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 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. ( )

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 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. ( )

Sebastian is the lord of Chevron, where falling into being a good lord of the manor comes easy to him, and he can do the young-man-about-the-town part too, although it doesn't really make him feel like himself. A guest at a weekend party invited by his mother, Leonard Anquetil, manages to shake his assumptions and make him think more about his life; Anquetil does the same for his sister Viola. Over the years, Sebastian has relationships with four women, but none of them quite make him feel fulfilled—if they fit into his imagined future, they bore him, others excite him for a time, but he cannot see them as his wife in his role as the lord of the manor. And all the while, Sebastian is all too aware the world outside is changing and lords of the manor are increasingly less important to in local people's lives and less likely to be seen as the only potential future employer in families working in the manor's sphere of influence for generations.

At the end, finding that Anquetil wants to marry his sister, he seems to finally want to break free and join on Anquetil's adventures. ( )

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 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). ( )

The Edwardians might pass as a novel that presents a good surface story or something to waste away an afternoon or two with. It is well written and contains a small cast of characters. Sebastian is the center character, the dashing nineteen-year-old, who rebels against his mother, but still stays within the norms of society. Viola is his younger sister who is awkward and cares less about society and position than Sebastian. The Duchess is firmly in the society scene and lives by image and proper appearances. Then there is Chevron which could be the main character as well as the setting. It is the estate Sebastian is set to inherit -- the massive building and the surrounding property and houses.

A close look at the author, Vita Sackville-West, will show that this book is more than just a novel. The opening imprint reads "No character in this book is wholly fictitious." Lucy, Duchess of Chevron, is a thinly veiled portrayal of Victoria Sackville-West's controlling mother of Vita Sackville-West. Chevron is without a doubt Knole the one true love of Vita. Sebastian and Viola are two different Vitas. Sebastian is the idealized Vita. The one with the true connection to the land and estate. Vita regretted the fact that because she was a woman she had no claim on her family's estate. It would be taken from her. Sebastian plays her male alter-ego. Viola is the more realistic Vita -- A bit awkward, not a society person, and at odds with her mother.

The story is also an examination and a criticism of the waning days and fall of the Edwardian period. "Appearances must be respected, though morals may be neglected." is the theme of the upper class. An affair was not bad unless it was exposed either through indiscretion or someone with a grudge. Affairs did not end marriages although they did hurt. Marriage was designed and arranged for stability and preserving the family name. Affairs, on the other hand, were expressions of love. This idea did not hold true outside of the nobility. The middle class did marry for love and took their vows much more serious as Sebastian finds out. The morals are too in this book outside of religion. It is not mentioned by the middle-class wife Teresa Spedding in determining what is right and what is wrong.

The Edwardians is a well written examination of the period. Although Vita Sackville-West exaggerated at times, it is, after all, a work of fiction. She did write about what she knew. This book like a few other of her works is loosely based on her life. Although I do not watch much television I have watch Downton Abbey and many themes in The Edwardian are reflected there. Relations between the nobility and the staff, the rise of a middle class, socialism, and the coming of the motor age are told in both. Also, the coming fall of the landed class is expected in both also. The Edwardians is an interesting book and made even better once the reader knows of the life of the author.