Love & Friendship
Page 20
* Moses, Old Testament prophet.
* From these we also get the adjective bilious.
* Solace, from the French.
* Even as eight-year-olds we were all a little in love with her. At that age sentiments are pure and idealistic, a warm glow suffusing one’s consciousness. The disgusting thoughts and imaginings do not typically come for another five years or so.
* “Lying in wait,” an expression that suggests a lurking posture preparatory to an ambuscade.
** An apoplectic seizure, derived from “Stroke of God’s Hand” (Sixteenth Century).
* This impression of “eyes finally opening,” alerting one to some truth or danger, occurs frequently—but it is almost entirely illusory. The implication is that, with eyes open, dangers will be discerned and so avoided, a notion which, though perhaps reassuring, is entirely false. Rarely does harm come to us when our eyes are closed, very often when they are open. In my own experience it is only when my eyes have been open that disasters have befallen me. Barring volcanoes, earthquakes, or house fires one is almost invariably safer when one’s eyes are closed. But that is not the commonplace view, and Reginald DeCourcy was not the sort of man to plumb such matters deeply.
* “Under par”—the reference is to a bond that trades at less than its face or “par” value; note that this was not Lady Susan’s view, but that of “some,” such as those in the DeCourcy circle.
** Éloignement, French for estrangement, separation, distancement.
* The reader might recall that Sir James, on arriving at Churchill, had looked for but not seen the church. He could hardly have been expected to have detected it. Dating from the Seventeenth Century, the Churchill church was more chapel in scale and lay in a dale, separated from the rest of Churchill’s park by a high stone wall and a wood, rendering it quite invisible from the road.
** No relation to Gen. Edward Braddock (1695–1755), commander-in-chief of British forces in North America at the start of the French and Indian War, defeated and killed at the Battle of the Monongahela.
* Theologians advocating a more particular delineation contend that there are, rather, five.
** The reference is to a dog or dogs barking at the base of a tree, erroneously considering their quarry “tree’d”—i.e., up the tree; here the expression is used as a theological metaphor to create a more vivid image. Another canine metaphor—“This dog won’t hunt”—describes a perplexing phenomenon: some dogs will not hunt.
* Jean Calvin (born Jehan Cauvin), 1509–1564, French theologian & pastor. His Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) is undoubtedly the greatest work of theological thought, of this millennium, at least.
* This alone shows the account’s falsity; it suggests that Alicia would have tried to lure Mr. Johnson to Bath when it was well known that it was Tunbridge Wells which he favoured.
* Éloignement, as has been mentioned, French for estrangement, separation, distancement.
* Euripides’ Medea. A Fifth-Century B.C. play, concerning the barbarian woman who married Jason of the Argonauts, far too gruesome to recount. Remarkable that it should still be performed, but crude melodrama has always had its public.
* Soulagement (French), relief, respite, solace, consolation.
** Vendetta, a term for revenge-seeking from a blood feud, said to have originated in my father’s native Corsica but in fact imported from Italy. From the Latin vindicta, as in vindictive.
* A Biblical character, cited in Genesis 3, actually Satan in disguise. The Biblical commentator Matthew Henry states: “He [Satan] is the great promoter of falsehood of every kind. He is a liar, all his temptations are carried on by his calling evil good, and good evil, and promising freedom in sin.”
* From the Latin vindicatio.
* Marcello Bernardini (c. 1740–c. 1799), Italian composer.
** Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842), pronounced “Carubini,” Paris-based Italian composer known for his choleric disposition. “Some maintain that his temper was ‘very even’ because he was always angry.”—Adolphe Adam
* As I write I see on my wall a painting of Indian braves paddling a canoe on the upper reaches of that waterway, the only painting the bailiffs left to me. As I understand it, the braves portrayed belonged to the same New England tribe as those who had scalped a cousin of Alicia’s at Hadley, Massachusetts, some decades earlier. (Her cousin survived but was compelled to wear an unsightly stocking-cap for the rest of his days.) Such things did happen in that wild land.
* I had the opportunity to know this room myself, having had tea with Mrs. Johnson there in the last year of her life. There is something poignant in becoming acquainted with such a personage shortly before she departed this life.
* Mr. Thomas Smith, my late partner, no connection with Mr. Charles Smith, the slanderer and gossip-monger.
* Adam Smith (1723–1790), philosopher of political œconomy. As the reader is probably aware, Smith (no relation to Thomas or Charles) was a member of Dr. Johnson’s Literary Club which included among its members Dr. Charles Burney, father of Fanny Burney, later Madame D’Arblay, whose epistolary novels the spinster authoress sought to ape.
* In my opinion this Table of Contents is not especially useful and, in fact, quite tedious. However, the “Genealogical Table,” which bears some interest, has been corrected and placed at the head of this volume [see page xi].
* French term for the use of de (French for “from”) before a surname, often indicating a pretension to nobility.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Principal Personages
Locales
Genealogical Table
Dedication
Author’s Preface
Part One: The 9th Commandment A True Narrative of False-Witness
Churchill Castle, the Autumn of 1794
A Short Note, an Interruption
A Delightful Country Retreat, though Boring
A Scarlet Gash in the Gold Room
Mr. Reginald DeCourcy, Confounded
A Perjurer’s Tale
December: Parklands
“The Grand Affair of Education”
Valuing Friendship Highly
A Preposterous Situation—Entirely of Our Own Making
A Family Matter
The Very Unfair “Green Peas” Affair
Sir James Martin Aids a Widow
The “Stride of Faith”
A Return to Parklands
The Manwarings of Langford
Parklands to London
A Wedding
Appendix: The True Account of Lady Susan Vernon, Her Life & Loves
About the Author
Also by Whit Stillman
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2016 by John Whitney Stillman
Cover art and design by Pierre Le-Tan
Author photograph by Bernard Walsh / Westerly Films
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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