Chapter Delaford, Dorsetshire #2
My new tea gown is pale thrush-egg blue.
(I wonder if thrushes were making all that noise in the woods?) It is caught up under my breasts and drapes over my slippers.
The modiste wanted to hem it above my ankles but I refused, since my skirts must disguise my feet.
I have practiced tucking them back so that only the tips peek out from my gown.
I’ll describe more gowns later, as I must go down to tea. I’ve been hearing carriages arrive all morning, rumbling over the gravel with a sound like a hailstorm. (Cliché: must do better.)
June 5, 1814, sent by Baron Hugh Skelmers Vaughan to Miss Margaret Dashwood:
Snaps, I’ve reached Florence, Italy. I know you want me to write about museums (and I will), but I came across people dancing in a piazza last night.
You know how much I hate dancing, but a strange woman grabbed my hands and whirled me around.
She reminded me of you, scolding me for being so awkward while waltzing.
Later that Afternoon
I have now met all the eligible men summoned to look me over.
Marianne is determined to trade my dowry for a title, so they’re mostly future knights, along with one future marquess (Squibby).
Due to my passion for culture, Marianne included a poet and a novelist (future barons).
It occurred to me when we were sitting around chirping over cups of tea that everyone is a “future,” because I am a future wife.
Sadly, the conversation hadn’t a shred of culture and centered on the likelihood of pigeon pie for dinner, given the morning’s successful shoot.
If I were as sensitive as Marianne used to be, the thought would have made me long for death.
I comforted myself by thinking that somewhere in the world people were discussing Chaucer and Raphael, but it didn’t help much, especially when the conversation turned to pig farming.
I smiled so much that my cheek muscles hurt.
At some point, Squibby brought me a fresh cup of tea—he’s awfully good at noticing empty cups—and asked me why I was grimacing so much.
Rude! I scowled and made him go away, and after that Miss Feodora Wintresse confessed that she was devastatingly in love with him.
With Squibby!
I didn’t ask why, but I must have looked astonished, because she waxed poetic about his cheekbones and the way his dark hair curls over his brow.
(Brow is a good word for a hero. Of course, we all have one, but I shall reserve the word for my hero.) When I noted that his thirty thousand pounds are also very attractive, she turned pink and said that I needn’t be vulgar.
I almost retorted that I was too highbrow to be vulgar, but luckily I didn’t, because now that sounds rather stupid.
At any rate: a description of Miss Feodora Wintresse.
She has flaxen hair and small earlobes to go with her very small feet.
Her nose is small, too. Her heart is probably small, and as Squibby’s true friend, I should warn him.
But I shan’t. Likely he will be entranced by the way her feet steal in and out of her petticoats like little mice.
(Is that a poem? I’m sure I read it somewhere.) Her gown was so light that the line of her French stays was perfectly visible.
I wore my thrush-egg blue tea gown with a corset as confining as my grandmother might have worn, thanks to my mother’s dislike of everything French. As soon as I’m married, I shall throw out my corsets and wear only stays, with no boning.
At any rate, I inquired about Feodora’s reading habits, and she confessed to reading novels, but only in secret, as her mother disapproves. I would have pulled out Cecilia and starting reading then and there, but my sister banished everyone to rest before dinner.
We all obediently filed out of the room, but I saw Squibby saunter off toward the back of the house, so I expect he was going to the stables.
He’s obsessed with horses, though, to his credit, he doesn’t bore one to tears talking about it.
I was tempted to follow, but, of course, one mustn’t.
I might be caught and my reputation dented.
I suspect he was going to the stables to see if my darling mare, Bobbin, was in good form.
Squibby and I share a passion for hunting—though it has nothing to do with killing a fox.
We love tearing over hedges and leaping stone walls on horseback.
Bobbin is smaller than his mount, Belial, but she’s wily and clever.
We often manage to bump Belial from the path because he’s too well bred to bump us.
On occasion, Bobbin will even bite at his flank.
Back to the novel.
Novels are never confined to the exploits of lords and ladies, so I shall practice by describing my maid, Sally.
I know girls who are horribly bullied by their French maids, but, thanks to my mother’s provincialism, Sally is from Northamptonshire.
She has blue eyes and bigger feet than me.
She claims to be grateful for her feet, because otherwise they would ache after a long day—which is a salutary reminder that most people work, whereas I am feckless and haven’t completed a single petit point chair.
Another important point: Sally has a much larger bosom than mine, supposedly the reason why most of the footmen are in love with her.
I considered making my heroine an impoverished orphan with a fanciable bosom, but I am unnerved by the idea of fictionalizing (if that’s a word) a life I don’t know much about and which can be so arduous.
Sally gets frightfully tired, though she assures me that Colonel Brandon’s butler is fair, and no one is overworked.
I expect I’ll end up with someone like Feodora as my heroine. But smarter. Like me, but with small feet.
I won’t be able to write again until after supper and dancing, but I’ll just say that tonight I shall wear a fir-green evening gown with the tiniest bodice you can imagine.
Sally has managed to trade one of my lace-trimmed handkerchiefs for some lip color—my mother refused to buy me any—so my lips won’t look grimly pale compared to other girls.
July 25, 1814, sent by Baron Hugh Skelmers Vaughan to Miss Margaret Dashwood:
Dear Snaps, I ran into Bobby Peel in Florence (he says to remind you that he partnered you in a waltz at Fulham Palace).
His father requires he stay with people of “worth and substance” rather than in coaching inns, so we’re in the Villa di Castello right now.
The garden is fed by a series of fascinating aqueducts leading from two springs that I might copy someday to bring water to the north cornfields.
Thinking of you, I looked around at the paintings.
There’s one of a lady without a stitch of clothing standing in a conch shell.
Bobby claims to be impressed by her gilded locks, though they’re not nearly as pretty as yours.
Very Late That Night
It’s three in the morning, but authors cannot give in to exhaustion, so I am sitting down to write my impressions of the evening.
The moment I came down the stairs, I saw Squibby, draped against the wall like the leaning Tower of Pisa.
I greeted him with that simile, and he argued that he was more like a statue of Bacchus that he saw in Rome.
I was distracted by his explanation of Bacchus (the god of wine and implicitly all sorts of depraved activities) and remarked that I’d never seen him in his cups, to which Squibby responded that no lady sees a gentleman in his cups, unless it’s their wedding night and they’re sharing a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
I was silenced by that idea and couldn’t help turning red.
I’ve never given the wedding night much thought, other than noting Juliet’s undignified wish to keep Romeo in her bed.
I suppose, when the time comes, I’ll be forced to ask Elinor about it, since she’s too sensible to allow me to be embarrassed by ignorance.
I couldn’t help wondering what Squibby’s unclothed chest looked like, no matter how inappropriate that was. Not that he would rival a Roman god like Bacchus, but I got the distinct impression that he would look quite good draped in a few grapevines.
Obviously, he realized his impropriety, because he changed the subject and asked if I’d read Cowper’s poetry. I was quite surprised. “No, I haven’t,” I said. “Have you?”
“He wrote a good one called ‘Epitaph for a Pheasant,’ that I thought you might enjoy,” he replied.
The truth is that I have intentionally avoided Cowper’s poetry, because it sounds depressing.
I struggled for a moment, deciding whether to reveal the truth about my propensity for cheerful literature, but I finally did.
“I made up that title,” Squibby said, after I confessed.
My mouth fell open, and I let out an unladylike squeak. Or squeal. “You what?”
“Made it up,” Squibby said, smiling at me. “The way you read me that book, years ago. Though Cowper did write ‘Epitaph for a Hare,’ so I wasn’t far off.”
I shan’t elaborate on my reaction, but I experienced a burning feeling under my breast bone that did not come from eating too much cake.
Squibby was seated far away from me at the dinner table; I was sandwiched between two knights, of which Sir Roderick Muckrose was the less annoying.
He said that a thrush sounds like a wooden flute and may well have been singing in the woods.
He wouldn’t mind reading a novel now and then, except the House of Lords keeps him busy.
That seemed a reasonable excuse. Unfortunately, one couldn’t describe his eyes as “flashing”—perhaps bovine?
I expect he will ask me to marry him tomorrow, as he informed me that I was the prettiest girl he’d seen for years and told me three times that he’d like to be the first to lead me into a dance.
I wish he hadn’t a maddening habit of beginning nearly every sentence with “I say!” Who else is saying it, if not him?