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Welcome to our first week of the discussion on Diana Tempest! I'm starting the thread a day earlier as I will have a hectic Sunday.

Summary of Chapters 1-7

The story begins with Colonel Tempest's journey to his family estate of Overliegh where his brother, Jack Tempest, the head of the family, is dying. On his way he reminisces about his life, delving specifically of his late wife. We learn that he has married the betrothed of his married by eloping with her and that following this incident, the brothers have been estranged.

The reception of Colonel Tempest by his brother, Jack, is cold despite being at the end of his life journey. There is no hope for being forgiven and reconciled. But Colonel Tempest is not ready to retreat from his specific mission. That is to succeed to the estate of his brother upon his death. This is specifically denied, and the brother announces his decision to pass it all to his son. Curiously we learn that his son, John Tempest, is not Jack Tempest's son but a result of the adultery of his wife. Nevertheless, he has raised the child as his own and passes his estate to him entirely on his death.

After the death of his brother, Jack, Colonel Tempest challenges his will with no success. The entire estate is settled upon John Tempest. In his frenzy, he enters into a bet staking John's life. He immediately regrets the decision but Mr. Swayne, the lawyer who set it in motion has disappeared. Years later Colonel meets him and requests to withdraw the bet but in vain.

The horror of his actions haunts him, and he lives in perpetual terror. Colonel Tempest doesn't care one iota about John. He is always jealous of the John who he thinks robs him and his son of their right to a huge wealth. But the idea of him being responsible for any accident on John is horrifying to him.

We're introduced to John Tempest, Diana Tempest, and Mrs. Courteney. The story is a bit diverted from the Tempests with the marriage between Madeleine and Sir Henry Verelst.

At a social gathering, Diana and John are introduced as cousins.

Themes

Greed:

Colonel Tempest is a vain person who loves money. Duty and loyalty mean nothing to him. And when it comes to money, the man knows no shame. He rushes to his brother's death bedside just to make his brother disinherit his own claimed son John. And in doing so, he unashamedly forgets the wrong he'd done him.

Parentage:

A legal question is discussed here. John is not Jack Tempest's son but his wife's. But since his birth had happened while his mother is married to Jack Tempest, it is legally assumed that John is Jack Tempest's son and heir.

Marrying for money:

Through Madeleine's marriage to Sir Henry, we could see how the society ladies market themselves to make advantages matches. It's the wealth and the ensuing comfort and the privilege that they count on. Love, loyalty, and respect are almost non existent.

What did you make out of our first segment?

How did you like the characters? I'd like to know especially what you thought of our Colonel Tempest. :)

Please feel free to share your thoughts and views on this segment.

I was surprised how often I laughed out loud, or grinned maliciously, while reading these chapters. Cholmondeley wields a sharp pen, and I hope she keeps doing so throughout the book.

The Colonel is the character described in most detail, and the portrait is well-drawn: a man who attributes all the evils that befall him to someone else, or the world at large; and then forgets what is disagreeable ... until he comes across something he cannot forget.

I am not sure (yet) whether Cholmondeley's caustic remarks on religion are her own or those of the character only? such as

the consolations of religion, or rather of the Church, which he had always understood to be a sort of mental chloroform for uneasy consciences, did not seem to meet his case
(which reminds of Karl Marx)

Even religiosity (the patent medicine of the spiritual life of the age—the universal pain-killer) ...

My favourite quote comes from Diana's lips:

often as I have been bridesmaid I never stood behind a bride with a better fitting back. I suppose the survival of the best fitted is what we are coming to in these days.

sabagrey wrote: "I was surprised how often I laughed out loud, or grinned maliciously, while reading these chapters. Cholmondeley wields a sharp pen, and I hope she keeps doing so throughout the book.

The Colonel..."

I agree with you that Cholmondeley wields a sharp pen. It is the key attraction to the story. I too was much entertained by her writing.

Colonel Tempest is a shallow man full of self-love, and I also thought that Cholmondeley has portrayed him well.

In the first seven chapters I felt the need to highlight sixteen passages, some for their wit, some revealing the perception of the author and others for her accurate descriptions of characters and scenarios.

The first one I highlighted could almost have been written by Oscar Wilde but even he might not have had the necessary perception to write it.

� It is the good fortune of shallow men so thoroughly to understand women, that they can see through even the noblest of them; though of course that deeper insight into the hypocrisy practised by the whole sex about their fancied ailments, and inconveniently wounded feelings for their own petty objects, is reserved for selfish men alone.�

The author’s damning description of Colonel Tempest, a man whose overwhelming selfishness leads him to believe that a touch of gout is more painful than childbirth, creates the plausibility of the evil that he is capable of committing.
Both amongst the people of the ‘good� society that the author describes, and then out of his depth with criminal classes, Colonel Tempest displays both his arrogance and foolishness. Unfortunately his actions bring both misery to his long suffering wife and potential murderous disaster because of the foolish bet with Mr. Swayne.

� Colonel Tempest's temper was like a curate's gun. You could never tell when it might not go off, or in what direction. It went off now with an explosion. It had been at full cock all the morning.

Mary Cholmondeley seemed to deliberately keep us waiting for the introduction of her main character, Diana Tempest. Some cleverly designed hints in the earlier chapters maintained the suspense until she finally arrived in the pretentious flat of her ‘friend� Madeleine. What a contrast between the two. Both are good looking but the author makes a distinction between beauty and prettiness. In fact, Madeleine’s prettiness is largely the result of make up, reflecting the shallow society circles in which her life exists. A first impression of Diana is a formidable one, particularly in the way she keeps the men at bay. She seems determined not to fall in the same trap as her mother. We haven’t been told how much of her mother’s story she knows, but how else could she gain the knowledge/skills necessary to keep even men she likes at arms length?

For an author sometimes said to indulge in melodrama, I thought this quote was highly perceptive.

� The moments of our most important decisions are often precisely those in which nothing seems to have been decided; and only long afterwards, when we perceive with astonishment that the Rubicon has been crossed, do we realize that in that half-forgotten instant of hesitation as to some apparently unimportant side issue, in that unconscious movement that betrayed a feeling of which we were not aware, our choice was made. The crises of life come, like the Kingdom of Heaven, without observation.�

Diana’s grandmother seems to have allowed her granddaughter some freedom to soak up and understand the specious character of society life. I liked the way the author described Mrs. Courteney’s own life experience.

� Her calm keen face bore the marks of much suffering, but of suffering that had been outlived………�
………� The pain was past; the experience remained; therein lay the secret of her power and her popularity, for she had both.�

The meeting between John Tempest of Overleigh and Diana Tempest seemed significant. The author noted that they were the same height and looked each other straight in the eye. But will John still be alive in order that Diana may meet with her ‘ugly� cousin again?

Another excerpt from the biography I quoted in the ‘background� thread�

� Mary Cholmondeley’s feeling for place gives substance to what might otherwise seem a hackneyed theme. The stately homes she describes in such loving detail are based on real ones, which she knew intimately—Condover Hall, for example, where her father grew up, becomes Stoke Morton in her first two novels; Gilling Castle in Yorkshire is Overleigh in Diana Tempest. �

Here is Gilling Castle as it looks today.



It is situated in North Yorkshire on the North York Moors, about 15 miles from York. There has been a castle/manor house on the site since the 12th century.

Here are the paintings mentioned in the description of Madeleine’s apartment.

� The pictures themselves were mostly sentimental or religious. Leighton's "Wedded" hung as a pendant to "The Light of the World."�

Thank you for the images & the background information!

I confess I am too hasty most of the time when I read a book for the first time, and simply pass over the details. ... I shouldn't, but then I'm too curious how the plot develops.

Fro the description, I had imagined the castle being older.

sabagrey wrote: "Thank you for the images & the background information!


Fro the description, I had imagined the castle being older...."

Mary Cholmondeley’s description of Overleigh does give the impression of an older, more rugged castle standing on an outcrop of rock above a crag. But even though the area is not too far from York, the North York Moors are quite wild and remote. I loved it when the Colonel and his son neared the castle and Archie saw deer and then said to his father.

� "Are the lions and the tigers loose too?" he inquired, with grave interest, but without anxiety, as his eyes followed a little band of fallow deer skimming across the turf.� 😂

Thanks for sharing the pictures and additional information, Trev. All of them add insight to the story, and also, help us better shape our mental images.

Trev wrote: "In the first seven chapters I felt the need to highlight sixteen passages, some for their wit, some revealing the perception of the author and others for her accurate descriptions of characters and..."

Thank you for your thorough, impressive comment, Trev. The quotations you've marked are indeed remarkable. Cholmondeley is a gifted writer, no doubt.

I quite agree with you that the author has communicated well the character of Colonel Tempest to us readers. A shallow, selfish man like him has no scruples as we can see from the betting incident. Of course, he repents immediately. But that too because of the superstitious fear of the consequence to him and not any harm to the little boy!

Diana indeed looks like a formidable character. Even from this brief introduction, one can see that she is a woman who knows her mind well. I think she keeps Lord Hemsworth at bay because she knows that she doesn't love or care for him in the way that she should love and care for a husband. She likes him as a good friend.

The description of the meeting between Diana and John was interesting. The way she has described their height and how they stared unquailingly at each other shows that they have equal power. John seems to be smitten by her. It is interesting to know how far that'll go and what Diana's reaction would be.

Chapter 3 - "The Bet":

I confess I have a hard time understanding "the bet", and how it would work out. I feel that the bet may become a relevant thread in the plot, so I am trying to have it clear in my mind.

“what's the harm of betting a thousand pounds to one sovereign that you never come into the property? It ain't likely, as you say. What's the harm of a bet, provided you don't mind risking your money? Let's say, just for the sake of—of argument, that there was ten bets—ten bets at a thousand to one that you never come in. Ten thousand pounds to pay, if you come in after all.� So ...

The colonel bets 1:1000 that John survives
If John survives, he wins 10 000.
If John dies, he pays the 10 000 pounds. - which is only a small sum compared to his inheritance.
So far, so good.

Mr. A is one of the 10 bettors.
Mr. A bets 1000:1 that the colonel will survive.
Mr. A has an interest in John dying.
If John dies, Mr. A wins 1000 pounds.
I have to assume that Mr. A does not deposit any *real* money with Swayne, maybe just the symbolic 1 sovereign. If he really invested 1000 pounds, would he not demand much more in return (plus interest) than just this sum (or less, see below)?

Mr. Swayne must make a deal with Mr. A to get his share of the 1000 pounds; he wants to benefit, too, and of course he has to "invest" beforehand to hire killers (and each failed attempt adds to the cost ... plus the interest accumulating over the years). Let's say he demands 20 %, i.e. he gets 2000 pounds in total, and Mr. A gets only 800 out of it. (20 % seems a modest share for someone like Swayne)

The gentlemen who bet have an interest in having John killed - but would a profit of 800 pounds or less be enough for any one of them to contemplate murder? They must smell a rat with all those "accidents" that happen to John ... One or the other would want to draw out of it.

And why on earth should Swayne implicate other people in the bet (which must be a risk), if he has to invest his own money in the murder? He could as well make a deal with the colonel alone, and take the 10 000 for himself. - Or is this maybe what he does, and the story of the 10 bettors is fake? (knowing that he can disappear if he loses, or that the colonel would not dare to pursue him for the money?)

I hope you will tell me where my thinking has got muddled up ... or is my thinking just too pragmatic for a Victorian plot device, and I should stop asking such questions?

I too did a lot of thinking about Mr. Swayne’s ‘bet.�

My thinking was this - and I could well be wrong.

Mr. Swayne has an underworld gang (or disparate group) of lowlife willing to murder someone for a price. In effect they are contract killers.

The colonel’s ‘bet,� in effect is his stake of £10,000 whereas the contract killers� stakes are only £1. The colonel only pays out £10,000 if John is killed. But the colonel would also hit the jackpot by inheriting the rest of Tempest estate on John’s death.

The Fagan-like Mr. Swayne will probably pocket a hefty commission as you have intimated, so all the interested parties involved in the plot would be better off if John was murdered. I think Mr. Swayne’s talk of a ‘bet� is just a way of putting a glossy coating on what is in fact a heinous crime.

Mr. Swayne has kept out of the colonel’s way because he knows that the colonel has realised he has been tricked into involving himself in a contract killing and the ‘bet� was just a front for it.

The issue for me is that there seems to be no time limit on the ‘bet� which means that the ‘bet� continues until John dies…� or did I miss something?

Ah! thank you! - yes, it makes sense to follow the thought that I only came upon at the end, after having gone through the "bet" scheme: that it was indeed just a contract murder scheme of Swayne, no bettors involved.

Does the colonel really know this, or does he honestly believe there is a bet? Does he maybe know it somehow, but does not allow himself to admit it (he's good at that kind of thinking)?

And no, I am not aware of any time limit ... the only "natural" time limits would be either John's or the colonel's death.

(if I were Swayne, I would try to get the 10000 or a bit more out of John directly, as the price for his life - and spare myself the cost and trouble of multiple assaults; the colonel need never know)

We'll have to wait for the chapters to come ,...

My understanding of the bet is also similar to Trev's, although I admit I didn't give much significance to its details. As I figured it is an open death warrant for an indefinite period on John's life. So yes, the "bet" is only a decent cover for a heinous crime.

The "bet" is not really a bet, but an acceptable way of making it clear to the Colonel that Swayne can arrange for John's death. If Swayne said straight out that he could have John killed, he knows the Colonel could not, as a gentleman, accept the arrangement. So he comes up with this complicated language of a bet--but the Colonel understands that he is to pay £10,000 if John dies.

I have to say I love Mary Cholmondeley's writing! She sounds more early 20th century than Victorian, a sign of how fast the world was changing at the turn of the century. Diana, too, is "modern" in her reluctance to commit herself to a man. I rather like that she is kept away from the reader at the start, so that the relationships we see are those of the brothers and then the male cousins.

Well summed up what the "bet" is all about, Jane. I too like Mary Cholmondeley's writing. Her language is much easier than the early Victorian writers. Some Victorian authors have experimented with the concept of "modern" women. And as we see from Diana Tempest, the trend seems to have continued.