The Cavendon Women
It’s 1926, and the Cavendons of Cavendon Hall are gathering for a family weekend, during which the story of two long-interconnected families, the noble Inghams and the servant Swanns, will play out on the playing board of passion and money and the stresses and strains of transformative post-World War I social conditions.
It’s a family saga in which a sprawling cast of characters navigates a new order in which the mighty fall and the lowly rise, but everyone has very good manners. It’s difficult to focus on the main characters, because there are so many of them, and they are virtually indistinguishable. The Ingham daughters, for instance, all have abundant golden curls, and they are named Daphne, Dulcie, DeLacy, and Diedre. Charles Ingham wants to marry Charlotte Swann, and his son, Miles, wants to marry Cecily Swann, who has long ago left the manor and become a renowned fashion designer. But there are obstacles. And somebody has stolen the family jewels.
The novel’s prose is serviceable, never energetic, and the plotting never moves beyond the expected. At times, I forgot that there was a plot; the characters’ experiences felt so much like the formless activities of everyday life. But there were wonderful clothes, which made up for everything. Almost.
Navigating an England where “the Great War had changed everything” (echoing what seems to be Downton Abbey’s leitmotif), the aristocracy is struggling, and a new moneyed class based on talent, vision, daring, and hard work, is rising, thus breaking down previously rigid social divisions. And it all works out well in the end.
