Reading the 20th Century discussion

Welcome to our October 2024 group read of....



The Shooting Party (1980)

by

Isabel Colegate


Feel free to comment any time


It is 1913 - just prior to England's entry into World War I - and Edwardian England is about to vanish into history. A group of men and women gather at Sir Randolph Nettleby's estate for a shooting party. Opulent, adulterous, moving assuredly through the rituals of eating and slaughter, they are a dazzlingly obtuse and brilliantly decorative finale of an era.

I have just read it! It was four stars for me. Has someone watched the movie?

Not me Daniela


I have just ordered a copy off eBay though

This book has been nominated a number of times so nice to see it finally succeed! It will be interesting to see a 1980's take on this period.

Looking forward to it.

that's great . I've seen the movie and loved it too. Julian Fellows, who created Gosford Park and Downton Abbey cites this novel as a big influence , I believe ....

Hester wrote: "that's great . I've seen the movie and loved it too. Julian Fellows, who created Gosford Park and Downton Abbey cites this novel as a big influence , I believe ...."

I didn't realise that. Rats! I was hoping the Colegate was less dodgy politically than Fellowes's work - all that nostalgia for a status quo when the poor doffed their caps and the working-class knew their place! Downton Abbey was very entertaining but very much a particular brand of Tory fantasy.

How much of fantasy do you think it was Alwynne?


None of us would want to be in domestic service I'm sure and yet I have read a few accounts by Butlers and Maids who absolutely loved being in service. #strangebuttrue

Not to worry Alwynne . I didn't enjoy Downton Abbey either and hardly watched it ...I think Colgate allows a more complicated view .

Gosford Park also had a more complicated view, showing a devastating hypocrisy behind the opulent appearances. I don't think Robert Altman would ever go for Downton Abbey.

Agree Vesna . Gosford Park is one of my favourite films ..

I'm hoping for something more Sarah Waters/The Little Stranger than Julian Fellowes but say that having never watched Downton Abbey.

I think there is a huge amount of fantasizing nostalgia about the period even while writers in the period themselves had more complicated views. We've touched on this before in relation to books like Brideshead which get treated as if they're our shared history when most of us wouldn't have been welcomed there.

I was amused that in our latest Blandings, Wellbeloved (the pig-man) comes out with a socialist rant about wealth being built on widows and orphans, and that was written in the 1960s.

It will be interesting to see how Colegate represents class politics in her book. Does anyone know anything about her?

Nigeyb wrote: "How much of fantasy do you think it was Alwynne?


None of us would want to be in domestic service I'm sure and yet I have read a few accounts by Butlers and Maids who absolutely loved being in service.

Do you remember during the election, a Guardian journalist was canvassing with the Labour candidate and one on the doorstep someone said that her grandmother had been in service and so they always vote Tory. There's an interesting inverse snobbery about not wanting to be associated with a party set up to represent the working classes, whatever they are today.

I find this all fascinating!

Indeed. Working Class Tories are an interesting demographic


I was also musing how much worse or better are people off who are on zero hours contracts and working as delivery drivers, cleaners etc. Just another version of the same old drudgery

This is her Guardian obit

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

Nigeyb wrote: "I was also musing how much worse or better are people off who are on zero hours contracts and working as delivery drivers, cleaners etc..."

Yes, precarity is a new dividing line in terms of status whether it's zero hours or fixed-term vs. permanent contracts (as is the case in academia where huge teaching loads are taken by highly qualified people who need second or even third jobs just to get by).

Nigeyb wrote: "How much of fantasy do you think it was Alwynne?


None of us would want to be in domestic service I'm sure and yet I have read a few accounts by Butlers and Maids who absolutely loved being in ser..."

I'm sure for some people it worked out, although it's telling that workers quit service in droves once there were more alternatives. Downton presents this idyllic vision of all-benevolent gentry in which the lord of the manor is a father figure to his servants. Dissenting voices like the IRA-linked, former son-in-law quickly learn the error of their lefty ways, the feminist/socialist schoolteacher he's briefly involved with - who I think is modelled on the headteacher in South Riding- is represented as strident and foolish for challenging class hierarchies. Also as a contemporary vision of the past, it reinforces the notion of a certain kind of benevolent Toryism as the ideal for keeping the country stable.

There's no acknowledgement of the backbreaking hours common in service, the lack of autonomy - with many not even allowed to have relationships - the low wages, the prevalence of sexual assault or exploitation by employers, the older servants cast out to live in grubby lodgings with little to no pension provision, the minimal, unpoliced free time etc...In Fellowes's world with the gentry in charge, everything in the garden is rosy and everyone knows their place, and is happy with the status quo. Shows like Upstairs, Downstairs much more honest and much more radical in their portrayal of a similar household.

All very good points Alwynne


I've not watched one second of Downton. Reading your comments convinces me that I have made a wise decision.

My Great Aunt, on my Dad's side was sent into service as a maid. The youngest of her family her leaving was a mouth less to feed at home. She never talked about it.

Nigeyb wrote: "All very good points Alwynne


I've not watched one second of Downton. Reading your comments convinces me that I have made a wise decision."

Maggie Smith is very entertaining though...

Downton Abbey is fiction. I think if you watch it without thinking that it reflects reality it is enjoyable and fun 😃 and yes, Maggie Smith is superb!

My copy has arrived


🙌🏻

I started this today and am posting here so I get notices. When I first looked at at the thread, I read the later posts first and briefly thought I must have been in the wrong thread.
The story introduces a lot of characters in the first few chapters so I started keeping a character list until I kept them straight. I very much like the book's start but, then again, I liked Downton Abbey so I'm probably a bit dodgy.
Thank you Maggie Smith. I still have never watched her in Travels With My Aunt and will have to remedy that.

I'll be starting this one once I've finished Small World

I'm about halfway through and it's shaping up to be a 3* for me. One thing that annoys me a bit is it's clearly written with foreshadowing of the war to come and the disruption it will bring. I prefer my historical novels written with more subtle omniscience.

But the character portraits are enjoyable and, although as Brian says, there are many, most become easily distinguishable. So far, much more focus on the upper class than the lower, and there are no heroes. I also appreciate the detail in the description of all the work it takes to maintain and run the estate.

Interesting thoughts, Brian and Ben - I 'll make a start as Bowen isn't commute reading and this may fill that gap.

Apparently the author, Isabel Colegate, came from the minor aristocracy, so she was probably more comfortable writing about people she knew. I read this one before, being as I nominated it, so look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I do agree that it very much feels like the WWI is a secret the readers are in on, while, for the characters of course, it is all to come.

I'm going to be reading again in November / December along with The Orlando Trilogy . I don't mind reading a novel where we're in on a secret , The Last September/ Elizabeth Bowen managed a similar setting brilliantly...both made into films too ..

It sounds an interesting book to have published (and written?) in 1980 given the background of Thatcherism and Princess Di reviving popular interest in the monarchy.

Was that just before the Falklands war with its jingoistic nationalism? Also the deregulation in the City which changed access to wealth and status: I remember one of the Rumpole stories about a 'barrow boy' who is a star on the stock exchange but whose girlfriend's parents won't accept him for his working class roots despite his million pound bonus.

It seems like a time when issues of social change, wealth, status and class were very prominent.

And, who knew, Nicholas Cafe bought her castle near Bath ! Thank you Wikipedia

cage

Although Nicholas Cafe does have a certain ring . he could have opened a teashop

And for those of us stuck into Dance to the Music of Time Colgate could well have fitted into that world , especially the post war bohemian publishers in book 10 . Love these bookish coincidences

You’ve upped my anticipation levels Hester


#bringiton

For a short novel, I think it covers a lot of themes. Yes, setting it the summer before WWI gives it a poignancy, but certainly there is also the sense it is a changing world. The young daughter who is reprimanded for talking about, and to, her maid. Barriers are breaking down and also there is the unspoken sense of what it means to be a gentleman, so there is a lot about unspoken rules regarding behaviour, what is acceptable and what it means not to fit in.

I just googled pheasant shooting as I wasn't sure what the point of it was i.e. are they predators that need to be kept down like, allegedly, foxes?

Turns out millions of pheasants are bred solely to be killed. Millions. Many are wounded by shots and are left to die. They're apparently not that good for eating so it is just for 'sport'.

This article was written a year ago: it's not unbiased, it's a Guardian opinion piece: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theg...

But it does draw the obvious parallel that the book is making about the shooting party and wars.

Also fascinating to see how the shooting party is structured: the beaters drive the birds towards the shooters and the loaders carry the guns, load them and pass them to the shooters who point in the general direction of the flocks of birds and let loose with the shot - doesn't seem like a particularly skilful sport.

I like Colegate 's prose: she has great clarity, almost like nineteenth century writers.

Daniela wrote: "Downton Abbey is fiction. I think if you watch it without thinking that it reflects reality it is enjoyable and fun 😃 and yes, Maggie Smith is superb!"

I clocked that it was fiction! But fiction also reflects and/or promotes or discourages a range of world views, it's never entirely apolitical. Sorry it's a bit of a bugbear because it's a discussion have had to have with first-year students year in/year out.

Roman Clodia wrote: "I just googled pheasant shooting as I wasn't sure what the point of it was i.e. are they predators that need to be kept down like, allegedly, foxes?

Turns out millions of pheasants are bred solel..."

It's a good analogy. If you walk through Cambridge or Oxford at certain times of year btw can often see braces of pheasants hanging from students' windows. Makes it clear which are the stuffier/Tory-leaning colleges!

Huge swathes of land are still given over to it


Birds of prey get illegally killed to preserve the pheasant population

And the land is generally very controlled making it inhospitable for many previously commonplace animals

See also the insane amount of land given over to livestock

If you ever get the chance go and visit the Knepp Estate to understand what’s possible if we took rewinding seriously

There’s a huge opportunity just waiting but land ownership is the other big issue which is a whole other can of worms

Alwynne wrote: "fiction also reflects and/or promotes or discourages a range of world views, it's never entirely apolitical. Sorry it's a bit of a bugbear because it's a discussion have had to have with first-year students year in/year out"

Ha, me too! It's amazing that bright kids with excellent A levels who have chosen to study literature still find this a revelation.

It seems to be much more common knowledge, I thought, that the stories we choose to tell ourselves as individuals and communities are also doing cultural work.

Alwynne wrote: "If you walk through Cambridge or Oxford at certain times of year btw can often see braces of pheasants hanging from students' windows. "

That reminds me of my super-posh friend at uni who came back with either a pheasant or grouse and was looking for somewhere to hang it - this was in a halls of residence kitchen at Warwick, awash with vegans, feminists and class warriors! He was lovely but bemusement on both sides is an understatement.

Yes Roman C . Trollope makes a similar point in The Duke's Children when one of the main characters questions the wholesale slaughter and gains the ire of a dedicated " sportsman "

Interesting that the criticism exists inside the book too via Olivia - and the young boy with the duck. (view spoiler)[ What a cruel joke, warning a child to keep his pet inside otherwise it'll be shot alongside the wild ducks.

There's also the contrast between the poacher killing a single rabbit for his dinner and mass killing as sport. (hide spoiler)]

This is engrossing!

So many clever and pointed juxtapositions so that Colegate doesn't have to comment directly: (view spoiler)[Sir Randolph thinking about benevolent patriarchy of the aristocracy then Tom Harper limping from an old injury where he was caught in a man-trap by a vicious gamekeeper (hide spoiler)]

Nigeyb wrote: "Huge swathes of land are still given over to it


Birds of prey get illegally killed to preserve the pheasant population

And the land is generally very controlled making it inhospitable for many ..."

All great points Nigey, totally on board.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "fiction also reflects and/or promotes or discourages a range of world views, it's never entirely apolitical. Sorry it's a bit of a bugbear because it's a discussion have had to have..."

Absolutely!

I'm finding it interesting that Sir Randolph is already mortgaged up even before the war.

I did some googling and it seems that there was an agricultural depression in England from the late 1800s following the repeal of the Corn Laws which dropped barriers to free trade. The end of the American wars and technology progress that made transport faster and cheaper meant imports from the US and Canada undercut home-grown corn and wheat undermining the rural economy even before the war.

Social changes associated with WW1 exacerbated the shift away from 'the big house', of course, but there appear to have been long term economic factors at play too.

Trollope touches on these issues, I think, as well as other ways American and City money affected the old land-based aristocracy even in the Victorian period.

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm finding it interesting that Sir Randolph is already mortgaged up even before the war.

I did some googling and it seems that there was an agricultural depression in England from the late 1800s..."

Presumably one of the reasons American heiresses were so sought after? As in Churchill's mother, and The Buccaneers - although that's one of the Whartons I haven't read yet.

Stylistically, this is a historical novel that almost pretends it isn't. Colegate's voice is withheld so while we do get descriptions of interiors and the landscape, there's no analysis of the period. She focuses on the interpersonal dramas and leaves it up to us to fill in the history and social context and commentary.

How did everyone feel about this? I ended up googling something not possible, of course, for 1980s readers so are we left a little adrift in the book? Or did it work fine? (Maybe everyone else isn't as ignorant as me!)