TROY CHIMNEYS

A sophisticated historical novel set in Regency England explores the moral dilemmas and internal conflicts of politician Miles Lufton, an unsettled figure.

Best known for her novel The Constant Nymph, Kennedy, author of many works of fiction, died in 1967. This book, first published in 1953 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, offers an unusual character portrait revealed through complex layers of narration (diaries, letters) bound together with a nonlinear timeline. Lufton, son of a clergyman and one of seven children, is a clever and ambitious boy who will grow up ever conscious of disparities of class, connection, and property: “I was nobody, because I was heir to nothing.” He enjoys the pleasures of wealth but is uncertain of direction—should he become a clergyman, too, or study law? Eventually he finds a role as a Member of Parliament, but even that leaves him dissatisfied. And then there’s the question of identity. Miles sees himself as two people, his thoughtful self outshone by the “universal geniality” of his more ebullient side. There are two women in his life, the first a survivor of the French Revolution who marries a cousin instead and, later, Caroline Audley, who discerns the same split in his makeup: “The private Mr. Lufton likes solitude and hates the world. The political Mr. Lufton never forgets his duty, and will pay compliments before breakfast.” Caught between these two personae, the dissatisfactions of his career, and other complicated involvements with friends both rich and poor, Lufton's path is at times a melancholy one which Kennedy interrupts to offer disquisitions on belief, suffering, happiness, and self-knowledge. The historic tone is captured with erudition and wit, while the dilemmas of the novel’s flawed hero have a distinctly contemporary edge.

For the right Anglophile reader, a pleasing curiosity.