Chapter 5 #2
Did I mention that Colonel Barrow is here with his family?
His wife is a charming lady, daughter of a baronet I believe, and most genteel.
She has invited me to dine several times, sometimes in the company of other officers, sometimes alone, and I enjoy those evenings greatly.
The food is nothing extraordinary, for she mostly relies on the fort’s kitchens, but the company is excellent.
Also living with the colonel is his middle child, Emily, with whom I have struck up a friendship.
Miss Barrow’s older sister is long since wed, and her younger brother is engaging in his own military career, leaving this daughter to live with her parents.
She is past the age of a youthful marriage and seems quite content in this fact, which allows the two of us to engage as equals without the expectation that my attentions to her derive from inclinations other than platonic.
In simpler terms, separated as I am from my family and acquaintances in England, it is good to have a friend.
This is, to date, an accounting of my first weeks in Bermuda. I shall add nothing more now, but I shall implore a return letter from you, that I might hear of my cousins and their affairs.
Your cousin,
RF
December 8, 1810
Dear Richard,
I suspect you have written in response to my previous missive and that our letters shall cross paths in their respective ships, but I have news to convey to you.
This will not be welcome news, but I felt it best you hear it sooner, and from one with your welfare at heart.
Miss Ingalls, or who was Miss Ingalls, has married, and not to the man for whom she jilted your suit.
In the scandal of the year, that lady spurned her engagement to Lord Worthiston and within days married John Garraway, who is Viscount Chintford.
You have surely heard of that man’s reputation about Town; I do not suspect it will be a happy marriage for either of them, despite her beauty and his riches.
Whilst I grieve for your broken heart, I suspect you are the better for having avoided her clutches.
Now on to more mundane matters, which might draw your interest.
Georgie seems to be pleased with Mrs Younge, her new companion.
The lady is not old, perhaps little more than thirty, and widowed.
She knows London well and has been introducing my sister to several other ladies of her acquaintance, as well as to the best galleries and museums in Town.
We have, together, attended a great many concerts and musical events of which I would not have known, but which have pleased Georgie greatly.
She continues her pianoforte lessons with the master I engaged last summer, and she progresses even more than before.
The teacher doth make the student. I do believe I shall purchase for her one of the new pianofortes with the expanded range, and have it sent to Pemberley for her enjoyment there.
Perhaps it shall suit as a gift for her sixteenth birthday.
I returned to Town after overseeing the harvest, but I shall be off again to Derbyshire tomorrow.
I hope to achieve Pemberley before the roads become difficult to travel, and there to spend Christmas.
Georgiana will accompany me, but Mrs Younge has requested leave to spend the holiday with her family, and this I have granted her.
We shall reconvene in London in the new year.
Our journey takes us past Matlock, and there we shall take some time with your own parents and sister, and your brother should he and his family be in attendance.
In the faint hope that this reaches you before the holiday, I wish you a happy Christmas,
Your faithful cousin,
FD
Dear Cousin Richard,
How excited I was when Will told me he had a letter to send to you and asked if I wished to include a note before he created the envelope. He has been in London these past several weeks at some business to do with Pemberley and has come to see me every day.
I believe he has told you of my new companion.
I am so very happy you agreed to take me from school.
It appears I have not the talent of making friends that some people seem to possess, and the other girls scorned me and would not take the time to work past my shy nature.
I know this of myself, Richard, and need only a person who will open her heart to me and befriend me first, so I may grow to trust her and befriend her back.
Perhaps one day Will might find such a kind-hearted lady as a wife, so I might have a sister and friend in one person.
Mrs Younge is not exactly that sort of person.
She is very kind and has introduced me around London, but I do not feel she wishes to be my friend.
I am satisfied with this, for one day I will grow too old for her, or she will take another position, and I would not wish to lose a friend and companion in a single move.
Nevertheless, I am far happier with her than ever I was with the smart young ladies at the school, no matter how kind your intentions in sending me there.
We attend plays and lectures and concerts, and during the day walk in the parks and see exhibits at the museums, and I am content.
She will not be with us over Christmas, as I believe Will has said, but she is talking of us finding a house in Ramsgate next summer, to take in the atmosphere and perhaps do some sea bathing!
I wish you a very happy Christmas and a pleasant new year,
Your cousin,
Georgiana Darcy
January 18, 1811
Dearest Cousin Will,
The winds must have been in our favour, for I received your letters of December the 8th in good time, and I am now able to respond to your remarks.
I hope you enjoyed a pleasant Christmas at Pemberley with Georgie, and were able to skate on the frozen pond, as we did as children.
Ah, how well I recall the ice and the snowball fights we had, and then the games we played once back inside and warm by the fire.
Snapdragon, charades, and finding the baby in the plum pudding!
I miss those carefree days and only hope to be back in England before too long to experience them anew.
Christmas in the Bermudas is, as you might imagine, very different than at home.
There are no frozen ponds to be seen, and the temperature hovers around seventy degrees on Mr Fahrenheit’s thermometer scale.
It is at once far more pleasant than England’s frozen shores, and far too exotic to be entirely comfortable.
I wonder, sometimes, at our compatriots out in distant India, where the temperatures must surely make the Bermudas’ seem arctic.
But enough of my reminiscences. Here is some news for you.
I was sent for four weeks to another fortification on these islands, an artillery fort named Fort St Catherine.
Unlike this great fort at the Dockyard, which protects the western approach to the isles, and the dockyard itself, St Catherine keeps guard over the eastern approach to the colony and the great lagoon on which sits the capital of St George’s.
It is a grand structure, the place where first Englishmen walked on these shores, and is under constant renewal.
It is defended by no less than five cannon, each capable of punching a hole through any enemy ship that dares approach.
My duties there were to train the men in the most modern drill from England concerning these guns.
Between that artillery and the guns here at my home fort at the Dockyard, it is no wonder these isles are considered impenetrable.
I have been back at the Dockyard for two weeks now and have been enjoying my frequent invitations to dine with the Barrows.
Mrs Barrow manages to coax edible food from the fort’s kitchens, and the colonel is an educated and intelligent man who somehow manages to procure newspapers from London with remarkable speed.
At times, one is only three weeks behind in the news!
Miss Barrow, whom I have been allowed to call Emily, remains a steadfast companion.
We spend a good deal of time talking when I am relieved of my duties for the day, and the time is never wasted.
Thank heavens neither of us has inclinations to anything other than platonic friendship, for I should be loath to disturb this connexion we have established.
More news as I have to tell it,
RF