Belgravia

BELGRAVIA, the location of Julian Fellowes's new novel, is an enclave of white townhouses with black railings covering a square mile or so to the southwest of Buckingham Palace. It was built on land belonging, then as now, to the Duke of Westminster, by Thomas Cubitt, a man who realized that polite society would pay handsomely to live within nodding distance of royalty. Its squares and terraces became, and still are, among the most desirable addresses in London. It is no surprise, then, that after spending years chronicling the inhabitants of an English country house, Fellowes should set his next enterprise in its metropolitan equivalent. There are no slums in "Belgravia," just as rural poverty doesn't intrude on the benign patriarchy of "Downton Abbey." The novel, which is largely set in the early 1840s, concerns two families, the aristocratic Bellasises, who live in a mansion on Belgrave Square, and the rather more down-market Trenchards, whose fortune stems from trade and who reside in the slightly "less magnificent" Eaton Square. The Bellasises and the Trenchards may live within strolling distance of one another, but in social terms they are worlds apart: The Bellasis family has lived off its estates for generations, while the Trenchards have made their money. James Trenchard was the Duke of Wellington's "victualler" at Waterloo and is now a backer of Thomas Cubitt. He is a "social mountaineer" who wants nothing more than to be admitted to the drawing rooms and soirees of the duchesses whose houses he builds. And in Belgravia that is beginning to be possible. As his daughter-in-law, the cynical Susan Trenchard, observes, "social climbing is notoriously harder in the country. In London people care less who you are as long as you dress properly and say the right things. In the country they are less forgiving." The aristocrats may resist, but money talks, and just as in "Downton Abbey," where the imperious Dowager Countess of Grantham was introduced to the bourgeois notion of "the weekend" by the solicitor Matthew Crawley - who by a twist of the entail had become the new heir to Downton - so the formidable Lady Brockenhurst is forced, through a secret that unites the two families, to acknowledge the nouveau riche Trenchards. The eventual merging of the Bellasis and Trenchard families is perhaps intended to serve as a metaphor for the molten technological and social change that was occurring in England in the mid-19th century. It takes the Trenchards three days to get to their country estate in Somerset by carriage, but another character can reach the northern city of Manchester, an even longer trip, in only five and a half hours on the new railroad. Fellowes and his historical consultant, Lindy Woodhead, have lost no opportunity to work in the innovations of the time - characters talk about the new red postage stamps, the telegraph (possibly a bit optimistic) and up-to-date ways to run cotton mills. The social order is being overturned, and by the end of the century landed families like the Bellasises will be so impoverished they'll be reduced to hunting for American heiresses to keep them in the style to which they've become accustomed - in other words, heiresses like Cora, Countess of Grantham. The plot devices of "Belgravia" will be familiar to anyone who has a passing acquaintance with Victorian fiction: There are missing papers, duplicitous ladies' maids, gambling debts, dubious marriage lines and long-lost heirs. The novel's chapters originally appeared online as individual "episodes," each ending with a Cliffhanger. It's a device that is, of course, a mainstay of the television serial drama, but in the 19th century it was used by novelists whose works were printed chapter by chapter in magazines like Dickens's Household Words, a device intended to keep readers coming back for more. "Belgravia" is an unashamed homage to the Victorian serial novel: There are echoes of Anthony Trollope's Lizzie Eustace from "The Eustace Diamonds" in the amoral Susan Trenchard, and of Sir Felix Carbury, from "The Way We Live Now," in the villain John Bellasis. The novel opens at the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the eve of Waterloo, which happens to be the scene of Becky Sharp's triumph in Thackeray's "Vanity Fair." Tellingly, Charles Dickens is one Victorian novelist Lord Fellowes doesn't make reference to. With his blacking factories and tragic crossing sweepers, his concern for social justice, Dickens doesn't belong among the creamy facades and clipped hedges of Belgravia. When Lady Brockenhurst and Mrs. Trenchard pay a visit to the Bishopsgate office of a young man they're both interested in, they pass through a paragraph or two of Dickens's London, a place of open sewers and "boys and girls everywhere, mostly without shoes, playing with anything that came to hand : old boxes, bricks, the empty oyster shells that littered the cobbles. One even had an ancient hoop, cast out by some son of privilege, no doubt, but these children at play were the lucky ones. Others had no time to enjoy themselves. They were too busy trying to sell anything they could lay their hands on." But then the characters go back to Belgravia, the smells and sights of the East End fade out of sight, and any sense that this is a society in ferment disappears along with them. READING "BELGRAVIA" is rather like visiting a modern re-creation of a Victorian house - every cornice molding is perfect - but it's a Victorian house with 21st-century plumbing and Wi-Fi. It's for anyone who has tried to read a 19th-century novel and become bored, say, with the demanding philosophizing in "Middlemarch" or the social misery of "Oliver Twist." The plot has plenty of surprises. Many of the female characters have been granted the hauteur and bons mots of the Dowager Countess of Grantham; a few of them even have something of the humanity of Mrs. Patmore. As you would expect, the dialogue is crisp. And there are a number of wonderful set pieces. The nervous Trenchard's first luncheon at the Athenaeum, where he is humiliated by a snooty club servant, is, as ever with Fellowes, delivered with malicious brio. But will this novel satisfy the millions of fans left disconsolate by the end of "Downton Abbey"? Anyone who relished that series for its obsession with the niceties of class distinction will find plenty to enjoy here, and there's no one like Fellowes for giving good dowager. But without the talents of great actors to turn stereotypes into human beings, much of the characterization - particularly among the downstairs cast - seems underdeveloped, and there's no score to remind us when a certain bit should bring tears to our eyes. "Belgravia" has the pace of a television show, which is welcome in a novel of 402 pages, and it has a wealth of sumptuous interiors and closely observed frocks, but anyone expecting the heart-tugging torture of Lady Mary's stuttering romance with Matthew Crawley will be disappointed. "Belgravia" has everything one would expect of a Victorian novel, apart from its sentimental heart. Leaving an English country house, Fellowes turns to its metropolitan equivalent. DAISY GOODWIN is the creator and writer of "Victoria," a "Masterpiece" presentation to be shown on PBS next January. Her novel "Victoria" will be published in November.

Fellowes, the creator of the hit TV series Downton Abbey, develops another rich cast of (mostly rich) characters, this time set in 19th-century London. Introducing the cast at a fancy ball on the day of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the story quickly moves to the 1840s, when fate brings them together again in all sorts of class-conscious episodes as varied, complex, and addictive as Fellowes's other period drama. Actor Stevenson is superb as narrator and as each and every one of the characters is given special treatment. Her British accent is entirely appropriate and perfectly clear to American listeners. She artfully distinguishes upper-, middle-, and lower-class men and women, providing each with telling vocal characteristics and tone. Together Fellowes and Stevenson hook readers from the start. A Grand Central hardcover. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Brussels on the eve of Waterloo was a place where conventions splintered and improbabilities seemed attainable. For example, young Sophia Trenchard, a child of the middle class, could marry the son of an earl. However, the young couple's love turns tragic, and many years later when the economically successful Trenchards meet the aristocratic Belasis family, their carefully constructed lives simultaneously collapse and awaken. The next generation of businessmen and aristocrats must struggle through society's expectations to find happiness-or, at least, survive. Juliet Stevenson's pacing and tone contribute to Downton Abbey creator Fellowes's tale of 19th-century culture clash. She offers a warm, likable reading of Mrs. Trenchard, which helps center her as a sympathetic heroine. The energetic, socially uncertain Mr. Trenchard, the haughty countess, the arrogant heir, the spirited ingénue, and the wily lady's maid are all amusing if stereotypical, and Stevenson punctuates their maneuvers and machinations with a clever reading. VERDICT If there is fault to be found with this book, it is that it is over too quickly. Recommended.-Juleigh Muirhead Clark, -Colonial Williamsburg Fdn. Lib., VA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.