Clodagh Finn: An ode to Hyacinth Bucket and the radiant art of growing old
Patricia Routledge and Clive Swift starred in ‘Keeping Up Appearances.’
Hyacinth Bucket, t he poster girl for women with notions, has left us.
That’s pronounced Bouquet, dear. I can just hear “the lady of the house” saying that now as she answers the telephone in , the 1990s comedic gold that struck a chord internationally because social aspirations (let’s be kind) apply everywhere.
Just ask Reggie from Blackrock Road, old stocks, the “richest man in Ireland, but not for tax purposes”.
I’ve been journeying down the virtual rabbit-hole to pay tribute to the late Patricia Routledge, an actor of remarkable humanity and craft who, rather unfairly, will be best remembered for her brilliant portrayal of the hilariously snobbish Hyacinth.
And little wonder. What great lines. “I do apologise, Vicar, I must answer my white, slimline telephone with last-number redial facilities, it’s bound to be someone important.”
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And this one: “It’s my sister, Violet. She’s the one with the Mercedes, sauna and a musical bidet. Classical of course.”
That reminds me of that old joke (which I always hear in a Cork accent): “Help, help, my son the engineer is drowning.”
Actually, to be more specific, I hear it in a Montenotte accent which is probably due to the satirical gem that was . In the 1970s, it gave us the Confederation of Mothers of Seven, who were based in that esteemed suburb.
Decades before the BBC sitcom, here were four Hyacinth Buckets, Cork-style, who sparred over a sherry, or a cup of Barry’s tea, in the comfort of their well-appointed living-rooms.
The name-dropping, the passive-aggressive little barbs and the one-up-womanship between Rosa (Frank Kelly), Mavis (Eamon Morrissey), Fanny (Pat Daly) and Grainne (Paul Murphy) were all exquisitely observed and are still, even decades later, instantly recognisable.
But let’s return to Patricia Routledge who has died aged 96. In her lifetime, she happily received recognition and many honours. There was an OBE and a CBE, and she was made a dame in 2017. She won a Tony award in 1968 and an Olivier award in 1988, but it was her words on ageing that struck me with particular force this week.
When she was 66, she played a pensioner-turned-private eye with teenage sidekick Geoffrey (Dominic Monaghan) in the crime drama series .
In real life she did something similar, turning expectations of age on their head while urging us to let the years ahead be our “treasure years”.
In a ‘Letter to Life’, which she wrote as she approached her 95th birthday, she said “some things bloom late — but they still bloom beautifully”.
It appeared under the heading ‘Growing old… oops up!’ on JaySpeaks, a blog run by Jay W MacIntosh, a fellow actor and late-bloomer who passed the California Bar Exam in 2000 at age 61.
Of her nineties, Patricia said she wrote letters by hand, baked rye bread and listened more than she spoke. “I breathe deeply in the mornings and whisper thanks to the sky… I have nothing left to prove — and so much left to feel.”
She wasn’t writing a farewell, she said, rather this gentle reminder: “Growing older isn’t a fading. It can be a radiant unfolding. A blooming — not back to youth, but back to yourself.”
You didn’t need fame, nor perfection, just a presence, she said: “Show up. Gently. Fully. Authentically. And life — if you let it — will always meet you halfway.”
She lived that herself. At 65, she said she stopped waiting for permission and began to learn Italian so that she could “feel opera in its native tongue”.
At 75, she returned to the Shakespearean stage without fear of critics or a need for applause.
At 85, she started to paint “one soft stroke at a time”, in order to remember, not to impress.
What a beautiful and inspiring post, one that might allow us to move through the decades with excitement and joy rather than the heaviness fuelled by the sellers of products who would have us expend all of our energy defying the pull of gravity.
There has been a shift in attitude though, one that embraces “the radiant unfolding” that Patricia Routledge so eloquently describes.
You see signs of that everywhere, with groups of women — and men — flourishing in the decades traditionally set aside for slowing down. But then, the very word retirement has ‘retire’ — to retreat, or step back, or go to sleep — stitched into it.
People are now much less likely to take that literally. Or they are returning to a much older vision of age, one that highlights the wisdom and the power that comes with advancing years.
This very weekend, for instance, Allihies Autumn School is focusing on An Chailleach, the hag, healer and holy woman of myth, in a packed programme taking place at Allihies Copper Mine Museum.
Rachel Parry’s spellbinding exhibition, , is part of it which seems entirely fitting given that the artist is a member of Na Cailleacha, “a collective of women over the age of 70, who are looking at being visible as artists in our old age”.
Earlier this week, she explained that one of her pieces, a cloak made out of bones, was inspired by the story of how the Cailleach slaughtered a cow every year and kept its bones in her loft. If anyone tried to determine her age by counting the bones, they could never get to the end of them.
What’s that about never asking a woman her age?
In an entirely different vein, , the new BBC drama from writer Sally Wainwright, airs tomorrow.
It tells the story of five menopausal women who form a punk rock band so that they can compete in a local talent contest. “They suddenly find they have a lot more to shout about than they ever imagined,” to quote the tension-raising pre-publicity.
Bring it on, along with the messy and full lives that these women lead, trying to care for elderly parents, still-dependent adult children and cope with marital strife, work pressures… and on and on goes the exhausting list.
But Sally Wainwright does something a little bit different here. She said she wanted to write about women in their late 40s and 50s in a positive and uplifting way. These women might feel they are disappearing, but they are actively claiming back their lives.
That is a theme which is happily bubbling up everywhere, from social media ( thank you, Melani ‘We Do Not Care’ Sanders) to film and TV. My favourite older-woman moment remains the one from where the inimitable Kristen Scott-Thomas says this of menopause: It’s “horrendous, but then it’s magnificent”.
We could, however, do with more positive cultural portrayals of older people. In the real world, they lead full and enriching lives but that hasn’t quite translated into fiction yet.
, the film which features Helen Mirren (80), Pierce Brosnan (72) and Ben Kingsley (81), is a notable exception, but where are all the 70 and 80 and even 90 year-olds on our screens?
There is so much to say, and to portray. As Patricia Routledge has reminded us, the treasure years have yet to come.
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