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Narrated by Katherine Kellgren
Fay WeldonUnabridged — 8 hours, 50 minutes
Narrated by Katherine Kellgren
Fay WeldonUnabridged — 8 hours, 50 minutes
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From the award-winning novelist and writer of Upstairs Downstairs, the launch of a brilliant new trilogy about what life was really like for masters and servants before the world of Downton Abbey
As the Season of 1899 comes to an end, the world is poised on the brink of profound, irrevocable change. The Earl of Dilberne is facing serious financial concerns. The ripple effects spread to everyone in the household: Lord Robert, who has gambled unwisely on the stock market and seeks a place in the Cabinet; his unmarried children, Arthur, who keeps a courtesan, and Rosina, who keeps a parrot in her bedroom; Lord Robert's wife Isobel, who orders the affairs of the household in Belgrave Square; and Grace, the lady's maid who orders the life of her mistress.
Lord Robert can see no financial relief to an already mortgaged estate, and, though the Season is over, his thoughts turn to securing a suitable wife (and dowry) for his son. The arrival on the London scene of Minnie, a beautiful Chicago heiress with a reputation to mend, seems the answer to all their prayers.
As the writer of the pilot episode of the original Upstairs, Downstairs-Fay Weldon brings a deserved reputation for magnificent storytelling. With wit and sympathy-and no small measure of mischief-Habits of the House plots the interplay of restraint and desire, manners and morals, reason and instinct.
If we must have more manor-house intrigue…let it be satirized by Weldon, whose flair for capturing the grudging envy shared by the British and their colonial counterparts is worth more than its market value in fool's gold.
…Habits of the House is good fun from start to finish, thanks to its breezy storytelling and witty social observations.
This first installment of Weldon’s late-Victorian trilogy centers on the Dilberne family, a titled albeit impoverished British house. The earl makes poor business decisions and continually runs up debts gambling with the Prince of Wales. Resolving to restore the family fortunes, he decides the clearest way to do this is to marry off his children. He sets upon son Arthur and, with the help of the household servants, locates a wealthy Chicago heiress, Minnie O’Brien. However, as the young couple start learning about each other, they realize that they both carry secrets that could ruin the engagement and their prospects. Weldon introduces several characters, both upper class and lower class, and in many ways the whole book feels expository because it lacks high-stakes drama. However, it succeeds as an opening to a new series and should entice enough to make it worth checking out the subsequent installments. Agent: Georgina Capel, Capel & Land Ltd. (Jan.)
Good fun from start to finish, thanks to breezy storytelling and witty social observations.” —The Washington Post
“Weldon brilliantly captuures the rituals above stairs and the gossip below stairs...Habits of the House is an absorbing and worthwhile read.” —Star Tribune
“Before there was Downton Abbey, there was Upstairs Downtstairs and, having written the first episode of that iconic television series, it is only fitting that Weldon now returns to the scene of the crime to further explore the disparate worlds of ‘them that has and those what serve 'em.'” —Booklist
“[Habits of the House] succeeds as an opening to a new series.” —Publishers Weekly
“An entertaining romp for Downton Abbey fans. . . . Weldon did the screenwriting for the first episode of Upstairs Downstairs so she has form in this arena.” —The Guardian
“I predict a happy success for the trilogy, in print and on the screen. Julian Fellowes must look to his laurels, and Downton Abbey may find itself running second to 17 Belgrave Square.” —The Scotsman
“My favorite part of the original series is the first episode because it was written by a great English novelist, Fay Weldon. Everybody was introduced so cleverly . . . so beautifully established.” —Jean Marsh, co-creator of Upstairs, Downstairs
“There is simply no touching Weldon as a writer.” —The Observer (UK)
“Fay Weldon has always examined the scary parts of what lies beneath the silk cushions and behind the closed gates.” —The Chronicle of Higher Education
“I was a girl from Downstairs. When I was 16, my bedroom was in the basement of a posh house in London, where my mother was the housekeeper. . . . Odd, this class business. Here's Upstairs Downstairs back again, Downton Abbey so popular.” —Fay Weldon
12/01/2014
Weldon, who wrote the pilot episode of the original Upstairs Downstairs, returns to the Edwardian era with the tale of the Dilbernes, a once-grand family striving to regain former glory. Poor investments and rising expenses have left the Earl of Dilberne with no choice but to marry off one of his sons to an American heiress, but this infusion of new money has unanticipated consequences. Weldon's return to her roots is as enjoyable as those early episodes of Upstairs Downstairs, mixing high drama and historical accuracy with humor.
It’s 1899, and the world is changing. The most immediately noticeable change for the Earl of Dilberne is that his Jewish solicitor is brazen enough to barge in unannounced before breakfast and doesn’t even feel the need to come in through the servants’ entrance. With a tony accent and wry humor, Katherine Kellgren narrates this story of an upper-class family on the verge of losing the life its members have always known. Kellgren differentiates well between family members, servants, and the young American woman whose fortune may very well save the Dilberne estate. Written by the author of “Upstairs, Downstairs,” HABITS OF THE HOUSE will delight fans of “Downton Abbey” and those who enjoy dry wit coupled with excellent narration. J.L.K. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Prolific Weldon borrows heavily from both Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs in her first in a series of three novels about Edwardian Britain, all to come out within the next year. Weldon begins her novel over 10 years earlier than the two TV series, but the dramatic elements are the same: a wealthy family and its servants (although they get short shrift here) reacting to social, economic and political changes. In 1899, Victoria is an aging queen, her son the Prince of Wales is a philandering gambler, and the second Boer War is about to break out in southern Africa. At 17 Belgrave Square, Robert Hedleigh, the Earl of Dilberne, has an unexpected visit from his Jewish banker, Mr. Baum. Mr. Baum has lent the earl quite a bit of money, but Lady Isobel balks at extending a social invitation to Mrs. Baum in return. Now, Mr. Baum explains that the Boer situation has ruined the earl's African mining investments. The family faces a potential financial crisis that is unlikely to be solved by the earl's gambling forays with the Prince of Wales. Since suffragette daughter Rosina seems unmarriageable, Lady Isobel--well aware that the earl married her for her father's money--sets out to find a rich wife for son Arthur, whose current love interests are his steam-engine automobile and the buxom blonde whose rent he pays, unaware that she was kept by his father before him. With the aid of lady's maid Grace, who has her own romantic history with Arthur, Lady Isobel turns up Minnie O'Brien, a meatpacking heiress from Chicago recently arrived in London with her loudly American mother. Minnie is charming as well as rich; even Grace finds herself won over. But Minnie has her own secrets. Will love and Minnie's money combine to save the household or will scandal wreak havoc? If this all sounds more than a little familiar, it is.
| BN ID: | 2940169426854 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 01/15/2013 |
| Series: | Habits of the House Series , #1 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
The House Awakes
6.58 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899
IN LATE OCTOBER of the year 1899 a tall, thin, nervy young man ran up the broad stone steps that led to No. 17 Belgrave Square. He seemed agitated. He was without hat or cane, breathless, unattended by staff of any kind, wore office dress – other than that his waistcoat was bright yellow above smart striped stove-pipe trousers – and his moustache had lost its curl in the damp air of the early morning. He seemed both too well-dressed for the tradesman’s entrance at the back of the house, yet not quite fit to mount the front steps, leave alone at a run, and especially at such an early hour.
The grand front doors of Belgrave Square belonged to ministers of the Crown, ambassadors of foreign countries, and a sprinkling of titled families. By seven in the morning the back doors would be busy enough with deliveries and the coming and going of kitchen and stable staff, but few approached the great front doors before ten, let alone on foot, informally and without appointment. The visitor pulled the bell handle too long and too hard, and worse, again and again.
The jangling of the bell disturbed the household, waking the gentry, startling such servants who were already up but still sleepy, and disconcerting the upper servants, who were not yet properly dressed for front door work.
Grace, her Ladyship’s maid, peered out from her attic window to see what was going on. She used a mirror contraption rigged up for her by Reginald the footman, the better to keep an eye on comings and goings on the steps below. Seeing that it was only Eric Baum, his Lordship’s new financial advisor and lawyer, Grace decided it was scarcely her business to answer the door. She saw to her Ladyship’s comfort and no one else’s. Baum was too young, too excitable and too foreign-looking to be worthy of much exertion, and her Ladyship had been none too pleased when her husband had moved their business affairs into new hands.
Grace continued dressing at her leisure: plain, serviceable, black twill dress – a heavy weave, but it was cold up here in the unheated attics – white newly laundered apron, and a pleated white cap under which she coiled her long fair hair. She liked this simple severity of appearance: she felt it suited her, just as the Countess of Dilberne’s colourful silks and satins suited her. Her Ladyship would not need to be woken until nine. Meanwhile Grace would not waste time and energy running up and down stairs to open the front door to the likes of Mr Baum. A sensible man would have gone round to the servants’ entrance.
‘Bugger!’ said Elsie the under housemaid, so startled by the unexpected noise that she spilled most of a pan of ash on to the polished marquetry floor. She was cleaning the grate in the upstairs breakfast room. Grey powder puffed everywhere, clouding a dozen mahogany surfaces. More dusting. She was short of time as it was. She had yet to set the coals, and the wind being from the north the fire would not draw well and likely as not smoke the room out.
This was the trouble with the new London houses – the Grosvenor estate architects, famous as they might be, seemed to have no idea as to where a chimney should best be placed. At Dilberne Court down in the Hampshire hills, built for the first Earl of Dilberne in the reign of Henry VIII, the chimneys always drew. No. 17 Belgrave Square was a mere rental, albeit on a five-year lease. The servants felt this was not quite the thing; most of the best families liked to own and not rent. But the best families were also the landed families; and land was no longer necessarily the source of wealth that it had always been since the Norman Conquest.
Elsie, along with the majority of the domestic staff, lamented the annual migration to London for the Season, but could see its necessity. The Dilberne children needed to be married off; they were too troublesome single. The young Viscount, Arthur, needed a wife to grow him up, and to give him the children he needed for the succession to the Dilberne title and estates: he was nearing twenty-six, so at least had some time to spare. Rosina, at twenty-eight, most certainly did not. The urgency was greater since she was no beauty and had recently declared herself to be a New Woman and resolved never to marry. London was the place for them to be, but the Season ended in August and here they all still were in October. The change in routine unsettled everyone.
Everyone knew Lady Isobel much preferred giving balls and dinner parties in town to hosting weekends in the country. The rumour also was she hated hunting, being afraid of horses – though otherwise fearless – and was out of sympathy with the male passion for shooting birds. This year the shoots had been let out to neighbouring estates. And also his Lordship had found himself obliged to spend more time in the House of Lords since the trouble in South Africa had flared up. Apparently he had business interests in the area. Neither Mr Neville the butler, nor Reginald the footman had discovered quite what these were: short of steaming open letters when they arrived (which Reginald wanted to do but Mr Neville forbade, for in his view reading letters left around was legitimate, steaming was not) there was no way of finding out. Mr Baum the lawyer carried documents away with him, or his Lordship locked them safely in the safe. And Elsie had overheard his Lordship say to her Ladyship that he could not forever be travelling up and down from Hampshire to attend the House, so they would stay in London until the New Year.
Elsie, personally, thought the smart new gambling dens in Mayfair and the company of his new friend the Prince of Wales was probably a greater attraction for his Lordship than politics. Elsie had been with the family for some fifteen years and knew as well as any what went on.
‘Three monkeys, three monkeys!’ Mrs Neville would urge – ‘hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil’ – in an attempt to tamp down the servants’ hall gossip, though in fact she was as bad a culprit as anyone. And Grace, her ladyship’s personal maid, would point out that since upstairs saw so little need to preserve their privacy in front of the servants, any more than they did in front of their dogs, they hardly deserved any. All wished Grace would not say this kind of thing; it smacked of disloyalty and the servant’s hall, no matter how much it grumbled and complained, knew that by and large it was well off, and happy enough.
Elsie was not prepared to open the front door, no matter how hard and repeatedly the caller pulled the bell: there was smut on her face and she was not yet in her cap and apron. Anyway it was Smithers’ job. Elsie would wait for a direct instruction from someone higher in the hierarchy. This overlong stay in London meant she missed her sweetheart. Alan was a gamekeeper on the Dilberne estate; they were saving to be married. The sooner that happened the better if she was ever to have children. On the yearly trips to London, as it was, Alan, back in Hampshire, consoled himself with drink and frittered the money away. By the New Year there would be precious little left. Elsie was not in a good temper these days, and she was tired of working in a cloud of ash.
There were few cabs about at this early hour, and since receiving the morning telegrams from Natal, Baum had taken a bus, but half-walked, half-run much of the way between Lincoln’s Inn Fields where Courtney and Baum had their offices, and the Square. He did not grudge the effort, since on the whole he wished the Earl of Dilberne well, and had certainly lent him enough money in the past to want the debt repaid, and the sooner his Lordship’s affairs were in order the sooner that would happen. But while Eric Baum pulled and pulled the bell and no one came, he began to feel aggrieved.
Copyright © 2012 by Fay Weldon
