We let her go on until she was saying, "It was Samuel Esmond who married my great-great-grandfather's half-sister." Preening herself, she added, "Our royal grant was next to theirs."I had heard about our royal grant many times. I met his dancing eyes and read the message in them: Don't tell her it's a novel. do I know any Esmonds?"Being an Englishman, my father was singularly unimpressed by Granny's ancestors, so I knew he was getting ready to enjoy himself. Though she hated "bluestockings"-her name for female intellectuals, who could never be ladies-she actually read a few pages of it herself, muttering, "Esmond. ››one‹‹ MY ladylike adventures have taken me from Seattle to Paris, but last year I was carried back to Tidewater Virginia, which my ancestors helped to unsettle.A romantic version of my address can be found on the first page of Thackeray's Henry Esmond, which kicks off with a description of the Esmond family's royal grant "in Westmoreland County between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers." It was the only book I ever read that Granny did not tell me to get my nose out of.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |