‘Sally?’ said Paul. ‘Sally’s incapable of jealousy, I assure you. Besides, she quite honestly thinks you very plain and boring indeed,’ he added in an attempt at revenge for the terrible evening he had just undergone. This reply was so unexpected that Marcella was for once quite unable to defend herself, and was quiet and affectionate during the remaining part of the drive to Gloucester Square where she lived. She snuggled as close to Paul as the patent leather covering to the springless seats would allow, and in the hall of her house she gave him a long, hot and sticky kiss, saying, ‘Anyhow, you think I’m beautiful, don’t you?’
‘The poor girl is admiration mad,’ thought Paul. ‘Apart from that she’s not a bad little thing, though heaven knows how I can be in love with her.’
4
The more Paul considered the idea of writing a biography, the more it seemed to offer him an ideal medium for self-expression, and one into which he could pour his heart and soul without risk of ill-timed mockery. Even the most hardened and callous critic could scarcely shake his sides over the description of a death-bed scene that had really taken place. He felt that in this branch of literature lay his opportunity to establish himself as a serious writer, and to shake off the humorous reputation which he had so unwillingly acquired. Once thus established he would surely be able to publish another novel with less danger of being misunderstood. The difficulty now before him was that of finding a suitable subject; one whose work should be thoroughly sympathetic to himself and whose outlook in life should be comprehensible to him.
He considered this problem for several days, but with no result. Those people whose lives he would have enjoyed writing, notably Maria Edgeworth, Miss Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mrs Carlyle, seemed already to boast a formidable bibliography. Others that occurred to him, such as Dorothea Felicia Hemans, Mary Russell Mitford, and Mrs Livingstone (the mother of Dr Livingstone – I presume), presented almost insuperable difficulties in another direction, as little or nothing seemed to be known about them by anybody. It would be hard, in fact, to find exactly what he wanted, which was a woman of breeding, culture and some talent, living towards the last half of the nineteenth century, who was not already the subject of a ‘life’.
At last, in despair of ever finding his ideal, he wandered into the London Library, where he began, in a desultory manner, to read through the opening pages of the Dictionary of National Biography. Unhelpful as it appeared to be, he waded on through the Adam brothers, Prince Adolphus Frederick, Aelfred Aethling, Anerium the Welsh poet, Bishop Baggs, Praisegod Barebones, Boate de Boot, and Bertulf. Having arrived by this weary pilgrimage of the mind as far as Beorhtric, King of the West Saxons, he was just going to abandon his search for the time being when, turning over two pages at once, his eye lit upon the name Bobbin, Lady Maria.
Lady Maria Bobbin. The only wonder was that he had never thought of her before. Here, indeed, was a life worth writing, a sermon waiting to be preached. This woman, this poet, brought up amid the conventions and restrictions of the mid-Victorian era, wife of a country squire, mother of twelve children, who found time among her manifold duties to sing in noble, deathless verse such songs as ‘The Redbreast’s Lament’, ‘Prayer of a Grecian Warrior’ and ‘Wales in Captivity’, was surely the very heroine for whom he had been searching. There was not much information about her in the Dictionary of National Biography, only enough to whet Paul’s appetite for more, but there was an allusion to her vast correspondence and copious journals which led him to hope that these might still be extant at her home in Gloucestershire, Compton Bobbin.
In the Dictionary of National Biography he discovered the following bare facts of her life:
‘Lady Maria Almanack, daughter of the eighth Earl of Leamington Spa, was born in 1818, and married in 1837 Sir Josiah Bobbin, M.F.H., of Compton Bobbin, Gloucestershire. From her earliest childhood she displayed an astonishing talent for writing verse, and in 1842 her parents were foolish enough to publish her “Poems” in a quarto volume. She soon recovered from the adverse criticism which these met with, and published in 1844 “Autumnal Tints”, a collection of short poems including the famous “Farewell to Mount Ida”. In 1845 she had her first real success with “Elegant Elegies, Tasteful Trifles and Maidenly Melodies”. The following year an epic poem, the well-known “Martyrdom in Mercia”, came from her pen, and after that date, in spite of her many duties as châtelaine of Compton Bobbin and mother of twelve children, she never failed to produce an annual volume, generally far from slim, of poems, ballads, sonnets, odes or romantic plays. She was, in fact, as prolific as she was gifted a writer, for, besides her published works, she found time to conduct a vast correspondence and to keep a journal which extended into 14 volumes. This treasure is now in the possession of her descendants at Compton Bobbin. During her lifetime her works enjoyed an almost world-wide popularity, and she was intimate with many of the most famous among her contemporaries, including Meredith, Carlyle, Lord Tennyson (who often spoke of the exquisite sensibility of her writing) and Queen Victoria herself. In 1896 she died from a chill which she caught at the christening of her fiftieth descendant.’
At the end of this paragraph there was no bibliography, no hint as to how or where further information was to be sought. The mention of a journal, however, was enough to spur Paul
