Victorian Social Activists' Novels Vol 2

Oliver Lovesey

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000419061
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: World History

The writers of these novels were involved in various types of activism, using approaches ranging from conservative amelioration to radical militancy. Their works employ a broad variety of genres from the novel of manners, sensation, education and vocation, to allegory, romance and lesbian fiction. Volume 2 includes 'Rose Turquand' (1876).

 

 

 

 

ROSE TURQUAND

 

 

 

 

 

 

ROSE TURQUAND

BY

ELLICE HOPKINS

 

 

 

So nigh to glory is our dust,
So nigh is God to man,
When Duty whispers low ‘Thou must,’
The soul replies ‘I can.’

Emerson.¹

VOL. I

 

 

 

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1876
[All rights reserved]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TO MY SISTER

A. L. M.²
‘BENE QUIDAM DIXIT DE AMICO SUO: DIMIDIUM ANIMAE MEAE.’³

St. Augustine.

 

 

CONTENTS.

• CHAPTER I
• CHAPTER II
• CHAPTER III
• CHAPTER IV
• CHAPTER V
• CHAPTER VI
• CHAPTER VII
• CHAPTER VIII
• CHAPTER IX
• CHAPTER X
• CHAPTER XI
• CHAPTER XII
• CHAPTER XIII
• CHAPTER XIV
• CHAPTER XV
• CHAPTER XVI
• CHAPTER XVII
• CHAPTER XVIII
• CHAPTER XIX

ROSE TURQUAND.

CHAPTER I.

The breakfast bell had rung, and the master and mistress of the house had already taken their seat at either end of the long breakfast-table. It was a London winter’s morning, and there was the usual thick, bilious-looking atmosphere which does duty in the English metropolis for the wholesome rain-washed morning blue of the country; while a few sickly sunbeams were in vain trying to make their way through the nauseous mixture, half strangled in the effort.

But whatever might be the gloom without, it rather added than not to the air of unmistakable English comfort of the large dining-room within, rich with crimson and oak, and filled with a low splendour of firelight that ran in little rills of flame down the silver tea-urn, and laughed and sparkled on the bright china and plate laid out along the well-appointed table for a large family party.

Mrs. Adair, the lady who sat at the head of the table, industriously knitting a grey stocking as she waited for the rest of the party to assemble, was a tall, well-made woman, sufficiently inclined to embonpoint⁴ to give a certain massive repose to her figure. She would have been remarkably handsome, but for her large rather prominent grey eyes, and an indescribable air of hardness which beset her well-cut features and grandiose form. One would as soon have thought of pillowing one’s aching head on her ample, well-rounded bosom as on the bronzen breast of a statue of Victory in a public square. Instinctively one could not help wondering whether she had ever shared in the ordinary weak beginnings of human kind, whether she ever could have been a tender, helpless babe, or had not rather been cast life-size from the first. Certain it is she had never known the common illnesses and frailties of human flesh. She had never taken a pill in her life, she would have scorned such a concession to the weakness of mortality. Sickness of any kind in her eyes was not so much a misfortune as a disgrace, to be summed up in the convenient formulary of ‘So-and-So’s fancies,’ and a thing to be heartily ashamed of as the result of giving way, and weakly refusing to exert oneself. Every one could help being ill if they liked, except old people going to die, and those who were born sickly; and these last she would have quietly disposed of, as a mercy both to themselves and to the living. Gifted with an iron will in an iron frame, she ruled every one who came near her, and no one dared to disobey her.

Opposite her, leisurely engaged in perusing a heap of letters that lay by the side of his plate, sat her lord and master, in the euphonistic but somewhat fictional language of domestic life.

‘‘An two ride a horse, one must ride behind,’ says Dogberry,⁵ despite some modern theories to the contrary; and I have my suspicions that in this case, as in many others, it was Mr. Charles Adair, M.P., that meekly took the hinder seat in the pillion of married life.

His was one of those good-looking, common-place faces, which cannot be recalled for two minutes together, but exist as a featureless blot in the memory; yet, on closer inspection, there was a wild indecision lurking in the corners of the eyes as well as in the loose flexible mouth, which boded ill for his remaining master of the situation in any domestic difference of opinion with his wife. He was universally congratulated on having such a woman, — congratulations, however, which from his bachelor friends were accompanied with an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders — such a devoted mother to his children, such an admirable manager, such a capital hand at giving the most recherchés⁶ dinners, to the satisfaction of the most fastidious epicures, never in trouble with her servants as other women are, never bothering his heart out with domestic squabbles, the strong capable woman taking up silently her share of the burden of life, and never being guilty of the weakness of thinking or complaining outside her head as so many women do.

But though he thoroughly recognised all her good qualities and, good easy man that he was, hugged the peace and order of his household, yet if the truth be known, I am not sure whether hard pressed he would not have made the same confession as once escaped the lips of a well-known character in one of the Universities⁷ with regard to his better half — ‘Yes, she makes me an admirable wife, never keeps me waiting for my meals, always sees to their being well-cooked, keeps the house in the best order, and is a capital manager, but yet I can’t say she is a woman I ever liked.’

Indeed, how Mr. and Mrs. Adair ever came to be bracketed together, — married, if it suggests any union of heart and soul, would be a misnomer, — was just one of those mysteries which beset the question of all beginnings in natural philosophy.⁸ Yet there they were seated at either end of the family breakfast table, man and wife, getting on as comfortably together as other married folk, and both of them inclined to get stout and personable on whatever woes they encountered in their earthly pilgrimage.

If such were Mr. Adair’s private relationships, his public career is more difficult precisely to define. As the owner of a large distillery, he was in receipt of a good income, which, however, he greatly diminished by unsuccessful speculations. Politically, he might be said to be an incarnation of the British principle of compromise on its least attractive side — not the compromise which springs from philosophical moderation and dislike of the practical falsehood of extremes, but the compromise which arises from a dread of consequences. Nominally, he was a Whig, that being the party in power, when he opened all the public-houses in the small town of N — , and had the proud honour of being floated to his seat in the legislature on a flood of bad beer and balderdash, swallowed ad libitum⁹ by his grateful constituents. His favourite plan was to tinker away at evil results, and leave the evil cause; his favourite rule to vote with large majorities; his one aim to swim with the stream and yet not to shoot the rapid. For the rest he enjoyed the reputation of being a kind-hearted and benevolent man, always ready to take the platform in religious meetings, held for the diffusion of knowledge and the lessening of drunkenness among the masses.

He was just opening his third business letter, when a sudden babble of fresh voices, and a rush of young feet down the stairs was followed by a somewhat tumultuous entry of the y...