Two-Way Mirror by Fiona Sampson (jenna bush book club txt) 📗

‘The Conversation was down five degrees below freezing. Every body thinking what to say next—except Mrs Waddington who does not seem to think at all.’ EBB to Henrietta MB c.November 1826, #240.

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‘Mama was on the lawn…’ Henrietta MB to EBB 24 February 1827, #250.

‘As I have taken the liberty of calling you Ba, I shall not be more ceremonious in writing than in speaking’, Price to EBB 17 November 1826, #241; ‘ “Ba” is much better pleased to hear from you than “Miss Barrett” could be’, EBB to Price c.December 1826, #242.

‘As a female…’ EBB to Boyd 3 November 1827, #275. EBB explains her mother was unwell: EBB to Boyd 15 March 1828, #288. ‘I was the cause…’ EBB to Elizabeth Moulton and Mary Trepsack 17 March 1828, #290.

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Boyd has published a number of translations of classical Greek and the Church Fathers since his debut, Luceria, A Tragedy, in the year of EBB’s birth. Elizabeth sometimes tests him on long passages of classical Greek verse he has memorised.

‘Awhile they sailed…’: Boyd writes two poems on this theme, ‘A Day of Pleasure at Malvern’ and ‘A Malvern Tale’.

The Gentleman’s Magazine reviewed Boyd’s Thoughts on an Illustrious Exile, Occasioned by the Persecution of the Protestants in 1815, with other Poems: ‘Mr Boyd is a Greek scholar; and energetic poet (as most blank-verse men are); and we are truly glad to see once more the unimprovable classical style, recently neglected for the rhymed prose which was brought into vogue by Lord Byron.’ Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle vol. 96 (London: John Nichols & Son, February 1826), p. 156. EBB lends Boyd Price’s Essay on the Modern Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, hot off the press, and passes back his praise to the author.

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Boyd married the eldest child of influential, polymathic and self-made engraver Wilson Lowry in 1805. Raised by a stepmother from the age of eight, she may not have had the happiest of lives.

‘Rather young looking than otherwise…’ EBB to Elizabeth Moulton and Mary Trepsack 17 March 1828, #290. ‘Really all the young ladies…’ EBB Diary, 22 June 1831. ‘Miss Steers…’ EBB Diary, 18 June 1831. Reading Tom Jones: EBB Diary, 24 June 1831. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (London: A. Millar, 1749).

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‘Alfieri’ of B—T—to EBB c.February 1829, #332. ‘I suspect…’ EBB Diary, 4 June 1831. ‘Kissing the rod…’ EBB Diary, 1 July 1831.

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Misses Bordman and Mushet: EBB Diary, 15 November 1831 and 29 December 1831. ‘Put his hat…’ EBB Diary, 19 July 1831. ‘Attacked me… Ought to love him…’ EBB Diary, 21 June 1831. ‘Adam made fig leaves… Thoughts of my heart…’ EBB Diary, 4 June 1831. ‘On opening my drawer…’ EBB Diary, 25 June 1831.

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The Athenaeum vol. 456 (23 July 1836). ‘Nothing else… I feel bitterly…’ EBB Diary, 29 June 1831.

A full account of the inheritance dispute appears in Robert A. Barrett, ‘Note on Barrett v Barrett’ in Michael Meredith, ed, Browning Society Notes vol. 22 (December 1994), pp. 61–68.

‘Empty minded…’ EBB Diary, 7 July 1831. On 23 April 1832, ‘Mrs Boyd is certainly an extraordinary woman, to be Mrs Boyd’. ‘I am quite aware that in your late removal I had no right or shadow of right, to be considered; & I sincerely hope that both you & Annie may gain from it as much happiness as you expect, – & as I have lost.’ EBB to Boyd and Ann Lowry Boyd 17 May 1832, #451.

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‘How very very very unkindly…’ EBB Diary, 4 June 1831. ‘Some talking…’ EBB Diary, 14 June 1831.

Boyd had published The Fathers not Papists, with Select Passages and Tributes to the Dead just two years earlier. Elizabeth’s report that, ‘The bride looked very lovely, & behaved very well—I mean, without demonstrating in any unbecoming manner, the agitation which was within her evidently’, implies a continued and shared low opinion of Annie. EBB to Boyd 2 August 1837, #578. Annie’s unhappy, childless marriage may be a mere match of financial convenience for Henry William Hayes, who turns out a bankrupt (twice) and an adulterer. In 1855 Annie divorces him for adultery. He has a number of illegitimate children before dying intestate. Annie’s revenge is to live till ninety. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hayes-2303 [retrieved 3 March 2019].

‘Driving to church…’ EBB Diary, 5 June 1831.

Nonconformist adherents number some 56,000 in 1791, 360,000 in 1836, and 1,463,000 in 1851. Numbers of Congregationalists and Baptists also swelled. John Cannon and Robert Crowcroft, eds, The Oxford Companion to British History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 1040.

‘To make me glow…’ EBB Diary, 5 June 1831.

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‘Seven chapters…’ EBB Diary, 16 June 1831. Elizabeth dislikes Anglicanism’s ‘ “holy mysteries” &c. What mystery is there, can there be, in this simple rite?’ EBB Diary, 25 September 1831. But she records, ‘Bummy expressed a general dislike towards the Methodists’ EBB Diary, 8 June 1831. Bummy requests confidentiality: EBB Diary, 4 July 1831.

EBB tells Julia Martin of her mother’s ‘first agony of grief’ and of her subsequent ‘frequent bursts of tears’. EBB to Julia Martin 15 November 1827, #276.

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‘Not quite so gay…’ Mary MB to EBB 1 October 1828, #321. E B MB’s raw grief: E B MB to his children 3 January 1831, #393. ‘I dare say God…’ EBB to Henrietta MB c.10 October 1828, #324. ‘She read…’ Edward MB to Julia Martin c.9 October 1828, SD674.

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EBB, ‘Glimpses’.

BOOK FOUR

Epigraph

AL Bk 7, L. 411.

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EBB to Julia Martin 28 August 1832, #462.

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Papa ‘shrinks’ and even afterwards, ‘never up to this moment, has he even alluded to the subject […] he had not power to say one word’. #462.

‘The drawing room’s four windows…’ #462.

Cricket in Jamaica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cricket_in_the_West_Indies_to_1918 Henrietta’s sketch is collected in The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3, facing p. 256.

Sunset was at 19.18 in Hereford on 23 August 1832. The moon in its last quarter: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1832&country=9 [retrieved 3 Feb 2019].

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‘A broken down man…’ Mary Russell Mitford to Lady