Aristocrats [antikvár]

Preface C Rally's fears for her little one are, thank God, over. The nursing scheme would not do; she had quantities of milk, which makes one regret the more that it would not do, but her nipple could not be drawn out without the greatest difficulty, and the child not being strong could not do it. It was ill from being kept from the breast for so long, but now it has a good clean nurse, sucks, sleeps and thrives,' This letter, written by Lady Caroline Fox to Emily, Duchess of Leinster about their sister Sarah is, in parts, so blatantly modern that it is hard to believe that it is dated 6 June 1769, and that it is almost 225 years old. It is not just the 'thank God' and the nipples. Its anxiety and relief create a resonant feeling that seems to erase the centuries between its writing and our reading. Thousands of such letters - between sisters, husbands and wives, servants and employers, parents and children - are the raw material for this book. It tells the story of Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, a story of high politics, romance, family life and tragedy that begins in 1744 as the Jacobites were planning their last, desperate assault on the Hanoverian throne and ends in 1832, five years before the beginning of the Victorian age. Nearly a century's worth of letters, and from them time and again we get this sense of