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Dedication: FOR J. B. PRIESTLEY

Opening Quote:

I have kept my faith, though Faith was tried
To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,
And the world's altered since you died,
And I am in no good repute
With the loud host before the sea,
That think sword strokes were better meant
Than lover's music--let that be,
So that the wandering foot's content.

W. B. Yeats

Opening: The old woman and the new-born child were the only living things in the house.

The old woman, Mrs. Henny, had finished her washing and laying-out of the bodies of the child's father and of the child's mother. She had done it alone because she had been afraid to leave the house with no one alive in it save the new-born child. Now she was exhausted and, in spite of her labour, fearfully chilled, for the snow, although it fell now more lightly, was piled high about the doors and windows as if, with its soft thick fingers, it wished to strangle the house.

She was very cold, so she drank some gin, although it was not as a rule her weakness. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Herries lay, the eyes decently closed, the pale hands folded, each in its proper bed.

A fine heat burnt through Mrs. Henny's old body. The gin was good. Then her head fell forward and she slept.



PART ONE: Rogue's Daughter

[p 36 - We meet the young John Peel. It was not unusual that boys should be there, and one of them she knew, little Johnny Peel, two years younget than herself. It would later be said of him, that he was 'lang in the lag and lish as a lizard,' and someone in the Gentleman's Magazine was to record that 'he seems to have come into this world only to send the foxes out of it.'

D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay,
D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day,
D'ye ken John Peel when he's far away,
With his hounds and his horn in the morning.

p 42: They were a waste of time, these stupid hours, when they all lay about, dribbling and drabbling, with the moon high, the wind fresh, blowing the stars about the sky. (hide spoiler)]



PART TWO: Watendlath

[The Uldale family stood for Country Life, Pomfret's family fotr London, the Cards in Bournemouth for Social Intercourse and the Rockages for the Ruling Classes.

Flight to Varennes

p 255: They did not care that only a mile or two away by the sea the new Industrial England was beginning to show its dusky evil-stained face, nor that there was an old mad King in London.

and

(hide spoiler)]



PART THREE: The Bird of Bright Plummage

[p 409 - I was actually present at Drury Lane Theatre last night when the poor King was shot at by a ruffian and had the most providential escape from death

p 417 - love is the toothache of the soul that no dentist can cure.

Judith Paris - two foot and a quarter (page 419)

p 423 - A Mr and Mrs Coleridge have for some time past lived at a Keswick house, Greta Hall, and now he is joined by another poet, Mr Robert Southey, whose sister-in-law he had married.

p 470 - They say that Mr Coleridge dislikes his wife extremely and will never return to Keswick. He goes often, I believe, to visit Mr Wordsworth in Grassmere.

Page 593 (hide spoiler)]



PART FOUR: Mother and Son

My copy is just a few pages short of a 800+ page Gorrilaz and is slighty unevenly paced. For example, the front part of section three is epistolary with letters flying hither and thither to further the story through the history of the time, and explain the relations of the Herries family in that period.

5* Rogue Herries
5* Judith Paris
Next up: Fortress



Also available via Gutenberg.au: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400...