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Heavenly Kingdoms - Chapter 6
From Margaret Playford to Caroline Playford, 15th of July, 1859.
Dear Cousin,
Such misery! You have no idea! The Charlstons are the most miserable family I have ever witnessed or heard speak of and considering the poverty of our tenants the Fitzwilliams, whose squalid dwelling I have been obliged to visit on all too frequent an occasion, this should say much toward convincing you of the destitution of this poor family I have had the misfortune to stay with for the last fortnight. To further juxtapose, the Fitzwilliams have one scrawny cow, seven half-starved children of which three are always suffering consumption (they had ten, and are soon to have four), and fields half covered in blight, yet their spirits are not half as distraught as that of Anne and that haunted homunculus she calls father.
But such is the typical fate of the highborn; to feel each woe with deeper anguish than the unwashed whose limited faculties are not sufficient to suffer the same depths. My dear George thinks me bigoted but I know he is all talk as I see him wince whenever the low-born speak to him in their coarse tones and jilting lilt. His romantic ways betray him, forcing hypocrisy from his lips, for he is too concerned with beauty to truly think the ugly worth consideration as equals. He writes and speaks only in the angelic. You could imagine then my glee at finding then upon his writing desk one day the play of Cromwell, by that French genius Hugo, wherein it states in the introduction that “it is through the fruitful union of the grotesque and the sublime that modern genius is born”, a statement which I forced him to concede he thought true, yet, by the admission of his own inability to fuse the two proves his lack of genius. Poor fool. Such visions of grandeur – so easily cut down. One day he will be made sensible.
But enough of George for now until he returns later in this grim telling of ”The Horrors of Sedgewood Manor”. Perhaps a memoir should be penned, would that I had sufficient command of the macabre to do justice to what would surely be considered gothic in literary nature. Yet will I relate my stay thus far and you can decide whether the plain truth is sufficient to induce the requisite horror of the author of such a...
Dear Cousin,
Such misery! You have no idea! The Charlstons are the most miserable family I have ever witnessed or heard speak of and considering the poverty of our tenants the Fitzwilliams, whose squalid dwelling I have been obliged to visit on all too frequent an occasion, this should say much toward convincing you of the destitution of this poor family I have had the misfortune to stay with for the last fortnight. To further juxtapose, the Fitzwilliams have one scrawny cow, seven half-starved children of which three are always suffering consumption (they had ten, and are soon to have four), and fields half covered in blight, yet their spirits are not half as distraught as that of Anne and that haunted homunculus she calls father.
But such is the typical fate of the highborn; to feel each woe with deeper anguish than the unwashed whose limited faculties are not sufficient to suffer the same depths. My dear George thinks me bigoted but I know he is all talk as I see him wince whenever the low-born speak to him in their coarse tones and jilting lilt. His romantic ways betray him, forcing hypocrisy from his lips, for he is too concerned with beauty to truly think the ugly worth consideration as equals. He writes and speaks only in the angelic. You could imagine then my glee at finding then upon his writing desk one day the play of Cromwell, by that French genius Hugo, wherein it states in the introduction that “it is through the fruitful union of the grotesque and the sublime that modern genius is born”, a statement which I forced him to concede he thought true, yet, by the admission of his own inability to fuse the two proves his lack of genius. Poor fool. Such visions of grandeur – so easily cut down. One day he will be made sensible.
But enough of George for now until he returns later in this grim telling of ”The Horrors of Sedgewood Manor”. Perhaps a memoir should be penned, would that I had sufficient command of the macabre to do justice to what would surely be considered gothic in literary nature. Yet will I relate my stay thus far and you can decide whether the plain truth is sufficient to induce the requisite horror of the author of such a...
