The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen

First published by Constable & Co, 1929; this edition Vintage, 1988

Why?

I was looking for some end-of-summer reading, and having very much enjoyed Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel, was keen to explore more of her work.

The Last September had the added intrigue of being partly autobiographical, drawing on Bowen's own upbringing in the Anglo-Irish aristocracy.

Any novel about the last summer of a fading social order, preferably set in a large country house, has an eternal appeal for me as it does for many. But whereas the familiar pre-First World War setting of 1913 has been explored extensively, this offered something different: Ireland in 1920, in the midst of its War of Independence, with the Anglo-Irish ascendancy facing a much more immediate existential threat.

Enjoyment factor

Beautifully written and wonderfully evocative, with a tangible sense of the languor of late summer and the strange, suspended world of the Irish country house.

Yet I felt strangely distant from the characters, and plot was rather thin on the ground. There is a curious detachment to the novel - the inhabitants of Danielstown are drifting through their final summer without quite acknowledging what is happening around them.

And, of course, the sense of impending doom hangs over everything. Knowing that the house will eventually be burned down makes even the most charming scenes feel melancholy.

It left me thinking ...

First, about how little I knew of the social and political position of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy in the early twentieth century. The novel captures a class caught between two countries, belonging fully to neither, and increasingly unable to sustain the peculiar world it has created for itself.

What particularly intrigued me was the distinction drawn between Anglo-Irish and English society. There are several references to the comparative brashness of the English, contrasted with the conservatism, restraint and propriety apparently prized by the Anglo-Irish. I had always rather lazily assumed that the Anglo-Irish ascendancy was essentially an extension of the English upper classes, transplanted to Ireland. Bowen suggests a much more distinct social and cultural identity, with its own codes, loyalties and prejudices.

There are similarities with The Hotel. Both novels take place in a relatively confined setting, with a limited cast of characters whose relationships and interactions provide much of the drama. Yet The Hotel somehow feels livelier, more sharply observed and more tightly plotted. In The Last September, the characters seem almost paralysed by their circumstances, and the sense of inevitability is overwhelming.

Which of course is the point. The familiar country-house novel often derives its appeal from the contrast between the apparent permanence of an established social order and our knowledge that it is about to disappear. But in The Last September, the threat is not simply the gradual erosion of privilege or the passing of an era. It is immediate, violent and political. The world of Danielstown is not just becoming obsolete; it is about to be physically destroyed.

And then there is the autobiographical element. Bowen herself grew up in an Anglo-Irish house, and she was writing about a world whose disappearance she understood intimately. Perhaps this explains the emotional distance of the novel: the restraint feels almost like a defence against the enormity of what is being lost.

Ultimately, I admired The Last September rather more than I enjoyed it. But it has left me wanting to understand much more about the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, and about a chapter of twentieth-century history that seems to receive surprisingly little attention in fiction.