Pomfret Towers by Angela Thirkell is a re-read for me as when I first read these books I didn’t read them in order, I just read them as I managed to obtain copies, so I decided to read them in the correct order at last.
Most of the book revolves around a weekend at Pomfret Towers. Lady Pomfret spends a lot of time in Italy, but she has come home for a wee while, and Lord Pomfret wants her to meet some of the young people that she hasn’t seen for years – including Alice Barton. Alice has a reputation for having delicate health so she has led a very sheltered life, hasn’t been to school and consequently is very shy and awkward, her parents worry about her. Alice is terrified of the approaching weekend, worried about having to tip servants and such, and her brother Guy is a typical brother – and is no help whatsoever! But most of the other guests are so kind and the upshot is that when Alice returns home at the end of the weekend her parents can see that the whole experience has brought Alice out and she’s already more socially confident.
The guests aren’t all young people though as the dreadful authoress Mrs Rivers (some sort of cousin) has invited herself and her ghastly son Julian to stay, and it transpires that they intend to stay at Pomfret Towers for six months as she has had an offer on her own home for six months rental ‘which is so good it would be wicked not to accept it.’ She’s a horror of a woman but Thirkell manages to get everyone feeling sorry for her, albeit briefly.
This was a really enjoyable read, but it isn’t one of my favourites. Pomfret Towers was first published in 1938 and I don’t think that Thirkell really got into her stride until wartime as that gave her so much more scope and she obviously enjoyed having rants at the government and the various new types of people she could write about in the shape of refugees and evacuees. She could be a terrible snob, but funny with it.
My copy of the book is in an omnibus edition which includes August Folly and Summer Half and I was surprised to discover that towards the end of the book the pages jump from 490 to 495. The pages haven’t been ripped out, they were never included it seems, but it is so annoying as there are only 503 pages in the edition so it’s obviously just when loose threads are being tied up, including a marriage proposal! The first time I read this book I must have read a paperback that I used to have, but I gave it away when I bought this omnibus edition!