Perfectly Beastly Snobs

THE HEADMISTRESS -- Angela Thirkell --Knopf ($2.50).

Since 1936 talented Angela Thirkeil, who is. as stylistically languid as her Pre-Raphaelite grandfather Edward Burne-Jones and as staunchly British as her cousins Stanley Baldwin and the late Rudyard Kipling, has made hay in the fictitious fields of Barsetshire -- the mythical English region created by Victorian Novel ist Anthony Trollope. In a series of novels (including the best-selling The Brandons and Northbridge Rectory}, Author Thirkell has peopled Barsetshire with 20th-Century "descendants" of Trollope's squires, rural deans, bluebloods, housemaids and self-made men -- all of whom breathe an air of whimsy, nostalgia and laconic snobbery that would make Author Trollope wince, but which has won Author Thirkell a host of chuckling fans.

Squirearchy's Decline. The Headmistress, tenth and latest of the Thirkell line, is just like the other nine. When Headmistress Madeleine Sparling evacuated her blitz-threatened London girls' school to Harefield Park in Barsetshire, impoverished Squire Belton of Harefield welcomed the fat rent she paid for his manor. But he suffered an anguish of snobbery over having his ancestral home occupied by a bunch of "elderly . . . slightly deformed [school] mistresses" dressed in wartime "utility non-crease . . . ready-made dresses of a kind of fine sacking in shades of puce [and] dirty tomato'' --to say nothing of the Cockney girls "in shapeless purple flannel blazers [and] pudding-bowl grey felt hats." The Squire and his family wondered what the world was coming to. "Poor Harefield is practically in the hands of the Jews," muttered the Belton son-&-heir. "There won't be a single gentleman in the Cabinet in five years," groused the Squire. "Well, I do hope my son-in-law and daughters-in-law will be our sort." murmured Mrs. Belton wistfully. "I suppose I'm a perfectly beastly snob," said her pretty daughter Elsa, "but I can't help it."

Schoolmistress's Conquests. Headmistress Sparling met Barsetshire's chilliness with warmth and infinite tact. She sympathized with the demoted Beltons. She was gentle with absent-minded Vicar Oriol. She listened tolerantly to eccentric old Mrs. Updike's half-witted worries--such as how one would kill a chicken on a desert island ("The only thing I can think of would be to work myself . . . into a ... rage and stamp on its head"). She commiserated with Mrs. Hoare, whose daughter had married a Dutchman and borne nothing but girls ("It's something to do with Princess Juliana, I always think," said Mrs. Hoare). She won over the snooty servants and even conquered Oxonian Misogynist Professor Carton, who had hitherto believed that all bluestockings wore raincoats and sang in the Bach choir. After 300 such leisurely pages Author Thirkell ties up the loose ends in a neat bow, marries the right people to the right sort, saves the family mansion and forgives a few of the lower classes. To those who can't see the comedy for the snobbery, Author Thirkell remarks tartly: "Snobbishness lies deep at the roots of social life, and there is good reason for it."

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