Volume 31, Number 6 · April 12, 1984
The Solace of Intrigue
By V.S. Pritchett
Good Behaviour
by Molly Keane
Dutton, 245 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Time After Time
by Molly Keane
Knopf, 249 pp., $13.95
By the Twenties the Anglo-Irish gentry—the 'Ascendancy' as they were called—rapidly became a remnant. After the treaty, some stormed out shouting at the receding Wicklow Hills. Those who stayed on resorted to irony; for centuries they had been a caste in decline on a poor island-within-an-island in Britain's oldest colony. They stuck to their wild passions for huntin', shootin', fishin', the turf, drink, and, above all, genealogy, as the damp rose in their fine but decaying houses. Debts and mortgages gathered around them, but they had long settled for not knowing history socially except when it presented itself in the form of family trees (sometimes done in tapestry) going back to the Normans, the Elizabethans, or even to Charlemagne. The snobbery approached, as Stendhal would have said, the Sublime.
Review, 2217 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |