So sad. I knew as soon as I saw this was written by Arnold Bennet it was going to be good. The characters are so realistic. Mr Clayhanger senior is a typical Victorian. I remember a few from when I was a child, I am that old. My own grandfather was one. He married very late in life, almost 50 years old and my father was born in 1923. I was born in 1952 and my grandfather died in 1957. Typically Victorian down to the way he bullied his children and when that didn't work anymore he tried to manipulate them through changing his will, depending on who had crossed him most recently. My father was the lucky one on that merry-go-round, he had been written out of the will but then his sister did something their father didn't like he changed his will in my father's favour and then he died. Poor Auntie Florence, who had taken care of him since he was a widower was left with virtually nothing. Even though this is set well over a hundred years ago it still has the ring of familiarity for me.
I always wonder why siblings who have been cut in by a controlling parent's will don't share with those who have been cut out. They've all been brought up in the same unhealthy environment and know it could just as easily have been them left standing when the music stops in their manipulative parent's inconstant game of musical chairs. I'm sure some do but guess most don't. It would take a very selfless sibling to ignore the wishes of the father when ignoring them meant losing some of their own inheritance. From my own experience, not all Victorians were created alike! Of my own grandfathers, one was born in the 1870s and one in the 1890s (I was born in the late 1950s so perhaps a family pattern not unlike that of your own). The one from the 1870s was warm and kind, the one from the 1890s was an "Old Mr. Clayhanger," so much so that I feel my blood pressure rising in the scenes where Old Clayhanger is berating his son so mercilessly. Young people today think of the late Victorian era as a history as ancient as that of the Egyptian Pharaohs, but we know it was not that long ago, don't we?. I have to laugh at their incredulity when I tell them I have vivid memories of many people born in the 1800s! They really have a hard time believing it haha!
