Theodora's story, as told by Miss Fanshawe

I have become fond of Miss Frances Fanshawe over the past few days. I have been to the manor house, and seen the kind of mild domestic chaos in which she lives. I have also seen Mrs Meade the housekeeper; who, possible tipsiness aside, seems a slovernly woman, and not at all the sort to whom one would wish to see Miss Fanshawe’s domestic arrangements entrusted. They seem to have established a kind of equilibrium however, in which everything which needs to be is somehow done, and nothing old or precious there (of which there are many objects, large and small) ever quite gets lost or broken. Far be it from me therefore, especially at this early stage, to make judgments too hastily. It seems to me there will be a new kind of happiness anyway, in simply in getting to know Miss Fanshawe as she is. I call her Frances now, because she asked me to. But the name still comes awkwardly, and in my thoughts she remains,unalterably, Miss Fanshawe

Bill has filled me in a little on her background and present way of life. The thing one has to remember most about her is her extreme unworldliness, he tells me. She grew up as a lonely child in a big house filled with books; in the care of a father whose mind was on higher things than little girls (he was some kind of ecclesiastical scholar, so far as Bill can gather), and a grandmother whose mind was on higher things too; only in her case they were stern, external things, like duty, and decorum, and having an eye at all times upon maintaining one’s position in society. So that a day-dreaming little girl had never quite been able to measure up. Somewhere, between the scholastic father and the severe and worldly grandmother, the little girl Frances had managed to tumble up. That was Bill’s way of putting it, and I am happy to accept it from him, since he seems to have developed a peculiarly tender regard for Miss Fanshawe, and must be taken, at least at this early stage, to be her best-informed and most sympathetic advocate.

What he further tells me is that, Miss Fanshawe’s universe being peopled largely by the characters she has met between the covers of the books in her father’s library, I should expect to find a certain ‘other-worldliness’ in her, too. And since this is so very much what I did find, when, as if at the pressing of a switch, I drew her on the subject of the Macauleys the other day, I feel I can do no better than reproduce her narrative for you here, as far as I can recall it and more or less verbatim. It does seem likely to run to several thousand words however, for which I apologise in advance. But since she knows so very much more about the Macauleys than I do myself, and is prepared moreover to be so very much more discursive about them than I would dare to be, I'll go ahead anyway. I shall simply try to ease the load a little, by putting it out in one or two manageable instalments…

“I’m not on personal visiting terms with Lady Macauley myself, of course…” was the way Miss Fanshawe began her account. “She’s rather exclusive you know - I wouldn’t put it more strongly than that. And who would blame her in any case, at her age, and with all the curiosity that has always surrounded her? There was a great deal of talk at one time, but I expect you know all that……. She was so very young, you see, and Sir Jack so very much older, and married, and in the public eye to such a large extent … He was a member of parliament at the time, I believe - though I was a young child myself at the time, and much of it came to me from hearing my grandmother talk about it……She was very disapproving of Sir Jack, and I was never allowed to associate with Belle Macauley or her brother, even though they were much the same age, and looked such fun, and our gardens actually abutted, at their farthest points…….. Sir Jack gave up everything anyway - he was obliged to resign his seat I believe - just to marry Theodora… There were some who said it was almost as great a sacrifice as the king’s had been, a decade earlier ……I expect it was a bitter pill indeed for her parents to have to swallow, though .. The Thanes were very grand, you see, for all that their estates were crumbling and the money running out…. They believed they occupied the very highest plane of the nobility; they recognised few equals in the land, and probably no superiors. I think they hoped that Theodora would have married well, and somehow shored things up for them - though they can hardly have enjoyed being rescued by the man they called the jumped-up shopkeeper……. ‘Sir Nobody from Nowhere’ was the way I think they were accustomed to describe him. Still, there wasn’t a thing they could do about it, when once Theodora’s mind was made up. She was a strong-willed sort of girl, you see – and Jack Macauley’s stores and factories covered five counties by then... He had been knighted by the king besides, the year before, for all manner of philanthropic enterprises in the north; and his wealth, and the range of his influence, must have seemed to that really rather modest rural lord, her father, to extend into regions quite imponderable …….This was not at all the sort of man an outraged father could ‘take out’ in any way; nor one from whom he might seek redress. So they had little alternative but to grit their teeth, and consent to attend the wedding….. And then of course Sir Jack pulled them right back from the brink, afterwards; restoring, unentailing everything ... Though I believe that relations between them never became entirely cordial, and that Theodora herself never forgave them for their condescension towards Jack…..”