Fanny [antikvár]

In ivhich Fanny is introducedIt is raining at Merriman Park. The green is the green that exists nowhere but in England. Even the tree trunks are green, being kissed with moss. And the steps leading to the little Greek temple are slippery with the same green moss. Across the ha-ha, at the end of the avenue of rain-drenched chestnut trees, cows are grazing, heads down, oblivious of the rain. They are English cows.A brown and white spaniel with muddy paws bounds into the house, races across the black and white marble floor of the main hall, wholly indifferent to the assemblage of gods and goddesses on the painted ceiling, the scenes from the Aeneid on the walls, the reclining marble figures of Poetry, Music, Geography, Astronomy, Geometry, and Sculpture on the pediments above the stately doors. TTie dog has been eating grass and she stops momentarily to vomit on the parquet floor of the library, then races up the great stairs to her mistress' bedchamber, where she leaps (with muddy paws) upon her silk-dressing-gown-covered knees (marldng the rose-pink watered sitk with paw prints), vomits some more grass, and in short thoroughly distracts her from what she has been writing. Her mistress puts down her goose quill (now blunt anyway from so much writing) and rises from the walnut writing bureau to chastise the dog, whose name, we now leam, is Chloe.But who is this lady and what has she been writing? She is too beautiful a lady for us not to inquire. Her hair is the color of autumn. Her eyes are as brown and liquid as her dog's eyes. Her face betrays no years but those required to make a girl into a woman. Perhaps she is thirty, perhaps forty, perhaps thirty-five forever. She is Fanny to her friends, Frances on official documents, and Pannikins to lovers besotted with her charms. There have been plenty of those. She has also been called poetic names like Lindamira, Inda-Chapter IThe Introduction to the Work or Bill of Fare to the Feast.I, Fanny Hackabout-Jones, having been blest with long Life, which makes e'en the Harshest Events of Youth pale to Insignificance or, i'faith, appear as Comedies, do write this History of my Life and Adventures as a Testament for my only Daughter, Belinda.I have, in other Documents, left this most Excellent Young Woman my Houses, my Lands, my Jewels, the Care of my Dogs, Horses, and Domestick Animals, and yet I am convinced that the ensuing History shall have more Value to her than all the Riches I have acquir'd in my Life, either by my Pen or by my Person, For tho' 'tis no easy Thing to be bom a Man in this Vale of Tears, 'tis more difficult still to be bom a Woman. Yet I believe I have prosper'd despite this Capricious Destiny, or e'en because of it, and what better Legacy can I give to my beloved Belinda than a full and tme Account of that very Life which hath been so oft' distorted, slander'd, or us'd to inspire scandalous Novels, lascivious Plays, and wanton Odes?If these Pages oft' tell of Debauchery and Vice, 'tis not in any wise because their Author wishes to condone Wickedness, but rather because Truth, Stark-Naked Truth, demands that she write with all possible Candour, so that the Inheritor of this Testament shall leara how to avoid Wickedness or indeed transform it into Goodness.All possible Care hath been taken to give no deliberate Offence to Modesty or Chastity; yet the Author avows that Truth is a sterner Goddess than Modesty, and where there hath been made necessary a Choyce betwixt the Former and the Latter, Truth hath, quite rightly, triumph'd.If some of the Episodes in the ensuing History offend the gentler Sensibilities of an Age less lusty than that which gave me birth, let the Reader put it down to the Excesses of my