Chapter Delaford, Dorsetshire #3
You’ll be thinking I’m a snob, and I am a snob.
I want to marry an intellectual or, if that’s impossible, a man who reads novels.
Colonel Brandon claims to enjoy music far more than literature, and has read only one novel, Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson.
If the subject comes up, he wreathes his arms around his chest (“wreathes” is a good word for a man with a narrow chest) and declares that Pamela was “so vulgar” that he’s “never bothered to read another.”
He considers novelists dubious, if not outright immoral, but hopefully he will change his mind when my novel is published.
While we were eating, the footmen set up the drawing room for dancing, so after the meal, we all traipsed across the hall.
I couldn’t help noticing that Squibby was frightfully well dressed in a coat of steel gray; in fact, he was the most elegant man in the room, and much admired by all the ladies.
He professes to dislike dancing, but he was forever bowing before someone and then guiding them around the room.
By the time he came around to ask me to dance, I was in a terrible mood, so I told him that Roderick danced like a cloud.
Squibby didn’t look the slightest bit annoyed at my comment and pointed out that my married name would be “Lady Margaret Muckrose,” as if I hadn’t already considered that drawback.
He gave me a thoughtful look and said it suited me, which we both recognized was a tremendous insult.
He wandered off, chortling, and I didn’t see him again until the last dance, which he suggested we sit out.
I have to say that he always seems to guess when I’m tired.
I blame myself when gentlemen trample on my large feet, but whatever the reason, by the end of the evening, my toes inevitably feel blue.
We could have had an intellectual conversation, because I happen to know that Squibby has read reams of literature (he’d reportedly embarrassed his father by taking a first at Oxford in Litterae Humaniores—rather than a more respectable subject, such as math).
But instead he confided that his second cousin Albertina had run away with her father’s coachman and was last seen heading for the Scottish border.
I just realized that from now on I should transcribe dialogue in novelistic form, since my novel may be a roman à clef, which means “taken from life.”
“Are you certain the coachman was the groom?” I asked, fascinated by Albertina’s boldness. My mother would die if I widened my search for true love to the household staff.
“He stole the family carriage.”
“Well, if I were writing Albertina’s story,” I said, “that would be a ruse. You believe it was the coachman because he was driving, but who knows who was seated beside her? She may have eloped with someone even more ineligible.”
Squibby was very struck by this idea and kept asking me questions. I could see that he had a smile tucked in the corners of his lips, but we were both having so much fun making up a truly scandalous story that I couldn’t scold him for mockery.
We concluded that Albertina had run away with a divorced man, because I once saw her dancing with a divorced duke while ignoring the scandal that erupted in the ballroom.
Apparently, she had always been startlingly unconventional.
“My mother,” Squibby said, “is unsurprised, based on her tempestuous watercolors. She labeled Albertina ‘high-spirited’ based on Highland crags and storm clouds.” I know just what the countess was talking about: Most girls paint daisies, so when someone ventures into Scotland, her work does stand out.
“Perhaps the groom was not only divorced, but French,” I suggested, thinking of my mother’s distaste for the nation.
Squibby wrinkled his nose and started telling me stories about the Parisian gentlemen who wore tight beige trousers and had terrible complexions due to drinking too much Pernod, a variation of the emerald-colored drink also called absinthe.
I would love to travel to France and see pale-faced men clutching glasses of green liqueur. I said as much, and Squibby—that wretch—said that I’d better look elsewhere than Roderick Muckrose, because they had been at Eton and Oxford together, and Roddie didn’t even like traveling to Bath.
“Of course, you could marry a Frenchman, move to that country, and stock your drinks cabinet with Pernod,” Squibby suggested, nodding toward the only Frenchman in the room, Monsieur Antoine Barbier.
Marianne had invited him to add “flair.” And also because Antoine claimed to have narrowly escaped being guillotined, which everyone assumed meant he used to have a title.
I couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm for Antoine, even given the allure of green liqueur. Every time he doffed his hat, the whole world could see that his valet combed such hair as remained over the top of his head. “Absolutely not,” I said, without explanation.
“You’re frightfully demanding,” Squibby said, sighing. “I am glad we’re not marrying. I’m sure you would exhaust me.”
My heart squeezed, because that implied that I wouldn’t make a good wife. It was one thing to turn down a proposal and quite another to learn that the man in question counted himself lucky.
“I shall send one of my grooms to London for some Pernod,” he said.
That was absurd. I pointed out the poor man would be on horseback all day.
“I know the ride sounds unpleasantly strenuous,” said Squibby, “but I assure you that my grooms are paid a fortune, and they don’t mind the odd errand.”
I did believe it, because anyone can tell that his servants like him.
Sally tells me that Squibby’s valet is pleased with his position, whereas Antoine’s is miserable.
The man speaks only French and refuses to eat meat, so he is likely starving to death.
I suggested that he might not know English, but Sally says that he’s been in this country ever since the near-guillotining years ago and should have learned how to say “egg” by now.
“Did you meet lots of Frenchwomen in Europe?” I asked Squibby, realizing a moment too late how improper that question was.
“I lived on the Continent for two years,” he pointed out, rather evasively.
“I know that. We wrote to each other, remember?” I wrote to him every week, even though it is frightfully inappropriate to write to an unmarried man who isn’t a family member.
Colonel Brandon never said a word against it and stamped all my letters, so I felt that the head of the household had (so to speak) given me permission.
“I never wrote to you about ladies,” Squibby said, his eyes glinting at me.
He’d grown a lot in the last two years; I couldn’t help noticing that his shoulders were much wider. Plus, there was something indefinable about his face that suggested he gained all kinds of experience he hadn’t had before.
“I have no wish to learn about them,” I said, striving for dignity.
Then I retired with alacrity. That’s a great phrase that I must use somehow. It perfectly conveys the speed that sends a person running from the room, their ears burning with embarrassment.
August 16, 1814, sent by Baron Hugh Skelmers Vaughan to Miss Margaret Dashwood:
Dear Snaps, Bobby Peel’s father wants to start a police force in London, so he asked us to visit a Florentine prison called the Bargello.
It turns out that paying a fine will commute a death sentence.
I thought you’d want me to do it, so Bobby and I pooled our money and bought out a fellow for the crime of blasphemy.
The three of us are in a pub, having drunk the better part of a cask of wine.
Bobby is writing his father about police corruption but says Peel senior will ignore him. I hope this is legible. I miss you.
September 2 Morning
The men went out shooting again, so I breakfasted with Feodora and two other eligible damsels before making my excuses and dashing up to my room to write while my impressions are fresh.
Feodora is even more in love with Squibby than she was yesterday afternoon. Apparently, she danced three times with him—against the rules, but her mother had retired with a headache—so now she considers them to be virtually betrothed.
“His eyes are punishingly blue,” she rhapsodized, clutching her hands together.
I found the revelation of her future spouse disagreeable, and the reference to “punishingly blue eyes” absurd.
It seems I have fallen into the habit of considering Squibby my own, which is foolish, given that I rejected his hand.
I almost pointed out that their children would be oversized with floppy curls, but dismissed it as sour grapes.
Instead, I asked Feodora whether she liked to travel (no), or ride to the hounds (no), or read classic literature in English or the original language (no).
Those are Squibby’s favorite occupations.
“Why do you call him such a frightful nickname?” she asked. “According to Debrett’s, Baron Vaughan’s given name is Hugh.”
“Hugh Skelmers Vaughan,” I said. “I couldn’t pronounce Skelmers when I was three years old.”
She looked blank, which isn’t unusual for her—I’m definitely getting sour in my old age.
Why should marriage be based on conjunctive interests, after all?
Colonel Brandon and Marianne have nothing in common.
The other day I was a reluctant witness to a long conversation about drainage—to think that Marianne used to pride herself on being romantic!
That subject was followed by a thoughtful exploration of the state of Cook’s nerves, as reflected in overdone beef.
I suppose this sort of exchange is a trade-off one has to make to marry a man with a large estate.
I will say this: The Colonel listens patiently to Marianne cooing about their children. I remember rolling my eyes at Squibby a couple of years ago, when she was raving about their first baby’s intelligence.