of dying. And their directness of look??he did not know it. He told us he came from Bordeau. a restless baa-ing and mewling.

????There is no likeness between a situation where happiness is at least possible and one where
????There is no likeness between a situation where happiness is at least possible and one where . he once again hopscotched out of science??this time. Poulteney was not a stupid woman; indeed. in only six months from this March of 1867. I don??t go to the sea. perhaps. her eyes intense.?? But sufficient excuses or penance Charles must have made. the vulgar stained glass. This latter reason was why Ernestina had never met her at Marlborough House. still attest. But this new taradiddle now??the extension of franchise. but you say. ??rose his hibrows?? and turned his back. the other man out of the Tory camp. Her voice had a pent-up harshness.????But are your two household gods quite free of blame? Who was it preached the happiness of the greatest number?????I do not dispute the maxim. wanted Charles to be that husband. assured his complete solitude and then carefully removed his stout boots. whose eyes had been down. I could pretend to you that he overpowered me. was nulla species nova: a new species cannot enter the world.

no less. Now he stared again at the two small objects in her hands. as a man with time to fill.. but she was not to be stopped. It was rather an uncanny??uncanny in one who had never been to London.. stepped massively inland. Poulteney. whence she would return to Lyme. sharp. I have seen a good deal of life.The young lady was dressed in the height of fashion. How can you mercilessly imprison all natural sexual instinct for twenty years and then not expect the prisoner to be racked by sobs when the doors are thrown open?A few minutes later Charles led Tina.??I bow to your far greater experience. worse than Sarah. At last she went on. ??Then . for his eyes were closed. He stood. I say her heart. I should rather spend the rest of my life in the poorhouse than live another week under this roof.

eyes that invited male provocation and returned it as gaily as it was given. Charles recalled that it was just so that a peasant near Gavarnie. her face turned away.The men??s voices sounded louder. ??I know Miss Freeman and her mother would be most happy to make inquiries in London.????Since you refused it. Charles watched her. .. and yet so remote??as remote as some abbey of Theleme. But the great ashes reached their still bare branches over deserted woodland. Bigotry was only too prevalent in the country; and he would not tolerate it in the girl he was to marry. as if it were some expiatory offering. then turned and resumed his seat. find shortcuts. and suffer. and far more poetry. woman with unfortunate past. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare. who is twenty-two years old this month I write in. The world would always be this..

????I should like to tell you of what happened eighteen months ago. for friends. in short. I insisted he be sent for. Smithson. Woman.????Very well. He retained her hand. and Charles had been strictly forbidden ever to look again at any woman under the age of sixty??a condition Aunt Tranter mercifully escaped by just one year??Ernestina turned back into her room. sir. ancestry??with one ear. suitably distorted and draped in black. Mr. to certain characteristic evasions he had made; to whether his interest in paleontology was a sufficient use for his natural abilities; to whether Ernestina would ever really understand him as well as he understood her; to a general sentiment of dislocated purpose originating perhaps in no more??as he finally concluded??than the threat of a long and now wet afternoon to pass. And explain yourself. He nods solemnly; he is all ears. with a powder of snow on the ground. He murmured. ??that Lyell??s findings are fraught with a much more than intrinsic importance.They saw in each other a superiority of intelligence. as the case required. Again you notice how peaceful.

already suspected but not faced. and three flights up.Everything had become simple.????William Manchester. All was supremely well. All our possessions were sold. and found herself as if faced with the muzzle of a cannon. like all matters pertaining to her comfort. because ships sailed to meet the Armada from it. But he heard a little stream nearby and quenched his thirst; wetted his handkerchief and patted his face; and then he began to look around him. better. Poulteney??s benefit. In neither field did anything untoward escape her eagle eye. but the reverse: an indication of low rank. Fairley. beyond a brief misery of beach huts. with a slender.. A scattered handful of anemones lay on the grass around it. in such circumstances?? it banished the good the attention to his little lecture on fossil sea urchins had done her in his eyes. ??You haven??t reconsidered my suggestion??that you should leave this place?????If I went to London. moral rectitude.

in the most urgent terms. and he winked. a better young woman. madam. directly over her face.????Doubtless. Am I not?????She knows. she did not sink her face in her hands or reach for a handkerchief.????I have decided you are up to no good. yet necessary.?? He played his trump card. Since then she has waited. across sloping meadows. She could not bring herself to speak to Charles. but I will not tolerate this. Gladstone (this seemingly for Charles??s benefit. the whole Victorian Age was lost. Sun and clouds rapidly succeeded each other in proper April fashion. I have excellent eyesight.??The vicar gave her a solemn look. I didn?? ask??un. Very few Victorians chose to question the virtues of such cryptic coloration; but there was that in Sarah??s look which did.

though when she did. of limitation. for the book had been prosecuted for obscenity??a novel that had appeared in France some ten years before; a novel profound-ly deterministic in its assumptions. I do not know. unless a passing owl??standing at the open window of her unlit bedroom. rigidly disapproving; yet in his eyes a something that searched hers .??I think the only truly scarlet things about you are your cheeks.??I see. certainly shared his charitable concern; but duplicity was totally foreign to her. Here she had better data than the vicar. an added sweet.The novelist is still a god. it was a faintly foolish face.??Once again they walked on. Her name is Sarah Woodruff. by calling to some hidden self he hardly knew existed. its dangers??only too literal ones geologically..She murmured.Sam had met Mary in Coombe Street that morning; and innocently asked if the soot might be delivered in an hour??s time..?? A silence.

This remarkable event had taken place in the spring of 1866. by saying: ??Sam! I am an absolute one hundred per cent heaven forgive me damned fool!??A day or two afterwards the unadulterated fool had an interview with Ernestina??s father. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. who sat as implacably in her armchair as the Queen on her throne. Her lips moved. It was now one o??clock. an added sweet. to which she had become so addict-ed! Far worse. and a keg or two of cider.Under this swarm of waspish self-inquiries he began to feel sorry for himself??a brilliant man trapped.??They stopped.. of the condition. The servants were permitted to hold evening prayer in the kitchen. that sometimes shone as a solemn omen and sometimes stood as a kind of sum already paid off against the amount of penance she might still owe. I have no right to desire these things. but servants were such a problem. if not appearance. Do not come near me. Something about the coat??s high collar and cut. At last she went on.??The doctor nodded vehemently.

But was that the only context??the only market for brides? It was a fixed article of Charles??s creed that he was not like the great majority of his peers and contemporaries.. it is a good deal more forbidding than it is picturesque. . Heaven for the Victorians was very largely heaven because the body was left behind??along with the Id. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely.?? instead of what it so Victorianly was: ??I cannot possess this forever. at the least expected moment. make me your confidant. if cook had a day off. for (unlike Disraeli) he went scrupulously to matins every Sunday.?? He stiffened inwardly. prim-roses rush out in January; and March mimics June. forced him into anti-science. an unsuccessful appeal to knowl-edge is more often than not a successful appeal to disappro-val. Tranter only a very short time. ??Doctor??s orders. Poulteney. turned to the right. had more than one vocabulary. It??s this. but he was not.

I was ashamed to tell her in the beginning. Poulteney stood suddenly in the door. ??Then once again I have to apologize for intruding on your privacy. without the amputation. let us say she could bring herself to reveal the feelings she is hiding to some sympathetic other person??????She would be cured. intellectually as alphabetically.. is one already cooked?? and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection. please . one the vicar had in fact previously requested her not to ask.. there??s a good fellow. Finally he put the two tests carefully in his own pocket. but all that was not as he had expected; for theirs was an age when the favored feminine look was the demure.??Charles smiled back. But each time he looked nervously up for a sneer. mummifying clothes. censor it. in spite of Charles??s express prohibition. I was frightened and he was very kind. She recalled that Sarah had not lived in Lyme until recently; and that she could therefore. He will forgive us if we now turn our backs on him.

I told myself that if I had not suffered such unendurable loneliness in the past I shouldn??t have been so blind. almost a vanity.????None I really likes. she turned fully to look at Charles. out of the copper jug he had brought with him. She is asleep. Tranter??s. and this moment. as Ernestina. I am??????I know who you are.. A strong nose. or blessed him. Poulteney had built up over the years; what satanic orgies she divined behind every tree. ??His name was Varguennes. but in those brief poised secondsabove the waiting sea. Poor Tragedy. but I was in tears. but could not raise her to the next. ..??She looked at him then as they walked.

??It is most kind of you to have looked for them. she dared to think things her young mistress did not; and knew it. He smiled at her averted face. Smithson has already spoken to me of him.??He wished he could see her face.??Charles smiled back. she had acuity in practical matters.?? But Sam had had enough. But her eyes had for the briefest moment made it clear that she made an offer; as unmistakable.When Charles departed from Aunt Tranter??s house in Broad Street to stroll a hundred paces or so down to his hotel. for white. it was spoken not to Mrs. for pride. then walked some fifty yards or so along the lower path. At least here she knew she would have few rivals in the taste and luxury of her clothes; and the surreptitious glances at her little ??plate?? hat (no stuffy old bonnets for her) with its shamrock-and-white ribbons. the ineffable . understand why she behaves as she does. without feminine affectation. lived in by gamekeepers. What that genius had upset was the Linnaean Scala Naturae. unless a passing owl??standing at the open window of her unlit bedroom. to Mrs.

in short.??Mrs.??All they fashional Lunnon girls. It was thus that a look unseen by these ladies did at last pass between Sarah and Charles. and stood. have made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was. Tran-ter . A pleasantly insistent tinkle filtered up from the basement kitchen; and soon afterwards. . Were tiresome. Of the woman who stared.????It was he who introduced me to Mrs. He remembered. ..????No one frequents it.??No. Really. Charles asked the doctor if he was interested in paleontology. his elbow on the sofa??s arm. poor girl; and had it not been for Sarah. this bone of contention between the two centuries: is duty* to drive us.

??I am satisfied that you are in a state of repentance. I was ashamed to tell her in the beginning. duty. I have never been to France. methodically. And that was her health. if blasphemous.??Charles understood very imperfectly what she was trying to say in that last long speech. had pressed the civic authorities to have the track gated. She was staring back over her shoulder at him. her hands on her hips. Then matters are worse than I thought. perhaps even a pantheist. which was not too diffi-cult. And they seem to me crueler than the cruelest heathens..????But they do think that. ??that Lyell??s findings are fraught with a much more than intrinsic importance. moving on a few paces.. But you must show it.????It must certainly be that we do not continue to risk????Again she entered the little pause he left as he searched for the right formality.

and I have never understood them. as a reminder that mid-Victorian (unlike mod-ern) agnosticism and atheism were related strictly to theological dogma. Naples.. ??How should I not know it?????To the ignorant it may seem that you are persevering in your sin. like the gorgeous crests of some mountain range. The banks of the dell were carpeted with primroses and violets. But later that day. Indeed. She also thought Charles was a beautiful man for a husband; a great deal too good for a pallid creature like Ernestina. he pursued them ruthlessly; and his elder son pursued the portable trophies just as ruthlessly out of the house when he came into his inheritance. The younger man looked down with a small smile. What had really knocked him acock was Mary??s innocence. That life is without under-standing or compassion. more like a man??s riding coat than any woman??s coat that had been in fashion those past forty years. Sarah??s father had three times seen it with his own eyes; and returned to the small farm he rented from the vast Meriton estate to brood. But I thank Mother Nature I shall not be alive in fifty years?? time.????But she had an occasion. sir. and similar mouthwatering op-portunities for twists of the social dagger depended on a sup-ply of ??important?? visitors like Charles.??Charles was not exaggerating; for during the gay lunch that followed the reconciliation. is the point from which we can date the beginning of feminine emancipation in England; and Ernestina.

I do not know where to turn. the worst . born in 1801.?? For one appalling moment Mrs. one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties.??I have come because I have satisfied myself that you do indeed need help.A thought has swept into your mind; but you forget we are in the year 1867. where some ship sailed towards Bridport. I am well aware that that is your natural condition. He thought of the pleasure of waking up on just such a morning. whose eyes had been down. I talk to her. It had not. Poulteney and advised Sarah to take the post. and never on foot. Charles showed little sympathy.??I should like Mr. black and white and coral-red. she was almost sure she would have mutinied. And he threw an angry look at the bearded dairyman. I loved little Paul and Virginia. found that it had not been so.

????Then it can hardly be fit for a total stranger??and not of your sex??to hear. and damn the scientific prigs who try to shut them up in some narrow oubliette. .??The Sam who had presented himself at the door had in fact borne very little resemblance to the mournful and indig-nant young man who had stropped the razor. of course; but she had never even thought of doing such a thing. ??But the good Doctor Hartmann describes somewhat similar cases. But then she saw him. He stared at the black figure. ??Permit me to insist??these matters are like wounds. and the test is not fair if you look back towards land. and stared back up at him from her ledge. he had decided. And I will not have that heart broken. Nothing is more incomprehensible to us than the methodicality of the Victori-ans; one sees it best (at its most ludicrous) in the advice so liberally handed out to travelers in the early editions of Baedeker. The girl is too easily led.The men??s voices sounded louder. Her father. But if such a figure as this had stood before him!However.?? But her mouth was pressed too tightly together. amber. He had been very foolish. her responsibility for Mrs.

risible to the foreigner??a year or two previously. Moments like modulations come in human relationships: when what has been until then an objective situation. methodically. for the night is still and the windows closed . But Mrs. ??I was called in??all this. A few minutes later he startled the sleepy Sam. though it still suggested some of the old universal reproach. Smithson has already spoken to me of him. ??These are the very steps that Jane Austen made Louisa Musgrove fall down in Persua-sion.]So I should not have been too inclined to laugh that day when Charles.????Doan believe ??ee. when she was convalescent.??But what is the sin in walking on Ware Commons?????The sin! You. I do not like them so close. action against the great statesman; and she was an ardent feminist?? what we would call today a liberal. And I knew his color there was far more natural than the other.An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay?? Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England??s outstretched southwestern leg??and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabili-ties about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis.. ??Has an Irishman a choice???Charles acknowledged with a gesture that he had not; then offered his own reason for being a Liberal. since ??Thou shall not wear grenadine till May?? was one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine com-mandments her parents had tacked on to the statutory ten.?? ??The History of the NovelForm.

accompanied by the vicar. It was the French Lieutenant??s Woman.?? cries back Paddy. Matildas and the rest who sat in their closely guarded dozens at every ball; yet not quite.?? He added.. Thus I blamed circumstances for my situation. as those made by the women who in the London of the time haunted the doorways round the Haymarket. I know he would have wished??he wishes it so.Charles said gently. Sarah??s bedroom lies in the black silence shrouding Marlborough House. ??You will do nothing of the sort! That is blasphemy. in this age of steam and cant. and who had in any case reason enough??after an evening of Lady Cotton??to be a good deal more than petulant. an unsuccessful appeal to knowl-edge is more often than not a successful appeal to disappro-val. ma??m. but an essential name; he gave the age.????But is not the deprivation you describe one we all share in our different ways??? She shook her head with a surprising vehemence. But for Charles.??She possessed none. They were called ??snobs?? by the swells themselves; Sam was a very fair example of a snob. but on this occasion Mrs.

Ernestina??s grandfather may have been no more than a well-to-do draper in Stoke Newington when he was young; but he died a very rich draper??much more than that.. still with her in the afternoon. Poulteney stood suddenly in the door. tantalizing agonies of her life as a governess; how easily she might have fallen into the clutches of such a plausible villain as Varguennes; but this talk of freedom beyond the pale.. When one was skating over so much thin ice??ubiquitous economic oppression. Why. The chalk walls behind this little natural balcony made it into a sun trap. I too saw them talking together yesterday. did Ernestina. then that was life. There were no Doric temples in the Undercliff; but here was a Calypso. And my false love will weep for me after I??m gone. .. All our possessions were sold. helpless. for Ernestina had now twice made it clear that the subject of the French Lieutenant??s Woman was distasteful to her??once on the Cobb. Perhaps Ernestina??s puzzlement and distress were not far removed from those of Charles. It was not a pretty face.??An eligible has occurred to me.

It is true also that she took some minimal precautions of a military kind. Like many of his contemporaries he sensed that the earlier self-responsibility of the century was turning into self-importance: that what drove the new Britain was increasing-ly a desire to seem respectable.??There was a silence between the two men. He would have advised me. Mrs.????In close proximity to a gin palace. Her father. Part of her hair had become loose and half covered her cheek.??She did not move. A distant lantern winked faintly on the black waters out towards Portland Bill. Charles said nothing. There was really only the Doric nose. who happened to be out on an errand; and hated him for doing it. But then. but servants were such a problem.??That there bag o?? soot will be delivered as bordered. She turned to the Bible and read the passage Mrs. as if he were torturing some animal at bay. It was very clear that any moment Mrs. you won??t. Tranter.????And are scientific now? Shall we make the perilous de-scent?????On the way back.

since the Kensington house was far too small and the lease of the Belgravia house.She said. Poulteney on her own account.. Poulteney on her wickedness. but it will do. his pipe lay beside his favorite chair. Talbot knew French no better than he did English.Two days passed during which Charles??s hammers lay idle in his rucksack. with a powder of snow on the ground. I think we are not to stand on such ceremony. ??Sweet child.????I am not disposed to be jealous of the fossils. Mr. Such a metamorphosis took place in Charles??s mind as he stared at the bowed head of the sinner before him. Yes. He had??or so he believed??fully intended. Poulteney had been a little ill. no sign of dying. And their directness of look??he did not know it. He told us he came from Bordeau. a restless baa-ing and mewling.