Downton Abbey Eat Your Heart out: Flambards by KM Peyton

published 1967

 

In the very early days of the blog (2012) I did a post with the title ‘Downton Abbey eat your heart out’. It was for a favourite forgotten novel (Jane by Dee Wells), and the strapline fits very nicely with this book too. (And I gathered in one of the pictures from that post, more later)

One of my blogfriends, Constance/CLM, asked me recently when I was going to do Flambards, a topic we had discussed before. Now, I was convinced that I had read Flambards when I was a child, didn’t remember it or take much interest in it: because I was certain it was about horses and I’m not bothered about horses. I knew it was a cult favourite for many people. It was a children’s book when written, would now be classed as Young Adult. Peyton wrote more than 50 books for children – I had read some of the Pennington series which, it turned out, couldn’t have been more different from Flambards…

So I downloaded it to my Kindle, and decided that I hadn’t read it in full – it’s possible I started it and then gave up, because, too right, it is full of horses. But it is also enthralling and entrancing, and I am not surprised so many people love the book, the follow-ups (it’s a trilogy & there was a 4^th book later) and the 1970s TV series. 

It wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

It begins with an orphaned young woman arriving at Flambards, a country house where her remaining relatives live,  in around 1910: she has been passed around the family since her parents died. So far, so familiar: there’s many a book starts like this, from Secret Garden to Anne of Green Gables (not family, but last-ditch) to Cold Comfort Farm. But the first surprise comes with the fact that Christina is very rich, an heiress, though she can’t touch the money yet. She shamelessly reads someone else’s letter (a heinous crime in the special rules of the time, but no reference to that) and finds out that the patriarch of the family wants to marry her off to his elder son, to get hold of her money. Well! She is very calm about this, and heads off for Flambards: a gloomy Gothic-seeming house, dark and full of misery and unhappiness. It is also deeply uncomfortable. The hideous old man has two sons, Mark and Will, polar opposites. The old man is vile, everybody else is miserable. There is a friendly housekeeper who helps Christina.

Much of this was familiar territory, but what I liked was Christina’s calmness. She is very nervous around horses to begin with, but everything else she takes in her stride, while occasionally sighing and getting annoyed. The goings-on in the  house are outrageous: The old man, Russell, hates his younger son Will and treats him appallingly. Will’s crime is to have no interest in horses and to want to learn about the newfangled invention of flying machines. There are quite gruesome scenes of violence and medical horrors.

The horses are the only happy creatures: the stables are the old man’s pride and joy, and the animals are much better-treated and more comfortable than the humans. Including those who work at the stables. Elements of socialism creep in here and there: Christina can see that the system is wrong…

Here she is getting ready to go riding for the first time:

To her dismay [the riding habit] fitted perfectly; in fact if she had been well-disposed towards the garments she would have noticed that the fine black cloth, long-skirted and tightly-waisted, was extremely becoming. The black velvet cap sat snugly on her smooth hair.

The book would have been strong stuff for a child of the 1960s or 70s: as well as a lot of violence & poverty, there is an illegitimate pregnancy. It turns out Peyton wrote it as an adult romance novel, but publishers insisted that the 13-year-old (at the start) heroine must go out to a  younger audience. People complained about it: as Peyton says ‘It was quite sexy actually’.

Another admirable aspect of the book is that, contrary to what you might expect, Christina does not reform the household or anyone in it, or try to make life comfortable. She certainly doesn’t charm the old man, though he likes the fact that she becomes very good at riding. But it is not one of those make-the-curmudgeon-love-you books, nor bring-a-womanly-touch-to-the-house. She goes on her own sweet way, watching those around her. It is not a comforting or inspiring book at all, there is no prospect of improvement without getting away from the doomy Flambards. Of all unexpected things, Flambards made me think of the Seinfeld rule ‘no hugging, no learning’, and all the better for it.

I genuinely had no idea where the book was going as it went along, or how Christina was going to end up. Two brothers and a stable lad to choose from! And luckily, the climax comes at a Hunt Ball, something I always enjoy. And there is the gown to go with it:

The dress was of a deep rose silk, the fashionably slim skirt embroidered all over with tiny crystal beads. The bodice was brief, deeply cut, the neckline trimmed with a fretwork lace of the tiny beads. There were no sleeves, but a stole of pale pink tulle, embroidered with crystal flowers, was folded underneath. There was also a small bag on a gold chain of the same rose-pink silk, a pair of long pink gloves and a pair of pink silk shoes with silver buckles.

[on arrival] She noticed the measuring-up glances of the other girls, through narrowed, cool eyes, at her dress. But her nervousness was steadied, not by confidence in her dress, but by the knowledge that she could ride better than the girls who watched her. She tidied her hair, changed her shoes and arranged the stole to hide a little of the bareness.

[weirdly represented exactly by this picture, with the message 'the girls she left behind her':]

The book ends in the early hours after the Hunt Ball, with some major excitements, and I immediately thought I would read the other Flambards books. However the next pages at the back of the book were adverts for the rest of the series, with blurbs that spelled out every major event and both spoilered and spoiled it -  ‘X is dead, Y turns up’  - so I haven’t yet ventured on.

But that doesn’t detract from this book: tremendous stuff, I enjoyed it hugely.

I was inspired to read a number of fascinating articles about Flambards and about KM Peyton – I particularly recommend this interview here in the Guardian a few years ago, for a great overview. Peyton wrote more than 50 books. Then there is the Flambards Theme Park in Cornwall – really, outside of Harry Potter there aren’t many books to have inspired such major tourist attractions…

 

Before now I have had trouble finding nice pictures of women in riding dress. But now I have uncovered a treasure trove of this niche subject, one of the collections at the NYPL, where the top picture came from - I was spoilt for choice, very hard not to run a dozen pics.

The photograph of ‘young equestrian’ Helen Preece from the Library of Congress (she is sometimes referred to as Preese). Well worth reading about her interesting life. It's the picture I used for the early blogpost mentioned above.

Helen Preece (loc.gov)

Helen Preece - Wikipedia