Sunday, December 12, 2010

Steam powered internet

I just want to say, if you are contemplating using a 'dongle' for mobile internet, forget it. A dinosaur could deliver a message faster and they are dead! Have tried every which way to upload a photo this morning and just would not do it. Grrrr!
So, all that is left is for me to bore you to tears once more dear friend with Ta Da...


                                            Pemberly
                       Chapter 2
It is not to be supposed that Frederick alighted from his post chaise onto the steps of the great house to universal approbation.
His election as the future inheritor of Pemberly did not sit well with the daughters of the house and their opinions had been loudly voiced by their elder sister Jane, So named in honour of her well beloved aunt.
"Mother, are we still to be denied the freedoms and rights so long withheld from our sex when a woman, the princess Victoria is to come to the very throne of England? Rational men cannot cling to these outmoded customs! The placing of an entail directing property away from a natural inheritor denies a woman her rights and is abhorrent, it must and should be addressed by an act of Parliament to right the   wrong!"
"Be still Jane, that is as it may be  replied her mother, the prevailing state of affairs is that you and your sisters MUST marry well, moreover it is as easy to love a rich man as one who has only his personality to reccommend him, even though his family be ever so worthy. Love grows in time in the case and you have only to look to  the example of poor silly aunt Lydia to educate you on the evils of the path she chose in marrying for what she supposed to be love thus disregarding her future."
Privately Lizzie felt all of the injustice of her daughters' situation having experienced a similar imperative in her youth.
"Thank goodness I was able to see the goodness in Darcy and the evil in Wickham before it was too late, even though one had all of the virtue of it and the other the mere appearance of goodness" was her thought as she reviewed the many happy years  she had spent with one whom she had first perceived as a proud haughty man. Fortuitously for her, love had come with a large estate attached. Indeed her first  glimpse of Pemberly and its magnificent grounds had cemented the growing regard that she fostered for  its owner, the taciturn but tender hearted man whom she had loved these twenty odd years past. Lizzy could only hope such good fortune  would befall her daughters.
It is here we must enumerate and name these beauties who while having all of the cogniscence of their position in life but none of the hauteur usually associated with it were, nevertheless Darcys and proud of it. Jane we have met, a girl not unlike her namesake, possessing beauty and a calm nature but with  perhaps a little more sharpness of wit than she. Her capacity for outdoor sports was boundless and it was said that "No one sat a hunter like Miss Darcy".  Miss Darcy was admired for her energy and  and would think nothing of tramping miles in the mire in search of an interesting wildflower specimen to draw. Her energy stood her in good stead also at county balls where she was so much sought after as a dance partner and many a young swain was observed to sport a black eye gained in a contest to see who would become Jane's next partner in the waltz (waltzing being a fashion come lately to the county but much practiced during the London season).  Her unfailing good humour did not prevent her from peevishly noting that they "Had much better be using their time playing at tiddlywinks than fighting as if they were disputing the ownership of the better pack of hounds!"
During the course of the last London season she had successfully parried at least five declarations that "A chap might just shoot oneself" if his suit were not successful, a boast happily never executed to her profound relief.
Jane's good looks and friendly nature exerted a powerful inducement to these many declarations from admirers who chose to ignore  her lack of real prospects in pecuniary matters when the melancholy day of Mr. Darcy's demise should eventuate.
Still Jane would not be swayed.
"Pray do not make of my Jane an old maid" thought  Lizzy, "There is too much goodness and beauty in her to waste in a lonely spinsterhood".

1 comment:

  1. Hooray, more about Frederick. I love the opening sentence - actually, I've always wondered what a post chaise is. If only love always came with a large estate attached! Keep it up...

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