One of the charms of the novel is how Mrs Palfrey and Ludo cope with the risks and difficulties that this deception gives rise to, including a visit by le vrai Desmond. Mrs Palfrey achieves a grandson and a visitor and establishes her status among the residents. It also allows him an opportunity for some research. Ludo, who is lonely himself and attracted by the adventure of play-acting agrees to stand in as Mrs Palfrey’s grandson. Her grandson Desmond has failed to visit her at the Claremont. Having fallen in the street, she is rescued by Ludo, a young writer. Upon this group Mrs Palfrey practices a deceit. She moves into the Claremont Hotel on the Cromwell Road in London, joining a small group of elderly residents. Mrs Palfrey is a genteel widow, needing to live somewhere, not invited and not minded to share a home with her daughter in Scotland. She would have made a distinguished-looking man, and sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag. She was a tall woman with big bones and a noble face, dark eyebrows and a neatly folded jowl.
And it may also be that because of her Home Counties life and classic good looks she has the undeserved reputation of writing about and for middle class women. Perhaps one reason for that can be discerned from the title of her biography by Nicola Beauman The Other Elizabeth Taylor, published by the champion of neglected C20th writers, Persephone. Despite this attention Elizabeth Taylor remains relatively unknown, relative to the quality of her writing that is. David Baddiel talked about this novel on 5 th July 2012 for Radio 4’s Bookclub, and there have been a couple of films adaptations of the novels Angel and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. 2012 was the centenary of her birth, celebrated with reissues in the Virago Modern Classic series. She died in 1975 aged 63 having produced 12 novels as well as five short story collections. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont was Elizabeth Taylor’s last novel, published in 1971. Can you think of others? How does this wonderful novelist deal with an older woman?
I chose this novel for the blog’s first reading group for two reasons: first because I think Elizabeth Taylor is a great writer and second, because the main character is an older woman and this is unusual.
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