The Flambards trilogy by Kathleen Wendy Peyton

First published:Flambards, 1967; The Edge of the Cloud, 1969; Flambards in Summer, 1969

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Coming-of-age, love and romance, war, and death

Time of work: 1908-1916

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: Flambards Hall, Essex, England, and the first flying academies

Principal Characters:

• Christina Parsons, a rich and lonely orphan who enters the alien, masculine world of Flambards
• Uncle Russell, once an avid rider, now a bitter cripple who cares only for his horses, hounds, and stables
• Mark Russell, Christina’s older cousin, a daring and reckless rider, the heir to Flambards
• William Russell, Mark’s younger brother, a sensitive dreamer obsessed with the designing and flying of airplanes
• Dick, the stable lad at Flambards
• Violet, the housemaid and Dick’s sister
• Sandy Hardcastle, a jaunty young pioneer in aviation
• Dorothy Saunders, Christina’s friend and eventually Mark’s wife
• Tizzy, the illegitimate son of Violet and Mark

The Story

Flambards begins with a familiar scene in children’s literature: the orphan’s arrival at the door of her new home. Christina Parsons has spent the last seven years of her life shuttled between the houses of various relatives in the suburbs of London. Her most recent home with Aunt Grace, a widowed dressmaker, has been comfortable but stultifyingly feminine. When Uncle Russell demands Christina’s presence at Flambards, Aunt Grace lets her go with reservations. Flambards is a male domain, ruled with an iron hand by its crippled master and inhabited by his sons, Mark and William. Flambards is famous for its fine horses and immaculate stables, while the house itself, neglected and unkempt, slides into ruin. Christina intuits at once Uncle Russell’s plan; he is after the fortune that she will inherit at age twenty-one. What better way to reestablish Flambard’s prosperity than to see that Christina marries Mark someday? Christina arrives at Flambard’s with some trepidation, and rightly so, for she is greeted with rudeness by Uncle Russell; she watches in horror as William is brought in bloodstained and unconscious after a hunting accident, and she is ordered by Mark to see to dinner.

Despite the inauspicious beginning to her stay, Christina rapidly adjusts to country life and starts her study of her cousins. As the reader peruses Mark and William through Christina’s eyes, an interesting analogy emerges. Mark, like his father, is tied to England’s recent past; he sees no reason why Flambards—a microcosm of English society—cannot continue its traditions of horses and hounds, servants and masters, while shutting out such modern inconveniences as automobiles and electricity. On the other hand, William, recovering from the hunting accident brought on in part by his fear and dislike of horses, deplores the atmosphere of rural decay at Flambards. William’s obsession is with airplanes; his bedroom contains countless models, suspended by wires and swaying gently in the breeze, and he reads with absorption of the exploits of the Wright brothers and Louis Bleriot.

A third young man appears for Christina’s scrutiny. Uncle Russell demands that Dick, the stable boy, teach Christina to ride like a true Russell. Dick is Christina’s first real friend at Flambards; unfailingly gentle and patient, he instructs her in the finer points of riding. Despite Christina’s fondness for Dick, he is a “servant who knows his place” and tries to sidestep any true intimacy. A crisis is inevitable, and when Christina’s horse Sweetbriar is badly injured as a result of Mark’s reckless riding, Uncle Russell insists that the useless horse be destroyed and fed to the foxhounds. Horrified, Christina begs Dick to help her smuggle Sweetbriar to a safe location and bribe the man at the kennels. William assists in the plot by finding the horse a home with his friend and fellow flying enthusiast, Mr. Dermot. Mark, who has noticed Christina’s fondness for Dick and growing rapport with William, discovers the truth and engineers Dick’s dismissal. With Dick gone and William absorbed with building and testing Emma, Mr. Dermot’s airplane, Christina and Mark build a relationship of sorts, marred by frequent, bitter quarrels. Yet even this tentative rapprochement breaks off when Violet, Dick’s sister, is dismissed for being pregnant with Mark’s child.

The final clash of opposing forces occurs at the annual point-to-point race of 1912. As Mark nears the finish line ahead of the other riders, a triumphant William, airborne at last, cruises overhead in Emma, frightening the crowd and causing mayhem among horses and riders. Mark loses the prize for which he longs and an enraged Uncle Russell banishes the unrepentant William. Christina, weary of the violence, bitterness, and domination at Flambards, discovers that it is William whom she loves. The novel closes as the two “elope” to London, Aunt Grace, and whatever the future brings.

The Edge of the Cloud, the second novel of the series, is dominated by William and his airplanes. At the ages of eighteen and sixteen, he and Christina are unable to marry without Uncle Russell’s consent, which he will never give, and William must earn a living while Christina lives with Aunt Grace and helps with the sewing. Hampered by a limp, his legacy from the hated riding days at Flambards, William has trouble proving his worth at Hendon, Brooklands, and the other flying academies. Finally at Elm Park, William demonstrates his ability as a mechanic, and through his growing friendship with the flying instructor Sandy Hardcastle, he takes to the air again. Happy and totally absorbed, he is not always aware of Christina’s growing boredom and discontent with her quiet, inactive life in the London suburbs. Fortunately, Sandy’s favorite pupil, the vibrant Dorothy Saunders, solves Christina’s problem by offering her a job as receptionist at her father’s hotel near Elm Park. Christina is happy to be with Will, even if her day off is spent passing him spanners and wrenches in a shed.

The friendship between Christina and Dorothy fills a void in Christina’s life. Her female companions to date have been elderly aunts, and Violet, Dick’s sister, has been a hostile presence at Flambards. Dorothy is the embodiment of the new woman, daring, independent, and self-possessed. Whether at the controls of an airplane or driving an automobile, Dorothy is directing her own destiny.

The Edge of the Cloud explores Christina’s growing maturity. She must learn to accept her role in William’s life and deal with the tension and fear she experiences as Will tests both his limits and those of the frail crafts he pilots. Dives, loops— everything about the airshows torments Christina; during the course of the novel, Mr. Dermot is killed flying his beloved Emma and Sandy Hardcastle dies in a fiery crash.

The novel concludes with Christina and William’s wedding in August of 1914, a ceremony to which William jokingly refers as “this darned appointment I’ve got to keep next Saturday that’s holding me up.” He has just enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps as war is declared. For a brief moment, the world of Flambards reappears in the form of Mark, who has come to give Christina away before embarking with his regiment to France. Christina leaves for church unafraid of what might happen. “She had the advantage of being proved and tried: she had come through, all calm and collected, to please Will.”

The third novel of the series, Flambards in Summer, opens in 1916. Christina, now twenty-one and recently widowed, returns to the empty, neglected house. The thought of Will’s death “still had the power to crush her into white, numb petrification,” and she doubts the wisdom of her choice. Mark is missing, presumed killed, in Palestine; old Uncle Russell is dead; only Mary and Fowler, the servants, remain. Possessed of the fortune she inherited on her birthday, Christina can buy whatever she wants but wants nothing but the people she has lost. Sick and discouraged, she sees the tumbledown house, empty stables, and aged retainers.

When Christina discovers that she will bear William’s posthumous baby, she vows to bring Flambards to life as a fit inheritance. Hoping to hire brawny farm laborers, she can find only a cunning shirker and an idiot boy. The beautiful hunters of her memories are replaced in the stables by stolid cart horses. Small portents, such as finding one of the foxhounds of the old Flambards pack to keep as a pet, delight her. In a sudden flash of memory, she recalls Violet, sent from Flambards in disgrace to give birth to Mark’s child. Relentlessly, Christina tracks her down and offers her five hundred pounds for the boy, Thomas Mark, called Tizzy. Violet, burdened by poverty and three other children, agrees.

Christina’s pregnancy follows Flambards’ cycle of growth and renewal. She learns to nurture and love Tizzy, paving the way for her impending motherhood. With the help of a kindly German prisoner of war, the crops flourish in the fields; Christina gives birth to her daughter Isabel. When Tizzy mentions that his Uncle Dick, Christina’s first real friend at Flambards, is invalided out of the army, she goes to him in London and begs him return to help her farm the land. Tizzy is overjoyed to see him; soon Christina, Dick, Tizzy and Isabel fall into a relaxed, familial relationship until Mark returns to shatter the peace.

Enraged by the sight of Dick and Christina’s contentment, Mark claims both Flambards and Tizzy as his rightful property and demands that Dick “remember his place.” Only the painful reality that he lacks the money to run Flambards and that he must return to the front keeps him from making good his claim. Mark’s whirlwind courtship of Christina’s friend Dorothy and their plans to manage one of her hotels after the war reconcile him to selling Flambards to Christina and playing the role of “Uncle” Mark to Tizzy. The novel closes with Christina secure in her possession of a home at last, content with Dick’s love and aware that although “life’s surprises were by no means finished . . . the omens are good.”

Context

In 1970, the Flambards trilogy won the prestigious Guardian Award for children’s fiction, an honor that followed The Edge of the Cloud’s winning the 1969 Carnegie Medal. Peyton is the author of many well-regarded novels for young people, and most of her books deal with her interests in horses, aviation, sailing, and the individual beauties of her settings. As a series of historical novels, the trilogy offers a fascinating period for study. Edwardian England existed in a near-pastoral state of innocence, drowsing comfortably in peace, unthreatened since Napolean a hundred years before. In the rural backwater of Essex, few ripples threaten the surface serenity. Peyton, however, reveals underlying tensions through Uncle Russell’s impotent rages, Mark’s dogmatic assertions that servants obey without question and know their place, the encroachment of machines, and the refusal of young people like William and Dorothy to remain loyal to the values of the past. A new world is about to be born out of the ashes of the old. Christina is both a witness and a participant and one troubled at times by conflicting loyalties.

With the exception of Dick, whom critic John Rowe Townsend calls “simple, brave and slightly wooden,” the characterization in the novel is vigorous. Mark is by no means a cardboard villain or mere nemesis; rather, his nostalgia for the Flambards of his memory is entirely sympathetic. His regressive nature is tempered by charm. William gains reader sympathy through his intelligence and individualism, yet his single-minded pursuit of personal goals often makes him seem indifferent to others. It is Christina who emerges most clearly in the novel. Her growth from orphaned girl to young woman to wife and mother occupies center stage. The most ambivalent of the characters, she hovers between conflicting loyalties. A true Russell, she loves horses and hunting; her pride at being “blooded” at her first foxhunt is palpable, much to William’s disgust. She and the difficult Uncle Russell can talk companionably about horses over port and mutton, and she seeks Mark to share her rides. She cannot, however, share Mark’s disdain for or exploitation of the servants; Dick and Violet are the unwitting catalysts to Christina’s decision never to marry Mark. While Christina embraces William and his democratic ideals, she never shares his enthusiasm for flying; she often views airplanes and automobiles, symbols of progress, with a suspicion worthy of Uncle Russell. Yet, despite her ambivalence, she is propelled forward into a new world, and her personal triumphs in the midst of war and social change make the novel one of perennial interest to adolescents.