We haven't finished with Dower Houses

 

- yet more of them....

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I should’ve known the blog readers would do me proud. I thought Dower Houses might be too obscure even for them, but I couldn’t be more wrong.

Do you even know what a Dower House is?

Was the first post,

Then it was

The ultimate dower house issue: The Spoils of Poynton

 

There are many many more mentioned in the comments on these two posts, and here I will highlight just a few – for excellent discussion, read the comments.

 

The Ghost Party by Henrietta Clandon

1934

 

Small unwitting group on their way to the Dower House, thinking it will be fun. Ha.

 

Of course the Dean St Press had one for me – remember I have to keep this sentence ready at all times, f1 on my keyboard:

Shoutout as ever to the Dean St Press who have made it available to us and earn my gratitude every week, it seems.

I think the lovely expert at DSP, Victoria, actually recommended it for another reason that I can’t quite remember – you’d think it would be easy to guess, but this book has a lot of everything you want in Golden Age crime fiction: Visits away? Ghosts (duh)? Difficult relations? And of course – a dower house which is associated with crime:

 

“Talking of funerals,” said Miss George… “didn’t you say someone was murdered in the dower-house here?”

 Rogers nodded. “But not this year, or last. As far as I can make out, it was in the eighteenth century, round about 1730. The ghost has walked ever since.”

‘Henrietta Clandon’ turned out dozens of books in different names – he was a man, and this was a female pseudonym. They are quite varied, while also being very much in the Golden Age mode.

This one has a group of people gathering at a country house hotel. There is a Dower House in the grounds of the hotel, reputed to be haunted (as we all know, they usually are), and a group of the party-minded guests decide they will spend a night there, each in a separate room, to see what they can see

“My idea is this. All the people who want a frisson will leave here at half-past eleven, and enter the dower-house. I shall carry an electric torch, and show each to his or her room. There they will sit and watch for apparitions, or listen for gro-a-ans.”

“Mr. Rogers!” cried Mrs. Bolter.

 “Disembodied groans, of course… As the time goes on, and silence succeeds to silence, and darkness broods over the haunted chambers, nerves will fray. I shall be stationed on the dark stairway, and the terror-stricken will come out of their rooms, and be guided by me, and my torch, to the door.”

Any experienced reader knows what will happen next: death, people being knocked out. One young woman sneaked out to join the party, and her aunt seems to have caught on to what she is up to. No good will come of this.

There are also West African gold mines, always a red flag. Honestly, this book has quite the Golden Age bingo line.

 

Georgette Heyer was well-represented in the Unknown Ajax (in the original post & elsewhere - it has been a very fruitful book for CiB) but I took a quick look at her The Quiet Gentleman (1951) which contains an awful old Dowager (except she isn’t really – the heir hasn’t married yet so technically she is still  in place. But she is so obviously born to be a dowager that we’ll let Heyer off.) She quite obviously should be packed off to the dower house (mentioned twice) but isn’t going, is sitting tight to run and rule over a house which is no longer hers. She is stepmother to the new eponymous heir, and is an imposing figure: wears a turban on her grey locks and keeps her Roman nose elevated. This picture is not exactly the right colour, but I thought gave a good impression:

 

Apparently also in Heyer’s The Talisman Ring a character lives in one. We’ll get to that.

 

There is a John le Carre book called The Secret Pilgrim, a round-up of post-Cold-War Smiley stories, and blogfriend Susanna sent me off to look for the dower house in it. A spy in trouble goes to earth, hiding away in a dower house on a remote island in Scotland. As Susanna says ‘I'd associated dower houses with England but evidently they exist in Scotland too.’

Here it serves two purposes: it shows that everyone is posh, and it is isolated enough to hide in (for a time) from anyone who is looking for you.

To find a picture I had to choose between an actual Dower House and a lonely-looking island house, and I went for remoteness.

 

And I don't think we're finished with dower houses yet. Keep sending in suggestions.

Turban de crêpe garni de jais, robe de crêpe garnie de crevás de satin bordés de jais - NYPL Digital Collections

 

Small Group Photograph, 1933, by Rose Garden, includes Farrell at left - NYPL Digital Collections

 

File:Vaila House, on the island of Vaila, from Burrastow - geograph.org.uk - 5318064.jpg - Wikimedia Commons