This is my second contribution to the 1937 Club, running all week and hosted by Kaggsy at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book.
I’ve really enjoyed the Molly Keane novels I’ve read, but I think The Rising Tide might be my favourite of them all. There’s lots here that is familiar to readers of Keane’s work: Irish upper classes, Gothic Big Houses, controlling matriarchs, a stomach-churning obsession with bloodsports… but the edges were softened a bit here. The matriarchs were horribly believable yet not skirting quite as close to Gothic caricature as some of her creations; the bloodsports were referenced frequently but from the point of view of two people who hated them; snobbery was less to the fore. Keane’s astute characterisation and observational skills were as sharp as ever and the descriptive writing – especially regarding clothes and gardens – absolutely sumptuous.
The Rising Tide opens at the start of the last century. The big house is Garonlea, and Lady Charlotte French-McGrath rules over it in a constant display of her mean spirit. Her style has all the fuss and overdecoration of the Victorian period, but without any generosity:
“No lighting or heating. Tepid bathwater at best. All the wallpaper dark green or dark red. Festoons of red velvet curtains, tassels, fringes. In this room seventeen ‘occasional’ tables beside big ones and a vase of flowers on each one.”
Charlotte’s devoted husband Ambrose really just wants to be left to walk in his woods. They have four young daughters out in society: Muriel, Enid, Violet and Diana, as well as an heir in their son Desmond.
“Really, there was nothing else to be done except the things that Lady Charlotte did and she did them with wrath and speed and efficiency and throughout showed an unflinching social front.”
Things change when Desmond brings his glittering, selfish fiancée Cynthia to Garonlea:
“‘Muriel, my dear, you may take Cynthia up to her room.’
‘Yes, I’m rather a dirty girl, I think,’ said Cynthia, blinking like a cat, gold cat in the warm light room where white chrysanthemums smelt antiseptically and a majestic silver tea service glittered on an elaborately clothed table.”
Cynthia charms everyone, especially youngest daughter Diana. Cynthia likes to be charming and she likes to be adored by all. Hence, her and Lady Charlotte’s relationship is doomed from the start, and as awful as Lady Charlotte is, Cynthia is no better. She is only concerned with making people worship her and has no interest in them beyond that:
“She was always thrilled by it [the worship] and it called out at moments a dramatic feeling of goodness and humanity in her, rather an imitation sensation perhaps and one that never lasted long enough to cause her any serious personal inconvenience.”
Diana, the youngest and most rebellious of the sisters, dislikes men, enjoys it when the fashion changes so she can cut her hair, wears trousers and she adores Cynthia. But Keane is never condescending or stereotyping towards Diana and the portrait is subtle. I read Diana’s attachment as romantic, but it isn’t possessive and in fact this could easily be my twenty-first century reading of an intense chaste attachment. (There’s another character who is definitely gay, and again he is not judged for this.) Later, Keane points out that Diana, in being left to tend her gardens and live a useful life, becomes the happiest of all the sisters, rather than pitiable or bitter for remaining unmarried.
One reservation Diana has regarding her beloved Cynthia is the treatment of her children. Simon and Susan are very different to their mother and she is cruel to them, forcing them into pursuits they find terrifying and otherwise utterly unconcerned with their lives:
“Cynthia was rather impersonal about the children. If they had not had decorative value and if they had not excited Desmond so much, she would have had very little to do with them. Perhaps when they were older and started riding they would be more interesting.”
“Why could they not love hunting and dogs and ratting and badger digging and their ponies, as all right-minded children should, instead of having to be compelled and encouraged to take their parts in these sports and pleasures?”
Yet Keane demonstrates sympathy for Cynthia too. It’s a small SPOILER to say that Desmond dies in World War I, and Cynthia did truly love him. This isn’t apparent to the rest of her family in her behaviour, as she manages her grief by throwing herself into the role of society hostess. She is made for this, as are the 1920s. As she parties, drinks to excess and has affairs, very few recognise the deep pain she is running from:
“If she could fill the present moment so that she need not look before or behind it, she found that she had some ease and quietness of mind. Hunting she thought was best, but what really made her nearest to forgetting was her perpetual and indefeatable success with the men.”
“All the rest of her life was a dangerous shell of pretence, a thin shell against her ear full of screaming whispers.”
This makes Cynthia understandable, but not any more likable. She is entirely selfish and there is no kindness in her. After the death of Lady Charlotte, she is mistress of Garonlea and Diana lives with her. Cynthia knows the trauma experienced by Diana within the walls of the house but does not make any allowances for her, as this would not be convenient.
“It was a pity that all these changes at Garonlea altered it so little for Diana. To her Garonlea was more itself than it had been before Cynthia had tore down its red wallpapers and hurled the unwanted ancestors into attics with their faces to the wall […] The spirit and power of Garonlea still lived with a tenfold strength. It was as if it stored and reserved its power for a future day. Quite literally the breath of such places, the strong camphor-filled breath, on the still laden air of an outdoor place thick with old childish memories filled Diana with hatred and a tremendous consciousness of things as they had been at Garonlea all her life till now.”
As the above paragraph shows, Keane makes Garonlea its own character too. It is a looming, energy-sapping, Gothic presence: “The ruthless benignancy of Garonlea and all that Garonlea stood for. It would always be the same, it always had been.”
This is such a long post and there’s loads I haven’t mentioned! Not least the descriptive writing. Details of clothes are used to emphasise the differences between the generations: the multi-layered, highly scaffolded dresses of the sisters, in contrast to the looser styles of the Bright Young Things who follow them. Keane’s love of gardening is apparent too, in detailed descriptions of the grounds:
“Near the house sunlight poured on flat grass and on groups of blue hydrangeas and thickets of red-hot pokers. It lay the length of the opened bank of the valley as hotly as in July. Black cattle standing close together in a ring of chestnut trees looked as if they were all carved from the same block and not yet unjoined from it. There was a shaken air of blue where the half turned bracken and the woods sloped down and up.”
The Rising Tide is such a rich novel and there’s so much to enjoy. Keane’s characterisation is sharp but never cruel, and her understanding of the societal changes that occurred in the first third of the twentieth century is acute. To those of you who have made it this far, thank you for sticking with me 😀
To end, a 1930s-style party tune on a Gothic theme, hopefully Cynthia would approve:
A wonderful review and yes I stayed till the end, intrigued and delighted to know that there exists a Molly Keane novel that can bring out the best and not just the worst in her characters. The various ways a sense of superiority is created and evolves through subsequent generations, and the diversity of manners, she really did have an eye and an ear for it all.
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Thanks for sticking with me Claire 😀
Yes, such sharp powers of observation, for people, places and things and she weaves it all together expertly.
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I loved this review too – all of it! This is definitely a book for my list – especially as Molly Keane is an author I have not read yet. Thanks for taking the time to whet my apetite so tantalisingly – I really liked the quotes.
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So pleased I’ve tempted you with this one! I hope you enjoy Molly Keane when you get to her.
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I’ve only ever read one book by Molly Keane which was Good Behaviour, and I loved it!
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Good Behaviour is great!
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Sounds excellent, Madame Bibi and it seems Keene had made the characters sympathetic even when showing their not-very-likeable sides. I’m yet to read Keane and this could well be the place I start. Thank you for reviewing this.
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Yes, the characters aren’t all that likeable but so believable! You’re not without sympathy for them. I hope you enjoy Keane when you get to her 🙂
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I love the sound of this, how can I not have read any Molly Keane?! On my list.
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I hope you enjoy her Jane!
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Very interesting Madame B! I’ve struggled to get anywhere with Keane because of the bloodsports – I just can’t take it. But her writing, from the quotes, is obviously very good…
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Yes, there are passages in her other novels that I’ve skipped entirely because I don’t want to read about such cruelty. This one is really quite a departure – the sympathetic point of view is with Cynthia’s children who both hate hunting, not with Cynthia. I was really surprised.
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That cover of Thriller is weirdly wonderful, and quite discombobulating! I think it’s the dancers… they so don’t match the singing, and it works!
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It does work somehow doesn’t it, I was really surprised!
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“…a stomach-churning obsession with bloodsports…” Hahahah I think I may have started reading this one. Need to dig through the piles and see if I’m right! Love the Thriller video!
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Some of her novels feature detailed hunting scenes, I was so relieved this wasn’t one of them! So glad you enjoyed the video 😁
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I love to add videos but almost no one ever clicks! It’s so fun to do that though I just keep at it. I was happy you doing that!
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Go for it 😁
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That video reminded me of the Hutch-inspired character on Downton Abbey! lol
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Unbelievably I’ve never seen Downtown Abbey! I’ll see if I can find a clip 😊
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Lady Rose and Jack…or in real life Lady Louis Mountbatten [as she was before the war] and Hutch
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Thank you ☺️
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A wonderful review. I was delighted to be reminded of it. I love Molly Keane’s writing, and in this novel, her characterisation, particularly of Cynthia, is spot on.
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So glad you enjoyed this one too Ali. Her characterisation really is extraordinary – so original and yet believable.
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I really must read some Molly Keane, she sounds like me cup of tea!
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I really hope you enjoy her! I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts 🙂
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You’ve really sold this one! It was on my list to read for the club, but didn’t quite make the cut – but I’ll have to get to it soon. I think the problem with her is she wrote so many novels with similar settings and feel that it’s hard to know which to pick up, or to distinguish them. This will definitely be my next one.
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Yes that’s very true! But this one I definitely enjoyed the most. I hope you enjoy it when you get to it Simon.
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