In Christopher Isherwood’s novel The Memorial, the country house is a dying entity with a scarce memorial. The memorial to the war heroes that is discussed in the novel gathers more respect than the death of the country house and everything that it represents. The English country house has its own unique ethos and way of life associated with it, and this book discounts that ethos and demands acceptance of the inevitable truth: the country house is no more. The country house is a symbol of doom in this novel, and it is exemplified in the sole character that still clings to it: Lily. She is unable to accept the death of the house and all that it meant to her, and she is portrayed as pathetic as a character. The other characters are moving on and letting go of the way of life they once knew in the country house, especially Eric. Eric is pulled in other new exciting directions by the other characters in the novel, and he has a hard time identifying completely with his mother’s pitiful state. His feelings toward the country house are ambiguous and impassionate. An examination of these two characters’ views of the English country house and the way Isherwood portrays them in the scope of the novel provides a contrast that illuminates the major theme of the novel: a natural, expected death of something that was never really that important anyway.
Lily is a widow who not only mourns the death of her beloved husband, but the death of the life they had together in the country house, Vernon Hall. From the very first time Lily saw Vernon Hall, she was enamored with it. She recollects this first encounter and the fact that she noticed that the house had been refronted and the windows replaced from the Elizabethan style: “Richard had been really amazed, and so pleased, when she’d asked his father about that, at dinner. Because, as he pointed out, she must have noticed it actually as they were driving in at the gates… ‘Lilt notices everything,’ he had boasted” (79).
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This is proof that she was amazed and intrigued with the house even before she moved into it. It was love at first sight. When Lily remembers her life at Vernon Hall, she regards it as something to be praised, and even worshipped. She obviously holds the house so high in her mind and heart that it is actually sacred and spiritual. One scene in the novel describes Lily kneeling down at her dressing table, as if in prayer: “That evening Lily had knelt down in her dressing-gown with her elbows on the dressing-table, to get the full light of the candles burning on either side of t he mirror” (77).
She is actually writing a letter, but it is about the house, and her kneeling position and the candles symbolize the idea that she literally worships it. What is this ethos, this life that Lily holds so dear and near to her heart? It is described in beautiful detail in Lily’s thoughts:
A beautiful, happy world, in which the next summer would be the same,
and the next and the next—the County gossip, the Balls, engagements
being announced, girls ‘coming out,’ talk about the cost of keeping up
one’s place—the shooting, hunting, livestock—humorous allusions to
people who’d made money in cotton—Mrs. Beddoes and the others
passing between the tea-table and the cool house, with plates of cress
and cucumber sandwiches. The old safe, happy beautiful world (87-88).
This old and beautiful world, Lily realizes yet refuses to accept, is passing away and a new world is going to replace it. She feels as if she is worn, used, and unwanted in this new world. Isherwood writes of Lily:
And at the thought of this new generation, so eager for new kinds
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of life and excitement, with new ideas about dancing and clothes and
behavior at tea-parties, so certain to sneer or laugh at everything which
girls had liked and enjoyed in nineteen hundred—at that thought Lily
felt not a pang of sadness but a stab of real misery. She was living on in
a new, changed world, unwanted, among enemies. She was old, finished
with (66).
Interestingly, the character that values a huge tradition and its ethos is portrayed as pathetic in this novel. Isherwood paints Lily as the one person in the novel who is unable to face the truth and move forward. The reason that Lily refuses to move forward, however, is that she does not want to let go of the house and the life she lived within it. She has already lost her husband, and she does not want to lose the house as well. This seems to me a worthy attitude, but Isherwood does not agree. At the end of the novel, when Lily is in her new flat and Mary comes to visit her, the final memento and symbol that she will never let go of Vernon Hall appears: “Over the bed hung a water-colour of the Hall as seen from the end of the garden” (282).
Eric, like his mother, has many memories of his experiences in Vernon Hall, but he is not as nostalgic and mournful about the loss of the lifestyle. In fact, he is eager throughout the novel to move on to be more like his aunt and cousins, who live with a disregard for the past. Eric is portrayed as a youth with many insecurities; he is awkward and speaks with a stutter. Lily is hard on him, and she is so pathetically in grief for so long that it ruins the mother-son relationship, partly because he cannot relate to the extremity of her loss. His aunt Mary and cousins Anne and Maurice, on the other hand, are happy and worry-free individuals who see every day as a new opportunity, and Eric is in rapture over their way of living: “It seemed to him that, if he could live always with his cousins, he would expand like a flower, breaking out of his own clumsy identity, gaining strength and confidence” (172).
Perhaps the most representative moment in the novel dealing with Eric’s feelings about Vernon Hall is when Eric is riding his bicycle and he thinks of Vernon Hall and his aunt’s house as opposite poles:
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As he climber the hill to the waterworks he felt the strong negative pull of Chapel Bridge trying to drag him backwards like a harness. The Hall was behind it. His mother. All the morning’s scruples…But as he passed the waterworks, as he climbed the hill to Ridge top, the field strength of Chapel Bridge grew weaker…A few yards more, and the faint pull of Gatesley could already be felt. And now Aunt Mary and Maurice and Anne were drawing him forward, so that it seemed no effort to jump
On to his bicycle and pedal up the last of the slope (174).
This scene elaborates on Eric’s feelings about Vernon Hall; he feels that it is a negative influence in his life now, and that it is a force that tries to hold him back from the positive pole, which is the lifestyle of his aunt and cousins. Vernon Hall is technically supposed to be left to Eric upon the death of his grandfather, but his feelings about that inheritance are bittersweet and neutral at best. In his own thoughts, he muses:
What should I do if all this belonged to me?…Perhaps I’d have the drive repaired. Should I change the name on the notice board From John to Eric Vernon? But no, he didn’t want to touch anything. He had grown up with a semi-superstitious fear, perhaps exaggerated from the teaching of his mother, of meddling with t he Past…I’ll stay with her always, he said to himself, and the thought made him curiously sad (156).
Here, Eric is mildly appreciative of the house and the fact that it has always been the same. The “Past” is the country house ethos and way of life which Lily reveres. However, he is saddened and seems to feel trapped by the Past and all its ways. He wants to escape from this trap but he feels guilty for it. Eric’s torn mind throughout the novel reveals that he, somewhere deep down, has a respect for the country house, but at the same time he is ready to let it go ahead and die.
The difference in attitudes toward the country house of these two main characters shows that the country house is an ambiguous entity in this novel. It is not praised, nor is it discounted or disrespected. The presence of the character of Lily proves that the country house ethos has something to it; otherwise Lily would not be so trapped in the past and unable to grow or move forward. Eric’s decisions and attitudes show that there is a better life to be had, and that to continue to cling to the country house at its prime is to cling to a lie. Lily lives in denial and stagnation, while Eric strives to move forward. However, Lily is not clinging to just a house. The ethos attached to the English country house is a cherished one for many: the long summer afternoons, the tea-times in the gardens, the beautiful life in the country-side that has meant much to many over the years. According to this novel, that beautiful life is dead, and should be grieved over only for a little while before it is simply forgotten forever. Lily cannot bear that notion, and that in itself says a lot about the significance of the country house. Even though Lily’s character is portrayed negatively, it gives that lost, forgotten country house way of life a lot of credit.
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