up ready to throw them into the story one after the other, and didn't think too hard about good plot devices for introducing them.Eventually, once she'd found a flimsy excuse for lining up all the characters in front of the reader, a story did at last begin to emerge. In all it was light-hearted, poking fun at the first world problems of the elite class in the early 20th century. It was particularly interesting to be reading this at a time when there's all the furore over Harry and Meghan; I couldn't help but draw parallels between the young duke Sebastian, who feels very sorry for himself in terms of the pressure to fall in line with expectations for his position, and our own young Duke of Sussex.
Sackville-West wasn't afraid to poke at the unwritten rules and hypocrisies that existed amongst her own class, so in this regard there was something very fresh in her approach. However, ultimately she was no Jane Austen in terms of prose.
3.5 stars - I'm glad I went back to finish it as I enjoyed it well enough, but I doubt I'll think about it for too long.
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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Somewhere between ugh and yawn. I very much enjoyed her All Passion Spent, about an old woman abandoning the rules she'd always lived by to become her real self - this one is about a young man who allows various love affairs to bind him ever tighter into the rules and roles he was born into. I
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don't much like Sebastian; he feels like a spoiled teenager in the first scene (because he is) and he doesn't change much over the course of the book. The final scene is a twist - but by this time I don't believe it would help, and besides the book is over. We don't get to see what happens when (if) he finally breaks free. Didn't enjoy it, nor find anything valuable in it. I'm still willing to read another Sackville-West, but I'm no longer confident it will be good (I was quite sure I'd love all of hers after All Passion Spent). Show Less
LibraryThing member japaul22
This was just as good as I had hoped. Set in the era between the death of Queen Victoria and the start of WWI, [The Edwardians] is about Sebastian, a 19 year old English Duke and heir of Chevron, a large estate. Sebastian loves Chevron, his home, and many of the traditions that go along with it,
I'd say this book lacks a little in the way of development, but it captures the struggles of the youthful upper class in this era very well and I really enjoyed reading it and I think it deserves to be more widely read.
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but at the same time he's hesitant to settle down and follow all the rules and conventions of his upper class set. He bristles at the reality that misbehavior can go on, as long as it isn't admitted or seen. He discovers himself through five different lovers: and older society woman, a middle class bourgeois woman, a servant's daughter, a bohemian free-spirit, and the traditional society boring woman. In the end it is more the influence of an older male friend who helps him choose his path. All of his struggles are contrasted with his sister Viola, who bucks tradition and strikes out on her own without all the personal drama. I'd say this book lacks a little in the way of development, but it captures the struggles of the youthful upper class in this era very well and I really enjoyed reading it and I think it deserves to be more widely read.
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LibraryThing member write-review
Flawed, Maybe; Brilliant on Many Levels, Definitely
"Oh that bloody book! I blush to think you read it," wrote Vita to Virginia Woolf, whose press, Hogarth, had published The Edwardians to surprising success. Comparing your work to Woolf's is an ideal way to torture yourself. In Vita's case, double
Of course, Vita faulted herself too much. In its own right, The Edwardians is quite good. It highlights many of her writing skills, skills that put most modern authors to shame. The weaknesses come in the form of a couple of didactic passages, what some may consider excessive exposition, and a predictable and less an organic ending.
However, these criticisms pale when measured against the many strengths and rewards of the novel. These include an insider's observation of high society at the beginning of the 20th Century, the sexual mores of the British aristocratic class, the societal shift in the run up to World War I, and, for those fascinated by VSW, additional insights into her thinking and view of life.
The story is straightforward. Young aristocratic Sebastian is coming of age and is tormented. He feels trapped in the predictable life he sees laid out for him, lord of the manor and all the obligations and constrictions his duke title entails. He is a tightly wound ball of anger and rebellion, though his expressions of rebellion remain confined within his well-off world. He revolts by having liaisons with various women, the two most important of which are Lady Roehampton, Sylvia, best and girlhood friend of his mother (who quietly is "... quite content that Sebastian should become tanned in the ray's of Sylvia's Indian summer"), and, reaching downward, the middle-class wife of a doctor, Teresa. Sybil devastates him by breaking off the affair at the insistence of her husband, for the sake of propriety. Teresa rejects him when he offends her middleclass values of faithfulness and loyalty, which befuddle and antagonize him. Finally, he seems resigned to spending his life fulfilling the role he was born to. Until, that is, he again meets Anquetil, after participating in the coronation of George V, the ceremony rendered in vivid and enlightening detail by Vita.
Anquetil and Sebastian become acquainted early in the novel. Anquetil functions as a critical observer of upper class society, which he disparages with wit and wonder, and as a catalyst to Sebastian's rebellious spirit, as well as that of Viola, Sebastian's sister. It is in this early chapter where Vita dons her lecture robes, as Anquetil launches into a long, though intriguing, disquisition on the choice before Sebastian. Everybody, not the least Sebastian and Viola, esteem the rough and ready explorer Anquetil, who is something on the order of a Shackleton. Vita, who possesses considerable powers of description, paints him as having "A startling face; pocked, moreover, by little blue freckles, where a charge of gunpower had exploded, as though an amateur tattooist had gone mad ..." His association with Anquetil further riles Sebastian. As for meek and mild Viola, by the conclusion of the novel she reveals herself, to Sebastian's astonishment, as the true rebel.
Strict distinctions divided the upper and lower classes in Victorian and Edwardian England. In the sex department, the upper class believed in exhibiting decorous behavior as an example to the lowers who otherwise might cavort in the manner of rutting animals. As for their own sexual conduct, as The Edwardians illustrates, especially Sebastian's mother planning weekend accommodations for guests at the great country house Chevron and dinner seating arrangements, the uppers regularly switched and shared partners, and (a variation on noblesse oblige, perhaps?) extended an appendage down into the lower ranks. (For a peek at the rich pornographic sub rosas activity of the periods, see, for example, the underground Victorian publication, The Pearl.) When found out by a spouse, usually through an indiscretion that created a buzz too loud to ignore, accommodation usually proved the accepted strategy. Thus, Lady Roehampton gives up Sebastian and at the insistence of her husband George leaves with him for a station in the colonies.
Teresa, the morally cinctured doctor's wife, assiduously adheres to the strict code espoused and flaunted by the upper class. Believing he has wooed her and that she has happily succumbed, her rejection of his sexual advances, made at a Chevron weekend with her husband downstairs playing bridge with the biddies, stuns him.
Vita, you may know, rebelled against most every stricture of accepted sexual and spousal behavior. She conducted numerous lesbian and straight affairs, the most famous and most scandalous with Violet Trefusis. She abhorred being addressed as Mrs. Harold Nicolson and she would burn anyone who attempted calling her such to the ground with a look. A bit of knowledge about Vita will increase your delight in reading most of the social passages in The Edwardians.
In the short introduction, Juliet Nicolson, Vita's granddaughter, focuses on the novel as one of societal change. And, indeed, you'll see this theme thread throughout the novel. The privileged, for the most part, ignored it. The class most dependent upon them lamented it. But some, especially Viola, embraced it enthusiastically.
While on the subject of social and societal upheaval and Vita and Harold's unusual life style (delineated artfully in the superb Portrait of a Marriage), Vita's main character names are very telling. Sebastian and Viola, as you probably know, are the brother and sister in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In the comedy, Viola assumes the role of lost Sebastian, dressing like him. And it is Viola in the novel ... well, that's for you to find out. Vita herself often during her affair with Violet dressed as a man, a soldier in fact, and sometimes a wounded one at that. In The Edwardians, you will find how the brother and sister deal with rebellious spirits and change fascinating.
Enough of me prattling on about VSW and The Edwardians: now it is time for you to read and enjoy it.
"Oh that bloody book! I blush to think you read it," wrote Vita to Virginia Woolf, whose press, Hogarth, had published The Edwardians to surprising success. Comparing your work to Woolf's is an ideal way to torture yourself. In Vita's case, double
Show More
the anguish, because they were lovers and Vita admired Woolf.Of course, Vita faulted herself too much. In its own right, The Edwardians is quite good. It highlights many of her writing skills, skills that put most modern authors to shame. The weaknesses come in the form of a couple of didactic passages, what some may consider excessive exposition, and a predictable and less an organic ending.
However, these criticisms pale when measured against the many strengths and rewards of the novel. These include an insider's observation of high society at the beginning of the 20th Century, the sexual mores of the British aristocratic class, the societal shift in the run up to World War I, and, for those fascinated by VSW, additional insights into her thinking and view of life.
The story is straightforward. Young aristocratic Sebastian is coming of age and is tormented. He feels trapped in the predictable life he sees laid out for him, lord of the manor and all the obligations and constrictions his duke title entails. He is a tightly wound ball of anger and rebellion, though his expressions of rebellion remain confined within his well-off world. He revolts by having liaisons with various women, the two most important of which are Lady Roehampton, Sylvia, best and girlhood friend of his mother (who quietly is "... quite content that Sebastian should become tanned in the ray's of Sylvia's Indian summer"), and, reaching downward, the middle-class wife of a doctor, Teresa. Sybil devastates him by breaking off the affair at the insistence of her husband, for the sake of propriety. Teresa rejects him when he offends her middleclass values of faithfulness and loyalty, which befuddle and antagonize him. Finally, he seems resigned to spending his life fulfilling the role he was born to. Until, that is, he again meets Anquetil, after participating in the coronation of George V, the ceremony rendered in vivid and enlightening detail by Vita.
Anquetil and Sebastian become acquainted early in the novel. Anquetil functions as a critical observer of upper class society, which he disparages with wit and wonder, and as a catalyst to Sebastian's rebellious spirit, as well as that of Viola, Sebastian's sister. It is in this early chapter where Vita dons her lecture robes, as Anquetil launches into a long, though intriguing, disquisition on the choice before Sebastian. Everybody, not the least Sebastian and Viola, esteem the rough and ready explorer Anquetil, who is something on the order of a Shackleton. Vita, who possesses considerable powers of description, paints him as having "A startling face; pocked, moreover, by little blue freckles, where a charge of gunpower had exploded, as though an amateur tattooist had gone mad ..." His association with Anquetil further riles Sebastian. As for meek and mild Viola, by the conclusion of the novel she reveals herself, to Sebastian's astonishment, as the true rebel.
Strict distinctions divided the upper and lower classes in Victorian and Edwardian England. In the sex department, the upper class believed in exhibiting decorous behavior as an example to the lowers who otherwise might cavort in the manner of rutting animals. As for their own sexual conduct, as The Edwardians illustrates, especially Sebastian's mother planning weekend accommodations for guests at the great country house Chevron and dinner seating arrangements, the uppers regularly switched and shared partners, and (a variation on noblesse oblige, perhaps?) extended an appendage down into the lower ranks. (For a peek at the rich pornographic sub rosas activity of the periods, see, for example, the underground Victorian publication, The Pearl.) When found out by a spouse, usually through an indiscretion that created a buzz too loud to ignore, accommodation usually proved the accepted strategy. Thus, Lady Roehampton gives up Sebastian and at the insistence of her husband George leaves with him for a station in the colonies.
Teresa, the morally cinctured doctor's wife, assiduously adheres to the strict code espoused and flaunted by the upper class. Believing he has wooed her and that she has happily succumbed, her rejection of his sexual advances, made at a Chevron weekend with her husband downstairs playing bridge with the biddies, stuns him.
Vita, you may know, rebelled against most every stricture of accepted sexual and spousal behavior. She conducted numerous lesbian and straight affairs, the most famous and most scandalous with Violet Trefusis. She abhorred being addressed as Mrs. Harold Nicolson and she would burn anyone who attempted calling her such to the ground with a look. A bit of knowledge about Vita will increase your delight in reading most of the social passages in The Edwardians.
In the short introduction, Juliet Nicolson, Vita's granddaughter, focuses on the novel as one of societal change. And, indeed, you'll see this theme thread throughout the novel. The privileged, for the most part, ignored it. The class most dependent upon them lamented it. But some, especially Viola, embraced it enthusiastically.
While on the subject of social and societal upheaval and Vita and Harold's unusual life style (delineated artfully in the superb Portrait of a Marriage), Vita's main character names are very telling. Sebastian and Viola, as you probably know, are the brother and sister in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In the comedy, Viola assumes the role of lost Sebastian, dressing like him. And it is Viola in the novel ... well, that's for you to find out. Vita herself often during her affair with Violet dressed as a man, a soldier in fact, and sometimes a wounded one at that. In The Edwardians, you will find how the brother and sister deal with rebellious spirits and change fascinating.
Enough of me prattling on about VSW and The Edwardians: now it is time for you to read and enjoy it.
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Original publication date
1930-05
Physical description
304 p.; 7.96 inches
ISBN
0860683591 / 9780860683599