Monday 6 June 2016


What a gorgeous afternoon to spend in the cinema ... I did feel a bit guilty.  No wonder there were only three people there.
I can't find my copy of Lady Susan, and it must be 40 years since I read it. I'm guessing that the film is a tiny bit naughtier than Jane Austen dared to be. (That honeymoon baby ... surely not!) It was all good fun, like a lovely-looking cream puff, though my attention was wandering by the end ...
What I really loved were the gorgeous Georgian locations in Ireland, which made such a change from the usual National Trust properties that get rolled out again and again.


Especially as I've just finished reading this book, which is very scholarly and a bit more than I needed to know but interspersed with good anecdotes.

When I got home, I looked up the film locations; they're all there ... 



Newbridge House was known for incessant card playing, which would surely have suited Lady Susan especially as it was a source of income for ladies who played their cards right.

Tradition says that the tables were laid for it on rainy days at 10 o'clock in the morning in Newbridge drawing room; and on every day in the interminable evenings which followed the then fashionable four o'clock dinner. My grandmother was so excellent a whist-player that to extreme old age in Bath she habitually made a small, but appreciable addition to her income out of her 'card purse', an ornamental appendage of the toilet then, and even in my time, in universal use.' Frances Power Cobbe.  

I'm wondering if the interiors were Howth Castle,. which is still a family home. To think that when I worked in Dublin, I used to stroll on Howth Head in the evenings after work, then go for a fish supper ...

3 comments:

Mystica said...

Sounds very good.

mary said...

The costumes are lovely, too, Mystica.

Vintage Reading said...

Georgian houses are just so elegant. I love the fanlights over the door. Not sure whether to see the film or not - I'm always disappointed by Austen films.