I hadn't seen this discussion, so thanks for the pointer. The bit about the putting people at their ease reminded me of the woman who was the Senior Modern Languages Tutor when I first came to Oxford. She was a charming, soft-spoken, white-haired Welshwoman, who said of one the public school admissions applicants, "She bounced into the room and put me at my ease," which made me laugh, because it caught exactly that boundless self-assurance that some public schools instil (whilst illustrating that the person who does the putting-at-ease is normally the person with the power in an unequal relationship.)

Gerald is definitely Old Tory, you've hit the nail on the head there. And while DLS clearly dislikes Helen, she imagines her vividly enough that you catch glimpses of the unhappy person underneath the nastiness - plus, of course, she's very entertainingly nasty. Neither of which can be said of JPW's Helen, who is a hatchet job. But then none of her versions of the characters are entertaining. I have huge sympathy with the person on the list whose husband found the book too dull to get through.