PENELOPE BRANDLING
By
VERNON LEE
A TALE OF THE WELSH COAST IN
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
M CM III
TO
AUGUSTINE BULTEAU
THIS STORY
OF NORTHERN WRECKERS,
IN RETURN FOR A PIECE OF PARIAN
MARBLE PICKED UP IN THE
MEDITERRANEAN SURF
AT PALO
GRANDFEY, NEAR F., IN SWITZERLAND.
May 15, 1822.
Having reached an age when the morrow is more than uncertain, andknowing how soon all verbal tradition becomes blurred and distorted, I,Sophia Penelope, daughter of Jacques de Morat, a cadet of the Counts ofthat name, sometime a captain in the service of King Louis XV., and ofSophia Hamilton, his wife; and furthermore, widow of the late SirEustace Brandling, ninth baronet, of St. Salvat's Castle, in the countyof Glamorgan, have yielded to the wishes of my dear surviving sons, andam preparing to consign to paper, for the benefit of their children andgrandchildren, some account of those circumstances in my life whichdecided that the lot of this family should so long have been cast inforeign parts and remote colonies, instead of in its ancestral andlegitimate home.
I can the better fulfil this last duty to my dear ones, living and dead,that I have by me a journal which, as it chanced, I was in the habit ofkeeping at that period; and require to draw upon my memory only for suchdetails as happen to be missing in that casual record of my daily lifesome fifty years ago. And first of all let me explain to my children'schildren that I began to keep this journal two years after my marriagewith their grandfather, with the idea of sending it regularly to mydearest mother, from whom, for the first time in my young life, I wasseparated by my husband's unexpected succession and our removal fromSwitzerland to his newly-inherited estates in Wales. Let me also explainthat before this event, which took place in the spring of seventeenhundred and seventy-two, Sir Eustace Brandling was merely a youngEnglishman of handsome person, gentlemanly bearing, an uncommonknowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and a most blameless andamiable temper, but with no expectations of fortune in the future, andonly a modest competence in the present. So that it was regarded in ourCanton and among our relations as a proof of my dear mother's high-flownand romantic temper, and of the unpractical influence of the writings ofRousseau and other philosophers, that she should have allowed her onlychild to contract such a marriage. And at the time of its celebration itdid indeed appear improbable that we should ever cease residing with mydearest mother on her little domain of Grandfey; still more that ourexistence of pastoral and philosophic happiness should ever be exchangedfor the nightmare of dishonour and misery which followed it.
The beginning of our calamities was, as I said, on the death of SirThomas Brandling, my husband's only brother. I have preserved a mostvivid recollection of the day which brought us that news, perhapsbecause, looked back upon ever after, it seemed the definite boundary ofa whole part of our life, left so quickly and utterly behind, as theshore is left even with the first few strokes of the oars. My dearmother and I were in the laundry, where the maids were busy putting bythe freshly ironed linen. My mother, who was ever more skilful with herhands, as she was nimbler in her thoughts, than I, had put aside all themost delicate pieces and the lace to dress and iron herself; while I,who had made a number of large bundles of lavender (our garden hadnever produced it in so great profusion), was standing on a chair andplacing them in the shelves of the presses, betwee