Ghosts of Christmas past: review of Treasure On Earth: A Country House Christmas

On first glance this short memoir of an idyllic Edwardian Christmas in the innocent days before the First World War seems like a fairly slight stocking-filler, the kind of "days gone by" country house nostalgia that has the reviewer rapidly exhausting the available synonyms for "charming". Its portrait of fabulous inherited wealth, affectionately deferential servants and upper-class eccentricity could fit it squarely in the Downton Abbey genre, if it wasn’t for the author’s veiled self-awareness that the world it depicts was destined for ruin and collapse, and that the families who inherited the great English country houses were really the inheritors of a historical process that was very quickly coming to an end.

The house in question is Lyme Hall (here lightly fictionalised as "Vyne") in the Cheshire countryside. Dating from the Elizabethan period, it forms the stage for Phyllis Sandeman’s third-person recollections of her excitement and anticipation on Christmas Eve, as the house is made ready for the big day. Affectionate portraits are painted of her father, the austere yet loving Sir Thomas Vayne, her sister Lettice, her various aunts and uncles and grandparents, and cap-doffing servants like Jim the estate carpenter or "Fräulein", her governess. While Phyllis plans the play she and her siblings will perform, she looks forward to the family’s Christmas rituals, the games, the lavish meal, the "beef distribution" to the estate workers; all of it unchanging and eternal in the young girl’s mind, as the house itself seems unchanging and eternal. Yet, beneath the warm domestic confidence is the hint of uncertainty. As the servants gather to rousingly cheer their employers, Sir Thomas is heard to remark at "the most artificial part of the whole proceedings", and Phyllis is constantly alighting on the fear that the house might not last forever after all. "But supposing her father’s prophecies were fulfilled? If a day should come when they would have to abandon Vyne? Oh, if that should happen how could she bear it? It would be like abandoning a helpless, loving fellow-creature."

Of course, that day does come, and in a genuinely poignant coda Phyllis returns to the estate in 1946, when the rigours of war have dramatically changed the estate’s fortunes. Now, "crippled with taxes, harassed by controls", the Vynes have gone and the house belongs to the nation. First given in the gift of the Black Prince, holding relics of Charles I and with connections to Charles II, the estate is now overgrown and the only way to save the house is to open it to the public for paid tours. And yet Phyllis can see one bright point of hope: the old chapel, used in the house’s heyday as no more than a store for furniture and old bicycles, has been opened once again. "This tiny grain of comfort seemed symbolic," she thinks, "of an immense truth." Unnecessary when the house was undisputably great, the chapel comes to serve its purpose only when all has fallen into darkness.