Set in the tense, heady months leading up to the outbreak of the First World War, Isabel Colegate’s Statues in a Garden is a great summer read – an evocative story of betrayal and transgression in which the fall of a privileged family prefigures the broader political disasters to come. Like The Shooting Party (Colegate’s best-known book), Statues peels back the polite surface veneer of Edwardian society, revealing the immorality, vitriol and corruption simmering underneath.
Statues revolves around the prosperous Weston family: Aylmer Weston, a liberal politician and member of Herbert Asquith’s Cabinet; his beautiful wife Cynthia, who enjoys her role as society hostess; and the Weston’s three grown-up children – Edmund, who is following in his father’s footsteps by training to be a barrister, Violet, soon to be married, and Kitty, the youngest and most impressionable of the three with her Suffragette sympathies. Also of significance are Aylmer’s twenty-eight-year-old nephew, Philip, whom the Westons adopted some twenty years earlier when his parents died of cholera, and Alymer’s elderly mother, Mrs Weston, who enjoys nothing more than being driven around by her trusty chauffeur, Moberley, who doubles as her chief confidante. Then there is Alice Benedict, Kitty’s newly-appointed governess-companion, who soon catches the eye of both Edmund and Philip. However, while Edmund is genuine in his love for Alice, Philip is most certainly not – a fact that soon becomes apparent to the reader as the story unfolds.
In short, Philip is a disrupter – impatient, provocative and rather cruel in his attitudes towards others, despite his comfortable upbringing with the Westons. Having grown bored of life in the Army, he is eager to make some money of his own – preferably a lot of money – by going into business with Horgan, a London-based stockbroker dealing in South African investments. Aylmer, however, has some initial doubts, confiding in Cynthia about his concerns for the young man.
He [Philip] wants to leave the Army and put the money in some stockbroking venture, but when he was talking to me, I suddenly had the feeling that his motives were all wrong, and he was only doing it because he resents not having enough money to cut it – among his brother officers, and because he resents Edmund, and that made me feel that perhaps we have failed him in some way. But how? (P. 49)
Nevertheless, with both Westons wishing to see Philip settled in some kind of career, Aylmer agrees to invest £9,000 in a sure-fire venture of Horgan’s, solely based on Philip’s advice. Before long, other Cabinet Ministers and members of the Weston family are buying shares in Cape Enterprises (all facilitated by Philip, of course), contributing to a sharp rise in the share price that Horgan duly exploits.
Phillip’s feelings towards Aylmer are complex, a strange mixture of love, envy, jealousy and respect. On the one hand, Philip is grateful to Aylmer for his generosity and compassion; but on the other, he wants to destroy the privileged classes, ushering in a reckoning by sweeping away the old societal structures and their inherent social mores.
Philip thought, I really want to destroy them. They are so artificial, everything that they say means something else everything is within the bounds of proprietary, even impropriety, I want them to be blown away, the little bright bubble of their world to burst. Why? Because they irritate me, isn’t that enough? (p. 171)
With Aylmer wrapped up in various conferences to negotiate a solution to the Irish situation and darker political developments across Europe, Philip turns his attention to Cynthia, whom he longs to liberate from Aylmer and the farcical rituals of Edwardian society. Cynthia, however, is preoccupied with preparations for Violet’s wedding to Wilfred, an occasion that ultimately provides the novel with a wonderfully visual set piece.
To rip off that hat and pull down her [Cynthia’s] hair so that it’s all round her shoulders and how long have I [Philip] wanted to plunge my face into those breasts and feel the soft skin between the hip bones this is bad and won’t do, it really won’t, I’ll have to do something. Alice in a governessy hat. Why is she so suitable all the time, silly little thing? Why don’t I come to your room tonight, little governess? After all I’m almost a son of the house, it should be an honour. (p. 152)
Colegate does a fine job of drawing parallels between the personal and the political here. So, while the country seems to be sleepwalking towards increasingly dangerous territory on the European stage, it is developments much closer to home which ultimately bring down the Weston family, destroying the comfort and stability that Aylmer holds dear. In other words, the novel is driven by personal revelations and tragedies, prefiguring the wider, more catastrophic destruction to come.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the context, the novel is shot through with a notable sense of impending doom – a mood that feels all the more poignant because we know that a whole way of life for the upper classes is about to be swept away by the War, even though Colegate’s characters do not. Right from the very start, there are hints of the violence to follow: a vixen slaughters a rabbit for her cubs; a blunt-headed owl is out on the hunt; and two Suffragettes lob a brick through a window in the middle of a formal dinner. Attached is a note stating ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN!’, a response to Alymer’s political views and recent speech in the House.
Harbingers of violence in the violet dusk, Miss Ada Thompson and Miss Clara Pease Henneky lurked in the bushes by the drive. Gazing at the softly golden house, they relished the thought of the fright they would give it. They did not know that they were not alone, that the rabbit was wandering down the hillside behind them to be slaughtered by the fox… (p. 27)
As in The Shooting Party, Colegate takes great care in fleshing out her characters, moving the point of view from one individual to another, allowing us to access multiple perspectives as the drama unfolds. We also gain some brief insights into the staff at Charleswood, the Westons’ country estate – perhaps most notably, Cynthia’s lady’s maid, Beatrice, a spiteful, vindictive woman who proves pivotal in catalysing the novel’s denouement.
The hazy, shimmering summer atmosphere is beautifully conveyed, reminding readers of L. P. Hartley’s marvellous novel The Go-Between with its evocative languid mood and hints of a brewing storm.
It was hot. A light haze of heat lay over the garden. Time crept, softpawed Mrs Weston lurked, in black, behind the roses, but emerging only smiled and sent for Moberley, who took her off for another shaded drive. In the house the blinds were drawn, dust danced in the shafted sunlight, clocks ticked, feet on the stairs brought only another bowl of roses. (p. 186)
Colgate’s marvellous descriptions of lavish dinners at Charleswood add to the exalted mood, complete with cutting dialogue and sumptuous details that feel thoroughly realistic. For a novel first published fifty years after the period it depicts, Statues has a terrific sense of time and place, capturing this bygone world with elegance and grace.
Readers of the 2021 Bloomsbury edition will need to exercise a little patience with the text, which sadly contains multiple typos – several missing commas, full stops in the wrong place, erroneous gaps in the middle of words (e.g. ‘shop ping’ and ‘pass age’) and other assorted typos (e.g. ‘parti’ in place of ‘party’, ‘meet’ instead of ‘meant’). Nevertheless, it’s lovely to see this excellent novel back in print, even if it would benefit from being proofread!