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 4th 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

Comments

  1. I'm very glad you enjoyed this, Moira. I have to admit, I like horses better than you do, although I don't think that in itself would be enough to make me finish a book if the rest disappointed. I do like a clear-headed, mentally resilient female protagonist, so it's nice to know there is one here! And you've reminded me that it's always good to stay open to unexpected reactions to books...

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    1. It is, you are so right Margot. And also good to keep up with children's books, whether new or old. You never know what you might discover.

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  2. I really liked that her confidence at the Hunt Ball was based on a skill and not on looks!

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    1. Yes! She really is a good heroine. She must have made a good role model for the generations of young people who loved the books.

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  3. I loved the Flambards trilogy, and this has reminded me to go back and read them again. I met KM Peyton at a Puffin Post event once, and she signed my copy of Flambards. Of course, there's a fourth book as well so it's a quartet really, but the fourth one possibly suffers from having gone to the well once too often. I would strongly recommend reading them all even if they have been slightly spoilered for you. I read and reread them several times in my younger days. Apparently a modern author has written a modern story set in Flambards - with Peyton's blessing, but I can't remember the name of the author.

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    1. Gosh, Ann, a lot there. I was an avid Puffin Club member, but never went to any events at all, it just didn't seem possible. (Until they had a reunion - 1991? I went to that). Fancy meeting her! Always my dream to meet favourite authors but it never happened. And you are convincing me that, yes, I must carry on with the series.

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  4. My friend and I were obsessed with Flambards in the late 70s. It was the romance as I recall. I don't think either of us were remotely interested in horses. We moved onto Jilly Cooper not longer after that. Again, not for the horses. I still have my original copy and, though I haven't been tempted to reread it, I do give it the occasional fond look.

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    1. Oh that's lovely. I remember that deep love for a book that you shared with friends - in my case Georgette Heyer. We would discuss who was the best of those dark satanic heroes. Jilly Cooper an obvious next stage!

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    2. Did you know that Jilly Cooper's son rented our Cotswold cottage when we rented in Kirkland? She moved out of London (Putney?) to live in Bisley, Glos - very close to our village between Cirencester and Stroud.

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    3. I think I did know that solid gold fact. Did you read Jilly? I always liked her columns and funny pieces, and could certainly enjoy one of the bonkbusters at the right moment. (There was a great discussion of the phrase bonkbusters on here once - a reader from I think Australia thought it must have been a typo, but the UK readers were all delighted to explain to her the exact nature of a bonkbuster... )

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  5. I clearly spent a little too much time this month coping with my job or I would not have missed your delightful post until now! I am so glad that you enjoyed this, that you appreciated the decay of Flambards, the appeal of Christina (although in real life, I am not horsy either and would have had nothing in common with her) and the men in her life. I suspect that Peyton figured out early on where the first three books were going but as a reader I did not know, and I was certainly a sheltered child of about 10 or 11 when I first read it. My school library had the first three books and I read them over and over. I am sorry the back matter gave away too many plot details.

    Although Christina doesn't really care about clothes, I loved her clothes in this book and the next one. The riding habit, although a hand-me-down, intrigued me (although pales in comparison to the one worn by The Grand Sophy) and (you guessed it) I was captivated by the dress for the Hunt Ball (which Christina only got due to a fluke because someone else had ordered but not picked it up, which made it more Cinderella-ish).

    Did you notice the part about the curtains falling apart when Christina touched them? So creepy.
    The part where Will gets out of bed to injure himself is so distressing!
    Because of Violet being sent away when she is pregnant and Mark finding it all amusing, I knew what to expect when that particular scenario recurred - in Upstairs Downstairs and various novels. As you say, there is a lot going on for a pre-teen to absorb but obviously I was enchanted.

    I own most of her books now but it took me much longer to appreciate Pennington and I probably would have left them tried and discarded except at some point I read The Beethoven Medal and realized I'd encountered Pennington before.

    Jealous of Ann having met Peyton.

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    1. Thank you, those are great sidenotes to the book, Best Bits! It really was tremendous, both for young people and for adults.

      I am definitely intending to carry on reading, just giving it a gap. And certain elements which were spoilered were predictable or at least guessable... (someone always has to die in WW1)

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