Chapter 16 #2
“I still say Giant Barbarico was simply misunderstood,” Seraphina declared with a dramatic flourish of her hands. “Perhaps he only wanted a cup of tea and a biscuit, and everyone ran away screaming!”
The utter absurdity of the statement sent a wave of laughter through the entire group. Cordelia clapped her hands, Georgianna hid her face in Leonora’s sleeve as she giggled, and Leonora shook her head in amusement.
The door to the drawing room opened quietly, and the laughter instantly softened.
Nathaniel stepped into the room, his posture tall and instantly intimidating. He paused, his eyes taking in the scene of the sisters and his daughters clustered around the book.
“A natural and questioning mind is an excellent trait in a philosopher...” Nathaniel remarked, his voice carrying clearly across the space as he countered an earlier point. “...but in a young prince or a well-ordered estate, absolute adherence to rules is precisely what prevents total chaos.”
The room went quiet as his presence filled the space. Instantly, Euphemia, Leonora, and Seraphina rose to their feet to greet the Duke.
“Good afternoon, Your Grace,” Euphemia said, her voice the first to break the stillness as she offered a curtsy.
Leonora and Seraphina followed, unhurried and composed. Nathaniel inclined his head to the both of them in turn and crossed the room.
“Good afternoon.” He glanced at the open book, then at the assembled faces. “I came to see how our guests were settling in. I did not intend to interrupt.”
“You do not interrupt at all, Your Grace,” Leonora said. “But I do not believe your statement is entirely correct. About absolute adherence.”
Euphemia and Seraphina both looked to Leonora at the same time with widened eyes.
Nathaniel paused. He regarded her for a moment, his demeanor unreadable. Then, he walked over to the fireplace, resting his back against the marble mantelpiece and crossing his arms over his chest.
“And why is that, Lady Leonora?” he asked simply.
Before answering, Leonora darted a quick, slightly worried look toward Euphemia, silently checking if it was entirely proper to debate the master of the house in his own drawing room.
Euphemia noticed the hesitation. Instead of interjecting, she offered her sister a subtle, reassuring nod, giving her the silent permission to go on and answer him.
Receiving the sign, Leonora looked back at the Nathaniel.
“Because you are speaking of a young prince as if his mind is a watch to be wound and set by a craftsman, rather than a garden to be cultivated. John Locke gives us a much better foundation for education. He establishes that the mind begins as a blank slate, shaped entirely by reason and experience. If a child is taught only to obey rigid, unyielding commands without ever understanding the virtue behind them, he has not developed character. He has merely developed a very convincing performance of it, one that dissolves the moment the authority enforcing the rules looks away.”
Nathaniel listened. His expression did not change, but his attention sharpened in a way that Euphemia had learned to read as engagement rather than opposition.
“Locke’s conclusions are well-suited to the quiet of a philosopher’s study,” he answered.
“Remove them from that study and apply them to the governance of an estate, a nation, or, as history has recently demonstrated, an entire republic, and they become considerably less tidy. We need only look across the Channel to see what becomes of a society that decides, collectively, that every inherited rule and established hierarchy is open to interrogation. It did not produce an enlightened civilization. It produced the guillotine. Structure is the condition under which virtue becomes possible.”
“There is a considerable distance, Your Grace...” Seraphina chimed in.
“...between structure and absolute submission. Mary Wollstonecraft makes this distinction with considerable clarity. Demanding blind, passive compliance does not cultivate virtue or strength. It cultivates precisely the opposite, weakness dressed in the clothes of obedience, and hypocrisy dressed in the clothes of propriety.”
Seraphina tilted her head, gesturing slightly to the book in Georgianna’s lap.
“One need look no further than the very text your daughters are reading. The good fairy demands complete silence from the girls. She herself does nothing but lecture everyone for the entirety of the text. When the rules themselves are applied selectively, teaching a person to follow them without question does not make them good. It teaches them to be very good at concealment.”
A brief silence fell over the room.
Nathaniel’s eyes moved from Seraphina to Leonora. Something had shifted in his expression, not concession... not quite, but a recalibration.
“Samuel Johnson,” Leonora continued. “He is not a man easily dismissed as a radical. Yet in Rasselas, he gives us a prince who lives in perfect order, perfect comfort, and perfect compliance, and finds it entirely insupportable. He leaves. The entire novel is Johnson’s argument that a life governed purely by imposed structure, without genuine experience or the freedom to reason and choose, does not produce happiness or wisdom.
It produces Rasselas, comfortable, safe, and completely hollow. ”
Nathaniel was quiet for a moment.
“Johnson,” he said finally, “was writing about the individual pursuit of meaning. Not the governance of institutions.”
“He was writing about both,” Leonora said. “He simply had the courtesy to let the reader work that out.”
Another silence followed, longer this time.
Cordelia was looking between the adults with bright, tracking attention. Georgianna had not moved. She was watching them too. Euphemia was almost certain the twins were holding their breath.
Nathaniel straightened from the mantelpiece. He looked at Leonora, then at Seraphina, and then let out a soft chuckle.
“You are both very widely read,” he said.
“We can go back and forth all day about this. We could easily call upon Thomas Hobbes to argue that without the firm hand of authority and a strict social contract, the life of man is famously solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But I am entirely aware that you could just as easily counter me with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s assertion that man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. ”
He paused, a slight, rare movement of his mouth hinting at a dry, internal amusement.
“The truth of the matter is that neither position is entirely incorrect. It simply boils down to the individual. For a philosopher or an ordinary citizen, the freedom of a natural mind is a beautiful pursuit. For a duke responsible for the stability of a realm, order must remain paramount. But none of you are wrong. It is simply a matter of perspective.”
Nathaniel straightened from the mantelpiece, his gaze resting on the two sisters with a look that was undeniably impressed.
“I see now where the duchess gets it from,” he added. “You are all very similar, it seems.”
“Absolutely not,” Leonora argued immediately, her chin tilting up before she could stop herself. “We are not similar at all, Your Grace. In fact, we are very different.”
Euphemia shot Leonora a sharp, warning look, her eyes widening as if to chastise her sister to keep quiet and stop arguing with Nathaniel who had just handed them a monumental compliment. “Leonora, enough.”
Leonora caught herself, clearing her throat and folding her hands neatly in front of her dress.