Not quite
It was Sir Ambrose’s “latest quite vain wish” that people would say of him: “Grand old boy.” To achieve that not so noble goal, he wore “dark grey flannels, an Eton Rambler tie, an I Zingari ribbon on his boater hat.” This was his “invariable dress” on “sunny days.” When the weather permitted it, he wore “a deer-stalker cap and an Inverness cape.” According to his wife, Sir Ambrose was still on “the right side” of sixty but “having for many years painfully feigned youth,” he now “aspired to the honors of age.” The irony was that no matter how hard he tried to feign youth and what clothes he wore it was as clear as a day that he was in his late sixties. He wasn’t a boy anymore.
Reputation
“We limeys have a peculiar position to keep up, you know, Barlow,” Sir Ambrose says. Though he knows that Americans laugh at them a bit because of the way they “talk” or dress, think them “cliquey and stand-offish,” he doesn’t really care. He knows that Americans respect them no matter what. He often feels “like an ambassador,” for it is a great responsibility to represent the English nation in the USA. Sir Ambrose is proud of the fact that one can’t find “an Englishman among the underdogs.” The irony is that one can easily find them in England.
The dream
Poor Aimee used to be a dreamer whose kind and poetic heart strived for beauty and perfection. Whispering Glades were a suitable place for her, for they represented everything she believed in. It was an embodiment of refinement, what was more it was an ethical place where unconsoled ones could find some understanding. The terrible irony of Aimee’s life was that her own cremation happened at “the Happier Hunting Ground,” the place she considered terribly unethical. She was cremated in the same oven where dead pets were burned. What was more, her loved ones were the ones who chose such a terrible scenario for her.
