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 seriesof 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?
You’ll be thinking I’m a snob, and Iama 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, bySamuel 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 thatPamelawas “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 menclutching 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.
