Belgravia by Julian Fellowes an entertaining romance and look at a changing exclusive society
It’s a kind of London counterpart to rural Downton, set in fashionable Belgravia in the 1840s, with a similar cast of powerful older women, intriguing servants below-stairs, and beautiful young women, challenging the boundaries imposed on them by a rigidly hierarchical society.
Here, as in Downton, Fellowes displays his extraordinary gift for bringing the past, its customs and domestic detail, to life for the contemporary reader.
The novel opens with a prequel to the main action, set in 1815 at the Duchess of Richmond’s famous ball held in Brussels on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo.
Immediately William Thackeray’s classic novel, Vanity Fair, and its anti-heroine, Becky Sharp, which features the same ball as a pivotal point, comes to mind.
But there is no character as unusual and unforgettable as Becky Sharp here.
As so often in the creations of Julian Fellowes, the most memorable women are the older ones. As the action of the novel moves into the 1840s, we meet the Dowager Duchess of Richmond, Lady Brockenhurst, who hosted the Waterloo ball, as an elderly woman attending a soiree in the fashionable newly built area of Belgravia.
One of the first guests she is introduced to is Mrs Trenchard, who was also at the Waterloo ball in spite of being ‘in trade’ — the wife of Wellington’s chief supplier.
Mr Trenchard has since enhanced his fortune by joining forces with the Cubitt brothers who built Belgravia, and is climbing his way up in society with a tenacity that leads to him being described as ‘a social mountaineer’.
As the two elderly ladies lock horns, recalling her previous meeting in Brussels, the reader immediately casts Maggie Smith as the formidable Lady Brockenhurst, and Penelope Wilton, who played Isobel Crawley with such grace, as the unaristocratic but wise and compassionate Mrs Trenchard.
Lady Brockenhurst’s only son died on the battlefield at Waterloo, and Mrs Trenchard’s only daughter, Sophia, died about nine months later, days after giving birth.
And yes, there is a connection, one which it takes most of the novel’s 11 chapters to unravel, via some ingenious twists and turns of a very clever plot.
The novel started life as an App, releasing the chapters individually, in an attempt to mimic the way many Victorian novels were published in monthly instalments — the difference being, their authors were working to monthly deadlines, whereas Fellowes and his team had a carefully honed finished product long before the App went live.
The effect of this is a good one in that each chapter consists of about 30 pages of exciting developments, which can be read at one sitting, ensuring steady progress through the hefty-looking volume.
His team, who are credited along with Fellowes on the title page, consist of an editorial consultant, Imogen Edwards-Jones, ‘best selling author and scriptwriter’, and a historical consultant, Lindy Woodhead.
It is presumably due to Woodhead that there are so many interesting details concerning menus, party etiquette, the use of coaches, and the duties of lady’s maids and footmen.
Exactly what the editorial consultant did is harder to guess, but I imagine she was both a sounding board for Fellowes, and the person who ensured the book’s very smooth readability and the absence of the linguistic anachronisms that made Downton Abbey such fun.
There are several points where the plot strains credulity, but the writing quickly draws the reader on to the next incident before too many questions are asked.
There are happy endings for all characters except the villain, but Belgravia is not just an entertaining romance: it is also an illustration of the way that society was changing, as a wealthy middle class, which had made its money in trade, challenged the exclusivity of an increasingly impoverished aristocracy.
