All's Fair in Love and War and Death
Page 30
When Mrs. Eyers and Charlotte had been out last night, Mary had also gone out. She had been able to discover a portal like she always was able to these days. Mary found that there were escorts lined up along the seashore staring off over the English Channel. There had been an overriding sense of restlessness and despair among that multitude of spirits. It had led Mary to form a new theory—that a body of water like the Channel was too big, and that soldiers could not come home. It made her sad and even a little anxious.
Mary wondered if spirits waited on the other side, to be forever parted from their attendants, to be eternally restless? Perhaps that was why people first started seeing ghosts? Why ghosts were sometimes considered malicious as they could not find their eternal rest? She did not know; this needed more study.
But Mary continued towards the sea; it was far more welcoming in the sunshine of a July day than in the coldness of the twilight of the afterworld.
There were more men gathered at street corners or in front of public-houses, and a lot of conversation occurring on the streets of Ramsgate that day than on previous days. Mary thought something must have happened. Hawkers with news-sheets in their hands were waving copies above the heads of crowds, and she searched in her reticule for a coin.
Mary was shocked when she read the news: Napoleon Bonaparte was dead; he had died back in May. It had taken two months for the story of his passing to reach England. For Bonaparte had been banished to an island out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the ship carrying that news had arrived but two days before—it had taken two months to relay that information to the rest of the world, and another day to be printed in the papers and carried all over England.
Mary took her newspaper and went to a tea house for a cup of tea and a cake while she thought about this news. She thought about the passing of such a man. Had Bonaparte been a great leader or a monster? He and France had been defeated six years previously.
Mary thought about him dying so far away and on a tiny island. If her theory were correct, then Napoleon Bonaparte’s spirit would be forever condemned to pace around the island of St. Helena without meeting up with his escort. Would Napoleon Bonaparte become a restless spirit and haunt the island?
She would have much to write in her notebook that afternoon. Mary hoped that someday there would be someone to share her findings with, whether a nephew, or whether some sensitive person, generations down the years, who would find her work stashed in the Pemberley library and appreciate what Mary Bennet had done.
HISTORICAL NOTES
Concerning parlor games:
Before there was technology to entertain one in the evenings, there was music and card-playing as is well-documented in Austen’s books. But people in the period had fun playing parlor games as well. These could be quite over-the-top and allowed for wild flirtation.
Some parlor games involved wordplay while some involved music (consider an early version of musical chairs). There were a lot of guessing games and even active ones like Blindman’s Bluff. That one was quite risque and often banned by chaperones as it involved blindfolding a gentleman and allowing him to grope a lady to determine her identity!
There were often ways to cheat, and people would take advantage of it to win (or deliberately not win so that they could obtain a forfeit), or to trick a friend or acquaintance. Forfeits were usually kisses that were paid to one's sweetheart or love interest and could be paid on the hand or the cheek. The payment of forfeits could involve a whole other set of games as to how the forfeit should be paid, though not all forfeits were kisses, they could be compliments or some other task.
It is interesting to consider a person’s character and how she or he would play parlor games, and whether to play them properly to 'win.' i.e., without having to pay a forfeit or if they would play with the idea of raking in as many forfeits as they could. Or the last camp: those who tricked others into getting forfeits.
If you’re interested in learning more about Regency parlor games, search for the Google book, Winter evening pastimes; or, The merry-makers companion. It was published in 1822 by two married women and is a minefield of information about what bored ladies and gentlemen did 'of an evening where there wasn't much to do.'
If you enjoyed this book,
Don’t miss Anne Morris’ other
Pride and Prejudice Variation Novels:
At Last
The Nunnery