Jane Austen's Persuasion: a dramatic audiobook
GD Kalmbach for Sir Walter Elliot
HOW TO PLAY SIR WALTER
This man is a characterisation dream. He's snobbish, judgemental, and righteous. He moves in high society and is high born. His voice should carry all his class, all his status, all his judgement and all his vanity. Don't hold back and while doing so, be careful not to make him into a caricature. There are scenes where he is vapid and there are scenes were he is vicious.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER
The father of Anne Elliot, Baronet (this is a title of gentry in English society), and owner of Kellynch Hall, Sir Walter is a caricature of the impractical titled upper classes. Extraordinarily vain, Sir Walter lines his dressing room with mirrors, and agrees to be seen in public only with attractive or well-born people. Conscious of keeping up grand appearances, Sir Walter spends lavishly, and brings his family into debt.
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened: ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL.
[Sir Walter is arguing with Anne because she will not cancel on a friend in order to visit someone of low social standing. He is concerned about how it will make them look socially]
Westgate Buildings! And who is Miss Anne Elliot to be visiting in Westgate Buildings? A Mrs Smith. A widow Mrs Smith; and who was her husband? One of five thousand Mr Smiths whose names are to be met with everywhere. And what is her attraction? That she is old and sickly. Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most extraordinary taste! Everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting to you. But surely you may put off this old lady till to-morrow: she is not so near her end, I presume, but that she may hope to see another day. What is her age? Forty?[Sir Walter has just been advised that there is an offer of a tenant for his house, which he has to leave because he is broke, and it isn't someone wealthy, it's a man of the navy.]
Yes; it is in two points offensive to me; I have two strong grounds of objection to it. First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man.
