This was my final read of 2017, I never can manage to tidy things up satisfactorily. Chedsy Place was a marvellously compelling little read, unfortunately the last of the Richmal Crompton novels I had tbr, and I mustn’t buy more just at the moment (I am making an effort to manage my book buying, and so I’m attempting to not buy during January – I am waiting on a couple I ordered at the end of December, and one I have had on pre-order for months).
Richmal Crompton of course famous for her Just William stories for children, wrote quite a number of novels for adults and this is the fifth of them that I have read.
What I am finding with Richmal Crompton, who I am finding I very much enjoy – is that, beneath a veneer of cosy, middlebrow domesticity there lurks something rather less comfortable. In her novels The Old Man’s Birthday and Narcissa – particularly the latter – there are some wonderfully monstrous characters, complex relationships and family discord existing within a well ordered, conventional world. Chedsy Place has elements of both of those novels, as we find ourselves in the company of some rather unpleasant people – as well as those who are lovely. Characters imprisoned in their own lives by the tyranny of those around them or the quirks in their own personality. Some of these people may be about to break free, others will not, destined to remain in the state in which we first find them.
When Robert Beaton unexpectedly inherits Chedsy Place, he feels deeply nostalgic for the world of his childhood. Now happily married to Celia, Robert had shrugged off his painful longing for the place he had been so happy growing up. Instead, he has found a peace and contentment running a farm and making a reasonable living. Robert is a realist, he knows only too well that running a large country house like Chedsy Place is prohibitively expensive – and that the only thing he can do is to arrange for the place to be sold as quickly as possible. Every day the house is in their possession, it is costing them money. The only servant from the old days left in the house is Mrs Hubbard who shares Robert’s bittersweet nostalgia for former times.
“Mrs Hubbard stood watching them till they had disappeared round the house, then she went slowly back to the hall, through a green baize door, down a flight of stairs to the kitchen regions. The housekeeper’s room was the largest room in the basement except for the kitchen itself. In it was a square table covered with a red serge cloth, a comfortable basket chair, and a big old-fashioned fireplace. An enormous dresser took up one side of the room, and there was a sink, with taps and drying board, beneath the window. On the window-sill, catching what light there was, stood several bowls of lilies of the valley just coming into flower. Except near the window the room was so dark that, it had to be lighted artificially all day, but there was about it, when lighted, a cheerful cosy air. It had been Mrs Hubbard’s home for fifty years.”
Sad that her husband must sell a house so dear to him Celia comes up with what she considers a brilliant solution. Celia, bright, optimistic and forward looking is a marvel at organising and managing things – her help in running the farm has been invaluable. Now, Celia hits upon the idea of opening Chedsy Place up again – just as it would have been in former days, fill it with staff, a butler, footmen and maids and open it up to paying guests for Christmas. Her idea to produce something between a country house and an hotel, to advertise for quality people who will enjoy a traditional country house Christmas. Such is her enthusiasm, and her powers of persuasion, that she has no idea how abhorrent an idea all this is to Robert. To see his beloved family home turned into a glorified hotel full of strangers makes him shudder.
“He felt oddly ill at ease with Celia. He didn’t know what to say to her. He avoided being left alone with her. On the rare occasions when they were alone together, she would praise the house to him, remembering how in the old days he had loved to talk about it, not realising that to him Chedsy Place didn’t exist any longer.”
Celia, not one to shy away from hard work sets herself to her task, while Robert goes back to his farm, she works day and night with Mrs Hubbard’s help to get the place ready. A few days before Christmas she is ready to welcome a house full of guests, and Robert is also due to arrive and see for himself the extraordinary transformation.
Soon the house is filled with a mix of characters, not all of whom Celia is immediately taken with. A bitter young woman led into ‘bad ways’ by arrogant, selfish men. A middle aged academic stuck in a rut, trying before it is too late to socialise with new people. A cold, vicious beauty and her horribly bullied companion/secretary, who arrive driven by a handsome young chauffeur. A former soldier, blinded in the war and the wife he relies upon but regrets marrying. A devoted couple, with three of their four children who know their parents would rather be with their baby sister – the surprise child of their middle age – left at home with the nanny. A repressed and miserable young man bound for the church and his horribly eccentric aunt, who has been the bane and embarrassment of his life for years. A vicar recuperating from an illness and his garrulous wife. A selfish, cynical man, his sister and his wife; once a society beauty, now disfigured following an accident – he thinks he knows how to get what he wants from women, and has no respect for his poor wife.
While Celia runs around trying to keep everyone happy and ensuring everything runs to plan, Robert has to grit his teeth, as he finds himself treated like a member of staff by the guests paying to stay in his house.
Richmal Crompton manages to squeeze a lot of individual stories into this fairly short novel (my Bello edition is 220 pages) some stories take more prominence, but characters are well drawn and deftly explored, and all this makes for a book fairly hard to put down. I certainly enjoyed this novel, though it would be fair to say it is my least favourite of the five Crompton novels I have read.