Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power - Claudia Renton
Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power - Claudia Renton
Non-Fiction
Pages: 512
The Wyndham sisters - Mary, Madeline and Pamela - occupied a special place in the pre-war British aristocracy - the tip of the top, one might say. Born into wealth and privilege, they were young, beautiful, educated yet bohemian, enchanting. They were the central hub of the 'Souls', the exclusive and eccentric intellectual clique that numbered many of the era's most celebrated names amongst its ranks - Lord Curzon, Arthur Balfour, Margot Asquith, Violet Manners, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. And yet like so many of their era, this 'golden age' of the later Victorian/early Edwardian period was not to last for them.
As much as it is a biography of the three sisters this is a book about a vanished world, the kind of carefree upper-class existence that is still seen as so mysterious and alluring today, as the popularity of television shows like Downton Abbey attest. The sisters moved in exalted circles, mixing casually with figures of power and influence, from the arts to politics, so the book is populated with a fascinating and well-known cast of characters. They embodied much of the contradictions of their time, the bohemian attitudes and the rigid social mores, unthinking privilege and noblesse oblige, the imperial triumph of the later Victorian period giving way to the tragedy of the trenches.
It is an enjoyable book, although given the sisters' social positions and wide circle of acquaintances, there are a lot of names to get straight in one's head, especially so when names and titles change upon inheritance! I also found the narrative shifts from one sister to another occasionally jarring, particularly when this involved a chronological shift as well. It could perhaps have done with somewhat tighter editing to correct some of this. But as I said, an enjoyable book and well worth reading for anyone interested in the Edwardian aristocracy of Downton Abbey.