Now Cobalt, do not encourage the rabble. Let us begin our discussion of Mansfield Park. I believe you said you would be getting it at the library? Let us know as soon as you get your copy. I am starting tonight.
Let me whet your appetite:
About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the County of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefitted by her elevation; and such of their acquaintances as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward at the end of half-a-dozen years, found herself obliged to be attached to the Reverend Mr. Norris, a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse. Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point was not contemptible; Sir Thomas being happily able to give his friend an income in the living of Masfield; and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal felicity with very little less than a thousand a year. But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of the marines, without education, fortune, or connections, did it very thoroughly. |
