Isabel ColegateReseñas

The subject of this book is of particular interest to me. Having lived a fairly solitary life and years alone in mountain wilds, I’ve been described by others as a hermit or recluse. I quite like the label and use it as an anti-definitional job-title on LinkedIn. Ironically, in 18th century England, there were contracted jobs on offer for hermits to live in grottos or fabricated rustic hermitages, as a form of garden ornament.

Charles Hamilton wanted a hermit who would ‘continue I the Hermitage for seven years. Where he would be provided with a Bible, optical glasses, a mat for his feet, a hassock for his pillow, an hour-glass for his time piece, water for his beverage and food from the house. He must wear a camlet robe, and never, under any circumstances, must he cut his hair, beard or nails, stray beyond the limits of Mr Hamilton’s grounds, or exchange one word with the servant.’ If he lasted the full seven years he would be paid 700 guineas; if he broke the rules or left earlier he got nothing. (p.187)

Jobs aside, there is a lot to say about the joys and perils of solitude. Despite Colegate’s considerable literary erudition (I have read many of the books she mentions), those looking for any critical examination of how a solitary life might be lived well, will not find much in this book. Nor will they find much about the ancient Chinese intellectual tradition of retreating from cities to the mountains and following a simple, austere pursuit of the three perfections (calligraphy, painting, poetry).

What you will find is a kind of Eurocentric (including USA), certainly British roundup of people who have been notable recluses; often unkempt or characterised by religious zeal, filth, suffering, and/or madness.

The celebrity hermit a modern phenomenon, seems to have escaped the tolerance, let alone respect, accorded to other species of solitary, being regarded instead with indignation and outrage. The reasoning behind this must be thought that no one would be a writer or an actor or a musician – or indeed be prominent in any way – unless their chief object was to be famous, and that therefore they should lay themselves down gladly as a sacrifice on the alter of human curiosity. (p. 38)

There are certainly some interesting characters. Who would not be intrigued by Isabelle Eberhardt?

Half-French, half Russian, loudly and affectedly Slav in her emotional outbursts and swings of mood, small and sallow, frequently drunk or drugged, sexually promiscuous, and scornful of conventional morality, she dressed as a man and liked to sit and smoke and drink with soldiers and tribesmen from the deep Sahara. She was married to an Arab. She scandalised the army wives. She maddened authorities of all kinds. (p.88)

or indeed, the wealthy William Beckford whose manifold talents (marred by sexual indiscretion) included tower building. I wondered if the privileges of the mid-18th century British upper classes who had the means to realise their eccentric imaginings was worth the darker colonial exploitations and slavery that financed them.

Although I found many passages of interest, this is a poorly designed book. Not that the binding has failed (there are a few typos indicative of a lack of care) but it's annoying to have the chapter headings omitted from the contents page, the illustrations have no captions and the alternating use of unattributed line drawings of trees and what may be a hermitage in the author’s garden (charming as they are) serves no function other than to confuse the reader.

By the end, I felt as if the author was on a kind of quest (pilgrimage) to uncover her inner solitary. She certainly travelled and read widely but without a central thesis the book tends to feel scattered and unstructured. She writes unevenly but clearly loves words, and often sent me to my dictionary for the unfamiliar: coenobitic, yashmack, eremitic, syneisaktism, apophatic, dilatory, catamite, accidie.

As he does every October, in 1913, Sir Randolph Nettleby, Bart., invites some of the best shots in England to his Oxfordshire estate to shoot pheasant. The activity has a particular meaning here, for we don’t expect tweed-coated gentlemen to trample through the underbrush in their wellingtons, bagging a few birds for supper.

Rather, we have the spectacle of “beaters,” local men and boys recruited to flush the pheasant so that the frightened birds take brief flight — the only type they are capable of — toward the tweed-coated gentlemen, waiting with their loaders and dogs. Not that the participants would agree, but this is more mechanized killing than sport. The shooters take hundreds of birds, and the loaders are there to make sure the gentlemen never even have to turn their heads to receive a ready weapon, restocked with cartridges.

The novel’s opening paragraph notes that an infamous incident will take place, “an error of judgment which resulted in a death.” And since the timing is the autumn before the Great War, Colegate intends The Shooting Party as a metaphor for England on the eve of that tragic struggle.

What a metaphor it is, slaughter for its own sake, by the so-called best people in the country, no less. That the death referred to is a mistake, and that the author reveals it up front, properly removes any sense of whodunit, though the narrative does build suspense as to who will be the victim, how, and why. Instead, Colegate focuses on the characters, who represent various social classes and attitudes.

In lesser hands, this premise and approach could have devolved into a talky, theme-driven tract, populated by two-dimensional ideas rather than characters. But Colegate writes well-drawn people whose private concerns merge beautifully in a single, cohesive picture, and whose opinions often seem contradictory, which makes them more human.

For example, Sir Randolph, courteous to all despite his oft-injured sensibilities, worries that the stewards of the land, as he views himself, are a vanishing breed. Outwardly almost diffident, he nevertheless carries himself as the aristocrat born to rule, and his confusion as to how the world has changed lends him depth.

Stolid Bob Lilburn, who believes in form above all, astonishes his gorgeous wife, Olivia, by doubting that there could exist in England any people worth knowing whom he doesn’t already know. Lionel Stephens, a lawyer who seems perfect to everyone, believes he’s passionately in love with Olivia and would be willing to die for her if the fraught international situation brought war. A footman repeats this sentiment to the young parlor maid he fancies, who has the sense to think it’s twaddle.

Throughout, Colegate’s description of the shoot evokes the future conflict, often involving the manner in which the birds, fed and catered to before their destruction, are driven toward the guns. Again, a lesser author might have overplayed the symbolism, but Colegate’s hand remains deft. That’s because she’s careful to keep her descriptions active as well as physically and visually precise.

Though published forty years ago, The Shooting Party still keeps its edge. It’s one of those elegant novels I admire, in which the central action is itself an arresting metaphor. I must warn you that other than from a library (or sources in the UK), the book may be hard to find. But it is well worth your time and effort, a classic tale.

"The element of ritual lent it a kind of solemnity; like so many rituals it required a sacrifice"
By sally tarbox on 21 June 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
It's 1913 and in an aristocratic household, a group come together for a shooting party. In the first paragraph the author tells us that it culminated in "an error of judgement that resulted in a death...a mild scandal at the time."
So the reader is trying to guess throughout the narrative of the preceding twenty-four hours who will be the victim...the highly strung grandson who fears for his pet duck as the shooters blast the wildfowl? The gamekeeper's studious son who's been roped in as a beater? One of the participants in extra marital liaisons? The two menservants in competition over whose master is the best shot? The socialist eccentric who's turned up preaching animal rights and equality for the poor?
The novel (inspiration for the later Gosford Park and Downton Abbey) focuses on both above and below stairs, and gives a flavour of the world on the cusp of war, the endless loss of bird life an image of what is to follow...
Enjoyable read.½

This was an interesting book. Upon picking it up I was expecting a text that centered upon what it meant to be a solitary and instead what the author writes is more about the lives of specific recluses divided up by regions time and scenery such as a desert or the forest. It is from these sketches we can draw some assumptions. Colegate's writing is wonderful and discussions of the recluses interspersed with her own travels really made this book worthwhile to me.

I did regret the lack of depth but I think I'm a bit closer on understanding solitude's draw

Short but brilliant portrait of English society on the eve of the 1st world war.

I picked up this book after searching my library’s catalogue for Isabel Colegate’s works, and was curious about this non-fiction work of hers (ok I was curious about all her works as I have yet to read her fiction). This is a book about the solitary, about hermits and recluses, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt compelled to search it out, but I did, and I took it home and it sat on my shelf for a little while, as I sought out what I felt to be the more interesting books in my recent Library Loot. Then I finally picked up A Pelican in the Wilderness, and I was pleasantly surprised. This book is less a scholarly treatise than a collection of thoughts, a wandering, a pondering of a subject that is so obviously dear to Colegate. Her passion for this topic is very affecting. So while at first hesitant, I grew to understand her ardor. What makes a person leave society behind and live on their own? Why do some of these hermits naturally attract a following? What is living all alone like? Colegate delves into the lives of the well-known and the obscure, often quoting from literary sources such as Somerset Maugham, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alexander Pope. She discusses the lives of Thoreau, J.D. Salinger, Lao-Tse, St Anthony, and many more.

But if you are truly looking for answers about becoming a hermit, this isn’t exactly the book for you. Instead, this book is a little more like an exploration, a revaluation of the solitary, a kind of selection of character sketches (although character sketch doesn’t seem to be the right word – it sounds too vague). Colegate’s journey is a meandering one, and at times disjointed which can occasionally frustrate, but A Pelican in the Wilderness is a wonderful voyage through a surprisingly refreshing topic, with Colegate’s passionate voice as a rather suitable tour guide.

“The idea of the hermit’s life – simplicity, devotion, closeness to nature – lurks somewhere on the periphery of most people’s consciousness, a way glimpsed, oddly familiar, not taken. It is like one of those tracks you sometimes see as you drive along a country road, a path leading up a hill and disappearing into a wood, almost painfully inviting, so that you long to stop the car and follow it, and perhaps you take your foot off the accelerator for a couple of seconds, no more. Most of us wouldn’t like it if we did walk up the hill, we’d become bored, depressed, uncomfortable, take to drink. But the idea is still there: the path we didn’t take.”

Ce livre est enthousiasment dès le départ. Il y a une préface très intéressante qui renseigne sur l’auteur, le contexte d’écriture et en quoi ce livre est important. L’avertissement nous dit cependant que cette préface révèle des éléments essentiels de l’intrigue et clairement, ce n’est pas faux. On sait ce qui se passe dans la toute dernière partie. C’est toujours un peu mon dilemme : est-ce que je dois lire la préface, au risque de me faire aiguiller sur la manière dont je vais lire le livre, cherchant les éléments dont à parler le préfacier et à savoir si je suis d’accord avec ses idées ou impressions, ou ne pas lire la préface, et manquer alors de contextualisation, penser que l’histoire est banale alors qu’elle ne l’est pas forcément, et que sa richesse se situe peut être dans les petits détails. Ici, clairement, je n’ai pas regretté d’avoir lu la préface. Certes, je connaissais le dénouement avant d’avoir commencer le livre mais l’intérêt du livre ne se situe pas dans son dénouement.

L’action se situe à l’automne 1913. C’est donc le dernier automne avant la Première Guerre mondiale, avant la fin d’un monde. Le thème principal du livre est le déclin de l’aristocratie rurale anglaise. Isabel Colegate a publié son livre en 1980, ne juge pas (malgré qu’elle décrive son milieu) et en plus, réhabilite ce type de personnages dans les romans anglais (c’est ce que précise la préface). Le roman se concentre sur trois jour, trois jours de partie de chasse sur les terres d’un sir anglais, un sir de la vieille époque.

Le roman a une grande galerie de personnage se divisant en plusieurs groupes : les aristocrates, les domestiques, les extérieurs du village, les extérieurs ne venant pas du village.

Les aristocrates se connaissent tous (d’un autre côté, ils sont invités à la chasse). Il y a trois générations. L’hôte est très vieille école. Par exemple, à la chasse, il n’y a pas de compétition, c’est le tableau global qui compte. Si on ne pense pas de la même manière, on ne se conduit pas à gentleman. Lui, par contre, voit la fin d’une époque, de son époque, veut continuer à défendre son domaine rural, quitte à avoir des idées novatrices, voire révolutionnaires. Sa femme, elle, n’est que futilité, tout en ayant pourtant à cœur le respect des convenances. Leur belle-fille et leurs trois petits-enfants habitent le domaine, et marquent un peu les générations de transition vers ce déclin proche, avec des qualités modernes, tout en gardant un certain respect pour leur position dans l’empire. On n’a invité deux couples dont un car le mari est un excellent chasseur. Pour occuper sa femme un peu casse-pied, on a invité le jeune amant pour l’occuper. La femme du deuxième couple trouve son mari ridicule, pour le respect qu’il accorde aux petits détails et qui font pour lui son rang. Elle préfère discuter avec un jeune invité célibataire de grandes idées. Je pense que vous pensez un peu la même chose que moi. Tout n’est que faux semblant : les amants se retrouvent sous les yeux des partenaires officiels. Tout le monde est d’accord du moment que cela reste discret. Il y a très peu de « grandes préoccupations ». C’est à penser que l’aristocratie ne situe bien que dans les petits détails.

Dans les domestiques, il y a Dan et son père, le premier garde-chasse et les domestiques de maison. Le garde-chasse veille au bon déroulement de la chasse, pas forcément parce que celui lui plait mais plutôt par ce qu’il veut perpétuer une tradition ancestrale, un empire. Il souhaite aussi faire honneur à son maître. Après le décès de sa femme, il lui reste deux choses : son métier et Dan. Il refuse d’ailleurs de voir partir son fils, pour faire des études, principalement car il ne voit pas d’un bon œil ce changement car il ne peut qu’être heureux dans un endroit, dans une position où toutes les générations précédentes l’ont été. Dan lui hésite. C’est un peu le pendant des petits-enfants des hôtes de la partie de chasse. C’est l’incarnation du changement (ici pas du déclin en cours). Les domestiques sont plus drôles et plus vivants, essaient de vivre leur histoire d’amour. Ils n’ont pas les mêmes préoccupations. Par contre, les aides de chasse vivent la compétition de leurs maîtres comme la leur. Cela m’a mit mal à l’aise au début car pour moi, c’est un peu le syndrome d’une aliénation. En réfléchissant, je juge un petit peu avec les idées de mon époque. Ce n’est sûrement pas comme cela que c’était ressenti à l’époque.

Les extérieurs représentent un peu le changement, l’apport des nouvelles idées, sur le sort des animaux, sur la place de la femme, la signification et le droit à la chasse. Pour l’instant, ces nouvelles idées sont clairement ignorées, même pas écoutées mais plutôt considérées comme des choses négligeables. Cela va avec une remarque qui m’a un petit peu choquée. Un femme, du groupe des aristocrates, demande comment savoir s’il n’existe pas des gens d’une aussi bonne société ailleurs en Angleterre et la réponse d’un des hommes ne se fait pas entendre. Ce n’est pas possible. Tout simplement par ce qu’ils ne peuvent qu’être moins distingués qu’eux. En toute modestie, bien évidemment !

Ce n’est clairement pas un roman d’actions ou d’aventures, ce sont les personnages qui priment. L’histoire est plus ou moins racontée par petites anecdotes. On se déplace de personnage en personnage, de petit groupe en petit groupe, assistant à un dialogue, à une pensée, à une action, en tout cas à quelque chose de léger, de futile, montrant les préoccupations de chacun, hors du temps mondial. Toutes ces petites scènes contribuent, cependant, à nous faire tendre vers quelque chose. On ne sait pas quoi, mais on sait qu’il va se passer quelque chose, on sait que cela ne peut pas continuer comme cela. On sent la tension montée au cours de la lecture.

Au final, c’est un très bon roman qui décrit très bien des faits dont on se doute, sans être pour autant aristocrate. J’ai été marquée par la légèreté, la simplicité du snobisme de l’aristocratie rurale de l’époque, cette surdité face aux changements, cette incapacité à l’entrevoir et encore plus à l’anticiper mais surtout à cette certitude d’être le haut du panier, d’être ceux qui dirigent. J’ai trouvé que la démonstration qu’Isabel Colegate en faisait était magistrale. J’ai regretté par contre le fait de ne pas pouvoir m’attacher aux personnages, du fait du mode de narration choisi.

Like a voice out of the past, this sad, beautiful novel so evocatively recreates the texture, language, and mores of Edwardian England. Colegate pulls off the magic trick of making this novel feel so utterly of the period, something that only the best historical fiction can achieve. The number of characters feels a little overwhelming for such a short book, but I think for the most part Colegate succeeds in making them all distinct. The book takes place during a pheasant shoot on a large country estate the fall before the outbreak of World War I. The specter of the war and of a looming death (announced in the first sentence of the book) gives the novel an airless, foreboding feeling despite the luminous writing and gorgeous setting.

I did not know anything about this author until now; her style reminded me of some other British/Commonwealth female novelists of about the same age, Jane Gardam and Shirley Hazzard, whom I also read for the first time this year. All three are superb at showing, obliquely through action and dialogue, the motivations and feelings of their characters.

This book comes out of a long tradition of similar works in British fiction; as the reviewer below noted, The Shooting Party adds to that tradition, inspiring in its turn the screenwriting work of Julian Fellowes. Colegate's wistful but guarded love letter to the Edwardians has clear echoes in Fellowes's own interpretation of the era, Downton Abbey. I will certainly have to investigate other of her novels!½

Read during Summer 2003

Like 'The Shooting Party', 'Statues in the Garden' takes place in the perfect English summer preceeding World War I. The eldest daughter of the aristocratic Weston family is getting married. Sir Aylmer Weston is an MP preoccupied with 'the Irish question'. His adopted son and nephew leaves the army and tries to make a fortune on the stock market. A new governess is hired for Kitty, the youngest daughter, who wants to become a suffragrette. What makes all this interesting is that is is told from constantly shifting points of view. There is an unamed narrator as well. Despite all these different plotlines, there is the constant theme of Phillip, the nephew and his capacity for complete self-destruction. His narrative is the most harsh and brutal. Cythnia Weston, mother and wife, is the most enigmatic character, though. It is hard to tell, is she innocent and trusting or just vain and completely conceited? I kept changing my mind.

This short novel takes place in 24 hours in October 1913 before and during a shooting party at the Oxfordshire country house of Sir Randolph Nettlby. From the opening paragraph, you know that something bad is going to happen, but a something that will be forgotten a year later when their world is shattered by the Great War. The reader experiences the events of the day by following many characters, both aristocratic and service class.

Colgate is a fabulous writer--subtle, observant, witty, stylish. And she's writing about my favourite historical period--Edwardian England. Do I have to tell you I loved this book? I held back from giving it a full five stars because for my tastes there was a little too much detail about the actual shooting (or shall I say, needless slaughter of hundreds of pheasants, and yes, that's a metaphor for the war).

Recommended for: readers who love the Edwardian era, fans of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, although fans of the later should take note that this is only one day in the life, and there is no Maggie Smith character making hilarious comments. It also has a less fluffy tone than Downton Abbey.

Note: The 2007 Penguin Modern Classics edition has an excellent 24 page introduction by Julian Fellowes. He was inspired by the 1980s film version of [The Shooting Party] to create Gosford Park, which further inspired him to create Downton Abbey.½

The Orlando Trilogy contains Orlando King, Orlando at the Brazen Threshold, and Agatha, a family story of powerful people in the 1930's and their decline into the 1950's.
Orlando King is Isabel Colegate's retelling of the Oedipus story. Orlando is reared by his mother's tutor on an island off the coast of France. When he goes to England to make his fortune, he falls into the orbit of his biological father. He doesn't kill Leonard, but he is present when he dies and he does marry his stepmother. Colegate plays effectively with chronology in this novel: a choice that she does not continue in the other two, being content with the results of her first experiment.
Orlando at the Brazen Threshold takes Orlando, nearly blind (of course) and liable to die at any time with a bad heart, to Italy after he has backed the wrong side before England's entry into WWII. His daughter Agatha, 17, comes to live with him, and they forge a strong bond as they work to remodel the priest's house, tower, and chapel that Orlando has bought. Orlando's interior life is caught up in understanding the diaries of King, who brought him up. Agatha is bent on loving and doing her best for Orlando, for her favorite half-brother Paul, and for her cousin Henry with whom she has always been in love.
Agatha returns the action to England where Agatha and Henry live in a cottage on his father's land and Conrad, Henry's father, operates as a cabinet minister just out of the inner circle of power during the Suez crisis. This is a political novel, contrasting Conrad's loyalty to the faded empire with Paul's brash and self-aggrandizing communism.
The story is always compelling; the characters are fascinating without the vital spark that makes their triumphs and defeats of emotional importance to the reader - or this reader. Their final impersonality reinforces the feeling for the time, giving a solid finish to the trilogy.

I found various stories while well written not tied together logically. It's like a set of different articles on similar subject.

This trilogy tells the story of Orlando King, his rise to ambiguous power during the moral confusion of the 1930s, his spectacular downfall and the troubled legacy he bequeathed to his divided family. As the 1950s draw to a close, his daughter Agatha accomplishes a painful resolution.

Repetitive, but it compelled me to do further research on some of the hermits.

An entertaining read about people who choose (whether out of religious conviction, artistic compulsion or personal preference) to live alone. Very well written, and a great book for anyone interested in or living the solitary life.

Rather tedious, in all honesty. I only got around two-thirds of the way through it, but Colegate seems content to spin out endless tales of specific hermits instead of delving into the question of why people are compelled to live their lives in this manner. Some of it's interesting, but it all winds up rather samey after a while.