At Lady Molly's

Book by Anthony Powell

At Lady Molly's is the fourth volume in Anthony Powell's twelve novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1957, At Lady Molly's is set in England of the mid 1930s and is essentially a comedy of manners, but in the background, the rise of Hitler and of worldwide Fascism are not ignored. The driving theme of At Lady Molly's is married life; marriages – as practised or mooted – among the narrator's (Nick Jenkins) acquaintances in bohemian society and the landed classes are pondered. Meanwhile, the career moves of various characters are advanced, checked or put on hold. The portrait of the aristocratic Tolland family is sourced in part from Powell's own in laws, the Pakenhams.

General Aylmer Conyers. Known immemorially to the Jenkins family. Perhaps distant relation to Nick's mother. Disliked by Uncle Giles who, typically, regarded the General as Inclined to think a good deal of himself and that he always knew the right people to further his career. A few years short of eighty and prospective brother in law to Widmerpool. Retired from the Army around his early fifties, shortly after marrying Bertha Blaides. Busies himself training Poodles to be gun dogs, learning the Cello, reading the latest literary fiction (Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography Uncle Giles mentions an episode from the general's career, arming the Palace eunuchs with rook rifles, which is echoed in the ambassador scenes of Sally Potter's 1997 film Orlando) and studying psycho analysis. Diagnoses Widmerpool as an intuitive extrovert a classic case, almost and Nick as an introvert. Conyers is a member of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms. Mrs. Bertha Conyers. Older sister of Mildred Haycock. A generation younger than her husband, General Conyers. They have one child, Charlotte – a rather colourless girl who marries a Naval officer in Malta. Bertha herself was one of six daughters of the late and not much lamented Lord Vowchurch, a rather grim practical joker. All six daughters lived their early lives in disgrace for none of them being a boy. Cousin to Baby Wentworth. Mildred Haycock, née Blaides. Nick suspects that she is probably insane. Younger sister of Bertha Conyers. A V. A. D. during the First World War, Nick first sees her while visiting the Conyers flat with his mother towards Christmas 1916. The next time he sees her he is at Lady Molly's. Mildred, who is twice widowed by then with two teenage children and has slept with every old timer between Cannes and St. Tropez, walks into the room with her new fiancé Widmerpool. During the war Mildred nursed at Dogdene where she met Lady Molly and also became close to Alice, the successive Lady Sleaford. Lady Molly Jeavons. Who could boast that my grandfather had ninety seven first cousins and he was only three up my grandmother on my mother's side was an Ardglass, sister to Jumbo Ardglass and to the present Lady Katherine Warminster. She married Lord John Sleaford, Chips Lovell's first Sleaford Uncle at eighteen straight from the Ballroom. The marriage was childless. Whilst Lady Sleaford she was mistress of the magnificent Sleaford seat of Dogdene. The house was used as a military hospital during the First World War. It was at this time that she got to know Mildred Blaides and also met Captain Jeavons. Lord John Sleaford died of the Spanish flu in 1919 and the title passed to his brother Geoffery Lovell's second Sleaford Uncle. Molly again met Cap. Teddy Jeavons at the car show at the Olympia and they later married. Living on, as Lovell surmised, about £100 a year of her own money with Jeavons not bringing in a cent the Jeavonses' kept open house at their home at South Kensington, a social no man's land where one could meet all kinds (excepting working class types unless they were employees). It was at Lady Molly's that Widmerpool first met Mildred, Mrs Haycock. Nick Jenkins re encounters Alfred Tolland and Mark Members there. Captain Teddy Jeavons. Lady Molly's second husband. Badly wounded during the war and awarded the Military Medal. Nick finds him intriguing although he finds in the last resort his company was exhausting rather than stimulating and thinks of him as having a mind seething with forgotten melodies, forever stirring him to indiscretion by provoking memories of an enchanted past. Mark Members, whom Jeavons asked about snooker, offered a Gold Flake cigarette and tried to sell a patent device, looked upon him with absolute horror. Widmerpool dismisses Jeavons as a failure and dull. Later it transpires that Jeavons had a wartime fling with Mildred Blaides and there is a strong hint that he again has sex with her while she is engaged to Widmerpool an act that Widmerpool signally fails to perform. Lord Alfred Warminster. Erry (short for Erridge, his first title) to his family, Alf to Quiggin. In his early thirties and most probably still a virgin. Lonely, socially inept, unkempt Left wing Peer. Frugal and stingy in personal interaction but free with his money to those social causes that he feels passionate about – the latter a trait which makes him very attractive to J. G. Quiggin and one that Mona Templer indicates that she aims to cure him of. Egotistical, worries about his health and used to having his own way. First mention of this character was in A Buyer's Market when his name was announced at the Huntercombes party. Lady Frederica Budd. Widowed. Eldest of the Tolland sisters. A lady in waiting and great friend of Mrs Conyers. Priscilla Tolland. Youngest of the Tollands and desired by Chips Lovell
Norah Tolland. A lesbian living with Eleanor Walpole Wilson in some squalor at a flat in Chelsea
Susan Tolland. Turns up with Isobel at Thrubworth and announces her engagement to Roddy Cutts (who looks into the Conservative Central Office once in a way). Isobel Tolland. A bit of a highbrow when she isn't going to night clubs according to Chips Lovell, Nick meets her at Thrubworth and they are engaged by the last chapter. Long legged and witty. Blanche Tolland. Regarded by the Tolland family as being dotty. Katherine Warminster. Sister of Lady Molly. Widowed stepmother to the ten Tollands. Lives at Hyde Park Gardens where life could be ruthless but at the same time a curtain of relatively good humour was allowed to cloak an inexorable recognition of life's inevitable severities. To Nick's mind she has an unearthly, witch like quality. A hypochondriac, she spends most of her time in her bedroom writing lightly researched histories of powerful women – Empress Maria Theresa of Austria her current subject. Lord Warminster had spent most of their married life fishing in Iceland or pig sticking in Bengal. but a great deal of facility. Appears in an act with Max Pilgrim at Dickie Umfraville's night club. Neighbour of Norah Tolland and Eleanor Walpole Wilson. Mrs. Betty Taylor or Porter. Peter Templer's new girlfriend whose last name he can't remember although he regards her as rather a peach. Peter Templer. Meets Nick at Umfraville's night club. Mona Templer. Living in a cottage with Quiggin on Erridge's Thrubworth estate. Bored, she fancies becoming a film star but runs off to China with Erridge instead. Mark Members. No longer writing Freudian inspired verse and has thrown over his half hearted adherence to communism. Now he has a variety of jobs of a literary kind which keep him in funds. Trying to move up in the social world which is why he regards the people he meets at Lady Molly's reception as being great disappointments. Quiggin. Now a well regarded critic, although his Unburnt Boats remains a work in progress. He has become a hanger on of Erridge, Alf Warminster, whom he hopes will finance a new magazine with Quiggin as director. His Left wing bombast and odd regional idioms reach new heights. Widmerpool. Becomes engaged, contracts jaundice again, see A Buyer's Market , gets cuckolded and then jilted. Has a terrible and dramatic scene at Dogdene. Politically he is an Appeaser. Nick Jenkins. His twenty eight year old (or thereabouts) self has become more assertive and outspoken when interacting with his contemporaries (although Widmerpool still renders him speechless).

"What, then, is the central theme of the series? Creativity – the act of production. Of literature, of books, of paintings, of music; that is what most of the central characters are engaged in for the whole of their lives. Moreland composes, Barnby paints, X Trapnel writes, Quiggin, Members and Maclintick criticise and the narrator publishes books and then becomes a writer. What excites the novelist is music and painting, literature and criticism. It's this creativity, together with the comedy of everyday life, that sustains the Dance"