Mrs. Palfrey At The Claremont (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
“Mrs Palfrey first came to the Claremont Hotel on a Sunday afternoon in January. Rain had closed in over London, and her taxi sloshed along the almost deserted Cromwell Road, past one cavernous porch after another, the driver going slowly and poking his head out into the wet, for the hotel was not known to him. This discovery, that he did not know had a little disconcerted Mrs Palfrey, for she did know it either, and began to wonder what she was coming to. She tried to banish terror from her heart. She was alarmed at the threat of her own depression.”Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, Elizabeth Taylor’s penultimate novel is therefore the penultimate read of the librarything Virago Group’s Elizabeth Taylor centenary read along. Although, as I didn’t re-read ‘At Mrs Lippincotes’ in January with them, I may read it next month along with Blaming so I will have read all the novels this year. I have heard it said, that one’s first reading of a novel is the most intense, but I don’t always find that to be the case. Certainly with my own re-reading I have found the reverse to sometimes be the case. When I first read this novel I enjoyed it hugely and was certainly looking forward to reading it again. I hadn’t expected however, to be so exceptionally moved by it, or to find myself thinking about it throughout the day whilst at work, it wasn’t as if I didn’t know what was coming.Having spent so much time thinking about and reading the works of Elizabeth Taylor this year, I feel as if I have got to know, in some small way at least, the woman that she was. It may have been this that made this reading of the book so poignant. Laura Palfrey is a woman so much set in the Elizabeth Taylor mould that I recognised her instantly, it may have been just my fancy, but in her I saw glimpses of the younger women who had come before, it was as if I couldn’t bear what she (they) had become. In 1971 when this novel was published, Elizabeth Taylor was only 59 – certainly not old, although she must have been in some way aware of the passage of time and her own ageing – she was only to live 4 more years. As the novel opens Laura Palfrey, the widow of a colonial administrator, having enjoyed a blissful retirement with her husband in Rottingdean, before his death, comes to the Claremont Hotel. Such places like the Claremont exist no longer, yet there is a peculiar familiarity to them. A genteel hotel, that offers reduced rates to the elderly residents who take up permanent residence there. Here she joins a small group of other elderly residents – with nothing in common but the Claremont, and the peculiar rules and daily routines. These are a wonderful group of eccentrics – Elizabeth Taylor is always so brilliant with her more minor characters – Mr Osmond with his risqué stories, Mrs Burton with her mauve hair and her drinking, the arthritic and bossy Mrs Arbuthnot. Hotel meals and visitors are given particular importance and no one wants to be seen as the poor old soul with no visitors. When fellow resident Mrs Arbuthnot discovers that Mrs Palfrey has a grandson in London, Mrs Palfrey feels rather duty bound to produce him. However Desmond never arrives. Then Laura meets Ludo. Ludo is a young aspiring writer and former actor, who spends his days in the famous banking hall at Harrods where he keeps warm and works at his writing. There is a story well known to Elizabeth Taylor fans that the character of Ludo, was based on writer Paul Bailey, who Elizabeth Taylor had watched from afar as he carried out his job at Harrods around the time his first book was published. Paul Bailey has since written several of the introductions to the Virago editions of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels, and he recounts the story in his introduction to this one. Ludo comes to dinner at the Claremont and is a big hit with the other residents; he soon begins to eclipse the real Desmond in Mrs Palfrey’s mind. In Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont – Elizabeth Taylor has given us a deeply poignant, beautifully written novel, that I feel must have given her chance to have a deeply personal look back over her own life.“They became more and more to one another and, in the end, the perfect marriage they had created was like a work of art. People are sorry for brides who lose their husbands early, from some accident or war. And they should be sorry, Mrs Palfrey thought. But the other thing is worse.Mrs Palfrey is helped by Ludo after a fall, and in her gratitude they strike up an odd sort of friendship. Odd because Laura is rather smitten with young Ludo, and persuades him to impersonate her grandson Desmond so she can save face back at the Claremont. There are moments in this novel, which I felt to be really rather Brookneresque – such pathos and loneliness, the bleakness of an empty Sunday, the emptiness of certain London suburban streets. However there is a warmth to Elizabeth Taylor’s writing – even when it is sad – that I don’t think Brookner can reproduce.
It was this author's inevitable fate to be known as the other Elizabeth Taylor, especially as her first novel appeared a year after the twelve year old star of National Velvet blanketed all associations with the name. In this review of Nicola Beauman's biography we're told of one blossoming of confusion:Elizabeth Taylor the novelist occasionally received fan letters intended for her more famous namesake. "Men write to me and ask for a picture of me in my bikini," she told the Times in 1971. "My husband thinks I should send one and shake them, but I have not got a bikini."That makes her sound awfully sweet doesn't it? Gently humorous, and indeed it seems that she has been dismissed in the past as writing small canvas miniatures of teacup rituals. But she is anything but fluffy. No, no fluffy kitty, but a sinuous siamese with claws, with lethal claws. Her writing is a glitteringly sharp instrument of steel, as hard as a diamond. There's not a breath of sentimentality here: she is ruthless. This novel of loneliness is utterly devastating. The Claremont hotel is a vision of hell, bleak ante room to death, but not in any fantastical sense, no, that is the terrifying thing. This is the real world, ruled by absurdity, by the desperate attempt to save face and by Mrs Arbuthnot of the pale blue eyes, arbiter of propriety and literary taste. At the same time it is screamingly, achingly, painfully funny. There's the typical British obsession with social embarrassment: sitting in a quiet room with perfect strangers requires coughing over stomach gurglings and further quick thinking. "Well, another Sunday nearly gone" Mrs Post said quickly, to cover a little fart. She had presence of mind.. The same Mrs Post is the only one who knows the elderly actress who's been hauled in to impress at a party, but is less than tactful when she reminisces about seeing said actress as Mrs Darling when she took her little nephew to see Peter Pan, and then goes on to mention that he's now a married man himself with teenage children. The actress would dearly like to drift away from Mrs Post, but she seemed the only one who had ever heard of her, so she decides to bully her rather than dazzle.That is where Elizabeth-Taylor-the-novelist shines: she sees those cruelties that we use to ward off the careless cruelties of others. And yet she's deeply sympathetic, even warm, towards these people heroically struggling to retain a smidgen of dignity, while at the same time exposing their foolishness. Funny, and poignant, and bleak, and scathing, all at once. And resolutely unsentimental. In a recent review of Two Lives, GR friend Tony moots the idea that Mr Trevor may be a touch scarier to know than his twinkly image suggests. This is precisely what I feel about Ms Taylor-the-novelist. She may have fostered her image as a bland housewife, chronicler of the domestic. But there is steel under the powder and lipstick and pearls. And she would observe and store away your stumblings and expose you to crimson embarrassment. No sweat.
What do You think about Mrs. Palfrey At The Claremont (2006)?
One of the benefits of procrastinating on my Goodreads reviews is that I get to see how a book stays with me (or not) over time and this book has held up well over the past few weeks. I loved reading the thoughts in Mrs Palfrey's head - she is a woman trying to live her remaining years in quiet dignity but she also has a sense of humor and isn't ready to give up just yet. This book has such an interesting mix of humor and sadness, sentiment and cynicism that it's a far more layered book than the description implies. Every character has a complexity. The two main characters, Ludo and Mrs Palfrey, are using each other for their own ulterior motives - Mrs Palfrey is relying on him to keep up the lie that she has a loving grandson visiting her and he is secretly using her for material for a book. Yet you can see how they each enjoy the other and ultimately gain something from their relationship. Of course, the details of being an older person in a busy city - surrounded by people and yet completely alone - were heart breaking at times. Taylor does an excellent job of conveying the every day struggle to fill time, to find something to look forward to, that these people must feel. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it but I've also found myself coming back to it to think about a scene or a sentence that really rang true.
—Jennifer
As Mrs Palfrey travels down Cromwell Road, she gives herself a “good talking to”; she is that kind of woman. Just because the taxi driver does not know the hotel she wants, there is no reason to believe it is any less than she is expecting. Widow of a former colonial administrator, Mrs Palfrey is moving into a hotel in London, the Claremont. Although the Claremont is not a home for the aged or ageing, it has five permanent residents, too old to live on their own, but not yet ready for a nursing home. Mrs Palfrey is “a tall woman with big bones and a noble face, dark eyebrows and a neatly folded jowl. She would have made a distinguished-looking man and, sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag."She is also proudly English and this is very important to her: "When she was young, it had seemed that nearly all the world was pink on her school atlas -- 'ours', in fact. Nearly all ours! she had thought." She is also a woman of character and class who doesn’t tolerate fools gladly.The life of the Claremont’s residents revolves around daily minutiae, what is on the menu for lunch and dinner, knitting, the crossword, trips to the library. Hopefully, they look for visits from family to break the monotony of their days. Sadly, when these visits occur they are of the obligatory kind, all about the visitor feeling good about themselves. When choosing to move to London, rather than one of the seaside towns, Mrs Palfrey hopes to regularly see her grandson, Desmond, but many calls, and even notes sent to him, remain unanswered. One of the ways Mrs Palfrey overcomes the monotony is to stretch out her daily walks and errands to fill the time. Returning from a visit to the library, she slips in the street landing very heavily. A young man Ludovic, Ludo, Myers comes to her rescue and so begins an unusual and lovely friendship. As her grandson seems disinterested in visiting, Mrs Palfrey indulges in a little deception and introduces Ludo at the Claremont as Desmond. Thank you, Pamela for recommending this novel; I thoroughly endorse your opinion. I was not surprised to learn it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1971, the writing is excellent. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is character driven; even quite minor characters are given life by her pen. The description of Elizabeth, Mrs Palfrey’s daughter says so much in so few words "My daughter no longer needs me - indeed, her dread is that it might one-day be the other way about.” Author Elizabeth Taylor takes the fraught and challenging subject of aging, adds humour and in inimitable English style, produces defined personalities and distinct voices for her characters. Her descriptions of the scenery from the plant life, to the sky, to the cleanliness of a room are concise with an economy of words. An example of these descriptive abilities is the Ladies Night at the Masonic Lodge, a beautifully observed scene. I thoroughly recommend Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont; despite being written over 40 years ago, it remains relevant today.This review is published on Starts at Sixty here http://bit.ly/1DXq6EE.
—Karen O'Brien-Hall
This is a British tragic-comedy of errors, set in a “Hotel”, concerning a small group of long-stay elderly residents. The protagonist, Mrs. Palfrey finds little to like in the residents, the hotel, or her life. But dignified lady that she believes she is, she attempts to keep her chin up and cover her loneliness. As luck would have it, she falls one day while out walking and a young man, Ludo, comes to her rescue. A highly unlikely friendship ensues and because Mrs. Palfrey’s grandson, the only relative living in frequent visiting distance, has ignored her she hatches up a plan to have Ludo pose as her grandson to save face. A starving writer, he takes her up on dinner at the hotel.And I must admit I struggled with the sadness of it all. I found Ludo to be the most interesting character in the novel. He has an odd fascination toward the elderly, but only, it seems to jot down descriptions and phrases. Is he an honest stranger, or is he preying upon her in hopes of a small fortune? This was a slight novel that suffered a bit from characters and situations that could have used a bit more introduction. At times I needed to page back and carefully re-read what I may have missed. I recently read The Stone Angel. Both were for Goodreads group reads. Both protagonists are late-life woman. In story Stone Angel was no less depressing, but the writing was flawless and I readily recommend it. Mrs. Claremont? Less so.
—Mmars
