Mary London Belle Extract

Mary told herself that she did not wish to have any more suitors who were prim, prudish, and overly serious, like Edmund Bertram.  If she married, it would be to someone who knew how to behave with a woman, and was used to Society ways.  Edmund’s sense of morality was virtually middle class.  So if Mr Richard was considering a proposal, she would politely decline. After all, she had a handsome fortune and did not need to marry.  She did of course intend to marry one day.  She wished to have the freedom and status of being a married lady.  She wanted a man with a London house and a handsome country estate.  Someone who might have a career that would make a noise in the world, such as an MP.

In her younger days, she had not cared for rural life but nowadays she enjoyed country life a little more.  It would be pleasant to have a place to retreat from town. She knew that the Maynards had bought a small estate.  Mrs Robson had mentioned it.  But unless they were very rich, City merchant families did not have estates; they would hire one at times or sometimes they bought a house with gardens and parkland, wanting to spend a little time enjoying the quieter pleasures of rural life, such as pottering in a garden or walking and flower picking or gentle riding....

But these nouveau riche families often did not want to involve themselves in agriculture, nor engage in blood sports.  Her upper class friends were inclined to mock at such dabbling in country ways.  Mary found her solitary evening very dull and lonely.  She enjoyed  reading, but she was used to companionship.  She liked to have someone to talk to or play games with.  So she was not pleased at Catherine’s being out.  She took up a book after dinner, found it dull and sat down to play the piano. 

She was not a first class player at either the harp or the pianoforte, but she was competent and enjoyed practising. As she began to practise a concertina, she found her thoughts straying to young Mr Maynard.  He did enjoy music.  She remembered his inviting her and Catherine to a concert of Ancient Music.  Mrs Robson had accompanied them, and had fidgeted all the way through it.  Yet Richard had had a genuine look of interest and pleasure on his face.  Strange, she thought now.  One tended to think of nouveau riche people as being uncultured, that they bought houses with libraries already full of books, which they never touched... Yet Richard Maynard’s interest was real, she could see that.