Rakes, ruin and refinement

We often think of eighteenth-century England as a Gainsborough canvas or a group of Reynolds portraits: dignified, neoclassical, and measured. And yet, what probably comes closer to the truth is Hogarth’s violent caricatures of Gin Lane and the tetraptych of Humours of an Election. For Georgian Britain, its capital and its countryside alike, was full of rakes, fashionable gamblers and philanders, drunks and ruthless politicians.

Whigs and Tories – but mostly Whigs among themselves – vied for place and patronage. Of course, it was also a country where the arts and literature were cultivated, where great houses and churches were designed by the likes of Vanbrugh and Gibbs, and where the peculiarly English style of landscape gardening took off. It was also a century in which British taste looked across the Channel to Europe as never before – the Grand Tour helped there.

Savage House, directed by Peter Glanz, is a cinematic portrayal of the age of the Georges that would make William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox alike proud to have been Georgians.

The focus is on the Savages, an impoverished couple of noble lineage: Lady Savage (Claire Foy) and her adventurer husband, Sir Chauncey (Richard E. Grant), who live in a Yorkshire country house with their daughter Fanny (Kila Lord Cassidy) and a handful of servants. The film is set at the beginning of George I’d reign — probably in 1715, as we still hear about the threats of Jacobitism in the country surrounding the big house. Then, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire inform the Savages that they intend to visit them during their Yorkshire tour. The family sell all their family heirlooms and get into enormous debt in anticipation of the ducal visit that they hope will elevate them socially once again. Meanwhile, Sir Chauncey’s valet, Reginald Halifax (Jack Farthing), and his secret lover, the chambermaid Dorothy Neville (Bel Powley), are conspiring to end their employers’ marriage and murder the lord of the manor, to their own financial benefit.

The family surname is perhaps a wink to Dr Johnson, who wrote Life of Mr Savage. Richard Savage was a minor Georgian poet, who claimed to be the natural son of the Countess of Macclesfield and Richard Savage, 4^th Earl Rivers, and cultivated grand connections, ran perpetually into debt, and died in Bristol Newgate gaol for it. Chapeau to the screenwriter and top marks in first-year Georgian History.

There is a Waiting for Godot quality to the film. The Devonshires are ever-present but never arrive – choosing another, more glamorous host in the end – leading to the financial ruin of the Savages and the husband’s imprisonment. Royal progresses in Elizabethan times beggared hosts, such as the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth in 1575. That fear, but also excitement, of entertaining royalty or a great magnate above one’s station and one’s means persisted well into the eighteenth century. It’s a  reminder that the art of social climbing in Georgian Britain was a sophisticated skill and required great chance — but also style. Sir Chauncey is in the end just another outsider, keenly aware of his social inferiority, bringing to mind the Irishman Barry Lyndon in Thackeray’s novel. 

Indeed, Kubrick’s cinematography is a clear influence, and Savage House carries a Lyndon-esque feeling throughout. Two Kubrickian techniques stand out: the use of light, and the candlelit scenes that make the film look at times like an eighteenth-century conversation piece. Classical music, too, is used to advance the plot and to heighten the tension of a scene. When Purcell’s funeral music for Queen Mary plays during the scene of Halley’s eclipse, it does what Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto in E minor does through the narrative passages of Barry Lyndon. The final giveaway, of course, is the narrator’s voice, guiding us through the rise and fall of Sir Chauncey, as it does for Lyndon.

This is a refreshing break from recent historical dramas

This is a refreshing break from recent historical dramas, in the vein of Visconti and Merchant Ivory for its historical accuracy and the fondness (although not idealisation) with which the director approaches his story and characters. The costumes convince, as do the historical references. See: the animated political chatter between Sir Chauncey and his snobbish neighbour Mr Bennett (Richard McCabe) about Jacobitism and the “German king” on the throne, Sir Chauncey’s gout, even the fonts of the newspapers.

The film is by turns rollicking, tragic, funny, and poignant. Richard E. Grant alternates between a Georgian adventurer and Withnail from his earlier cinematic incarnation, whilst Foy is compelling as his long-suffering wife, who shares in his ambition — but not in his tragic end.

The movie does not moralise, although it comes closest with the punishment that awaits the Savages for their ambition and hunger to re-establish the social credentials of the family. Sic transit gloria mundi. Overall, it is a pleasant movie about the eighteenth century, and by Jove, we want more good movies about the most fascinating era in British history.