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The Old Priory Group Read 2025
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Yes! both families are teetering between two stools and, in the persons of Arabella and Alan, clasp hands and resolve many dilemmas! A truly fairy tale ending, one that the dowager was denied in one way ( one wonders how that would have turned out!) and granted so abundantly in another....The return of the pirate father is the traditional figure of the deus ex machina, who sets everything right....like the ending of a Shakespeare comedy ( which were sometimes called his "real" tragedies) when the villain is vanquished, inequalities adjusted, lovers presented to each other in their "real" lights, and all reconciled emotionally - and financially!!
I must say that the person I feel totally, absolutely happy for is Lettice : at last she gets what she so richly deserves....sorry if I'm jumping the gun!
There's something satisfyingly circular about the plot, from Arthur and the mysterious lady to Arabella and Alan (after her initial attraction to Lord Gorleston, of course).The words NL puts in Arabella's mouth about the fomerly mysterious lady, now known to be the Dowager Lady Dunwich, makes her (the Lady) sound like a tragic figure. I'm not so sure. I still suspect she might have at least colluded in the attempt to kill Arthur, and the armour of her makeup and clothing don't make her a sympathetic figure to me. Maybe she's a bit like Lady Rosamund, was it? Rosaleen? The beauty who was really a vicious domestic tyrant.
I kind of like the idea of the black sheep returning to the family after having made a fortune in extremely dubious ways. Partly because Arabella's father does seem a likeable (although socially ambitious) character even though I suspect he was also capable of brutality. Ship captains generally were back then, even when they weren't also pirates or slavers. He's straightforward. He doesn't pretend.
I suspect the luckier of those adventurers did return to England and merge more or less successfully back into life there after decades of a very different existence. Same after any violent period (e.g. overseas wars). The survivors, if they were lucky, came home and settled down. I remember how surprised and impressed I was when I discovered that one of my parents' friends, an immigrant from the UK, had been in London during the Blitz. The contrast between what that must have been like, and her current life as a small-town housewife and part-time librarian struck me. I got up nerve to ask her about it once, and she just said "Oh, we managed. If things were bad, I just told myself "It's just the fake blood our first aid instructor used" and then in was OK."
Anyway, that's a bit off topic, and I don't imagine Arabella's father engaged in much first aid during the more violent part of his life.
Arabella is a very appealing character - and I so much admire Lettice's ability to survive so much and still retain her character. She didn't turn into a whited sepulchre like the Lady.
Oh, and I have to mention the supernatural incident! Not much is made of it - I wonder if Alan or Lettice even made the connection between what happened and the later riding accident.
I don't think what you said about your Blitz friend was off topic...I find all periods of war and/or conflict fascinating, because they bring out the best- and the worst-in human nature.Also, pirates I find fascinating...look at poor Sir Walter Raleigh...first knighted and cosied up to and glorified by Good Queen Bess ( that arch dissembler) and then ignominously executed, after writing those wonderful last poems in the Tower of London ( as did Anne Boleyn, before her execution.
Yes, I think Arabella's dad's obsession with social climbing and being : accepted" by the local gentry was quite touching...also, as you said, Cheryl, he made no bones about it! Also ironic that he contributed to the almshouses, to which at one time Lettoice feared she was doomed to go...
In fact, this whole last section is full of irony...Alan is desperately saving, said Lettice to Arabella, to buy his own land, so he would be independant, while Arabella is thinking that, by marrying her, as she longs for him to do, he could have everything he's slaving for, and more!...she longs to say, : Look, I know you don't love me,but...I love enough for two. Why not marry me? You could buy acres of land for your precious potatoes,"
Quite sweet, too, when Mr. Shawcross breaks off talking about prostitutes - meaning Mistress Babcock- when discussing her with Lettice, to spare her " maidenly" feelings, little knowing that she's had a lover and an illegitimate child!
And the fact that Mr. Shawcross, by buying half the Old Priory only to become " landed gentry", is fulfilling his only child's dream- to get closer to her beloved!So many hidden dreams, so many cross purposes, all happily resolved by the circle coming round!
And, yes, there is a resemblance between the Dowager and Lady Rosaleen - and not only in the make up - in their steely resolve to get their own way, come what may ; I'm sure Lady Rosaleen wouldn't have balked at murder, either...in fact, she was quite the Lady Macbeth, the way she manipulated her poor, besotted husband, AND everyone around her....
Arabella and her renegade father are well matched, don't you think?Both rebels at heart and willing to look outside the spheres they were born in.
When Mr. Shawcross buys Sir Edward Shelmadine's house called The Mount in South Suffolk near Baildon, he takes the first step to becoming what he dreams of being : a country gentleman. He had no idea that simply owning a house and having money- in this retired, insular part of the world-meant very little! The local "gentry" may have had little money, but they were all related in one way or another, and " as proud as Lucifer"...
Arabella, facing the dearth of available young men to marry, says bravely ( and almost means it), " I want no man. I'm quite happy as I am".....she means it until she discovers the Old Priory, meets Lettice Tresize, and Alan ( the image of her crush Lord Gorleston) walks into the room!
he treats Arabella rather like a young comrade instead of a daughter: " Don't you have a dress that isn;t the colour of Orinoco mud?" (!)
Aside from the gentry idea - that insularity reminds me a bit of the smaller towns in my home province in the past. Everyone new says - correctly - how friendly and warm everyone is. As time goes on, they realize that no one REALLY belongs unless they're born there. When I was working in a small town, village almost, similar in some ways to the one I grew up in, I was certainly an outsider - and a woman who'd married in decades earlier was still "So-and-so's wife; she comes from Other Town." Of course in my home, I was "Cheryl, her father's so and so, he's not from around here, but her mother was born here, and her parents are...."So each society, each human community has its own ways of figuring out who belongs and how - but a clever observer like Lettice knows the back entrances, so to speak, how to entice the influential locals by offering them the chance to do something admirably charitable that didn't cost them a cent! I like Mr. Shawcross's generosity though. Arabella has gained a lot of practical experience in the problems of the poor, and appreciates his arrangements. I don't get the impression Arabella is really fulfilled by the pious and dutiful, but let's face it, not really exciting religious life she's exposed to. That would be about the period when the Dissenters who became Methodists were adding a lot of "enthusiasm", as it was disapprovingly called by their opponents, to religious life, but that doesn't appear in this book at all.
Arabella does her religious duties, but they don't fulfill her. She's not like her grandmother, frugal and practical when it comes to clothing. Whatever she says, she wants a nice young man - ideally, a beautiful young man with shining red-brown hair. And she gets one!
I never even thought about Arabella's religious side...she seemed so thrilled by small pleasures ( given her stingy grandparents) that, as she says when she wants no man ( of course, hasn't seen Alan yet!) she's positively revelling, not only in the freedom of her new life with her open handed father, but the joys of having domestic staff and only having to please herself...she was lonely, true, but then she felt she'd always ben a little " set apart"...You're quite right about small communities, Cheryl...although I come from a small state called Goa in India, when I finally came back to live in it with my partner, I was regarded as a total outsider, although I was technically a " local" by birth.....it was only when, enquiring on a friend's behalf about the availability of land right next to my house, and all the way down the river in front, I was told by my neighbour Alerio that it all belonged to one
" Eleanor Lobo"....when I asked my mother ( who lived in the capital about an hour away) if she knew who this person was, she said, " you silly girl, it's your aunt Dolly...we never called her Eleanor"...
When I told my neighbour this, he almost broke down and wept and said, " you're the first person in the family to come back here to live, for generations!"...the news spread like wildfire and I was soon clasped to the bosom of the village, so to speak!
However, let's not forget that great joker in the pack, luck.....and Arabella gets it in spades!
That is such an interesting Goan backstory Tanya ! Thank you . My family came from a small English town and moved to a really small village and we were never accepted as belonging there. Thank goodness actually , because it spurred me on to leave asap and become a whole lot more cosmopolitan and educated than I might otherwise have done ! I hope you will forgive my recent lack of participation , it is SO hot here that when I have finished everything , I can barely function intellectually . Its still akin to Hades today ( 40 C, ie 104 Fahrenheit) but promises to break this afternoon or evening . My inlaws in Queensland are drowning in floods and we in South Australia are in a huge drought. Australia is mad I tell you !
As ever I am so impressed by what has gone before on these boards, al I can do is agree with you both Tanya and Cheryl! I do understand the comparison of Lady Dunwich with Lady Rosaleen, though I thought Rosaleen a real psychopath and was never really convinced that Lady D was part of the attempt to silence Arthur. Elizabeth Rawley who became Elizabeth Rowhedge could have been , in some small part, a sister under the skin to them don't you think?
Poor Arabella , seeing everyone in her immediate circle happy, but she herself unhappy 'longing for something that could be neither bought nor hired. And oh yes, the irony of her knowing that she could have asked for Bowmans as a wedding present ,a dowry if only she could have Alan .....
Do we wholeheartedly love the happy ending or what!
Just to finish my " Goan story"...when we moved to our 2nd village in Goa ( first hamlet was populated by loonies who'd been locked in feuds for generations over ownership of a single field : they spent their days at each other's throats and at 6 pm all gathered at the roadside shrine to bawl out a novena together, the whited sepulchres!Anyway, after we'd fled from that lieu and moved to another ( where I'd specified NO IMMEDIATE NEIGHBOURS to the estate agent), I got fed up at only receiving two daily newspapers max. a week, and so, after 3 months, only paid for the ones I'd gotten...at which point the delivery chap ( whose name, ha ha, was Englebert...no surprise in a place where the football star was called Climax and the local drunk The Passion of St. John the Baptist, I'm not kidding!) shouted at me, " Yeah, just because you talk like that you think you can abuse me, you bloody foreigner!'...Me, whose family had been there since 1600!!
I do love Lettice Tresize..the way she says to Arabella, who she notices has grown thin ( from unrequited love, if she'd only known!), and thinks it's because she's not eating enough, " the strongest get to the trough first"!
Well, now that you bring it up, Barbara, I DO think that happy ending was a bit too pat....NL wrapped it up very neatly, but it was a bit too pat...after all, Charlotte in Bless This House had had several extra sensory experiences before she came upon the hoard in the woods and the skeleton and so fell into the arms of her future husband, but Arabella wasn't of her ilk....
We all have small town backgrounds! I left my small hometown at 15, longing to see the bigger world I'd read about, although at that age I settled for going to the provincial capital to start university with my parents' approval. Although I have lived in small towns since, I never really wanted to, and much prefer the smallish city I've lived most of my life in,My father was from New England, which has had historic (but not until my father arrived, family) ties with Newfoundland. My surname, although common in New (and probably old) England, was unheard of here, and I got so many polite enquiries as to where I was from when I introduced myself! That practice seems to have died out (although I've been asked twice in the last year or so where my surname comes from, now that I think about it). Family connections were so important in the past - again like in the NL books. When I returned from my first time away, my mother and grandmother asked about my new friends in the traditional way - "Mary Andrews ... would that be the Trinity Bay Andrews, or the Notre Dame Bay ones; we're related to them both. Or maybe the Burin Peninsula family?" I generally hadn't asked the right questions of my new friends to be able to answer!
I've never been to India, but my last major trip - oh, nearly 10 years ago now - was to Australia and New Zealand. I loved it (although the few days in NZ, added on to the main trip, were cooler and wetter than I had anticipated).
Here in the North Atlantic, although we've had a mild winter by our standards, it is currently -2, wind chill -11, winds gusting to about 66 kph. Not too bad, really, but it's one of those deceptive days with clear skies and sunshine - looks like spring (in spite of the remaining snow), but unexpectedly cold.
Back to NL - I do like a happy ending, but in this case, I think it is a bit contrived. Many people do have a particular type - but that the, what, first cousins? Half-first-cousins if there is such a thing? - would be so similar is a bit unlikely. It is also very lucky that the man Arabella eventually fell in love with returned her affection - that doesn't always happen!
But I still liked the happy ending in spite of the improbabilities.
Oh, I loved the happy ending ( especially after the horrid Sir Francis, who was after Arabella's money...a lesser father would have married her off to be related by marriage to the title!)....I think the red hair and the striking resemblance of Alan to Lord Gorleston simply proves the importance of predominant genes...Arthur Tresize seems to have had them in spades!...
But I especially liked the happy ending for the many joys it brought to Lettice - she had her beloved house back, her son happy, in love, and set up in life financially...and a daughter in law who adored and looked up to her...
Surely she was moving toward what Wordsworth said,
A an old age, serene and bright/and lovely as a Lapland night/shall light thee to thy rest"
'Lovely as a Lapland night' .....I don't think I have ever read that before, so evocative and beautiful .So we, despite our years and educations and general cynicism and world weariness, really rather liked the happy ending huh? Are we, then my loves, done with The Old Priory ?
I think we've covered it pretty thoroughly!
Me too....though I would like a decision on whether the Dowager colluded in Arthur's prospective murder or not!The old maid was, of course, an ancestor worshipper, devoted, body and soul, to her beautiful mistress, and would never take any chances in this last throw of the dice...wouldn't the beauty have known what she was likely to do??
If she didn't actively participate in the poisoned cakes, she MUST have suspected, huh?
Tanya Mendonsa wrote: "Me too....though I would like a decision on whether the Dowager colluded in Arthur's prospective murder or not!The old maid was, of course, an ancestor worshipper, devoted, body and soul, to her ..."
I think she , Lady Dunwich , may have feared/suspected that Marie might do something , and perhaps you are right she did kind of know - or at least took very good care not to know. I wonder if she ever set discreet enquiries afoot to check on his welfare , or lack thereof ...
Barbara wrote: "I think she , Lady Dunwich , may have feared/suspected that Marie might do something , and perhaps you are right she did kind of know - or at least took very good care not to know. I wonder if she ever set discreet enquiries afoot to check on his welfare , or lack thereof ...I'm still ambivalent about Lady Dunwich's guilt. I think I lean slightly to the side of the maid acting in Lady Dunwich's interest but without her orders - but then I always remember that Lady Dunwich herself was a pretty ruthless and cold-blooded sort, able and willing on very short notice to protect her position and wealth by arranging a cuckoo for the nest... She may have ordered the murder or been aware that her maid arranged it - but I don't think she would have made enquiries as to the success of the murder. If it had failed, she'd be exposed to the risk of losing everything she'd gained if Arthur was alive and figured out through enquiries who she was. If she was less cold-blooded than I'm thinking, she might have preferred not to confirm, even to herself, that a determined murder attempt had succeeded. That's especially true if the maid acted on her own - plausible deniability for Lady Dunwich, strengthened by her refusing to look too closely at Arthur's current circumstances.
Thanks for clearing my confused (and suspicious!) mind...I agree with both of you...
I really don't think Lady Dunwich was cold blooded...she was young and with no protectors, terrified of losing everything to her dead husband's vulture like relatives, who were on the point of ejecting her, penniless, from the castle...
I think she took the only huge gamble she could, as pregnancy was her only salvation...maybe her few nights with Arthur were the only true passion - and love- she'd ever known...for sure, she hadn't gotten it from her ancient husband, and, after she gave birth to a boy, I'm sure she never risked another affair!
Marie, the maid, was the puppeteer holding the strings - maybe it had even been she who came up with the whole, wild scheme - and she'd take bloody good care every precaution was taken to ensure success...
Yes, I think that's the way it worked, most likely : just like NL to keep us guessing!
And here we have Lord Gorleston’s sad-eyed but still a Tartar grandmother who of course we know from way back. She too seems to be portrayed as secretly pining for a lost first love , ie Arthur, but again, l think it is , not a posture exactly , but a kind of habit of thinking of what-might-have-been, whilst having no intention whatsoever in pursuing it or giving up the comfortable what-is.
Poor Arabella, at least for now. Until , in fact, she meets the Tresizes, who are as awkward a social phenomenon as the Shawcrosses , betwixt and between classes and backgrounds. Perfectly matched as it happens ! And in a way brought closer by the frightful Mistress Babcock.