We're not blind, my dear Father, we're just human beings. We live in a changing reality to which we try to adapt ourselves like seaweed bending und
We're not blind, my dear Father, we're just human beings. We live in a changing reality to which we try to adapt ourselves like seaweed bending under the pressure of water. Holy Church has been granted an explicit promise of immortality; we, as a social class, have not. Any palliative which may give us another hundred years of life is like eternity to us. We may worry about our children and perhaps our grandchildren; but beyond what we can hope to stroke with these hands of ours we have no obligations.
I belong to an unlucky generation, swung between the old world and the new, and I find myself ill at ease in both.
Before reading this novel, I saw the famous 1963 Visconti film starring Burt Lancaster as Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina. I really had no idea about the historical background of the novel's events, which begins with Garibaldie's campaign - the 'Expedition of the Thousand' - to overthrow the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Sicily and Naples). This preceded the unification of Italy, which before 1860 had been divided into separate kingdoms. The film does touch on these events, as does the novel; and while it helps to know this history, it isn't absolutely crucial for understanding the story. The reader (or viewer) soon grasps one of the key themes of the story: the changing of the guard.
Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, is still a man in his prime (age 45) in 1860. He still commands wealth, land, a large family and the respect of his countrymen. His rituals and ways of life remain unaltered. He is the still the ruler of his own fiefdom in Sicily, just like generations of Salinas before him. Yet, Don Fabrizio - an astronomer/philosopher who studies the stars - is keenly aware that his family fortunes are on the wane. The historical tide is turning and it is not going to favour the Salinas.
One of the important characters in the book is Don Fabrizio's nephew Tancredi. Tancredi's father has lost his own family fortune and left Tancredi virtually penniless - but Tancredi has charm, ambition and the support of his uncle. The chief turning point of the plot is Tancredi's marriage to Concetta, whose father is the shrewd (but crude) Don Calogero Sedara. Concetta has beauty and wealth, and Tancredi has illustrious bloodlines and the savoir faire to know how to make himself gracious and useful to new kings. Don Fabrizio has to unbend his own pride because he realises that such a marriage is necessary for the continuation of the family's fortunes and success.
A man can consider himself still young till the moment comes when he realises that he has children old enough to fall in love.
Although the story and characters have a wonderfully detailed specificity, and there are beautiful passages about the 'character' of Sicily itself, the novel is surely a classic because the theme of one generation having to give way to the next is one of the eternal verities. Don Fabrizio dominates the novel, but it ends - poignantly - without him.
I think that I appreciated the film even more after I read the book. The film is exceptionally faithful to the story and I thought that the casting of all of the main characters was perfect. The only surprise is that the novel contains several codas which the film left out. They add their own depth to the story, but in a sense I preferred the ending of the film: the famous 'ball scene', in which the betrothal of Tancredi and Concetta is presented to the local 'high' society and Don Fabrizio enjoys the last dance of his prime....more
There is a photograph of me, taken at my christening in the summer of 1932. I am held by my father, the future 5th Earl of Leicester, and surrounde
There is a photograph of me, taken at my christening in the summer of 1932. I am held by my father, the future 5th Earl of Leicester, and surrounded by male relations wearing solemn faces. I had tried awfully hard to be a boy, even weighing eleven pounds at birth, but I was a girl and there was nothing to be done about it.
My female status meant that I would not inherit the earldom, or Holkham, the fifth largest estate in England with its 27,000 acres of top-grade agricultural land, neither the furniture, the books, the paintings, nor the silver.
Like Vita Sackville-West, who never got over being deprived by the laws of primogeniture of her ancestral birthright to Knole, Anne Glenconnor (nee Coke) would have inherited a great house and title if she had been male. Unlike Sackville-West, Lady Glenconner seems to have calmly accepted her fate. Born female, she was consigned to more of a supporting role in life, but the stature of those she has supported has been far from average. Her life, by any measure, has been pretty extraordinary - but there is no doubt that most of its historical merit relies on her close relationship to two of the British 20th century’s colourful characters: her husband, Colin Tennant (later Lord Glenconner), and her friend Princess Margaret. She served as Lady in Waiting (hence the title) to the latter for more than 30 years; she was married to the former for 54 years. Although Princess Margaret has always been known as a difficult character, compared to Colin Tennant she comes off as a sweetheart.
I read this book as a sort of biographical companion to the fourth season of The Crown. Actually Anne Glenconner features more prominently in Season 3, which delves into Princess Margaret’s years on Mustique. Lord Glenconner bought Mustique when it was a pretty threadbare island barely hanging on to its fading cotton industry. Over several decades, he turned it into one of the most exclusive holiday destinations in the world. Lord Glenconner was a savvy operator in many ways, and according to his wife he had good business brains and a larger-than-life personality. He was also a complete nutter in the high aristocratic style.
It might be going a bit too far to describe Lady Glenconner as phlegmatic, but a combination of her own natural temperament (no doubt) and some extraordinary difficulties have made her the most stolidly calm of narrators. She doesn’t avoid discussing some of the tragedies and melodramas in her life, but she is not one to wring her hands, either. Most of the tragedies are to do with the author’s five children, three of which suffer horrible fates, but her husband’s misbehaviour is pretty epic. She is more than fair, more than generous, in her description of him and his behaviour.
As for Princess Margaret, this book does provide some insight and detail into the royal’s life - but without ever ‘telling all’ or saying anything at all which might be considered disloyal. It’s a very watered-down portrait of Princess Margaret, but perhaps it does provide some counterbalance to the more typical biographical sketches of the younger sister of the Queen.
This could have been a far more colourful book. I suppose that Lady Glenconner felt, reasonably, that the facts of her colourful life didn’t need much extra embellishment. ...more
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