With nice ecumenical parity, Peter Somerville-Large derides equally both Ireland’s principal Christian churches as they compete for the soul, or at least the membership, of young Paul Blake-Willoughby. His discordant Ascendancy parents, a Catholic father and a Protestant mother, are on what the late Brian Inglis, an esteemed Spectator editor, called ‘a descendancy course’.
Somerville-Large, who was born in Dublin and educated partly at St Columba’s, — a boarding school modelled on English public schools — is a historical social observer of merciless accuracy and caustic wit, moderated with just a touch of nostalgia. He has written a wonderfully entertaining novel about the decay of a traditional Irish big house and the demoralisation of its inmates, a perfect blend of realism and satire, which has been recommended as ‘a splendid book’ by William Trevor, himself a Columban old boy and an expert on all the nuances of Hibernian intercourse.
During the second world war, Paul’s father, a blimpish Sandhurst man, though Irish for many generations, goes overseas as a major in a British guards regiment. Away for three years, he spends some of the time dallying with the ladies and developing his dependence on whisky in a luxurious club in Cairo, while attempting remotely to direct his son’s education and religious commitment. Daddy sends frequent letters to Paul’s mother, his Protestant headmaster, his Catholic priest and to the confused boy. Daddy is uncompromisingly demanding; Mummy is neglectful, dangerously generous and silly. They are both generally ineffectual, yet each hopes that Paul will eventually choose the right faith. The story gains tension and anguish from how he chooses and why. Many details along the way are very funny.
Mummy tells her son: ‘My father kept saying, “I hate to see an old family going this way.” He thought I was letting the side down, marrying a Catholic.’ She also declares prejudices of her own; for example, she doesn’t like people who put the names of their houses on their gates, keep poodles or grow floribunda roses.
Paul’s headmaster, Mr Good, tells the boys that ‘Here in St George’s we pride ourselves on our reputation for clean living and moral honesty’; but sixth-formers have affairs with pretty juniors called ‘bijoux’, and one of the masters is a paedophile nicknamed ‘Fingers’. When Mummy gives Paul a new bicycle and a ten-pound note, he is easily led astray in a nearby town, with disastrous results. Daddy thinks Paul will be fit only to farm the family estate, so he is made to submit to an agricultural college, mucking out pigsties and sweeping away snow. When that project fails, Mummy hires a young tutor, who causes further trouble. Daddy’s home-coming party at the end of the war is painfully embarrassing.
Paul attends a 50th anniversary reunion of Old Georgians:
You didn’t want to talk about health if you could help it. Forget erectile problems or incontinence. If possible make no mention of prostate or strokes or cancer. Death’s fetid breath was at all their backs, but worse than death was the hovering spirit of Dr Alois Alzheimer.
Paul finds that all change is for the worse. Somerville-Large saves the worst for the very last paragraph. And that isn’t funny at all.
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