The House of Trelawney

I do like a good family saga, and The House of Trelawney has all the strained relationships and eccentric relatives imaginable. After 700 years of titled wealth, the remaining members of the Trelawney family have inherited the vast, falling-down estate and most of the aristocratic sensibilities, but there isn’t actually any money left. Rather than succumb to a reasonable middle-class (or even upper-class) lifestyle, the aging Earl insists on keeping up standards, and pretending they still have servants,  while the future earl of Trelawney constantly re-mortgages the estate for financial schemes to reverse the family fortunes.

I loved the family’s near-constant refusal to mention anything wrong, like the lack of staff, heat, private schools, or the missing relatives. Despite the huge estate full of empty rooms,  the younger siblings are not permitted to stay in the family estate after they reach adulthood. I also loved when the Trelawneys occasionally met other aristocrats, and as they go around calling each other their ridiculous nicknames, you can’t help wondering who else had sold off painting and fields. And the reversals and shocks just keep coming, with perfect tension and timing, throughout the novel.

At times, though, it’s just too much. The house is not just a rundown manor, with no heating and gaps where the auctioned paintings used to be, instead it’s revolting, with mold and animal droppings and general filth. The stubborn spinster aunt, someone a bit too into her horses or dogs, is a familiar character in stories about British aristocrats, but here she’s scraping fleas off animal corpses for research. Gross. Other stories have infidelity, here it seems like half the village is a Trelawney byblow and half the fortune has gone to pregnant housemaids. The grandson and future heir is uselessly spoiled, of course, but is it too much? Can 700 years of rank and privilege really end up like this?