Robert Rodi's Blog, page 3

Edgar and Emma, chapter 2

Lady Marlow wrote to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Curtis, who lived in Marlhurst, to tell her of their imminent arrival. Mrs. Curtis was delighted to have such interesting news to dispense, and strategized how best to parcel it out to the village.“It would be simplest first to tell Mrs. Grayson,” she explained to her husband—who was not listening—“as she is our nearest neighbor and my dear friend. But she is also an active, interested woman, and would then undertake to relay the news herself, to others of our acquaintance. So that inevitably I should come to some household or other, and find that she had been there before me. Thus, though it may put her nose out of joint, I think I must bypass Mrs. Grayson in favor of Mrs. Stanley, who never ventures forth from her house due to her unfortunate terror of highwaymen. I know what you will say, my dear," she added, though her husband quite visibly meant to say nothing; “it is unreasonable to fear highwaymen in a place where there is no highway. But she will not be persuaded, and that is that, so I beg you say no more.” Mr. Curtis appeared readily compliant with this request. “Then after Mrs. Stanley, I may just scoot over two lanes and tell Mrs. Heath, and then I will not be so very far from the parsonage, and I may tell Miss Nesmith, who has no mother and so depends on the kindness of all the ladies in town to keep her up-to-date.”Mr. Curtis, whose wife’s narrative had formed a kind of low, droning hum in his ears, like that of a hive of unusually industrious bees, had his consciousness snagged by that single word, “parsonage.” He looked up from his newspaper and said, “What, my dear? Did you say we have been invited to dine at the parsonage?”“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Curtis with a frown. “You must endeavor to pay greater attention, Horatio. I said I was to go to the parsonage myself, to tell Miss Nesmith of my brother and sister returning to live at Graftings.”By the time she had finished this clarification, her husband’s attention had already drifted back to his broadsheet. He cared only to know whether he might look forward to an evening with the parson, who was one of the very few persons in town with whom he could agreeably pass an evening; as this was not to be, there was nothing further in his wife’s narration to interest him.“And if I am at the parsonage,” continued Mrs. Curtis, applying the full potency of her intellect, and furrowing her brow to illustrate as much, “I may have time to dash over to Willmot Lodge and spread the news there. I need only be careful not to be drawn inside for a dish of tea, for such is the way of Willmot Lodge, that a dish of tea can easily turn into a commitment of several hours, involving drowning dogs, or collapsed walls, or children’s arms pulled out of joint.” She sighed in sympathy for a household whose juvenile members so vastly outnumbered those of a rational age.Then she brightened and resumed her recital. “If I am sufficiently concise, I may arrive back in town with ample time yet to call on Mrs. Lerner, and then—well, there will only be Mrs. Grayson left, and I daresay no one else will have given her the word. For everyone knows she is my particular friend, and will quite naturally assume I have told her already. Do you see the beauty of my plan, husband? Do you not admire my cunning in conceiving of it?”Mr. Curtis turned a page of his newspaper and said, “Your tone just now was interrogative, my dear, though I did not quite hear what you asked. Despite which, you may presume that my reply to it is whichever answer would please you best.”Mrs. Curtis had been in this position frequently enough to have learned to set aside her pride, which she knew would never gain satisfaction from any protest she made, no matter how long she made it (as early in her marriage, she had been known to protest very long indeed), and instead to take her husband at his word. “I knew you would appreciate my particular genius," she said, and she blew him a kiss, took up her shawl, and raced out of the house, nearly knocking a parlourmaid off her heels as she passed.
Mrs. Curtis was more than twenty years younger than her husband, and had had to learn to dampen her own youthful spirits in order to match his sober, careful ways. But she was not so fully converted to the unhurried, deliberate pace of her wedded life, that she did not joy to shirk it whenever she could—as now, with a kernel of gleaming gossip jangling in her purse, and her small, tripping feet carrying her as fleetly around the town as she could wish, so that her errand was soon accomplished, and in better time than she had hoped.She found herself at the parsonage, and a little out of breath; but the parson’s daughter very kindly invited her in for refreshment—as well she might. Alice Nesmith had few enough friends in the village, which was a thing very curious to Mrs. Curtis, for she was a pretty, witty, amiable creature, who loved news and never tired of hearing more of it. And Mrs. Curtis, who had no friends near to her own age—the other wives in the village being many years her senior—was happy to think her a kindred spirit.“I do not suppose you recall,” Mrs. Curtis began, after Miss Nesmith had poured her a cup of tea, “because you are very young, but until five years ago, my brother, Sir Godfrey Marlow, and his family, lived here in Marlhurst.”“I remember them very well,” said Alice, over her own pleasantly steaming cup.“They have since resided in Wiltshire,” Mrs. Curtis continued, “and for the past several months in a market-town, where they had lodgings. (I cannot think what put them in mind to do that.) When they lived here, it was at Graftings, which is the house hid by all the yew trees; I really think you must remember them.”“Indeed I do,” Alice assured her, “as if it were yesterday.”“The house has stood empty since they were last in residence, but what do you think: they are coming back! Indeed they are! I have had a letter…here it is…no, wait, I cannot find it. I had it tucked exactly here, in my reticule…where has it got to? Have I dropped it? Will you call your housekeeper, my dear?…Oh, here she is. What is her name? Green?—Green, would you do me the courtesy of seeing whether a stray letter is lying on the parsonage path? I thank you.—Anyway, my dear Alice, they are to come back, and very soon; I should imagine no later than Wednesday week. And I am sure when you see them, you will remember them all at once.”“I remember them all now, Mrs. Curtis.”“My brother is a baronet, and very stately, and his wife was once a renowned beauty, who still boasts a great dignity. They have three children. Their eldest is Frances, who I am sorry to say is rather a tom-boy. She does not play or sing or dance, or even sketch or do needlework; she is always out of doors, so that her skin has got quite brown, and we all despair of her ever marrying. She is devoted to her dogs, which she refuses to part from, though I cannot imagine how it must have been, to live in rented rooms in a market-town with two such beasts underfoot. I would not have allowed it; but my brother and his wife are very mild. You will see as much when you meet them.”“But I have met them. Indeed I remember their mildness.”“Their next child is Emma, who is my favourite, though you must not say I have said so. She is very pretty and accomplished, and has a satirical turn of mind—indeed she struggles to curb her tongue. I know not where she gets it, because, as I have said, her parents are both rather mild. My brother, I know, would not curse the storm that knocked his house down around his ankles. But Emma—well, she would have a thing to say about a far slighter inconvenience. She is exactly your age…it would be perplexing were you not to remember her.”“But I do remember her, Mrs. Curtis. Of course I do.”“And finally there is their ward, young Tom, whom they have raised as a son. He is a very curious youth; there is something about him…I suppose the most agreeable way to say it, would be to call him venerable. He reads Law at Cambridge, which I suppose must explain it; his is a cultivated solemnity.”“I agree; I have met him. I see exactly in him what you describe.”“Anyway, I—oh, Green; you say there is no letter? Very well, thank you for having looked.—I expect I must have left it at Mrs. Heath’s, which is very tiresome, as it means I will have to stop there on my way home. My dear Miss Nesmith,” she said rising from her chair, “I must go at once. I am yet to stop at Willmot Lodge, and now I have Mrs. Heath to see again as well. I wish I had not left my letter with her. She is such an inexhaustible talker. She will trap me again in one of her interminable stories. I wonder at such persons; they must be utterly lacking in self-awareness.”“I will accept your authority on it,” said Alice.“Please advise your dear father of my news,” Mrs. Curtis added as she donned her gloves. “He will remember the Marlows, no doubt. I daresay we will all meet very soon, and I can introduce you to them.”“We are acquainted already,” said Alice as she showed Mrs. Curtis to the door. “But I shall be happy to see them again.”As she bustled down the road to Willmot Lodge, Mrs. Curtis suddenly remembered one of her fancies from five years past: that clever, pretty, solitary young Alice Nesmith would make an ideal wife for steadfast, precise Tom Peake. In fact, she had made rather a project of it, although they had been very young at the time. She would have to take it up again, now that they were of an age at which her influence might yield results.Even so, it was a singular thing that after all her efforts, Alice should not have remembered him. Well, that was the carelessness of youth, no doubt. Having wed so young herself, Mrs. Curtis had escaped such consequences. (Though she was not so certain she was entirely thankful for that.)Introspection made her head ache, so she set aside such thoughts and focused instead on quickening her pace.
She had come very near to Willmot Lodge when she was approached by a gentleman on horseback; who was discovered, as he came nearer, to be Ralph Willmot, the family’s second son.“Good day to you, ma’am,” he said when he drew closer, and he tipped his hat. “I take it that you are come to see my mother and father?”“I am indeed, sir,” she said. “But as I have no invitation, I can but hope they are at home.”“My mother is in,” he said, while curbing his horse’s restlessness. “I have just left her. She will be glad to see you, I am certain.”“As am I,” she said gleefully, “for I come bearing news.”He arched an eyebrow. It was a very attractive gesture; in fact Ralph Willmot was a very attractive man, with cornsilk-yellow hair and riveting blue eyes, and a roguish grin whose effect he clearly knew too well, and deployed without pity. “May I be privileged to hear it?” he asked.She shook her head. “It is only right that I tell your mother first. But if you are headed into the village, you will hear it spoken of there.”“I am headed to London for several days,” he said, smiling and patting his mount’s neck to calm her. “As you see, Virago is eager for the exercise; I have rested her well in anticipation of the journey. But consider: as a result of my sojourn in town, it will be many days before I hear your news—by which time indeed it may no longer be news. Have pity on a poor traveler.” He flashed her his incandescent grin. “I feel certain I am not the first gentleman to beg a favor of you. You must be as kind to me as to all the rest.”Mrs. Curtis could not repress a startled laugh. “You are too shocking, Mr. Willmot; I will not have you speak to me so. My husband would object in the strongest possible terms, were he to hear of it.”“Which he will not, because you will not tell him,” he said, with such merry confidence that it quite disarmed her reproof. “Though you will tell me the news you have brought for my mother. I insist upon it.”By now, the currents of their conversation had gotten rather more turbulent than Mrs. Curtis was accustomed to; but Ralph Willmot had that effect. There was something about him that was very nearly disorienting. Because she had married at sixteen, she had never learned—had never had to learn—how to deflect, or even to resist, the flirtations of a handsome man.Nor did she feel she needed to learn it now; her wedding ring was her protection. Doubtless Ralph Willmot considered it so as well, and felt safe in speaking so provocatively to her. Which meant that his blandishments were the merest flattery. And if they pleased her, and did no one else any harm, how could anyone object—even her husband? Could a man who never vouchsafed her a word of commendation, deny her the pleasure of hearing pretty, empty words from a trifling acquaintance?And yet…all this conjecture had had the effect of throwing her much-vaunted news into a more humbling perspective. Compared to the way Ralph Willmot made her feel like she was thrillingly skirting the outer perimeter of scandal, the intelligence of a family moving back into the neighborhood was paltry stuff indeed.“Of course I will pity you, sir,” she said with a smile. “It really is not so much to fuss about; merely that my sister and brother—the Marlows, you may remember them—are to come back to live at Graftings.”A look passed over Ralph Willmot’s face—but it was a look she was unable to read. It did seem, on evidence, to be one of pleasure; but from what the pleasure derived, it was not possible to tell.“That is happy news,” he said. “We want variety in the neighborhood, and they will be just the thing.”“I feel the same.”“I look forward to meeting them again. And I thank you, ma’am, for the gift of your confidence. I shall keep it unto death; or at least, until you give me leave to speak of it.”Again she shrieked a laugh; it was embarrassing. She felt herself a silly schoolgirl.He tipped his hat to her once more, and rode off.She watched him go; then she turned and continued her trek to Willmot Lodge. But she could no longer enjoy the exercise; the very air about her was agitated by her encounter with Ralph. He was, she realized, entirely too free in his manner, too assured of the potency of his charm. Far better that he were married, with a wife to steady him and tame his exuberance.As she plodded on, Mrs. Curtis remembered that in earlier days she had had an idea of matching him to her niece, Emma. They would make such a pretty pair, both so handsome and so flaxen, like they were carved from a single block of spruce. And now she recalled as well that towards the end of her last stay in Marlhurst, Emma had grown very interested in the Willmots, eager to know more of them and to see them whenever the opportunity arose.Well then; Mrs. Curtis would put her mind to it, now that the girl was coming back to Graftings. It would give her two projects to which she might devote her copious energies: pairing Alice Nesmith to Tom Peake, and Emma Marlow to Ralph Willmot.
“This is good news indeed,” said Mrs. Willmot as they sat in her parlour. “The Marlows were always a welcome addition to our society. I am very glad to know they will soon resume a part in it.” It was just the two of them, and of course Patience, the Willmots’ eldest child—a plain young woman of twenty-eight who had abandoned all hope of finding a husband, donned her cap, and devoted herself to becoming her mother’s constant companion; in which capacity she now sat, just to her mother’s left, quietly working her needle. Mrs. Curtis, who was three years her junior, often wondered at Patience’s folly in giving up so soon; in her place, she would yet have been canvassing every eligible male in the eighty-three English counties, and a plain face would not have stopped her from securing one of them, though the Devil himself might bar the way. There were times when she thought Patience must have taken her Christian name too much to heart. Far better had the Willmots baptized her Charity. Or Hope. Or Delilah. “I knew you would be pleased,” said Mrs. Curtis to Mrs. Willmot, “and you must promise to pass the news to your good husband, and to attach my fond regards.” She clutched her reticule as if preparing to rise to her feet. Time had a habit of moving more slowly at Willmot Lodge, so that one might feel one had passed a pleasant half-hour therein, only to emerge and find the sun dipping below the horizon and owls hooting in the trees; and therefore one must be decisive in making an escape from it. But Mrs. Willmot seemed oblivious to Mrs. Curtis’s readiness to depart, and fixed her in place by posing more questions.“And do you know," she asked, “whether Miss Emma Marlow will accompany the family?”“Of course she will,” Mrs. Curtis said. “Why should she do otherwise?”“It occurred to me that she might, in these past five years, have found herself a husband, and acquired an establishment of her own.”“Oh! no. I assure you, Emma is yet unmarried. I would certainly have told you so, if it were otherwise.”Mrs. Willmot—a very large woman, with rosy cheeks and an ample breast—visibly relaxed, which involved so much unbending of her anxiously constricted spine and shoulders, that the air in the room seemed to grow more compressed. “How happy I am to hear it!” she said. “For I have always thought there was some particular interest between her and my Edgar.”Mrs. Curtis barked a laugh. “I think you are mistaken, ma’am! It is Emma and Ralph, rather, between whom there is an observable keenness.”“Is it so?” asked Mrs. Willmot with a look of genuine surprise. “Ah! well, you are much nearer their age than I, Mrs. Curtis, so I must credit your judgment. And I confess I care not overmuch; with so many sons to find wives for, it is all the same to me whether Miss Emma Marlow settles on one or another.”"She shall settle on one, certainly,” said Mrs. Curtis. “It would not surprise me, indeed, to learn that it was she who instigated this return to Graftings, for the specific purpose of renewing her childhood fancy.”“I shall encourage it, then,” said Mrs. Willmot with a nod. “Anything to prompt the children to move on. Even with Richard away at Eton, and Amy with my sister Clayton, there are too many on hand to provide me a moment’s repose.”As if to illustrate the veracity of this statement, the youngest Willmot daughters—a pair of twins, Mary-Anne and Lucy-Anne, both thirteen—burst into the room in full cry, and appealed to their mother to settle a dispute over a box of pencils, the possession of which was apparently so vital that each girl professed her willingness to die for the lack of it.It was during the initial arguments in this suit that Mrs. Curtis quietly slipped away.

Edgar and Emma: Chapter 2

Lady Marlow wrote to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Curtis, who lived in Marlhurst, to tell her of their imminent arrival. Mrs. Curtis was delighted to have such interesting news to dispense, and strategized how best to parcel it out to the village.“It would be simplest first to tell Mrs. Grayson,” she explained to her husband—who was not listening—“as she is our nearest neighbor and my dear friend. But she is also an active, interested woman, and would then undertake to relay the news herself, to others of our acquaintance. So that inevitably I should come to some household or other, and find that she had been there before me. Thus, though it may put her nose out of joint, I think I must bypass Mrs. Grayson in favor of Mrs. Stanley, who never ventures forth from her house due to her unfortunate terror of highwaymen. I know what you will say, my dear," she added, though her husband quite visibly meant to say nothing; “it is unreasonable to fear highwaymen in a place where there is no highway. But she will not be persuaded, and that is that, so I beg you say no more.” Mr. Curtis appeared readily compliant with this request. “Then after Mrs. Stanley, I may just scoot over two lanes and tell Mrs. Heath, and then I will not be so very far from the parsonage, and I may tell Miss Nesmith, who has no mother and so depends on the kindness of all the ladies in town to keep her up-to-date.”Mr. Curtis, whose wife’s narrative had formed a kind of low, droning hum in his ears, like that of a hive of unusually industrious bees, had his consciousness snagged by that single word, “parsonage.” He looked up from his newspaper and said, “What, my dear? Did you say we have been invited to dine at the parsonage?”“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Curtis with a frown. “You must endeavor to pay greater attention, Horatio. I said I was to go to the parsonage myself, to tell Miss Nesmith of my brother and sister returning to live at Graftings.”By the time she had finished this clarification, her husband’s attention had already drifted back to his broadsheet. He cared only to know whether he might look forward to an evening with the parson, who was one of the very few persons in town with whom he could agreeably pass an evening; as this was not to be, there was nothing further in his wife’s narration to interest him.“And if I am at the parsonage,” continued Mrs. Curtis, applying the full potency of her intellect, and furrowing her brow to illustrate as much, “I may have time to dash over to Willmot Lodge and spread the news there. I need only be careful not to be drawn inside for a dish of tea, for such is the way of Willmot Lodge, that a dish of tea can easily turn into a commitment of several hours, involving drowning dogs, or collapsed walls, or children’s arms pulled out of joint.” She sighed in sympathy for a household whose juvenile members so vastly outnumbered those of a rational age.Then she brightened and resumed her recital. “If I am sufficiently concise, I may arrive back in town with ample time yet to call on Mrs. Lerner, and then—well, there will only be Mrs. Grayson left, and I daresay no one else will have given her the word. For everyone knows she is my particular friend, and will quite naturally assume I have told her already. Do you see the beauty of my plan, husband? Do you not admire my cunning in conceiving of it?”Mr. Curtis turned a page of his newspaper and said, “Your tone just now was interrogative, my dear, though I did not quite hear what you asked. Despite which, you may presume that my reply to it is whichever answer would please you best.”Mrs. Curtis had been in this position frequently enough to have learned to set aside her pride, which she knew would never gain satisfaction from any protest she made, no matter how long she made it (as early in her marriage, she had been known to protest very long indeed), and instead to take her husband at his word. “I knew you would appreciate my particular genius," she said, and she blew him a kiss, took up her shawl, and raced out of the house, nearly knocking a parlourmaid off her heels as she passed.
Mrs. Curtis was more than twenty years younger than her husband, and had had to learn to dampen her own youthful spirits in order to match his sober, careful ways. But she was not so fully converted to the unhurried, deliberate pace of her wedded life, that she did not joy to shirk it whenever she could—as now, with a kernel of gleaming gossip jangling in her purse, and her small, tripping feet carrying her as fleetly around the town as she could wish, so that her errand was soon accomplished, and in better time than she had hoped.She found herself at the parsonage, and a little out of breath; but the parson’s daughter very kindly invited her in for refreshment—as well she might. Alice Nesmith had few enough friends in the village, which was a thing very curious to Mrs. Curtis, for she was a pretty, witty, amiable creature, who loved news and never tired of hearing more of it. And Mrs. Curtis, who had no friends near to her own age—the other wives in the village being many years her senior—was happy to think her a kindred spirit.“I do not suppose you recall,” Mrs. Curtis began, after Miss Nesmith had poured her a cup of tea, “because you are very young, but until five years ago, my brother, Sir Godfrey Marlow, and his family, lived here in Marlhurst.”“I remember them very well,” said Alice, over her own pleasantly steaming cup.“They have since resided in Wiltshire,” Mrs. Curtis continued, “and for the past several months in a market-town, where they had lodgings. (I cannot think what put them in mind to do that.) When they lived here, it was at Graftings, which is the house hid by all the yew trees; I really think you must remember them.”“Indeed I do,” Alice assured her, “as if it were yesterday.”“The house has stood empty since they were last in residence, but what do you think: they are coming back! Indeed they are! I have had a letter…here it is…no, wait, I cannot find it. I had it tucked exactly here, in my reticule…where has it got to? Have I dropped it? Will you call your housekeeper, my dear?…Oh, here she is. What is her name? Green?—Green, would you do me the courtesy of seeing whether a stray letter is lying on the parsonage path? I thank you.—Anyway, my dear Alice, they are to come back, and very soon; I should imagine no later than Wednesday week. And I am sure when you see them, you will remember them all at once.”“I remember them all now, Mrs. Curtis.”“My brother is a baronet, and very stately, and his wife was once a renowned beauty, who still boasts a great dignity. They have three children. Their eldest is Frances, who I am sorry to say is rather a tom-boy. She does not play or sing or dance, or even sketch or do needlework; she is always out of doors, so that her skin has got quite brown, and we all despair of her ever marrying. She is devoted to her dogs, which she refuses to part from, though I cannot imagine how it must have been, to live in rented rooms in a market-town with two such beasts underfoot. I would not have allowed it; but my brother and his wife are very mild. You will see as much when you meet them.”“But I have met them. Indeed I remember their mildness.”“Their next child is Emma, who is my favourite, though you must not say I have said so. She is very pretty and accomplished, and has a satirical turn of mind—indeed she struggles to curb her tongue. I know not where she gets it, because, as I have said, her parents are both rather mild. My brother, I know, would not curse the storm that knocked his house down around his ankles. But Emma—well, she would have a thing to say about a far slighter inconvenience. She is exactly your age…it would be perplexing were you not to remember her.”“But I do remember her, Mrs. Curtis. Of course I do.”“And finally there is their ward, young Tom, whom they have raised as a son. He is a very curious youth; there is something about him…I suppose the most agreeable way to say it, would be to call him venerable. He reads Law at Cambridge, which I suppose must explain it; his is a cultivated solemnity.”“I agree; I have met him. I see exactly in him what you describe.”“Anyway, I—oh, Green; you say there is no letter? Very well, thank you for having looked.—I expect I must have left it at Mrs. Heath’s, which is very tiresome, as it means I will have to stop there on my way home. My dear Miss Nesmith,” she said rising from her chair, “I must go at once. I am yet to stop at Willmot Lodge, and now I have Mrs. Heath to see again as well. I wish I had not left my letter with her. She is such an inexhaustible talker. She will trap me again in one of her interminable stories. I wonder at such persons; they must be utterly lacking in self-awareness.”“I will accept your authority on it,” said Alice.“Please advise your dear father of my news,” Mrs. Curtis added as she donned her gloves. “He will remember the Marlows, no doubt. I daresay we will all meet very soon, and I can introduce you to them.”“We are acquainted already,” said Alice as she showed Mrs. Curtis to the door. “But I shall be happy to see them again.”As she bustled down the road to Willmot Lodge, Mrs. Curtis suddenly remembered one of her fancies from five years past: that clever, pretty, solitary young Alice Nesmith would make an ideal wife for steadfast, precise Tom Peake. In fact, she had made rather a project of it, although they had been very young at the time. She would have to take it up again, now that they were of an age at which her influence might yield results.Even so, it was a singular thing that after all her efforts, Alice should not have remembered him. Well, that was the carelessness of youth, no doubt. Having wed so young herself, Mrs. Curtis had escaped such consequences. (Though she was not so certain she was entirely thankful for that.)Introspection made her head ache, so she set aside such thoughts and focused instead on quickening her pace.
She had come very near to Willmot Lodge when she was approached by a gentleman on horseback; who was discovered, as he came nearer, to be Ralph Willmot, the family’s second son.“Good day to you, ma’am,” he said when he drew closer, and he tipped his hat. “I take it that you are come to see my mother and father?”“I am indeed, sir,” she said. “But as I have no invitation, I can but hope they are at home.”“My mother is in,” he said, while curbing his horse’s restlessness. “I have just left her. She will be glad to see you, I am certain.”“As am I,” she said gleefully, “for I come bearing news.”He arched an eyebrow. It was a very attractive gesture; in fact Ralph Willmot was a very attractive man, with cornsilk-yellow hair and riveting blue eyes, and a roguish grin whose effect he clearly knew too well, and deployed without pity. “May I be privileged to hear it?” he asked.She shook her head. “It is only right that I tell your mother first. But if you are headed into the village, you will hear it spoken of there.”“I am headed to London for several days,” he said, smiling and patting his mount’s neck to calm her. “As you see, Virago is eager for the exercise; I have rested her well in anticipation of the journey. But consider: as a result of my sojourn in town, it will be many days before I hear your news—by which time indeed it may no longer be news. Have pity on a poor traveler.” He flashed her his incandescent grin. “I feel certain I am not the first gentleman to beg a favor of you. You must be as kind to me as to all the rest.”Mrs. Curtis could not repress a startled laugh. “You are too shocking, Mr. Willmot; I will not have you speak to me so. My husband would object in the strongest possible terms, were he to hear of it.”“Which he will not, because you will not tell him,” he said, with such merry confidence that it quite disarmed her reproof. “Though you will tell me the news you have brought for my mother. I insist upon it.”By now, the currents of their conversation had gotten rather more turbulent than Mrs. Curtis was accustomed to; but Ralph Willmot had that effect. There was something about him that was very nearly disorienting. Because she had married at sixteen, she had never learned—had never had to learn—how to deflect, or even to resist, the flirtations of a handsome man.Nor did she feel she needed to learn it now; her wedding ring was her protection. Doubtless Ralph Willmot considered it so as well, and felt safe in speaking so provocatively to her. Which meant that his blandishments were the merest flattery. And if they pleased her, and did no one else any harm, how could anyone object—even her husband? Could a man who never vouchsafed her a word of commendation, deny her the pleasure of hearing pretty, empty words from a trifling acquaintance?And yet…all this conjecture had had the effect of throwing her much-vaunted news into a more humbling perspective. Compared to the way Ralph Willmot made her feel like she was thrillingly skirting the outer perimeter of scandal, the intelligence of a family moving back into the neighborhood was paltry stuff indeed.“Of course I will pity you, sir,” she said with a smile. “It really is not so much to fuss about; merely that my sister and brother—the Marlows, you may remember them—are to come back to live at Graftings.”A look passed over Ralph Willmot’s face—but it was a look she was unable to read. It did seem, on evidence, to be one of pleasure; but from what the pleasure derived, it was not possible to tell.“That is happy news,” he said. “We want variety in the neighborhood, and they will be just the thing.”“I feel the same.”“I look forward to meeting them again. And I thank you, ma’am, for the gift of your confidence. I shall keep it unto death; or at least, until you give me leave to speak of it.”Again she shrieked a laugh; it was embarrassing. She felt herself a silly schoolgirl.He tipped his hat to her once more, and rode off.She watched him go; then she turned and continued her trek to Willmot Lodge. But she could no longer enjoy the exercise; the very air about her was agitated by her encounter with Ralph. He was, she realized, entirely too free in his manner, too assured of the potency of his charm. Far better that he were married, with a wife to steady him and tame his exuberance.As she plodded on, Mrs. Curtis remembered that in earlier days she had had an idea of matching him to her niece, Emma. They would make such a pretty pair, both so handsome and so flaxen, like they were carved from a single block of spruce. And now she recalled as well that towards the end of her last stay in Marlhurst, Emma had grown very interested in the Willmots, eager to know more of them and to see them whenever the opportunity arose.Well then; Mrs. Curtis would put her mind to it, now that the girl was coming back to Graftings. It would give her two projects to which she might devote her copious energies: pairing Alice Nesmith to Tom Peake, and Emma Marlow to Ralph Willmot.
“This is good news indeed,” said Mrs. Willmot as they sat in her parlour. “The Marlows were always a welcome addition to our society. I am very glad to know they will soon resume a part in it.” It was just the two of them, and of course Patience, the Willmots’ eldest child—a plain young woman of twenty-eight who had abandoned all hope of finding a husband, donned her cap, and devoted herself to becoming her mother’s constant companion; in which capacity she now sat, just to her mother’s left, quietly working her needle. Mrs. Curtis, who was three years her junior, often wondered at Patience’s folly in giving up so soon; in her place, she would yet have been canvassing every eligible male in the eighty-three English counties, and a plain face would not have stopped her from securing one of them, though the Devil himself might bar the way. There were times when she thought Patience must have taken her Christian name too much to heart. Far better had the Willmots baptized her Charity. Or Hope. Or Delilah. “I knew you would be pleased,” said Mrs. Curtis to Mrs. Willmot, “and you must promise to pass the news to your good husband, and to attach my fond regards.” She clutched her reticule as if preparing to rise to her feet. Time had a habit of moving more slowly at Willmot Lodge, so that one might feel one had passed a pleasant half-hour therein, only to emerge and find the sun dipping below the horizon and owls hooting in the trees; and therefore one must be decisive in making an escape from it. But Mrs. Willmot seemed oblivious to Mrs. Curtis’s readiness to depart, and fixed her in place by posing more questions.“And do you know," she asked, “whether Miss Emma Marlow will accompany the family?”“Of course she will,” Mrs. Curtis said. “Why should she do otherwise?”“It occurred to me that she might, in these past five years, have found herself a husband, and acquired an establishment of her own.”“Oh! no. I assure you, Emma is yet unmarried. I would certainly have told you so, if it were otherwise.”Mrs. Willmot—a very large woman, with rosy cheeks and an ample breast—visibly relaxed, which involved so much unbending of her anxiously constricted spine and shoulders, that the air in the room seemed to grow more compressed. “How happy I am to hear it!” she said. “For I have always thought there was some particular interest between her and my Edgar.”Mrs. Curtis barked a laugh. “I think you are mistaken, ma’am! It is Emma and Ralph, rather, between whom there is an observable keenness.”“Is it so?” asked Mrs. Willmot with a look of genuine surprise. “Ah! well, you are much nearer their age than I, Mrs. Curtis, so I must credit your judgment. And I confess I care not overmuch; with so many sons to find wives for, it is all the same to me whether Miss Emma Marlow settles on one or another.”"She shall settle on one, certainly,” said Mrs. Curtis. “It would not surprise me, indeed, to learn that it was she who instigated this return to Graftings, for the specific purpose of renewing her childhood fancy.”“I shall encourage it, then,” said Mrs. Willmot with a nod. “Anything to prompt the children to move on. Even with Richard away at Eton, and Amy with my sister Clayton, there are too many on hand to provide me a moment’s repose.”As if to illustrate the veracity of this statement, the youngest Willmot daughters—a pair of twins, Mary-Anne and Lucy-Anne, both thirteen—burst into the room in full cry, and appealed to their mother to settle a dispute over a box of pencils, the possession of which was apparently so vital that each girl professed her willingness to die for the lack of it.
It was during the initial arguments in this suit that Mrs. Curtis quietly slipped away.

Edgar and Emma, chapter 1

“I cannot imagine,” said Sir Godfrey to his lady, “why we continue in such deplorable lodgings as these, in a paltry market-town, while we have three good houses of our own situated in some of the finest parts of England, and perfectly ready to receive us!”“I'm sure, Sir Godfrey,” replied Lady Marlow, “it has been much against my inclination that we have stayed here so long; or why we should ever have come at all indeed, has been to me a wonder, as none of our houses have been in the least want of repair.”“Nay, my dear,” answered Sir Godfrey, “you are the last person who ought to be displeased with what was always meant as a compliment to you; for you cannot but be sensible of the very great inconvenience your daughters and I have been put to during the seven months we have remained crowded in these lodgings in order to give you pleasure.”“My dear,” replied Lady Marlow, “how can you stand and tell such lies, when you very well know that it was merely to oblige the girls and you, that I left a most commodious house situated in a most delightful country and surrounded by a most agreeable neighborhood, to live cramped up in lodgings three pair of stairs high, in a smoky and unwholesome town, which has given me a continual fever and almost thrown me into a consumption.”This Sir Godfrey could not let pass. He set down his newspaper and looked across the table at his wife, which was not something he did often; so that on this occasion he was momentarily diverted from his impatience by a tremor of surprise at what she looked like—which was, several years older than the last time he had bothered. But this he put aside and in great indignation said, “And what ever did I hear from you, when we were happily housed in the country, but how you missed society, and the theatre, and shops? So that eventually I was compelled to find us lodgings here in Chipping Norton, where I have presumed you were perfectly contented.”Lady Marlow regarded him with as much surprise as if he had climbed atop the table and mewed like a cat. “What can you mean by such nonsense?” she asked. “We see no one here, for there is no one worth seeing; the shops, while more numerous, are inferior to those in the country; and never once in seven months have we been to the theatre. Indeed I am entirely uncertain whether there is a playhouse in town. No, no, husband,” she said, setting down the tambour on which she was embroidering a floral scene, “we came to Chipping Norton solely that you might be closer to your business interests.”Sir Godfrey was all astonishment. He had perhaps forgotten he had any such thing as business interests. “My dear,” he said when he had recollected himself, “I employ agents to act on my behalf specifically that I might live far afield from the world of commerce. It is distasteful to me; surely that much has been made plain to you, over the long period of our marriage.”But Lady Marlow was no more accustomed to looking at her husband than he at her, so that it was a surprise to both to be seeing each other, after so many years of wedlock, as if for the first time. Yet each was possessed of a congenial, imperturbable character, and thus found in the discovery of their mutual misunderstanding no cause for vexation or regret. Indeed, once they had concluded that the only persons to benefit from their seven-month sojourn in Chipping Norton were Sir Godfrey’s agents, who had needed to travel so much shorter a distance to report their activities to their employer, they could not withhold their laughter.“Well,” said Sir Godfrey once he had recovered from this attack of mirth, “I see no reason for staying any longer in these cramped rooms than we already have. I will this very day begin arrangements to leave them.”“I will certainly not hinder you,” said his wife. “But we ought first to determine where we will go.”“For my part, I would be content with any of our houses,” said Sir Godfrey. “As would I,” agreed Lady Marlow.This was the disadvantage to the congeniality of their characters; it often rendered them helpless in the face of a decision.“Let us apply to the children,” said Lady Marlow at last. “They are far more particular than we.”
These children were three in number. Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow had two grown daughters, Frances and Emma, the former of whom had nineteen years, the latter, eighteen. They also counted as their own a boy, Thomas Peake, who was the son of one of Sir Godfrey’s cousins; the Marlows had taken him in after his parents perished at sea. This was not entirely a philanthropic arrangement, for they had assumed the lad would grow up to marry one of their daughters. But with every passing year it became increasingly evident that Tom was the kind of man who would never marry at all. At twenty, he possessed all the settled, unvarying qualities of a man thrice his age, and a steadfast disinclination ever to alter them. He had accepted Sir Godfrey’s offer to finance his training for the law, and had undertaken his studies at Cambridge, so that his immediate future was as thoroughly charted as he could wish it. In the meantime, he made himself valuable to his guardians in an hundred different ways, which ameliorated their disappointment that he would be taking neither of their girls off their hands.Alas, in this present difficulty he was of no use whatsoever. “I feel I have already prevailed too much on your good natures,” he said with genuine humility when asked where he thought the family ought next to move. “And as I am soon to return to university, and will thus spend little time at whichever house is eventually chosen, I feel my own preference—if I had one—which I do not—must be disregarded.”Emma was applied to next. She was very glad to hear that the family was to depart Chipping Norton, as she had not thrived here; she was a delicate and sensitive creature, and the hustle-and-bustle of the market town’s streets buffeted her like a bit of flotsam on a rough sea. She was also afflicted with a short temper, so that there had been occasions on which her treatment at the hands of the town’s populace had been unusually brusque, when she had very sharply made her displeasure known; this had not increased her popularity.But in general she was a sweet girl, and strove to be kind, and to be fair. To which end she now gave the question her parents had put to her, her most impartial consideration.The Marlows’ three houses were Graftings in Sussex; Dunfosters in Wiltshire; and Penwether in Cornwall. The latter was the least to be desired, simply because of its distance—its sole appeal being its connection to the family of Lady Marlow, whose grandfather had inherited it from a distant relation. Dunfoster’s was a very fine house in very fine neighborhood, situated amidst nearly five-and-twenty families of quality, which made for a rich, invigorating society. Dunfosters was also the house in which the family had traditionally spent Christmas, so that it afforded many happy memories of that kind. And finally, Dunfosters was the house from which they had repaired, seven months before, to their lodgings in Chipping Norton; so a return to its doors would be akin to picking up a thread that had been but momentarily dropped. Their Wiltshire friends and acquaintances were a mere seven months the older, and could be counted on to be still in sympathy and accord with the Marlows’ manners, habits, and tastes.Graftings, by comparison, was a smaller house, located in a village—Marlhurst—whose society was restricted to a mere thirteen families, and not all of unimpeachable reputation. (One household numbered among its progeny a daughter who had made a profession of the London stage; another, a son who had married an American.) And as the Marlows had not stayed there for nearly five years, most of those families would, encountered anew, seem akin to strangers. In addition, the countryside was the hilliest in all Sussex, which made walking more effortful than Emma generally liked. And the house itself was enclosed by a large copse, which tended to render its rooms chilly even in high summer. Lady Marlow had asked to have the trees cut down, but Sir Godfrey refused her, on the principle that they were “fine old yews” and afforded them such a cloak of privacy. At which point Emma had suffered one of her fits of temper, and asked for what reason the family of Sir Godfrey Marlow required privacy, adding that she supposed they were too far inland to make smuggling at all practical.Sir Godfrey had not appreciated her wit; and the memory of this moment’s disgrace, along with all the other inconveniences, ought to have stricken Graftings from consideration. And yet the property boasted one other feature that, for Emma, overrode all the rest; which was its proximity to Willmot Lodge.This was a villa on the outskirts of Marlhurst which served as the residence of Mr. Erasmus Willmot, his wife, and their nine children. One might be forgiven for thinking that in so large a family, it would be difficult to distinguish any individual; but for Emma, there was one inhabitant of Willmot Lodge who outshone all the others.Edgar, the eldest son, was seven years her senior, and had been a romantic figure in her impressionable girlhood. This had required a good deal of imagination, for he was a quiet, aloof, serious-minded young man, with dark hair and dark eyes, whose conversation ran from little to none at all. Indeed there was nothing about him that might charitably be called attractive—especially with a brother, a year younger, who was everything he was not: fair-haired, jovial, and eager to please. Yet Edgar had the aura of The Heir about him; and as his father had a considerable share in a lead mine and ticket in the lottery, there was, as sometimes in society there was not, a substantial inheritance for The Heir to be heir to.This initial fancy might have faded over time, as Emma grew to young womanhood and gained a deeper understanding of the wider world and her family’s place in it. But such was not to be. For one day when she was just thirteen, she had gone out for a walk—her youthful determination not in the least thwarted by the unruliness of the hills or the briskness of a late October morning—and badly turned her ankle while descending a slope too quickly. Unable to carry herself farther, she sat herself upon a stone and examined her injury, and attempted to gauge whether she risked greater impairment if she forced herself to walk on it, or whether she would be obliged to hop on one foot all the way back to Graftings, (which seemed to be an ideal plan for similarly disabling the other ankle).She was considering this dilemma—and, being a merry, agreeable girl, was not at all insensible to the humor in it—when a rustling in the fallen leaves very near to her drew her eye; and therein she saw a long, brown snake.She screamed; and as if considering that this single emission did insufficient justice to the full horror of her situation, she paused but briefly, then screamed again.The snake—which was perhaps deaf—did not flee or retreat, or bury itself more deeply in its cover of leaves, but slithered closer to where Emma sat, and coiled itself around her heel.She was up in a heartbeat and began to run away; but on her second step, when her injured ankle bore the full measure of her weight, she flinched in pain and folded like a rag doll; and while she managed to hop a few more paces in blind panic, it was inevitable that her lurching and flailing should end in a fall.She lay for a moment in the dirt, panting in fear, then propped herself up on her elbow to see whether the snake had given pursuit.And what she saw instead was Edgar Willmot. He came over the rise, his bearing stately and his manner phlegmatic, and accompanied by one of the family’s Irish setters, which he then gestured into a sit. Upon which he turned to Emma, clicked his heels and tipped his hat, and said, “I heard you cry out. May I be of assistance?”“Oh, yes, please,” Emma burbled. “I’ve hurt my ankle—I cannot walk—” And at this, Edgar began to approach her, so that she must exclaim, “—Be careful, there is a snake!”He stopped and cast his glance at the ground, though appearing to be more curious than fearful.“I see none,” he said calmly.“It was just there,” she whimpered, indicating the stone from which she had recently propelled herself.Edgar turned his scrutiny in the direction she had pointed out. Then a sudden movement galvanized his searching eyes, and he stepped forward very decisively, reached down, and plucked something up.It was the snake.Emma could not but feel somewhat foolish on seeing the creature dangle between Edgar’s thumb and forefinger, for it was rather slight. It had seemed so much longer when oscillating between the leaves.“This is a mere grass snake,” he explained; “it is not venomous. It poses no threat of any kind, to you or to anybody.”Her face burned, and she felt her angry wit well up. “I daresay I should not be lying here, if that were so.”He took no offense; in fact, he smiled. “In your predicament, it was fear of the creature that harmed you, not the creature itself,” he said, and he masterfully flung the thing many yards away. She lowered her eyes. “How stupid you must think me!”“Not at all. I can perfectly understand how its discovery must have startled you.” He approached her anew. “I often think there is nothing quite so disconcerting as stumbling upon life against one’s expectation.” He crouched down next to her. “Several weeks past I opened a drawer in my room, and reached into it for a pocket handkerchief; but what my hand closed about, was a mouse.”“Oh!” Emma squealed. “How dreadful! Were you quite alarmed?”“No less so than the mouse,” he said with a grin. “Though that was considerably. Shall I lift you?”She felt her face flush. “You needn’t put yourself to such trouble; if you but lend me your arm, I can hop alongside you.”“That ill suits your dignity as the daughter of a baronet,” he said. And with that, he scooped her into his arms and raised himself to his feet. Emma felt the sensation of the earth moving away from her, and without thinking sought to steady herself by throwing her arms around his neck.He was unfazed by this sudden intimacy. He quarter-turned his head and said, “Come, Baron,” and his dog happily leapt to his side.Twelve minutes later—during which not a single word passed between them (she being unwilling to add to his exertions by forcing him to talk)—he delivered her to the front door at Graftings, and into the care of her mother. He tipped his hat again and bade them both good day, before turning and departing, Baron bounding at his heels.Since that day, for Emma, there had been no other hero in all of Britain, but Edgar Willmot.Alas, there had been little chance for further encounters between them. Autumn swiftly gave way to winter, and within two months the Marlows relocated to Dunfosters for Christmas; and at Dunfosters they remained for four additional years, until they moved to Chipping Norton. There was nothing in the world that Emma wished more dearly than to return to Marlhurst, and to see Edgar Willmot once more. She wondered what changes five years might have wrought in him; he would now be twenty-five! A vast age. But no change in him could compare with the alteration in her; for she had been a mere child when last they met. Now she was a grown woman of eighteen; would he even know her? Would he care to know her? She yearned to find out.And yet she was a conscientious girl, and meant to do her duty by her father and mother; and it was so seldom that they asked her opinion on anything, she felt she must honor their request by responding as selflessly as possible. Which, all things considered, must mean Dunfosters.And so she said as much.They thanked her for her deliberation, and behaved in such a manner as to suggest that Emma’s word had settled the matter. This was a compliment to her, which she did her best to enjoy; it might be the only reward her integrity would afford her.But no; for here came her sister, Frances, into the room—and since she was the elder of their daughters, Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow did her the courtesy of asking her opinion as well.Frances did not hesitate in her reply. “If it’s all the same to you, dear Papa, dearest Mama, I should very much like to return to Graftings. It has been entirely too long since we have settled there.”“By that token,” said Lady Marlow, “we ought to make for Penwether, from which we have been even longer away.”Frances waved the point aside. “Penwether has waited this long; it can wait longer yet. But I must tell you, Papa, what I miss most keenly about Graftings is Uncle Baldwin’s kennels. You know it has been my desire since childhood to take them over. You promised me that I should, someday. Why may not that someday be today?”Sir Godfrey, reminded of his pledge, was forced to submit to it; though it seemed clear he had made it only because its object had seemed, at the time, no more than a young child’s fleeting fancy. He would scarcely have agreed otherwise to allow his fair young daughter sovereignty over the kennels which his late brother, ever prodigal, had had affixed to the property some quarter-century earlier. A baronet’s daughter belonged in a drawing room, not a dog run.Yet the ensuing years had done nothing to dim Frances’s love for all things canine. She scorned society, disdained distaff pursuits, neglected young men, and turned her back on all accomplishments. Her world revolved around her two King Charles spaniels, Dash and Cannon, and she longed for the day when she might make them the progenitors of a great spaniel dynasty.Thus, as she was the only member of the family whose preference was cast in iron, she carried the day.The Marlows would return to Graftings.

Edgar and Emma: Chapter 1

“I cannot imagine,” said Sir Godfrey to his lady, “why we continue in such deplorable lodgings as these, in a paltry market-town, while we have three good houses of our own situated in some of the finest parts of England, and perfectly ready to receive us!”“I'm sure, Sir Godfrey,” replied Lady Marlow, “it has been much against my inclination that we have stayed here so long; or why we should ever have come at all indeed, has been to me a wonder, as none of our houses have been in the least want of repair.”“Nay, my dear,” answered Sir Godfrey, “you are the last person who ought to be displeased with what was always meant as a compliment to you; for you cannot but be sensible of the very great inconvenience your daughters and I have been put to during the seven months we have remained crowded in these lodgings in order to give you pleasure.”“My dear,” replied Lady Marlow, “how can you stand and tell such lies, when you very well know that it was merely to oblige the girls and you, that I left a most commodious house situated in a most delightful country and surrounded by a most agreeable neighborhood, to live cramped up in lodgings three pair of stairs high, in a smoky and unwholesome town, which has given me a continual fever and almost thrown me into a consumption.”This Sir Godfrey could not let pass. He set down his newspaper and looked across the table at his wife, which was not something he did often; so that on this occasion he was momentarily diverted from his impatience by a tremor of surprise at what she looked like—which was, several years older than the last time he had bothered. But this he put aside and in great indignation said, “And what ever did I hear from you, when we were happily housed in the country, but how you missed society, and the theatre, and shops? So that eventually I was compelled to find us lodgings here in Chipping Norton, where I have presumed you were perfectly contented.”Lady Marlow regarded him with as much surprise as if he had climbed atop the table and mewed like a cat. “What can you mean by such nonsense?” she asked. “We see no one here, for there is no one worth seeing; the shops, while more numerous, are inferior to those in the country; and never once in seven months have we been to the theatre. Indeed I am entirely uncertain whether there is a playhouse in town. No, no, husband,” she said, setting down the tambour on which she was embroidering a floral scene, “we came to Chipping Norton solely that you might be closer to your business interests.”Sir Godfrey was all astonishment. He had perhaps forgotten he had any such thing as business interests. “My dear,” he said when he had recollected himself, “I employ agents to act on my behalf specifically that I might live far afield from the world of commerce. It is distasteful to me; surely that much has been made plain to you, over the long period of our marriage.”But Lady Marlow was no more accustomed to looking at her husband than he at her, so that it was a surprise to both to be seeing each other, after so many years of wedlock, as if for the first time. Yet each was possessed of a congenial, imperturbable character, and thus found in the discovery of their mutual misunderstanding no cause for vexation or regret. Indeed, once they had concluded that the only persons to benefit from their seven-month sojourn in Chipping Norton were Sir Godfrey’s agents, who had needed to travel so much shorter a distance to report their activities to their employer, they could not withhold their laughter.“Well,” said Sir Godfrey once he had recovered from this attack of mirth, “I see no reason for staying any longer in these cramped rooms than we already have. I will this very day begin arrangements to leave them.”“I will certainly not hinder you,” said his wife. “But we ought first to determine where we will go.”“For my part, I would be content with any of our houses,” said Sir Godfrey. “As would I,” agreed Lady Marlow.This was the disadvantage to the congeniality of their characters; it often rendered them helpless in the face of a decision.“Let us apply to the children,” said Lady Marlow at last. “They are far more particular than we.”
These children were three in number. Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow had two grown daughters, Frances and Emma, the former of whom had nineteen years, the latter, eighteen. They also counted as their own a boy, Thomas Peake, who was the son of one of Sir Godfrey’s cousins; the Marlows had taken him in after his parents perished at sea. This was not entirely a philanthropic arrangement, for they had assumed the lad would grow up to marry one of their daughters. But with every passing year it became increasingly evident that Tom was the kind of man who would never marry at all. At twenty, he possessed all the settled, unvarying qualities of a man thrice his age, and a steadfast disinclination ever to alter them. He had accepted Sir Godfrey’s offer to finance his training for the law, and had undertaken his studies at Cambridge, so that his immediate future was as thoroughly charted as he could wish it. In the meantime, he made himself valuable to his guardians in an hundred different ways, which ameliorated their disappointment that he would be taking neither of their girls off their hands.Alas, in this present difficulty he was of no use whatsoever. “I feel I have already prevailed too much on your good natures,” he said with genuine humility when asked where he thought the family ought next to move. “And as I am soon to return to university, and will thus spend little time at whichever house is eventually chosen, I feel my own preference—if I had one—which I do not—must be disregarded.”Emma was applied to next. She was very glad to hear that the family was to depart Chipping Norton, as she had not thrived here; she was a delicate and sensitive creature, and the hustle-and-bustle of the market town’s streets buffeted her like a bit of flotsam on a rough sea. She was also afflicted with a short temper, so that there had been occasions on which her treatment at the hands of the town’s populace had been unusually brusque, when she had very sharply made her displeasure known; this had not increased her popularity.But in general she was a sweet girl, and strove to be kind, and to be fair. To which end she now gave the question her parents had put to her, her most impartial consideration.The Marlows’ three houses were Graftings in Sussex; Dunfosters in Wiltshire; and Penwether in Cornwall. The latter was the least to be desired, simply because of its distance—its sole appeal being its connection to the family of Lady Marlow, whose grandfather had inherited it from a distant relation. Dunfoster’s was a very fine house in very fine neighborhood, situated amidst nearly five-and-twenty families of quality, which made for a rich, invigorating society. Dunfosters was also the house in which the family had traditionally spent Christmas, so that it afforded many happy memories of that kind. And finally, Dunfosters was the house from which they had repaired, seven months before, to their lodgings in Chipping Norton; so a return to its doors would be akin to picking up a thread that had been but momentarily dropped. Their Wiltshire friends and acquaintances were a mere seven months the older, and could be counted on to be still in sympathy and accord with the Marlows’ manners, habits, and tastes.Graftings, by comparison, was a smaller house, located in a village—Marlhurst—whose society was restricted to a mere thirteen families, and not all of unimpeachable reputation. (One household numbered among its progeny a daughter who had made a profession of the London stage; another, a son who had married an American.) And as the Marlows had not stayed there for nearly five years, most of those families would, encountered anew, seem akin to strangers. In addition, the countryside was the hilliest in all Sussex, which made walking more effortful than Emma generally liked. And the house itself was enclosed by a large copse, which tended to render its rooms chilly even in high summer. Lady Marlow had asked to have the trees cut down, but Sir Godfrey refused her, on the principle that they were “fine old yews” and afforded them such a cloak of privacy. At which point Emma had suffered one of her fits of temper, and asked for what reason the family of Sir Godfrey Marlow required privacy, adding that she supposed they were too far inland to make smuggling at all practical.Sir Godfrey had not appreciated her wit; and the memory of this moment’s disgrace, along with all the other inconveniences, ought to have stricken Graftings from consideration. And yet the property boasted one other feature that, for Emma, overrode all the rest; which was its proximity to Willmot Lodge.This was a villa on the outskirts of Marlhurst which served as the residence of Mr. Erasmus Willmot, his wife, and their nine children. One might be forgiven for thinking that in so large a family, it would be difficult to distinguish any individual; but for Emma, there was one inhabitant of Willmot Lodge who outshone all the others.Edgar, the eldest son, was seven years her senior, and had been a romantic figure in her impressionable girlhood. This had required a good deal of imagination, for he was a quiet, aloof, serious-minded young man, with dark hair and dark eyes, whose conversation ran from little to none at all. Indeed there was nothing about him that might charitably be called attractive—especially with a brother, a year younger, who was everything he was not: fair-haired, jovial, and eager to please. Yet Edgar had the aura of The Heir about him; and as his father had a considerable share in a lead mine and ticket in the lottery, there was, as sometimes in society there was not, a substantial inheritance for The Heir to be heir to.This initial fancy might have faded over time, as Emma grew to young womanhood and gained a deeper understanding of the wider world and her family’s place in it. But such was not to be. For one day when she was just thirteen, she had gone out for a walk—her youthful determination not in the least thwarted by the unruliness of the hills or the briskness of a late October morning—and badly turned her ankle while descending a slope too quickly. Unable to carry herself farther, she sat herself upon a stone and examined her injury, and attempted to gauge whether she risked greater impairment if she forced herself to walk on it, or whether she would be obliged to hop on one foot all the way back to Graftings, (which seemed to be an ideal plan for similarly disabling the other ankle).She was considering this dilemma—and, being a merry, agreeable girl, was not at all insensible to the humor in it—when a rustling in the fallen leaves very near to her drew her eye; and therein she saw a long, brown snake.She screamed; and as if considering that this single emission did insufficient justice to the full horror of her situation, she paused but briefly, then screamed again.The snake—which was perhaps deaf—did not flee or retreat, or bury itself more deeply in its cover of leaves, but slithered closer to where Emma sat, and coiled itself around her heel.She was up in a heartbeat and began to run away; but on her second step, when her injured ankle bore the full measure of her weight, she flinched in pain and folded like a rag doll; and while she managed to hop a few more paces in blind panic, it was inevitable that her lurching and flailing should end in a fall.She lay for a moment in the dirt, panting in fear, then propped herself up on her elbow to see whether the snake had given pursuit.And what she saw instead was Edgar Willmot. He came over the rise, his bearing stately and his manner phlegmatic, and accompanied by one of the family’s Irish setters, which he then gestured into a sit. Upon which he turned to Emma, clicked his heels and tipped his hat, and said, “I heard you cry out. May I be of assistance?”“Oh, yes, please,” Emma burbled. “I’ve hurt my ankle—I cannot walk—” And at this, Edgar began to approach her, so that she must exclaim, “—Be careful, there is a snake!”He stopped and cast his glance at the ground, though appearing to be more curious than fearful.“I see none,” he said calmly.“It was just there,” she whimpered, indicating the stone from which she had recently propelled herself.Edgar turned his scrutiny in the direction she had pointed out. Then a sudden movement galvanized his searching eyes, and he stepped forward very decisively, reached down, and plucked something up.It was the snake.Emma could not but feel somewhat foolish on seeing the creature dangle between Edgar’s thumb and forefinger, for it was rather slight. It had seemed so much longer when oscillating between the leaves.“This is a mere grass snake,” he explained; “it is not venomous. It poses no threat of any kind, to you or to anybody.”Her face burned, and she felt her angry wit well up. “I daresay I should not be lying here, if that were so.”He took no offense; in fact, he smiled. “In your predicament, it was fear of the creature that harmed you, not the creature itself,” he said, and he masterfully flung the thing many yards away. She lowered her eyes. “How stupid you must think me!”“Not at all. I can perfectly understand how its discovery must have startled you.” He approached her anew. “I often think there is nothing quite so disconcerting as stumbling upon life against one’s expectation.” He crouched down next to her. “Several weeks past I opened a drawer in my room, and reached into it for a pocket handkerchief; but what my hand closed about, was a mouse.”“Oh!” Emma squealed. “How dreadful! Were you quite alarmed?”“No less so than the mouse,” he said with a grin. “Though that was considerably. Shall I lift you?”She felt her face flush. “You needn’t put yourself to such trouble; if you but lend me your arm, I can hop alongside you.”“That ill suits your dignity as the daughter of a baronet,” he said. And with that, he scooped her into his arms and raised himself to his feet. Emma felt the sensation of the earth moving away from her, and without thinking sought to steady herself by throwing her arms around his neck.He was unfazed by this sudden intimacy. He quarter-turned his head and said, “Come, Baron,” and his dog happily leapt to his side.Twelve minutes later—during which not a single word passed between them (she being unwilling to add to his exertions by forcing him to talk)—he delivered her to the front door at Graftings, and into the care of her mother. He tipped his hat again and bade them both good day, before turning and departing, Baron bounding at his heels.Since that day, for Emma, there had been no other hero in all of Britain, but Edgar Willmot.Alas, there had been little chance for further encounters between them. Autumn swiftly gave way to winter, and within two months the Marlows relocated to Dunfosters for Christmas; and at Dunfosters they remained for four additional years, until they moved to Chipping Norton. There was nothing in the world that Emma wished more dearly than to return to Marlhurst, and to see Edgar Willmot once more. She wondered what changes five years might have wrought in him; he would now be twenty-five! A vast age. But no change in him could compare with the alteration in her; for she had been a mere child when last they met. Now she was a grown woman of eighteen; would he even know her? Would he care to know her? She yearned to find out.And yet she was a conscientious girl, and meant to do her duty by her father and mother; and it was so seldom that they asked her opinion on anything, she felt she must honor their request by responding as selflessly as possible. Which, all things considered, must mean Dunfosters.And so she said as much.They thanked her for her deliberation, and behaved in such a manner as to suggest that Emma’s word had settled the matter. This was a compliment to her, which she did her best to enjoy; it might be the only reward her integrity would afford her.But no; for here came her sister, Frances, into the room—and since she was the elder of their daughters, Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow did her the courtesy of asking her opinion as well.Frances did not hesitate in her reply. “If it’s all the same to you, dear Papa, dearest Mama, I should very much like to return to Graftings. It has been entirely too long since we have settled there.”“By that token,” said Lady Marlow, “we ought to make for Penwether, from which we have been even longer away.”Frances waved the point aside. “Penwether has waited this long; it can wait longer yet. But I must tell you, Papa, what I miss most keenly about Graftings is Uncle Baldwin’s kennels. You know it has been my desire since childhood to take them over. You promised me that I should, someday. Why may not that someday be today?”Sir Godfrey, reminded of his pledge, was forced to submit to it; though it seemed clear he had made it only because its object had seemed, at the time, no more than a young child’s fleeting fancy. He would scarcely have agreed otherwise to allow his fair young daughter sovereignty over the kennels which his late brother, ever prodigal, had had affixed to the property some quarter-century earlier. A baronet’s daughter belonged in a drawing room, not a dog run.Yet the ensuing years had done nothing to dim Frances’s love for all things canine. She scorned society, disdained distaff pursuits, neglected young men, and turned her back on all accomplishments. Her world revolved around her two King Charles spaniels, Dash and Cannon, and she longed for the day when she might make them the progenitors of a great spaniel dynasty.Thus, as she was the only member of the family whose preference was cast in iron, she carried the day.The Marlows would return to Graftings.

Edgar and Emma: an excerpt

As previously posted here in August, I’ve undertaken a new Austen project: turning Edgar & Emma—the hilarious four-page story Austen wrote in her teens—into a full-length novel in the mature Austen style (or at least my best approximation thereof).

Alas, I’ve only made incremental progress since announcing the project, because as a freelance writer I’ve had to set it aside whenever paying gigs have presented themselves. And they’ve presented themselves frequently lately…though without paying quiiiite enough to enable me to make any real commitment to Edgar and Emma.

So I’ve decided to mount a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to let me do just that. I’ll furnish the relevant details here, once the campaign is live; but as a precursor, I thought I’d give you all a glimpse at how Emma and Edgar has been progressing. Hence, the excerpt below.

But first, a few words about our dramatis personae:

Emma is the daughter of a baronet, Sir Godfrey Marlow, who has just moved his family back to Malhurst, the Sussex neighborhood of their early childhood. Emma has many fond memories of this place, particularly of a very intense young boy, Edgar Wilmott, who once, when they were both eight years old, rescued her from an encounter with a very long (yet entirely harmless) snake.

In the interval, Edgar has gone on to study Classics at Oxford, and now desires nothing more than to pursue an academic career. His dream is to produce a new English translation of Plutarch’s Lives, which pairs biographies of great Greeks and Romans…and also to add a third chapter to each entry, focusing on a corresponding British statesman. But these scholarly ambitions are thwarted by his wealthy father, who has decreed that as the eldest son, Edgar must instead inherit and run the bulk of the Wilmott estate.

Edgar’s dashing younger brother Ralph, meanwhile, has set his sights on social advancement, and sees the nubile young daughter of a baronet as just the ticket for his first step up the ladder. Edgar knows of Ralph’s self-interested plans for Emma, but can’t bring himself to declare himself in his brother’s place; he’s too shy, and too uncertain of his own qualities.

In the meantime, Edgar himself is pursued by Alice Nesmith, the grasping young daughter of the local vicar. Alice scorns country life; she wants London, and she wants money. Edgar, the educated son of a very rich man, can furnish her with both.

The only other character to feature in this excerpt is Emma’s aunt, Mrs. Curtis—a comparatively young woman who at a tender age married a much older man, so that she’s never had a proper outlet for her girlish need to flirt and be coquettish. Now she funnels all this stored-up sexual energy into her niece. Mrs. Curtis’s chief aim is to see Emma married to handsome, debonair Ralph Wilmott.

In the excerpt that follows, Emma and Mrs. Curtis have come to Malhurst town to do some shopping. They’ve no sooner arrived than they bump into Alice Nesmith. The three women saunter up the high street together.



“What do you think Emma has just been telling me of?” said Mrs. Curtis.“I am sorry to say,” said Alice with perhaps too much satisfaction, “that I have not heard Miss Emma Marlow speak sufficiently often to guess at what she might say.”“Why, she has only been telling me which of the Willmot brothers she finds the most handsome. I think you may surmise which she chose.”“I beg your pardon, Aunt,” said Emma, feeling color come to her face. “I have said not one word on the subject. The discourse has been entirely your own.”“But there are so many Willmots,” said Alice, ignoring Emma’s protest; “I don’t like to venture a guess as to which one you mean.” But her eyes—which she now turned on Emma—betrayed that she had indeed ventured a guess.“Difficult creature,” said Mrs. Curtis, and she playfully tweaked Alice’s arm—a familiarity that made Emma feel quite faint. “Why will you never guess when I ask it of you?”“I am sorry, but I am very stupid at it.”“I will have to tell you, then,” said the older woman, and she drew Alice closer that she might lower her voice. “It is of course Ralph whom Emma favors.”“Aunt,” Emma cried, “forgive me, but I never said such a thing! It was yourself who named him.”“Ralph is very fair,” said Alice with a nod of approval. “Though I confess I prefer a darker complexion. No doubt Miss Emma Marlow and I do not share the same taste in men.”Emma, who did not like to consider that she and Alice Nesmith might share the same taste in anything, stilled the protest that was poised to leap from her tongue; in which interval her aunt renewed her discourse on the male Willmots.“That is the benefit, you see,” she said, taking Alice in one arm and Emma in the other and leading them up the high street, “of having so very many brothers in a single family. There is certain to be one to fit every fancy. Think of it, girls: Ralph is light, Edgar is dark; Richard is slender, David is burly; and Peter—well, Peter is too young yet to say what he will be. I suppose we must be content to wait.”“I think he will be tall,” said Alice. “He is very high already, for just twelve years.”“Then the Willmots must be persuaded to have another son,” quipped Mrs. Curtis, “that there may also be one who is short.”“But what if he should instead be round? Then the Willmots must have two more sons: one who is short, and another who is gaunt.”“Mrs. Willmot will not thank you for that, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis, and the two laughed very wildly. Emma, whose elbow was securely interlocked with that of her aunt, could think of no greater mortification than to be seen with them behaving thusly, and indeed several heads turned in response to the noise they were making. But alas, she was to learn that greater mortification always awaits those helpless to defend against it.“Why, bless me,” cried Aunt Curtis, “are those not two of the gentlemen we have only just named?”Emma looked up, and to her horror saw that indeed Edgar and Ralph Willmot were a short distance ahead, very near to the milliner’s shop.“Emma, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis with telling deliberation, “was not our principle destination this morning the milliner’s?”“No, indeed, Aunt,” said Emma, pretending not to take her meaning, “we have no business to transact there.”Mrs. Curtis gave her arm a little shake. “Silly creature! You understand me, I am sure. I mean to say, what a chance this is to speak extemporaneously to your lover, Mr. Ralph Willmot!”Emma felt her face burn again. “I have no such lover,” she insisted.“Ah, but here is an opportunity to make it so!”“The mere fact that an opportunity presents itself,” Emma said desperately, “does not make it advisable to take it.”Mrs. Curtis cawed out a laugh. “How clever you are! Ever ready with a turn of phrase. I suppose you think that gentlemen find cleverness an attractive quality in a lady. They do not. You may trust me on this, my dear; I know it for a certainty.”“I am sure no one knows it better,” snapped Emma; and as soon as she had said it, she regretted that provocation had rendered her pert.Fortunately her aunt was oblivious to her meaning, and merrily pulled her in the direction of the milliner’s shop. Emma was chastened enough by her momentary rudeness to allow it.“I declare,” said Mrs. Curtis when they came within hailing distance of the brothers, “here are friends of ours! Look, girls; it is the Misters Willmot.”The brothers, who had been conferring together, lifted their heads at this, and a momentary look passed between Emma and Edgar—a look of such candid, unaffected interest that each was embarrassed by it, and turned their glances quickly away, and did not risk allowing their eyes to meet a second time.“How do you do, ladies,” Ralph said as he and Edgar tipped their hats.“Very well, thank you,” said Mrs. Curtis. “We are just come to visit the milliner’s. And what,” she added with unconcealed glee, “do you think we have all been talking about?”Emma, whose skin was so recently reddened by shame, now felt it go pale with anxiety. “Aunt, no,” she whispered.“You must not ask us to guess,” said Ralph. “For we might inadvertently scandalize you by deducing quite wrongly.”“Mrs. Curtis is fond of guessing,” said Alice, who seemed to direct the observation directly at Edgar. He gave her a grateful smile, but said nothing in reply.“Then I will have to tell you,” said Aunt Curtis, and as Emma felt herself begin to sink into the ground, she declared: “We have been singing the praises of this lovely springtime weather.”“Indeed it is very clement,” murmured Edgar, whose gaze remained downcast, as though in search of coins from Roman Britain that might be easily unearthed by the toe of his shoe.“Such a wonderful moistness in the air,” said Mrs. Curtis with a quick glance at Emma; and the spark in her eye revealed how much she enjoyed causing her niece trepidation, then relieving it at the last possible moment. “So beneficial for the skin. Does not Emma’s face have a particular glow this morning, Mr. Willmot?”“Indeed it does,” said Ralph, at whom she had quite pointedly directed the question; for Edgar seemed to drift ever further to the outskirts of the group. “And yet she looks no less fine than Miss Nesmith—or dare I say it, yourself, ma’am.”Mrs. Curtis laughed wildly again. “You must not say such things to me, Mr. Willmot! I am an old married lady.”He flashed her a dazzling grin. “Then this moist air is more efficacious than any I have yet known; for you look no less a maiden than your two companions.”Again she shrieked with laughter; up and down the street heads turned in curiosity at such stridency, and Emma longed to be gone. But she knew she was fixed in place for the time being. It was unlike her aunt to hurry away from a place where compliments were aplenty.“To be sure,” Mrs. Curtis said, “there is but a difference of seven years between my niece and myself. My brother Marlow is fully a dozen years my senior, you know; so that I was but a child myself when Emma was born.”“That explains it,” said Ralph with another bow. “I congratulate your husband, ma’am, on his good fortune in winning so young and comely a bride.”“As well you might,” she said with a little smirk of pride. “For Mr. Curtis was nearly forty when I married him and might have done much worse, as I often tell him. But I daresay I have made him happy. He will not say so; but as he has not got rid of me in all these years, I must conclude he is not unsatisfied.”“He is the happiest of men, I am certain,” said Ralph.She crowed again. “Oh! if Mr. Curtis is the happiest of men, then what dour creatures all the rest of your sex must be!” She turned again to Emma. “I shall wish better for my niece, sir; that I shall. For her, I shall wish a husband who is always gallant, always gay, always ready with a compliment.” She took another quick look at Ralph, as if requiring further inspiration, then added, “A well-looking fellow, who is always attentive and smiling. That is my ideal. That is what I wish for Emma.”“Such a paragon of positivity!” said Ralph, shaking his head and feigning a dubious look. “I wonder whether he exists in the world.”“I am certain he does, and in quantity. In fact, you may be sure there is one to be found wherever you go.” She gave him a very sly look, as if daring him to take her meaning.“Aunt,” Emma whispered frantically; “you grow too bold.”“And Miss Nesmith,” Ralph said, nodding his head at Alice; “is she not included in your marital good wishes?”“Oh, I shouldn’t like a cheerful husband,” protested Alice. “I should be much more contented with a sober-minded man—a scholarly man of great, mindful silences.” She did not look at Edgar as she said this; but Emma saw Edgar color and turn further away, as though he felt Alice’s eyes on him all the same.“Then at least,” said Ralph, “you ladies will never be rivals for the same suitor. I congratulate you on the safety of your friendship.” He turned his head, as if to say something to Edgar, then appeared momentarily confounded at finding him so far off. “It appears my brother is impatient to depart,” he said, “and indeed we have lingered here longer than we had ought. But with such company as this, none would dare to blame us.”
TO BE CONTINUED.

Wishing you a Bitchin' New Year

Welcome to 2015, everybody! I'll be in touch a little more regularly, beginning soon (he said cryptically). Meantime, to start the year with a laugh, here's a great sketch from the wonderful comic Jane Horrocks (best knock as Bubble in Absolutely Fabulous), which in my humble opinion is only a little bit wilder than the juvenile Jane Austen. Well...okay, maybe a lot wilder. But closer to her anarchic spirit than Merchant & Ivory, in my humble opinion. Anyway, enjoy!

Bitch for the Holidays, Part 2

And if by chance you've already bestowed Volume 1 on all your nearest and dearest, let me just note that Volume 2 is the perfect way to show them you still love them. In case you need reminding, here are a few excerpts:

"Emma is literary champagne; but of the very driest variety. In it, we find Austen at the height of her narrative powers, and clearly aware of it; she indulges herself—in fact, a bit too much so for my taste. She doesn’t make light of the world she creates, but she doesn’t exactly make heft of it, either. It’s a frolic—a gambol; a sunny roundelay. We love Emma, but we never feel any kind of anxiety for her, as we did for the Dashwood sisters, and for Lizzy Bennet. We never feel anxiety for anyone in the cast of characters. It’s as though Austen has invented such a group of darlings, she can’t bear to afflict them with any real tribulations. There is—as there always is, in Austen—a rival and a cad; but the rival is never seriously a rival, and the cad only intermittently caddish. The book’s only two villains are married off to each other and pushed to the margins so that their hideousness can only delight, never threaten. In a way, Emma is Jane Austen writing her own Jane Austen fan fiction."
"Northanger Abbey is probably the least regarded of Austen’s novels—not in the sense that it’s the least liked (Mansfield Park takes that prize), but in the sense that it’s the least often read, the least often discussed, the least often considered. There’s just too much in it that throws your average dingbat Austen fan into confusion: an unexceptional heroine who never rises to anything beyond a certain baseline competency, a foppish hero whose motives are never entirely understandable, and a one-sided love affair whose only triumph is that the diffident party is eventually flattered into signing on. But it’s my own favorite in the canon, after (of course) Pride and Prejudice. Because its first draft was written early in Austen’s career, it retains much of the swagger of the joyfully anarchic fiction she wrote in such quantity during her adolescence. And this is balanced by the psychologically nuanced character portrayals we associate with Austen in her full maturity. To me, it’s the most representative of her works, twining the brash irreverence of her juvenile period with the sagacity and reflection of her mastery."
"Persuasion is the last novel Jane Austen prepared for publication before she died, and it was released posthumously. For that reason, many people have come to regard it as valedictory; and this illusion is aided by its heroine, Anne Elliot, who, as a lifelong spinster disdained by her family, appears on the surface to be a stand-in for Austen herself. In granting Anne Elliot a second chance at love, and with the man she’d foolishly rejected in her youth, some readers—stupid readers, I think; sentimental and sloppy ones—view Persuasion as Austen’s attempt to live vicariously through a fictionalized version of herself; to bring her own story to a happy resolution before death claimed her. Like Prospero in The Tempest, Anne Elliot becomes the author taking her leave of her readers, by way of a dramatic stand-in.
You only have to take a look at the novel Austen was working on when she died to realize that Persuasion is no such thing. Sanditon clearly shows Austen back in biting social-satire mode, and even extending her palette to include sharp satiric jabs at commerce and industry. At the end of her life she was expanding her focus, not narrowing it."
"[Austen] began as a rollicking farceuse; developed into a relentlessly funny social satirist; and matured into a brilliant ironist. There’s no telling where she might have gone from there, had she not died so terribly, almost criminally young. But one thing seems certain: she would never have become a sentimentalist…never a romantic…never a safe little scribbler of mawkish, soft-core valentines. And if there is a literary heaven? Those writers are the souls who flee the fastest when she enters a room."
What better stocking stuffer for the culture maven, Janeite, or bitch (bonneted or otherwise) on your list? 
Finally: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you, and thanks again for supporting me in this project and for being such wonderful sounding boards, critics...and friends. I wish you the best of everything.

Bitch for the Holidays (volume 1)

Just a reminder that the ideal holiday present for every discriminating palate on your gift list does in fact exist. And you can get it by overnight delivery, so I don't even feel bad about taking this long to remind you.

What I will remind you of are some representative passages from its pages:

"Here are a few things you won’t find in Sense and Sensibility: a passionate kiss or a violent embrace...a kiss or embrace of any kind, for that matter...any portrayal of a marriage proposal...any depiction of a wedding ceremony...anyone speaking the words 'I love you.' Here are a few things you WILL find in Sense and Sensibility: ruthlessness...venality...arrogance...avarice...fecklessness...snobbishness...shamelessness...two or three of the most unbridled talkers in all of western literature...and an authorial voice that merrily mocks them all into immortality."

"Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I laugh. It’s the laughter of philosophy; the clear, cold laughter of those who reside in the abyss but are untouched by its sweat-soaked, writhing tumult. We laugh, because Austen lifts us above the fray and nimbly escorts us to a farther shore, where there are kindred spirits waiting. We can’t stay there long; but we can return whenever we like...again, and again, and again, and again."

"I’ve conjectured long and hard about why Austen wrote Mansfield Park; but whatever the reason, the good news is, she learned from the endeavor...and she shows as much in her next novel, which is basically Mansfield Park turned on its head. Its heroine, Emma Woodhouse, is a revisionist Mary Crawford—a sly, feline charmer who’s quick to judgment and carelessly glib, and who is made to pay for it; but this time, crucially, she’s forgiven. Her rival, Jane Fairfax, is a new incarnation of Fanny Price—chilly, impenetrable, aloof; and like Fanny, her imperturbable stillness wins her her man in the end. But in this case it’s exactly the right man for her: Frank Churchill, a second Henry Crawford, whose wily roguishness will force her to enlarge her own capacity for understanding; as her quiet determination will galvanize his. Because of this ingenious inversion, Emma scintillates where Mansfield Park stalls out; Emma delights where Mansfield Park frustrates; and Emma is beloved, where Mansfield Park, despite its many brilliant facets and enduring moments, seems fated to remain only tolerated."

Go on then...share the love. You'll be glad you did.

Dang, but the holidays are difficult.

I mean, where do you find the perfect present for every highly intelligent, supremely cultured tastemaker on your gift list? It's so very, very vexing. But don't give up...keep looking...surely something will occur to you...

More home news: Volume 2 ebook, and NEW Austen project

Two news items today:

First, BITCH IN A BONNET Vol. 2 is finally, at long last available as an eBook. Your choice: Kindle or Nook. Other platforms will be added in due course. Thanks for your patience, enjoy!

Second: I've begun a new Austen project. I'll be adapting EDGAR AND EMMA—taking the rollicking three-page story Austen wrote in her teens, and fleshing it out into a full-length novel. And, I'm sure, having the time of my life while doing it. Aiming to have it finished and available in early 2015; I'll keep you apprised of my progress. Meantime, enjoy what's left of summer!