Peeling the genteel veneer

Saudha Kasim

Reading Isabel Colegate’s The Shooting Party, it is impossible not to have Chekhov’s line about not putting a loaded rifle on stage if it isn’t going to go off echo through one’s mind. This is a story about a shooting party at an English aristocrat’s estate in the autumn of 1913 and plenty of guns abound. “It was an error in judgement which resulted in a death,” Colegate makes plain on the first page itself. There is an undercurrent of tension among the gathered guests — resentments and betrayals seem to be on the verge of bursting through the genteel veneer of the landed class.

The Shooting Party, which was published in 1980, was Colegate’s ninth novel. In an essay in The Threepenny Review almost 20 years later, Colegate said that while writing it she thought the interest in the First World War had passed. But her publisher insisted she finish it and the book went on to win awards and was adapted into a film some years later.

The world that Colegate depicts in her novel may be long extinct but it periodically comes alive on screen, the latest iteration being Downton Abbey. Though Julian Fellowes’ saccharine melodrama assiduously tries to balance the wide gulf between the classes by showing both “upstairs” and “downstairs”, its sympathies do seem to lie with the lords and ladies rather than their staff. Colegate’s story set over the 24 hours of the hunt is better at achieving this balance — she isn’t out to condemn the upper classes and her characters from the other side of the class divide are beautifully fleshed-out beings.

The hunt that is at the core of the novel takes place in Nettleby Park, which belongs to Sir Randolph Nettleby and his wife Lady Minnie. At the time of the shooting party, they also have their daughter Cicely and daughter-in-law Ida with them. The other titled couples at this gathering are the ever-so-slightly crass Gilbert and Aline Hartlip and the more seemingly sedate Olivia and Bob Lilburn. Gilbert is considered one of the best shots in England and his main rival in the party is Lionel Stephens who is deeply in love with Olivia. The party also includes a brilliant Jewish financier Sir Reuben Hergesheimer and the Hungarian Count Rakassyi. The grandchildren of the Nettlebys are part of this group — Marcus, Violet and Osbert. The last is an imaginative young boy with an intense feel for nature and has a pet duck that is as finely and meticulously etched out by Colegate as any of the human characters.

While those above the stairs eat their meals in the grand rooms of the house, there are, on the periphery, domestic staff like the housemaid Ellen and the gamekeeper Glass and his clever son Dan. There is a poacher-turned-beater (who assists the lords in their shoot) Tom Harker. And observing all this human drama from a distance is the socialist Cornelius Cardew who wants an end to traditions like this hunt.

All through the novel, which draws to the violent end promised at its start, the spectre of the First World War looms:

“The other shooters were ready. Olivia, Cicely and Aline, who were to walk with them for a few drives, were with them. The beaters moved off first, and the others followed. It’s like an army, Olivia thought, we have bivouacked and are moving off now to the front line. War might be like this, casual, friendly and frightening.”

Like most people in the midst of the turning of history, the characters in The Shooting Party — particularly those in the privileged class — are blind to the signs and portents that point to their doom. Reading this novel at a time when the world goes through another period of turmoil, one is forced to consider the questions Colegate, who died earlier this year at the age of 91, asked in The Threepenny Review essay about the First World War: “…Is that when things went wrong? Did it really have to happen? Could it happen again? As to that last question, the answer must be no, not in the same way. But in another way, even worse? How can we tell?”

The author is a writer and communications professional. When she’s not reading, writing or watching cat videos, she can be found on Instagram @saudha_k where she posts about reading, writing, and cats.

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