Review by New York Times Review
is it possible nowadays for otherwise intelligent Americans to reflect on England without thinking first of "Downton Abbey"? To put it another way: Can beleaguered American publishers expect to sell any English author without promising - however absurdly - a tie-in with Julian Fellowes's opulent confection? I wonder. But in the case of Catherine Bailey's stylish new book about one of England's grandest dynasties, the link proves apt. Readers of "The Secret Rooms" couldn't ask for a more storied setting or, indeed, for more rooms (a respectable 356). For nearly a thousand years, Belvoir Castle has been the ancestral seat of the Manners family. Bailey, a British television producer and director, initially set out to write about the valiant working men of the Belvoir estate who fought in World War I, a book that surely would have been the more historically valuable contribution. Still, we might forgive her for settling instead on the narrower, intimate family drama contained in these pages. Here, among other things, is the story of a sad, gentle boy who grew up to be a deeply troubled man. Born in 1886, John Manners, ninth Duke of Rutland, had the misfortune to come of age not only in brutal times but among real brutes. Even by the grim standards of the day, he was the recipient of dreadful parenting. Wasn't it insult enough to be the "spare" in a world that prized first sons above all others? It could have been worse. Dwindling family coffers aside, a glorious accident of birth assured John an enviably cosseted existence. And the mysterious death of his 9-year-old brother elevated him, at age 8, to the status of heir. So what if Mother and Father thwarted and belittled his every ambition? At least he inherited Belvoir. But if we know anything from watching "Downton Abbey," it's that one man's castle is another's gilded cage. John's was especially claustrophobic. How fitting, then, that he should have spent his final days in some of Belvoir's smallest, dreariest rooms - the secret rooms of this book's title. In pages more reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe than Evelyn Waugh, Bailey opens with John's death, on April 21,1940, inside the cheerless Belvoir Castle archives. Exactly what he was doing there - in an oxygen tent, surrounded by several centuries' worth of family papers, working frantically on something - is the proverbial question. Why we should care isn't immediately apparent. But it soon emerges that John's son sealed these rooms after his father's death. "He knew there was something bad in there," a family member tells Bailey, "but he couldn't bring himself to confront it." Sure enough, John had things to hide. Excisions abounded in the family papers. Casting herself in the role of sleuth, Bailey narrates a first-person account of her journey in search of John's demons. Naturally, they originated in childhood - with the death, in 1894, of his elder brother, Haddon. I'll leave it to readers to decide whether John was responsible, but suffice to say that his melancholic father and redoubtable mother punished him with obvious zeal well into adulthood. They banished him from Belvoir after Haddon's funeral, sent him to stay with an uncle during school holidays, even resented his enjoyment of a family house intended for poor dead Haddon. With its steady stream of Cliffhangers, "The Secret Rooms" sometimes feels overengineered, but at its best the book reminds us why this seemingly insignificant story bears telling. Like others of his station and rank, John must have entered World War I, at least in part, as an effort to help stem the rushing tide of class resentment that was tearing Britain asunder. He also joined because he wanted to be someone other, as his sister put it, than "the last male issue of our noble house." His mother would have none of it. "The trenches," she reminded her children, "were certain death." So out of dynastic duty - with nary a hint of maternal devotion - she orchestrated various schemes to keep John from the Western Front. This was the duchess's most grievous crime against her already haunted son. Bailey reminds us that 249 men from the Belvoir estate, which encompassed 30 villages, were killed in action. One can only imagine how difficult it must have been for the ninth Duke of Rutland to look their family members in the eye. KIRK DAVIS SWINEHART is writing a book about Sir William Johnson, Britain's 18th-century diplomat to the American Indians.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 5, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
While researching a book on WWI, historian Bailey stumbled on a crackerjack real-life mystery revolving around the life and times of John Henry Montagu Manners, the ninth Duke of Rutland. A meticulous curator who organized his illustrious family's documents and correspondence, he died in the archives suite of Belvoir Castle in 1940, refusing medical treatment until he completely expunged all records pertaining to three distinct yet interrelated periods in his life. As Bailey painstakingly unearths secret after secret in order to deduce what really happened between the years 1894 to 1915, the ghosts of scandals past surface in full force. Populated with a bevy of real-life aristos who played by their own twisted and privileged set of rules, a searing portrait of family intrigue, dysfunction, and hubris a la Downton Abbey emerges.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
While researching another book, historian Bailey uncovered mysterious gaps in the correspondence of the 9th Duke of Rutland, John Manners. Wondering who had removed the letters, she unravels secret after secret of the wealthy family at Belvoir Castle circa WWI. These include coded messages, a cover-up of a young boy's death, disputes over inherited property, and possible military desertion. Bailey brings to life the calculating matriarch, Violet, Duchess of Rutland, who abandons John as a child and then tries to control every aspect of his life in adulthood via surveillance and emotional manipulation. She ruthlessly pursues a potential wife for her son and orchestrates a massive campaign to have him removed from the war's front lines that involved prostituting her daughter to a married military adviser. Bailey also recalls some of the major events of the war, including the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, where Britain suffered massive casualties while John was kept safe, due to his mother's machinations, and the Battle of Hill 60 at Ypres, where the Germans first used chemical weapons. Bailey deserves commendation for her meticulous research as well as her storytelling. Illus. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A British documentary producer and historian creates a bang-up detective story around mysterious gaps in the archives chronicling the sad tale of the ninth Duke of Rutland. The master of the Belvoir Castle, commanding thousands of acres and priceless treasures dating from the 11th century, the Duke of Rutland--John Henry Montagu Manners--died of pneumonia in the bowels of his keep in April 1940, not long after a top-secret convoy of royal documents was delivered to the castle for safekeeping during the war. Bailey is truly a dogged detective in getting at the essential questions surrounding the reclusive duke's labored death: What was he so keen on finishing before he would give up the ghost? An obsessive archivist, he had spent the last decades of his life carefully sifting through and cataloging the records pertaining to his family history, even before King George VI had sanctioned the evacuation of important national documents to the castle. In 2008, Bailey was allowed access to the duke's private sanctuary, which had been sealed after his death. In her tireless digging, she discovered three important omissions of material encompassing three distinct dates in John's life: August 1894, when he was 8 and his older brother, then heir to the dukedom, suddenly took ill and died; June 1909, when he was 22 and corresponding with his uncle in cipher about his father, who had attempted to sell off his inheritance; and, finally, during much of 1915, when he was supposed to be serving on the western front but instead returned home to Belvoir at the instigation of his mother. What Bailey essentially uncovers is an entire moribund way of life in the great aristocratic families and the shockingly self-serving privilege put before the sense of national purpose. A compelling expos on the once-almighty laws of ducal inheritance.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
