She was about to join Nova, the pioneering feminist glossy, when her sister Linda and husband Laurence Kelly plotted an engagement to their friend Thomas Pakenham, whose mother had decided that at 30 it was high time he married. Pakenham, “handsome and wonderfully clever and funny”, proposed on the battlements of his cousin Randal Dunsany’s Norman castle in Co Meath. “What more wonderful life than to live in an Irish castle, however damp, surrounded by lakes and hills,” she mused. “I would be able to ride a horse again, instead of catching a London bus to work.”
Sort of thing that happens in Wodehouse all the time.
Oh, you said ‘houses’ Tim. I thought you said ‘horses’.
A major part of Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy’s sex appeal is Pemberley.
Can’t expect blossoming young women to get hot under the corset about a council flat, can you? Not the good ones, anyway.
I’ve heard some have passionate affairs with wallets.
“the legendary Lough Derravaragh beyond.” Alas, the legend hadn’t reached me.
“When she and Pakenham first arrived there, they thought they were alone, until after some weeks the man who stoked the boilers emerged from the basement.)” I do hope that none of the three was running around naked.
“a grand tour, visiting Irish grandees (Mariga and Desmond Guinness and the Knight of Glin) in villas and palazzi”: froth, fume – absentee landlords I’ll bet! Cut their throats! Dash their children’s brains out on a wall!
Women marry power and money; I thought everyone knew that.
“Can’t expect blossoming young women to get hot under the corset about a council flat, can you? Not the good ones, anyway.”
Why can’t you get hot under the corset about a good council flat? ;-p
She was about to be staff writer for a pioneering feminist magazine, until Mr Darcy swept her off her feet and she opted for the life of a housewife instead. Feminism for thee but not for me.
Because you’ve got to find a good council flat first?