THE MANTEL

In a time, long ago, Mary Farleigh already displayed, in the first faint wispiness of her lineage, that airy, seed-borne disposition which her descendants would later cultivate. She fluttered in the cold southeastern wind with a pail knocking against her skirts, bound for the well some three hundred yards away, and spun and spun until her serious thoughts spun silly threads of silver to keep her warm and spry, but none too cheerful. She was out of the house! And being out of the house meant wind-tossed dandelion freedom in that sweet morning air, lasting only until the frozen path delivered her back to the kitchen door of the Harcourt estate, or, rather, the remains of it.

Lord Harcourt was not a loud man, and indeed had always considered loudness one of those unfortunate economies to which persons of insufficient property were driven when they had no better means of announcing or explaining themselves. Loud racket belonged to the unsecured. To debtors startled from their beds by a writ and a heavy fist upon the door (“Out of bed, you slippery bastard! I’ll not freeze my arse while you sleep. Pay what you owe, find a friend with coin, or come along quiet before we drag you out to the slaughter!”); to shopkeepers whom credit, that most amiable of fair-weather friends, had abandoned at the very moment it was required to prove its constancy; to embarrassed gentlemen improving, against their inclination, their acquaintance with the Fleet, the Marshalsea, or those melancholy liberties of the King’s Bench where a man might walk about with the impressions of freedom; and to all those inferior creatures who, having neither acres to murmur for them, nor ancestors to wail from their verdant graves, were reduced to the last vulgarity of pleading their own case to the tenth degree. His lordship’s opinions had never been obliged to enter a room unattended. They came preceded by power acquired through violence but so long ago that everyone duly forgot about it, accompanied by tenants, softened by connections, and received with all the respect naturally due to an opinion which had land behind it. It is remarkable how fluently wealth speaks for itself, and more remarkable still that those who possess it are so seldom satisfied with letting it do so without interrupting and adding to the conversation. A powerful man may seem modest, being sparing of speech and gentle in gesture, while all the while his consequence roars through the kingdom like a bell tolling under the earth. In Parliament he need only rise and sit again; yet the poor, upon whom such delicate verbs at last descend, hear not gentility but thunder. His words pass from chamber to statute, from statute to magistrate, from magistrate to gaol, from gaol to the empty stomach and the cold hearth; and by the time they arrive there, they are no longer words at all, but loud echos that have reverberated and enhanced in volume through the kingdom echo chamber. Thus, when he had lately risen in the Lords upon the matter of the Frame Work Bill, he did so with that grave and chastened composure by which severity may pass for some gleam of conscience. He had much to say of evil, and very little to say of hunger; for evil was a convenient abstraction, while hunger had the disadvantage of belonging to the ghastly reality of individual stomachs. Lord Harcourt sounded almost Biblical while avoiding the dangerous precedent of Joseph, who, upon hearing the cry of a famished people, had opened storehouses1. Poverty might require investigation and bread distributions to calculate and think on; but evil required only punishment, and punishment was a public remedy of which Lord Harcourt had always approved, having never been in any danger of becoming its example.

Mary Farleigh thought she could still see Lord Harcourt there by the hearth, though nothing of the hearth remained but a mantelpiece, cracked through the middle and leaning most pathetically upon the last remaining wall of that great room; an arrangement which, had his lordship been present to observe it, he would no doubt have praised for its soundness.

“There you be,” Mary said, setting down her pail of water and looking up at the cracked mantel. “Still a-leaning, my lord. The mighty cast down, like the parson read it, only he never said they’d crack so ugly when they fell nor lean so long after, as if falling were beneath ’em. Humph! That’s gentle blood for ye’.”

She caught herself then in the cracked looking-glass still hanging by one nail above the fallen washstand, and there was Miss Farleigh, split three ways by the break in the mirror: one eye larger than the other, her cap gone crooked, her cheeks hollowed by hunger. She smiled at herself, and her teeth showed black in the dimness.

“Well,” she said, humming under her breath, “there’s beauty for the drawing room.” The smile widened, ugly and pleased and all her own.

“Look at ye, Mary. Teeth like burnt pegs, hands mottled. And still here.” She leaned closer to the glass, and the broken mirror gave her back in pieces, which seemed fair enough, for the house had never taken her whole either. She tapped the glass with one hard nail.

“Bits and pieces, weren’t it? A bit of Mary in the scullery. A bit on the back stair. A bit froze on the path to the well. A bit left standing with water down her neck while them Harcourt boys laughed fit to split.” She hummed a senseless tune.

“Mmm. And now here’s the rest of her.” She drew herself upright, slowly, for the house had worked upon her hard, ossifying every soft thing for the sake of others: her knees with curtsies, her hands with labour, her tongue with silence, her back with the scrubbing and the mending and the tending to, until Mary Farleigh stood in the ruin as one of its last entombed stones. “So lean on, my lord. Lean and look. Mary Farleigh’s got a room. Mary Farleigh’s got a fire when she can make one and water when she can fetch it.” It would be too much, perhaps, to say that Mary Farleigh had triumphed. The mighty had been put down from their seats, the Harcourt family sent empty away, and Mary, who had once entered that room only to mend a fire, now sat in it with her shoes off.

THE FRAME WORK BILL OF 1812

When I wrote of the fictional Lord Harcourt I was thinking of Mr. Secretary Ryder. In his parliamentary speech on February 14, 1812, Ryder was responding to the Nottinghamshire Luddite frame-breaking disturbances that had begun in late 1811. His stated motive was not sympathy for hunger or wage collapse, but the restoration of order and the protection of property. He says the disturbances were “lawless violence,” “enormities,” an “evil,” and “a system of riot” that had existed for three months and was “bordering almost on insurrection.”

The government’s first intelligence came on November 14, 1811, when the high sheriff asked for military assistance. Ryder says a squadron of dragoons was sent to Nottingham that day. By early December, officials feared the unrest would leech into Leicester and Derby, and between November 14 and December 9 the government sent 900 cavalry and 1,000 infantry into Nottingham, which Ryder himself calls an unusually large force for a local disturbance, and as I have stated in other places, the British public were naturally weary of militia presence in their part of town.2

Ryder also hints at an economic backstory for the Luddites. Trade had expanded about four years earlier because parts of South America were opened to British commerce; frames multiplied, hands were employed, and then, about two years later, the market failed. Manufacturers discharged workers, creating “discontent and distress,” worsened by the “unfavourable situation of trade.” But this admission is immediately contained: he says those “deplorable” circumstances still could not justify the frame-breakers. Frame-breaking was already a felony punishable by fourteen years’ transportation, but Ryder says that punishment had proved “completely insufficient.” His proposed remedy was to make it capital, in other words, punishable by death. He insists he is “by no means a friend to the increase of capital punishments,” and then, without irony, recommends one.

He justifies death through property and state danger. He points to the “immense body of property involved,” the “great expense” of machinery, nearly 1,000 frames broken, and the risk that continued destruction would become “dangerous to a state.” The Act that followed was blunt: offenders convicted of destroying or damaging stocking/lace frames or related machinery would “suffer Death” as felons “without Benefit of Clergy.

Why, it may be asked, should such a tremendous solution be fitted to so small a visible offense? A frame is broken and that is vandalism, but was it worth a life? The difficulty, in judging such a moment, lies in persuading the modern imagination to enter a mind so perpetually furnished with panic. To Mr. Ryder and those who supported him in Parliament, the broken frame was more than a broken frame. The Napoleonic Wars were causing paranoia and anxiety across Britain and the Luddites were considered by Ryder and his supporters as a domestic front in a country already at war. Additionally, if workers could destroy frames, meet in secret, threaten informers, and remain unawed by the militia, you had disobedience. And in a country at war with France, broken obedience was the one spectacle England could least afford to display.

For Further Study:

Feb 14 1812 Parliamentary Debates: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1812/feb/14/frame-breaking-and-nottingham-peace-bills

Feb 27 1812 Parliamentary Debates with a speech by Lord Byron: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1812/feb/27/frame-work-bill

The Frame Breaking Act 1812 in full: https://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.com/2012/03/20th-march-1812-1812-frame-breaking-act.html

Thomis, Malcolm I. The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England. Schocken Books, 1972.

Binfield, Kevin, editor. Writings of the Luddites. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. (I have some excerpts here I can share)

Grimley Park, Nov 1811 -Knightley Ancestral Lands Held Since Henry III

The horses stood in elegant discontent upon the gravel, their breath rising in stately white plumes protesting the morning’s chill, which the sun, having finally dragged itself above the barren tree line, made no effort to dispel. Footmen stood aside with reins and flasks, attending to the gentlemen, a Mr. Knightly, Mr. Lambeth, and Captain Adleigh who were now mounted and attired in decadent garb consisting of gloves, breeches, whips and coats, exchanged little glances that stood for coordination among men of their standing. Each, in their own way, calculating the maneuvers that came with much practice from a sport that, through custom, was as natural to him as breathing.

The women, Mrs. Lambeth (formerly Miss Anne Cartwright), Miss Eloise Cartwright and Miss Charlotte Samson, just waking up from their slumber, hurried to the drawing room windows to observe and comment on a sport that they were little inclined to think highly of. Mrs. Cartwright, having come to chaperone her daughters, still asleep and laying content in the arms of Morpheus knowing that one of her daughters was married and the other, so much in proximity of men of consequence, nearly so.

Mr. Lambeth’s bay gelding, temperamentally similar to its rider, shifted beneath him with a toss of the head.

“I am told,” said Lambeth, adjusting his grip on the reins and with a loutish shift in his saddle, “that the foxes were last sighted near the east ridge, out from beneath the old ash grove.”

“You were told wrong,” said Mr. Knightley, coolly. “The fox will not take to open ground this early. If the creatures possess any sense, they’ll stay to the low cover near the copse of elms”, pointing confidently in the opposite direction of the ash grove, “over there.” Mr. Lambeth looked around confusedly, giving Mr. Knightley the impetus to add, “to your left, man, just beyond the rise!”

Captain Adleigh, already turning his horse toward the lower path, glanced sidelong at them both “No use crowding the line,” he called back. “Best to stay ahead and let the hounds do their work.”

The horn was sounded in a long, low note, almost mournful. The hounds leapt forward, the horses neighed in frightful determination, their hooves striking the frozen ground in rhythm sharp enough to wake the earth, and Mrs. Cartwright, in the arms of Morpheus. The riders were off.

They scattered in practiced formation: Knightley veered left toward the copse, Lambeth took to the higher ridge, poorly advised, and Adleigh, ever the tactician, galloped straight for the streambed between the rise and the copse where the fox, if clever, would attempt a crossing.

“Mr. Lambeth appears to be chasing nothing at all. Look at him bouncing in his seat,” said Miss Samson, lowering her looking glass.

“We know he is a man of enthusiasm,” said Eloise. “But I fear, direction is merely a secondary concern.”

Below, Lambeth gave a jubilant whoop as his horse stumbled slightly, recovered, and continued with determination unburdened by any sense. He did not have accuracy, but happiness, that generous fool, remained faithfully at his side.

Captain Adleigh’s horse thundered down the slope with the grim inevitability that naturally follows experience. He spoke no commands aloud, but adjusted his balance with such clarity of purpose that even the hounds behind him seemed to gather up their instincts more tightly. In Eloise’s assessment, the pageantry and orchestration appeared…excessive.

Knightley cut in from the side. Their horses briefly ran abreast.

The fox darted from the brush ahead of them close to the river edge, Captain Adleigh’s instinct correct, the fox’s body low to the earth, tail streaming like a banner of fire. The hounds bayed and the chase redoubled.

Near the ridge, Lambeth spotted a quarry far too late and attempted a correction, yanking his horse sharply and nearly unseating himself. He recovered, just barely, and turned to shout, “I had him! Nearly had him! If only the creature had the courtesy to run straight!”

Knightley sighed, drew his mount alongside, and said with civility sharpened: “Perhaps next year we might instruct the foxes in choreography.”

Meanwhile, Adleigh had dismounted near the stream. His boot prints left sharp impressions in the mud as he examined the trail. There was a bent reed, a faint mark and further on noted a disturbance in a patch of wet leaves.

“You’re not hunting,” Knightley observed as he approached with some distaste. “You’re reading and too much reading makes men idle. The fox is too far gone.”

“Hunting requires a good read of the situation,” Adleigh replied, straightening himself from the muddy trail. “Let the fox run haphazardly about and think it unseen.”

The sound of the horn echoed faintly through the trees calling for the midday meal. The hounds, though reluctant, began to draw back under the master’s calls, their baying softened into whines. The foxes, clever and evasive, had vanished somewhere into the lower thickets. The hunt, it seemed, had ended early and without ceremony.

“Dash it all, Henry! You’ve driven the fox clean through to the far end of the elms,” said Mr. Knightley, flushed with exertion and no small amount of irritation. “One might think you conspired with the creatures.”

“I did no such thing!” Mr. Lambeth replied. His cravat was soaked and his hunting cap nowhere to be found.

Knightley turned then to Captain Adleigh, who remained still beside his horse, a figure composed but not satisfied.

“Adleigh, should we call it or should we go after the kill?”

“It isn’t the kill that counts, Knightley,” Adleigh said mildly. “A good chase reveals far more who tires first and who shies at the hedge. A field betray its company, if one has the patience to take a look.”

Mr. Knightley, exasperated, “You speak in riddles, sir!” but deciding to play along, “And what has the field told you today?”

Captain Adleigh responded matter-of-factly, “That the fox always leaves a trail.” He walked past the men with the frustration from the hunt and some annoyance at Mr. Lambeth. He got back on his horse and the three men went off along the trail, ignoring the horn and continuing with the hunt.

By the time the gentlemen had returned to Grimley Park, dusk had settled over the grounds like a velvet curtain, the pale gleam of lanterns flickering across the gravel drive. Boots were removed, coats handed off, mud cleaned with attentive efficiency by the Grimley footmen.

In the drawing room after dinner, the fire burned steadily, its glow licking the brass and casting shadows across the patterned carpet. Outside, the fields were blanketed in fog, the hedgerows blurred into soft grey shapes the world itself had drawn a veil after the hunt.

Within, conversation floated lightly above the conversational and conventional duties of supper and claret without too much pomp and ceremony. Mrs. Cartwright had full command of the dinner table, ensuring that conversation steered toward nothing in particular, which she later admitted was a sure method for making the men fall in love. The men reclined with an ease born of hard work at the hunt, their cravats freshly tied, their boots traded for shiny black pumps. The ladies sat in diligent concentration at their embroidery and reading, or, in the case of Eloise, studying the scene as if she were some impartial observer, though she observed with much bias and feeling.

Eloise broke the silence with a studied languid air, as though mindful not to startle the assembly.

“Mr. Knightley, I remain unconvinced that fox hunting serves any purpose beyond self-applause,” she started. “The fox so rarely submits to capture, and when he does, the reward is a chorus of whining hounds.”

Mr. Knightley gave a small smile to suggest magnanimity rather than victory.

“Miss Cartwright, you mistake the object. It is not the fox that matters, but the pursuit. The alertness and the coordination prepare a man for battle…and for the ballroom.”

Mrs. Cartwright, dozing in her seat, came to with the sharp instinct of a seasoned chaperone whose charge was veering dangerously near the kind of philosophizing that led to the ruin of a woman.

“Ballroom?” she repeated, blinking. “Has someone mentioned dancing? Eloise, do not argue with the gentlemen, they’ve been outdoors and do not want to exert in the comfort of a drawing room in such a manner.” She adjusted her shawl with the air of one who had said something unanswerable and promptly drifted off again, her head nodding like a judge satisfied with her own verdict of the situation.

“Then it is a ritual without consequence,” Eloise said, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “You say it prepares a man for battle and the ballroom, but I rather think it does neither. A woman in a ballroom expects charm, not aggressive pursuit. And as for war, the French do not tremble in thickets waiting to be flushed out. They tend to shoot back.”

She continued, “No, if the gentlemen seek a rehearsal, fox hunting offers the wrong cast entirely. The fox is clever, yes, but solitary and wholly uninterested in conquest. He is not, I daresay, the likeness of a Frenchman in battle…or an Englishwoman in a ballroom.”

Miss Samson laughed cheerfully, and Mrs. Lambeth dropped her embroidery. The comment had struck rather too near the heart of Mrs. Lambeth, who found nothing amusing in the suggestion that Englishwomen sought to conquer anything, least of all when one’s own “conquering” had been so recently and publicly arranged.

“Why must something always be useful, Miss Cartwright?” Mr. Knightley said, with the sort of calm certainty of a confident man, but also with some amusement at the direction of the conversation ready to fan his wit, or at least the appearance of it. “Custom does not depend upon its outcomes. It endures because it is ours. That, I think, is the English way.”

Captain Adleigh, picking up where his friend left off, “Look at the Prince Regent. He may do very little that is strictly necessary, but he dresses for the role and shows up where he’s expected. The monarchy and its customs remain, and so does the sense of order. The hunt is no different and is surely a ritual that must continue.”

Miss Samson tilted her head, half-smiling. “So we ride in circles for no purpose and call it continuity?”

“If it keeps the country from turning upside down,” Knightley said gently, “then perhaps the circle is the point.”

Eloise, unpersuaded, lifted her chin slightly. “No,” she said, her voice calm but firm. “The Prince Regent may be custom embodied in person, but what he preserves is the appearance of continuity, not its substance. Behind him stands a king who cannot rule and a Parliament too paralyzed to lead.”

She continues to double down, “He will surround himself with flatterers and tailors, mistaking this counsel for reflection. The continuity you consider is concealment. The monarchy persists, yes, but in a form so hollow it risks forgetting what it was meant to uphold. A pageant without principle is not order, it is deceit and distraction. And distraction, when power is misused or absent altogether, is dangerous.”

“It is a necessary illusion,” came Captain Adleigh’s voice, softened but unmistakable. Miss Samson, who had seated herself beside him under the claim of draftiness, turned slightly in her chair to observe Captain Adleigh more fully.

“To rule is not to act,” Adleigh continued. “It is to be seen. The Prince sustains calm because he is visible, dining and parading about. Then the nation draws in this parade without riot. That, Miss Cartwright, is rule in practice.”

Eloise, unflinching, met his gaze. “And what will the people do when they grow hungry for more than calm? Bread cannot be replaced by this pageantry nor is gilded deceit governance.”

“But it reflects beautifully in candlelight,” Miss Samson murmured, smiling at Adleigh as his face shown brilliantly. “Perhaps that’s why we trust it.”

“The people do not trust the Prince,” Eloise said. “They tolerate him. A regency of theatre rots from the inside while the act plays on.”

Captain Adleigh, swirling the last of his brandy, replied with a bit of weariness, “Governance is not the only requirement of government, Miss Cartwright, only that the people fear it enough not to prod it, and admire it just enough to leave it standing. The French, poor souls, attempted improvement and ended up with a beheading. We, at least, still have ceremonies and titles if not strong policies.”

“How exhausting to think in this manner!” Eloise was incredulous at Adleigh’s remarks.

Knightley, observing the gentle curve of Miss Samson’s cheek as she turned again toward the Captain, felt some part of himself drawn to Miss Samson’s serenity, which was in much contrast to Miss Carwright’s abruptness.

“Miss Cartwright,” Mr. Knightley inserted himself yet again, “the sovereign may falter, but the institution endures. That endurance is a kind of victory.”

“Endurance is not victory,” Eloise returned. “It is stagnant survival without the decency to do anything new or better for its people.”

Miss Samson chimed in, “Captain….Mr. Knightley, you make inaction and appearances sound almost admirable.”

“Only because you mistake inaction for idleness,” Adleigh replied. He did not look at her, though his voice inclined in her direction with the courtesy of a bow. “To appear calm while others are afraid, to appear constant while all else alters, are not small accomplishments. The hallmarks of a behemoth; we know full well that half of government is performed in the imagination of those governed.”

Knightley watched them a moment longer, then turned away, not jealous with the conversation between Captain Adleigh and Miss Samson, but faintly disquieted about the course of the discussion. Men truly are burdened by women who think and even more so by women who voice their thoughts.

“You are all too quick to excuse inaction,” Eloise said, her voice gentler now. “This will all end in tragedy. We’ve had kings who mistook the crown for a costume, and the kingdom paid the price.”

“Then let us be certain to remember the names of these actors,” Adleigh said, rising to refill his glass. “In England, we are less governed than we are staged. So long as the lines are spoken clearly and the entrances properly timed, no one will question whether the play still deserves its audience.”

Later that night, Captain Adleigh sat at the writing desk in Mr. Knightley’s study, backlit by the remains of the fire. A single candle cast a wavering gold pool over his page. The ink flowed quickly and he moved with dexterity.

He was folding a letter neatly and twice for extra measure when the door creaked open.

Eloise Cartwright stepped into the room. “Captain!” she said in surprise.

He did not startle. But, she noticed, the way his hand slid the folded paper into the inside pocket of his coat, an action done with more of a learned, quick instinct than forethought.

“Miss Cartwright,” he said, looking down at her with a measured smile. “I was just on my way out if you need to peruse the bookshelves with some privacy.”

“I…am…sorry Captain Adleigh for the intrusion,” she replied. “I thought the servants left a candle on and I was prepared to snuff it out.”

She looked suspiciously at Adleigh who, seemingly aware of this suspicion, added, “I’ve a habit of recording thoughts before sleep…a soldier’s custom.”

He made a show of straightening the blotter. One corner of the parchment shifted under his touch, and his fingers stilled for the briefest moment before he replaced the candle snuffer.

“I shall retire,” he said. “The room is yours, should you wish it. Do enjoy the fire, Miss Cartwright. “Goodnight.” And with a polite bow, he left.

The door closed behind him and at last the room exhaled.

Eloise waited precisely five heartbeats before moving. She crossed to the desk, eyes already narrowing at the blotter. A stack of papers, underneath the top parchment he had taken, remained. But on the top of this stack, faint as breath on glass, a ghost of his letter remained.

The ink had bled into the parchment below. Carefully, she read the imprint, the blotting of a military mind stupidly confident in his discretion.

To: Monsieur Davout

Local levies active east of Canterbury, rotations observed near Nonington and Ash. Coastal line between Hythe and Folkestone reinforced; all towers appear manned. Canal line fully cleared and patrolled. Roads west of Tilmanstone remain unguarded at dusk, traffic sparse.

– W.A.

Eloise’s face did not change and carefulness stood where shock should have been. She folded the stained parchment in half, tucking it into her sleeve. Eloise wondered about this trail left behind and so carelessly.

So, Adleigh was a fox in disguise. In England, we are less governed than we are staged….a front to the masses.

She turned back toward the dying fire, her expression smooth and her mind, two steps ahead, already writing a new letter bound for her friends at Whitehall.

For Previous Chapters

Society held, with firm conviction, that for a gentleman to visit his bethrothed more than once before marriage was not only inadvisable but entirely indecorous. Mr. Lambeth, however, had always displayed a certain resistance to prevailing custom not from principle, but from a habitual failure to observe anything that did not immediately concern his person. Thus, in a gesture that bordered more on imposition than gallantry, he arrived at Highmarch to request what he termed a “supervised conversation of a very delicate nature” with Miss Anne Cartwright.

Mrs. Cartwright, mortified by the impropriety of so public a gesture, had the curtains drawn at once and directed the servants to suggest that the family had removed to London for the commencement of the Season though it was a full month premature and unconvincing to anyone who recalled the wedding was just next week: Mr. Lambeth least of all. However, the deception might have held, had there not been a narrow opening between the drawing room and the tea salon where no curtain had yet been hung. Through this unfortunate breach in domestic strategy, Mr. Lambeth caught a glimpse of Anne, which, though brief, rendered the concealment void.

Thus emboldened, and Anne having lost the benefit of discretion, Mr. Lambeth opened the door without waiting for it to be answered, and proceeded up the stairs, three steps at a time, with such vigour as to overtake the footman entirely.

The footman, a Mr. William Radley, only lately removed from duties in the stable-yard, was wholly unprepared for such a breach in protocol. That he was unable to prevent it, he attributed not to Mr. Lambeth’s behaviour but to his own inadequacy. William, being a conscientious young man, was hard-pressed to believe that the missteps of others are best explained by some fault in his own performance.

Mr. Lambeth did not arrive alone. He had brought with him a companion and dear friend, Captain Adleigh, a man not given to sentimental attachment and therefore doubly disturbed by the suspicion that he had developed a marked partiality for Miss Eloise Cartwright. Convinced that this sentiment was the product of overactive fancy rather than genuine esteem, he determined that one more meeting, so long as it remained trivial in content and brief in duration, would cure him of the disorder entirely.

He had been careful to rehearse lines of moderate levity and neutrality. He was aware that a recurrence of the previous evening’s philosophical exchange might do more to inflame the affliction than to relieve it. He also comforted himself with the notion that the daughter of a gentleman who possessed more “ledgers” than philosophical treatises would not, a second time, prove so capable a disputant (unaware of Eloise’s hidden chest of philosophical tomes).

As they ascended, William Radley, recovering his professional bearing, intercepted them at the landing with the manner of a most loyal servant.

“Gentlemen,” he said, his voice polite but firm, “may I ask whom I have the honour of announcing?”

“Mr. Lambeth and Captain Adleigh,” replied Mr. Lambeth, with an air of self-conceit and flourish.

“I see,” said William, who promptly turned to relay the information, but to his dismay found the gentlemen had already advanced uninvited into the hall. Forced to trail behind them, he called ahead, “I shall inform Mrs. Cartwright to prepare herself accordingly. Though I daresay she may require a proper and lengthy introduction!”

In the tea salon, Mrs. Cartwright rose to meet them. Her smile was restrained, her manner composed, but there was a distinct tension about the eyes which any close observer might have noted.

“Mr. Lambeth,” she said, “we were not expecting you today.”

Mr. Lambeth, who did not detect the mild rebuke, bowed. “Yes, I have come to speak with Anne on a matter of some delicacy…with your permission, of course.”

Mrs. Cartwright arched one eyebrow with all the precision and grace of a seasoned hostess, but the wrath of a mother confronted. “How thoughtful. And so, in honour of this delicate subject, you have brought... a companion?””

Captain Adleigh gave a polite nod, already regretting every decision that had led him to this doorway.

Lambeth blinked. “Why… er… yes. I thought it best.”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Cartwright, gesturing them inside. “As you see, Anne is seated with her sister and Miss Samson. A most fitting assembly for the discussion of private concerns.” She added, not without emphasis, “After all, if a delicate conversation is suited to three, it may be positively refined among six. Possibly seven, if the footman remains to pour the tea.”

William stood just outside the tea salon rather discomfited being involved in the arrangement of tea things having just been promoted from the stables and attending to less serious matters downstairs. Peering in and ready to be of service, nonetheless, he really was a good young man only knowing his whole life to put his discomfort second to the service and comfort of others.

“Anne,” Mrs. Cartwright continued, “Mr. Lambeth has called upon you.”

Anne looked up with a smile. “How very kind of you, Mr. Lambeth. I was told there was a subject of delicacy you wished to breach?”

“I... yes,” said Lambeth, faltering. “I wished to speak about the weather. Or rather…the possibility of rain on the day of the wedding. I am most concerned for the state of the dresses and the garden walks.”

Eloise and Miss Samson, having until this point maintained the dignified pretense of reading and letter-writing respectively, now looked up: one from over her book, the other from an unfinished letter, and promptly began to chuckle.

Captain Adleigh had been watching Eloise from the moment he entered, taking up position on the opposite side of the room with desperate solemnity. Her smile, which he had intended to forget, was more charming than he remembered.

Mrs. Cartwright was delightedly shocked that “delicate” did not mean “indecorous.” “Rain, Mr. Lambeth? On your wedding day? How practical of you to think of such things!”

Anne resumed her needlework in silence, faintly disappointed that the subject had not proved more romantic or at the very least, more improper. The talk then continued between Mr. Lambeth, Anne, and Mrs. Cartwright with all the pragmatic sensibilities and none of the romance to embellish them.

Meanwhile, Captain Adleigh, still determined to remove himself from all romantic entanglements, moved towards Miss Cartwright with deliberateness and duty.

“Miss Cartwright,” he said, bowing. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

“Captain,” she replied, cool and amused. “How industrious of you to appear at such an early hour. I was beginning to suspect most officers were creatures of the night.”

He smiled. “I had not thought to be so early, but the opportunity arose.”

“And did you seize it in order to discuss the weather like proper people, or would you have Cicero discussed again?”

“I, uh, hoped for lighter conversation this morning.”

“Then I shall lower my expectations accordingly.”

He smiled tightly. “May I be introduced to Miss Samson?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Eloise, gesturing languidly. “Captain Adleigh, this is my good friend Miss Samson.”

Miss Samson looked up with a polite smile but with a twinkle of amazement in her eyes at Captain Adleigh. She did not have two words to put together, for she found the captain remarkably handsome and so unlike the picture Eloise painted of him just the night before. Miss Samson tried to remind herself to talk to Eloise about her opinions on this. For handsome men, whether they be gentleman, a “great” man, poor or otherwise ought to still have been tolerated.

Turning to Miss Samson with what he imagined was a gallant air, he added, “It is a fine thing, I think, that women so often enjoy a wide circle of female friends. There is something admirable, I think, in such close feminine companionship.” Captain Adleigh, untrained in the hazards of nuance and the particular danger of clever women, turned to a subject so seemingly plain in its boundaries that even he might tread it without fear of entanglement.

Miss Samson smiled politely but deferred to Eloise, who rarely permitted such generalities to go unchallenged.

“Is it admirable, Captain?” she said. “I don’t pretend to care for general admiration, only that which I find from a very few friends. I rather think that intimacy cannot flourish where numbers prevail. One can collect acquaintances like one does ribbons, but I have never found it particularly good for me.”

“Oh, I meant only that female friendship is valuable and ought, where possible, to be cultivated.”

She tilted her head slightly, as though weighing the sincerity of the statement. “A fair sentiment, although I don’t see what you mean by ‘valuable’. But it’s a sentiment that might be applied more broadly, I think.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“If friendship among women is so admirable,” she continued, “then it follows that the capacity for true friendship is not confined to one sex. Which leads me to wonder…what, precisely, are your views on friendship between men and women?”

“Men and women can be friends, but it’s a friendship merely of pleasure.” He rose slightly, preparing to take his leave and join Mr. Lambeth, congratulating himself on having escaped the conversation with his dignity largely intact thus far, sensing more was to come.

But Eloise’s voice stopped him mid-turn.

“Captain, may I ask, does that belief arise from conviction, or experience? You are, by all accounts, much acquainted in society. Do you consider every pleasant companion a friend? Or every agreeable conversation a bond of any real substance?”

He hesitated. “Certainly not. That would be absurd.”

“Quite,” she said. “Because true friendship must involve more than charm or diversion. A friendship based solely on pleasure may be entertaining, but it is not enduring, and it is not, properly speaking, a friendship at all. You do not call a game of cards a partnership simply because it passed an hour pleasantly.”

Adleigh remained still.

“You distinguish among your male friends, more than just pleasure. But with women, you grant only delight. That is not a theory to live by, Captain, and it is certainly a limitation.”

“More so,” continued Eloise. “Quantity does not ensure quality in society or friendship. And as for your thoughts on female friendship, by your standards, does not exist with men.”

Adleigh gave a measured shrug. “I suppose such friendships may exist, though in my experience, they are more difficult to sustain. Less useful, perhaps. A man turns to his fellows for counsel, for shared enterprise, for a certain… understanding.”

“Ah,” said Eloise, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “So you find women less useful as friends?”

He blinked. “I did not say that.”

“You implied it,” she replied, too gently to be mistaken for unkind. “But I disagree. Aristotle writes of the highest form of friendship: that which is built not upon utility or pleasure alone, but upon virtue. Mutual admiration. A shared pursuit of the good. And he allows this even between men and women, provided neither confuses sentiment for sentimentality.”

Adleigh flushed slightly. Here come the philosophers! He was trapped and social etiquette dictated that he could not end this discussion without offending. He had to rely on his reason to ensure the feelings stayed intact. “Yes, but society rarely permits such friendships to flourish.”

“Then it is not friendship that is at fault,” Eloise said, “but society.”

“I have often observed,” said the Captain, folding his hands in an attitude of casual philosophy, “that friendship between a gentleman and a lady, when it is not encumbered by courtship or matrimonial ambition, is best regarded as a friendship of pleasure.”

“Pleasure alone, Captain? That is a rather modest ambition. You do not allow for utility or virtue in such associations?”

“I cannot say I do. A gentleman forms his most useful connections among other men: brother officers, hunting companions, those with whom one may share business or confidence. A lady’s society may be charming, indeed, often more agreeable than is strictly convenient…but useful? No. I confess I do not see it.”

“Then perhaps, sir, you have not looked very hard.”

“On the contrary, Miss Cartwright, I have made a study of the matter. Ladies are best appreciated for their elegance, their conversation, their capacity for light amusement. That is pleasure enough. But utility? It would be a rather severe friend indeed who insisted upon being useful. And women are not severe.”

“And by your account, not friends. For a friendship of pure ‘pleasure’ is not a friendship at all. “Friendship” founded solely on pleasure is often no more than an acquaintance. It charms, yes, but it seldom endures. I think better of friendship than to reduce it to mere amusement.”

“Then you subscribe to Aristotle?”

“I do. And I suspect he would find your interpretation wanting.”

“Then pray, enlighten me, madam. I am but a simple soldier. I wield a sabre more skillfully when unencumbered by wit and rhetoric.”

“Very well. Aristotle distinguishes three elements of friendship: of pleasure, as you say, of utility, and of virtue. There must be all three, but with the first only friendship is fleeting, the second transactional and fragile, and the third, which is rarest of all, is built on mutual admiration and the pursuit of moral good.”

“And you believe such a lofty arrangement may exist between a man and a woman?”

“I do believe such friendship is possible, though seldom attempted. Society discourages it, of course, but that does not render it impossible. A woman may be of use to a man by fetching his coat or managing his accounts, checking his prejudices, and reminding him, now and then, that strength is not the same as sense.”

“I daresay most gentlemen would prefer their prejudices remain unbothered by ladies who consider it their mission to correct them.”

“Indeed, and yet you admit prejudice exists and correction a consequence. Curious, is it not? You claim friendship between the sexes can be no more than a pleasant diversion, and yet here you are, acknowledging that women are capable of correcting his ways. That is not merely pleasure, Captain, it is utility.”

“Well, perhaps I spoke in haste. I meant only that friendship with women lacks the sort of... mutual enterprise one finds amongst men.”

“Ah, mutual enterprise. Then pray explain how the correction of one’s moral and intellectual faults does not qualify? Unless, of course, you do not consider your prejudices a worthwhile object of enterprise.”

“That would be a harsh assessment.”

“Only if it’s true. You cannot, Captain, praise the value of a thing while denying its existence. It is rather like admiring a fine orchard and insisting no apple trees grow there. It seems you are less committed to your philosophy than you appear.”

Adleigh was feeling the same ill effects from the discussion the previous night and looked with some urgency at Lambeth, who, much vexed by the probability of rain, was deep in trivial conversation with Mrs Cartwright.

“I have a proposition for you Miss Cartwright,” the captain continued after a slight pause and some thinking. “If you feel so strongly about what constitutes a virtuous friendship between men and women, why don’t you and your sister, as well as Miss Samson, come to Kent to join the end of the hunting season, after the wedding, at Mr. Knightley’s next week. We will test your theories and see what we can make of it.”

“Captain! The audacity of this provocation.” Miss Samson was shocked for the second time in the span of an hour at Highmarch…an eventful social call indeed.

“I will need to ask my mother and father and of course we cannot expect to just intrude without Mr. Knightley’s invitation.”

“You need not concern yourself, Miss Cartwright. Leave Mr. Knightly to me. He owes me this much.”

And so, the Cartwright sisters and Miss Samson departed for Kent after the wedding between Mr. Lambeth and Anne (where not a single drop of rain fell). Miss Eloise Cartwright, with all the serenity of conviction, intended to prove what few gentlemen ever wish to admit, that they ought to be useful, and that friendship (and nothing more) between the sexes, devoid of sentimental attachment and when conducted with virtue as its aim, may be not only possible, but necessary.

Leave a comment

For Chapters I & II see —>

Marguerite Gérard, Lady Reading in an Interior (ca. 1790s). Public Domain.

Chapter I. Cicero in the Drawing Room

Eloise Cartwright sat uneasily on a bench planted firmly in a pleasance, affording just enough privacy from the main house to be discreet without being too obvious about it. She sat with no small degree of protest. The bench was expressly chosen by her mother, one suspects, to discourage both ultimate comfort and unapproved displays of emotion in anticipation of this very moment. The proximity of the window and angle was such that Eloise could make out a certain Mr. Lambeth, situated inside the Cartwright drawing room, but made the view of her beloved sister, who most likely sat directly opposite from Mr. Lambeth, an unfortunate impossibility. Eloise very much wanted to catch sight of her sister engaged in what one could only describe as “matrimonial diplomacy,” all prim and lace, but with an air of detachment.

The gardens and drawing rooms were subject to the peculiar constitutional monarchy of Cartwright household protocol, a body of legislation passed down by her great-grandmother, whose chief contributions to the family legacy were ensuring that the family line continued via exact rules on etiquette in this area. While the study and billiards room were reserved for the male portion of the family to perform their various acts of vigorous idleness, the visiting rooms and garden served as arenas for the subtler blood sport of marriage-making.

Thus, in accordance with Cartwright tradition, rules were designed to produce marriages, quietly, without sudden movements. It was strictly understood that if a Cartwright daughter found herself alone in the presence of a potential suitor, no abrupt entrances, exits, or shifts in certain arrangements were to occur, lest the gentleman be startled into flight and abandon matrimony altogether.

This particular rule had its origins in what the family referred to (without irony) as “The Clattering Incident of 1756”, an event in which Grandfather Cartwright opened a teacup cupboard too quickly and spooked a well-respected vicar, who sped off hastily from a very distraught Miss Jane Cartwright. The clattering was so extreme that the vicar, who intended so much from the visit and with such grand expectations of marriage, left with the most adamant desire for permanent bachelorhood.

“The moment a man is made to pause and think,” the Cartwright dogma declared, “he will.” Sudden motion, it was agreed, startled men into thought. Thought, as the family had long since learned, was the death knell of a successful engagement.

Thus Eloise remained sitting, stiff-backed, trapped by etiquette of the house and incidents, having nothing to do with her, as her sister’s future unfolded inside with little regard to her own thoughts on the matter. A very average day at Highmarch House.

Eloise, as might be suspected, was not fond of staying still and silent and thus had a natural aversion to the business of marriage-making.

It was, then, with much disappointment that her sister Anne was engaged by week’s end to the very Mr. Lambeth whose conversational gifts did not extend far beyond compliments. The match was, according to Mrs. Cartwright, a triumph. According to Eloise, it was the triumph of dullness over reason. But Eloise was partially grateful, for Anne was receiving calls and proposals at a rate of six a week and the never-ending line of desperate, land-rich (wit-poor) men visiting the home, and in the very room where she had her tea, was most welcome.

Anne bore it well. She was patient and graceful, and in possession of that peculiar talent for smiling at the correct frequency and dosage. Mr. Lambeth appeared to think of her as an excellent listener, which she was not; she simply knew when to nod and sigh at the appropriate time, for timing was everything in trivial conversation and among the boorish set of English society.

The engagement brought great excitement to Highmarch and a series of guests (to Eloise’s chagrin), including members of the militia who, as Mrs. Cartwright breathlessly explained, would increase the chances of marital prospects for her second daughter, whether Eloise liked it or not.

Among them arrived Captain William Adleigh, a friend of Mr. Lambeth and a second son of a grand military family with close political connections to King George III, whose presence inspired in Eloise neither admiration nor respect. He had a face sculpted by David and an expression honed by society to appear thoroughly unimpressed by anything lacking a military commission. His entrance was marked by two remarks of a very odd nature that was said in, what he thought, was in secret to his newly engaged friend: “I found the gardens devoid of the correct amount of footpaths needed for proper appreciation” and the library without “the necessary Roman and Greek scholars that generally line the walls of a gentleman’s study”. Pompous and wholly without the taste to back the condescension.

“Roman scholars, sir?” Eloise asked, raising one brow in the first line of attack masked as polite inquisitiveness.

The captain spun around in shock that his words could be heard by what appeared to be the younger sister of the family. He had hardly noticed her upon entering the room, but after the initial shock of the question, inspected her person more closely and found her to be subtly (not strikingly) beautiful. He took the bait and found his opportunity to begin a lecture he had made many times in the rooms at Brooke’s. He replied, trying very hard to compose himself by inspecting a nearby statue bust in a manner suggesting both erudition and nonchalance in the conversation. “It’s the tragic of the modern gentleman. There’s an absence of Cicero. No Epictetus or Herodotus. A gentleman must dine with the ancients to digest the present.”

“Cicero? How...distinctly ornamental. I was under the impression a gentleman’s library should reflect his pursuits and interests. Unless, of course, the understanding of rhetoric will make the management of the estate run more smoothly.”

The captain, even more shocked upon this retort than the initial question, at the very least did not show it. Without looking up from his teacup he scoffed, “Pursuits!” then paused, having come to some awareness that he was surrounded by “gentlemen” of the most English of character and had better tread carefully. In a calmer tone, “the English gentleman is not a tradesman, Miss Cartwright. He aspires to the elevation of the soul. What association does a gentleman have with “pursuits” but that of the pursuit of the noblest of spirit? Surely you’re not suggesting a true gentleman avoid the classics?” The captain, at last, looked fiercely with fine green eyes upon Eloise and with disdain laced within the last of his questions.

“Not only do I argue that a true English gentleman has no use with Cicero but that having this knowledge will be more of a danger to himself than not.”

The captain knew very well to suppress his emotions in conversation. But this proclamation, uttered by one so seemingly innocent and naive, required him to steady his stance and puff out his chest similar to a position taken against Napoleon himself. (Eloise was like the morning mist at the beginning of battle. Beautiful and innocuous, until the enemy charged out from beneath its fold and was all along a true threat). “A gentleman must have more than land, Miss Cartwright. He must possess a cultivated mind, a familiarity with Cicero for example, goes beyond the practical and strengthens it within a moral structure. From Cicero we get definitions and instruction in justice and governance.” The captain paused thinking more carefully about the silliness of her last statement. “And what of this “danger” you speak of?”

Eloise was exasperated by having to explain more than she expected. “I do not deny Cicero is clever and he was right to provide ‘moral structure’.’ But, I believe, Captain Adleigh, that you mistake my meaning. I mean to say that true knowledge of Roman scholars, especially Cicero, are not in the gentleman’s self-interest and that Cicero does more to threaten the existence of an English gentleman than any other Roman scholar you find are needed in a gentleman’s study.”

A merry diddy was playing on the piano forte in the background and many chose to dance rather than converse. Only the most elderly of the group, unable to dance, were within earshot of the conversation and even then many were hard of hearing and unable to hear most of it. But Mrs. Cartwright was a mother and, with it, came a special kind of hearing. Catching a whiff of this escalating conversation, and seeing the growing discomfiture of a man of rank in her drawing room, Mrs. Cartwright excused herself from the pleasantries of a conversation in order to squash the rancour of this other conversation wholly. But Captain Adleigh was quick to retort and Mrs. Cartwright started to feel little in command with the direction of the discussion and stood idly by, ready to drop her teacup and create much ‘clattering’ if needed.

Captain Adleigh smirked and stifled a snort. The audacity of this woman! “And what would you have him study instead? Crop rotation? Must a gentleman be measured by his use alone?” Bemused but also very curious what Eloise had in mind here.

“Listen carefully, Captain Adleigh. I do not mean to offend, but I must speak what I know.”

“Go on.”

“Believing in Cicero’s philosophy is a call to reform of the gentleman’s way of life. For he said, ‘For riches, fame, and power, without wisdom and a just method of regulating ourselves and commanding others, a government is full of discredit and insolent arrogance, nor is there any kind of government more deformed than that in which the wealthiest are regarded as the noblest.’”

Eloise bravely continued seeing that the captain’s complexion had drained of all its vibrancy and colour. “No, I do not believe gentlemen, by your definition, would be wise pursuing those scholars that discredit their position. Cicero tells him that justice is correct and that men in standing should be got by merit not birth or inheritance. But we are not in the forum, Captain, we are in England, where men of little consequence are held in high esteem for this very fact. A gentleman raised on Cicero may quote morals, but will he stand by them in the Lords or Commons?”

“Miss Cartwright, you do the English gentleman a disservice in presuming he holds neither democracy nor virtue in regard. I’d sooner a gentleman know too much and act too little than act without knowing at all. Better an impractical mind than an incurious one. You fear Cicero makes dreamers of men, but I say: better a gentleman full of untested ideas than one who does not think about questions of morality and virtue.”

“Esteeming virtue and justice is all well and good, but means little without action. A gentleman would do better to concern himself with what actually serves the body politic, such as reading his own ledgers, rather than clutching at noble ideals he’s too idle to act upon.”

“But..” The captain was ready to say more but sensing that the others in the room stood around, quieting their own conversations to hear theirs, came back to his senses and dared not to proceed. He was a guest at Highmarch House and they were all there in celebration of the newly engaged couple. Surely this was not a place to have a philosophical discussion, no less with the youngest daughter of a man of property and great esteem. “Miss Cartwright, pardon me, I better see that I attend to Mr. Knightly who, I see, needs help with his cravat.” The captain bowed ceremoniously.

Eloise, upset that the discussion was to come to an end and, immensely insulted by the candor and tone of the captain, sneered, “And do YOU call yourself a gentleman, sir?”

Quietly leaning into Eloise after quickly glancing around (most of the party were at the very least pretending to be engrossed in trivial conversation). He whispers “...No.” And with a wink and smirk the captain whisked himself away. Mrs. Cartwright gave Eloise a knowing look, for a man who thought too hard would most likely never again seek the attention of Eloise and she was quite disappointed, for Captain Adleigh would have made a great match. Eloise was left frustrated and sipping her tea. The tea was excessively hot, but she drank it without flinching; pain, after all, was unbecoming.

Chapter II. Plato & Gossip in the Tea Room

Captain Adleigh sauntered regally around the perimeter of the Highmarch drawing room the remainder of the night. He was a man well versed in posturing, especially on the battlefield, but in the drawing room he suffered defeat and looked on at the crowd with thin-lipped irritability as a soldier who must dine with his conquerors. No more Cicero, or any other philosopher mentioned in the slightest. All this philosophical refrain was condoned and encouraged by Mrs. Cartwright, seeing to it that talk focused on far weightier matters. Mrs. Avery’s curdled custard for one. Or, in patriotic panic, whether Mr. Gladstone’s mustache was trimmed with treasonous French precision (with the result that it was shorn off completely by morning and with much relief, for Mr. Gladstone insisted gruffly “Humph! I’d rather a razor to a lip than a guillotine to the neck in the name of crown and country!”).

The Captain declined several hands of whist, citing a sudden aversion to games of chance, having already risked his dignity in conversation with Miss Cartwright. The evening, in this way, unfolded uneventfully, attended by the customary fuss over sacred rituals known best to gentlemen and their families. And beneath it all, the only true excitement lay in the anticipation of the London season, drawing nearer and only weeks away.

As the guests were making their way out, a Mr. Knightly called out for the captain. “Ho there, Adleigh!” There was a stiff pat on the back from Mr. Knightley as they both entered Captain Adleigh’s carriage. “Let’s go to Brooke’s. I hear there is a lovely new port, just arrived!”

Knightly tapped the roof of the carriage and yelled briskly “Brooke’s, coachman…and smartly now. We’ve a thirst that won’t wait!”

“No, hold on there, Knightly. I am tired. Hate these country parties….the boredom I endure exhaust me to no end. They drain the very soul of me.” Sounding mildly irritated, Captain Adleigh hoped to distract his friend from the true meaning of his frustration with little effect.

Mr. Knightly, the wily observer, knew better. “Boredom! I seem to recall you having a lively discussion with Miss Eloise Cartwright. I wonder if that is the true source of your exhaustion?”

“That was not a discussion, it was an ambush. From a woman who sits in the drawing room tipping the scales and with a sword always at the ready.” Captain Adleigh looked back at the conversation with some amusement, but something vexed him deeply. Were it a matter of wounded pride, he would find honor in it, but on the fringes he knew he was drawn to her, and mixed with pride was a growing regard. He wanted none of that.

Knightly smirked shamelessly at his friend. “Ambush? Oh Adleigh, blame boredom all you want, if it quiet the mind and make sleep easy. But, lend boredom your coat and take it to the billiards!”

“Not tonight, Knightly.” Unlike Captain Adleigh, Mr. Knightly sought to remedy the boredom of the night with its perceived opposite elsewhere. But Mr. Knightly did not need company at Brooke’s to enjoy himself and left the captain to his wounded pride with that ease of manner and grace, which is born not of character but of circumstance and reserved for men who have not known a cold cup of tea.

“As you like, Adleigh. I’ll see you in London for the season, I suppose. Come visit Kent for the hunt before then. Henry and I want to take the hounds out for a good run.” Mr. Knightly was Mr. Henry Lambeth’s first cousin, both children of earls, short of neither land nor leisure. The two men parted, Captain Adleigh giving strict instruction to the coachman to take him home.

Eloise was exhausted as well. She went into her room, which had just enough wax in the candle left to finish reading a few pages of Cicero’s compilation of speeches, In Verrum, which she had hid in a small cabinet with other works, best kept secret. Eloise thought for a moment about the exchange with Captain Adleigh earlier. She hated it immensely.

The captain was surprised by her opinions, which were stated with much thought and feeling. She had not the luxury of schooling or education, but did what she could to read and discuss within the confines of Highmarch “limitations”, precisely the lack of classical scholars that the captain eluded to. She was embarrassed for her father Mr. Cartwright, who being a gentleman, was conservative with his ledgers, managed the estate with great care, and had little time for philosophizing and attention to ideals that consumed the mind of other privileged men. This is not a judgment, Eloise considered. But merely an observation of the facts.

Were she more of a stoic, then maybe the discussion would not have occurred in the first place and she would have been spared the agony of thinking of the captain altogether. She was hard upon herself through the course of the next day having slept little for want of relaxation until a Miss Samson came to call at the usual hour to discuss the events and concerns of the day.

“Hello Eloise, you look ill!” Miss Samson lived down the road and was a very good friend of Eloise. She was spirited and very loyal and in this loyalty was mostly honest when it was complemented with discomfort.

“Yes, Charlotte. I am feeling the ill effects of society. So much of this engagement and all these celebrations are wearing down the family. After so much attention from the men in this part of the country and for so long, and Anne having secured a match, we all ought to have slept instead of celebrated.”

Miss Samson sat down on the chaise and picked delicately at the tea offerings. Eloise saw that she held back something important in the lines of her mouth, in the eyes that shuttered open and shut mercilessly. “Charlotte, is there something you would like to say?” Eloise teased, for the things that Miss Samson had to say never really concerned her in the slightest, but she was intrigued nonetheless for it had always had everything to do with other people, which she enjoyed much more.

“Well, it has been said…” Miss Samson finally looked straight at Eloise and continued, “...it has been said that you had a very intimate conversation with a certain Captain Adleigh who has just joined us from Wiltshire.”

Eloise was exasperated. Intimate! “Charlotte, half of Wiltshire, heard the conversation. I would hardly call it intimate. If a philosophical argument be considered intimate then I imagine those at Oxford in a constant state of seduction.”

Miss Samson gasped. The thought of salacious talk was beyond her comprehension. She grabbed a tea plate and fanned herself fervently.

“I loathe and detest that man, Charlotte. What are people insinuating?” Insufferable people who dare characterize the discussion in such a way, when in her own heart she knew that WHAT they insisted was entirely opposite of the truth.

“Eloise, my dear, dear friend.” Miss Samson walks over to Eloise and places a firm and delicate hand on Eloise’s as one does when having to explain something terrible to a child. “Whenever a discussion between a man and a woman involves talk of ‘virtue’ and ‘morality’, it can only mean one thing.” Miss Samson gave Eloise a knowing look as if it was clear as an English summer’s day what talk of Greek and Roman philosophers entailed.

“And what would that be, Charlotte?”

“Well, I do not want to repeat the exact words, Eloise. Please don’t make me, but I’ve come here to tell you because I’m a good friend and I know the chatter about the exchange will be making the rounds. It’s my duty to make sure you are aware, generally, rather than in the particulars which I will spare you of.”

Eloise’s composure softened and she looked with tenderness at her friend who did much to inform and “spare” her from the very details she had already heavily implied. “Thank you, yes. I appreciate the sentiment Charlotte. But I want to dispel the rumor. There is nothing between Captain Adleigh and myself. The man is completely unreasonable and so thoroughly backwards in his idea of what ought to be that I have no inclination to talk to him again!”

“But really, Eloise, if we only spoke to reasonable people, we’d have no one to talk to.”

“If you could kindly let the people know I have nothing to do with Captain Adleigh, I would be very obliged to you Charlotte.”

“That’s all well and good, but don’t you think it…premature to make so many assumptions about a man who comes from such a great family and has made many honors in the army?”

“I must object to the ease with which you use the word great. To suppose a man is great simply because he come from good family and holds a commission is unprincipled and a danger in disguise. Calling a man great ought to follow from careful observation and study, not out of social convenience. To mistake fortune for character, or rank for virtue, is how very foolish men come to be trusted with very serious things.”

“What do you mean Eloise? I have seen lesser men called ‘great’ without issue!”

“Having it be said, does not make it so. Now tell me, what has Captain Adleigh shown that suggests wisdom? What restraint has he exercised that speaks to moderation? And as for courage…well, mentioning Cicero in a drawing room seems to qualify….as bold, but let us not confuse boldness with courage. Boldness often dashes in when not tamed by wisdom. Courage, by contrast, rarely needs an audience and is tempered by knowledge.”

“Bold, Eloise! His actions are noble and his family has one of the finest libraries in the country. Wisdom comes from knowledge and virtue on the field. What greater case can be made for his greatness?”

“If the size and quality of the library were a measure of wisdom, and battles of virtue, I would be sitting here calling King George a true ‘philosopher-king’. We know this cannot be true. Let’s discuss this seriously in the manner of Plato.”

“Fine, amuse me then, I’ve been longing for a respite.”

“You talk of virtue on the field. The soldier is certainly courageous, one of the virtues Plato expands upon. An Englishman, taking up arms, to leave his family and all he knows to fight requires courage because he must lose something by it.”

“Eloise, you talk so highly of the English soldier. Where has Captain Adleigh gone wrong, then, in your opinion?”

“Moderation and the temperance of ambition. The English soldier is spared the burden of ambition and does the fighting with dignity and courage. The English soldier of rank, however, aspires to fight and lead to line his pockets with coin and his coat with honors.”

“But he’s brave,” Charlotte insisted. “He leads men into battle!”

“Bravery,” Eloise replied, “is not parading about in a uniform, it is measured in the restraint one shows when unobserved, in standing for what is right when silence would be easier. Plato would say true courage must be governed by wisdom, or it is mere recklessness.”

Charlotte narrowed her eyes as though trying to spot courage somewhere in the carpet. “And what of moderation?”

Eloise folded her arms. “Moderation is the virtue most often lost on men with ambition. Captain Adleigh may fight well, but he fights for advancement. He performs his virtue as though it were theatre. And he is a man of rank in one so young, Charlotte, that alone disqualifies him from being a great man for one who has no wisdom and all the power will do much injustice. Plato tells us the ideal ruler must have no desire for power, and yet rank is, by nature, its pursuit. A man raised to value promotion cannot be trusted to value justice.”

“Who’s to say that Captain Adleigh pursues power and fortune?”

“Because Plato spoke in ideals. Philosopher-kings do not rule and virtues are cast aside for gain and glory. We live in the realm of shadows and images and in this realm, great men do not exist.”

“Eloise. You see the world and the people in it so cruelly and on outdated notions of what is right and wrong. I would rather take the modern view that all men are rational and virtuous. I see no wrong in Captain Adleigh.“

“Maybe I am being rather harsh. I hope to see something different...biscuit?” Eloise hands her dear friend a morsel and turns to look out the window. In the distance she sees two men on horseback, a Mr. Lambeth…and a Captain Adleigh coming to Highmarch.