Falling in Love With English Boys (2 page)
Tried on some jeans. I couldn’t get them past my knees.
More English things learned:
• English clothing sizes are two numbers bigger. Like even a skeleton would need a 4.
• English shoe sizes are tiny. My size 9s? Here, I am a 6½. Go figure.
Mom and I went out for Indian food tonight in Soho. It’s all Indian restaurants, where the Indian waiters sound like Colin Firth, and pubs, where everyone spills out onto the sidewalk and sounds like Adam Sandler. On the way we passed the house Mom’s research subject lived in. Lots of the houses in the neighborhood have these round blue plaques on them.
“Frances Hodgson Burnett, Writer, lived here
.
”
(For those of you who have forgotten your childhood, she wrote
The Secret Garden.
) Or
“Martin Van Buren, Eighth U.S. President, lived here.”
What our president was doing living in London is a mystery. My fave (see pix):
“Beau Brummell, Leader of Fashion, lived here.”
Leader of Fashion. Gotta like that. Mom says he lived at the same time as the woman she’s studying, that if he didn’t like the way a girl dressed, she could just about give up any hope of being a “success.” She says he polished his boots with champagne bubbles. I get the idea she doesn’t much care for Beau Brummell. He sounds okay to me.
What Not to Wear
, Regency Edition.
So we walked by the house Mom’s Mary Percival lived in. Not so much as a tiny little blue bathroom tile there. Apparently her books didn’t make her famous enough for a plaque. Pretty house, though, red brick with lots of windows and a fancy black stair rail that Mom says is definitely original. She touched it and got all emotional. Help.
Tomorrow maybe I’ll stroll over to Clarence House. According to a very reliable source (
Hello!
), it’s Prince William’s official London residence. You never know . . .
June 27
Someday My Prince Will Come
No William. Too bad. He’s on holiday somewhere, according to my knows-it-all source. (
OK!—Hello!
’s poorer and slightly funny-looking cousin.)
Mom brought home (“home,” hah! Home is currently being occupied by the world’s foremost expert on 18th century Cossack poetry) a photocopy of Mary’s daughter’s diary. She thinks I should read it. Apparently Miss Percival and I have a lot in common. So far, I’ve managed to get through the first ten pages. Her handwriting is almost disgusting, it’s so perfect.
Here’s what we have in common so far:
• A name (she’s Katherine with a
K
).
• Approximate age (she’s 18).
• (S)mothers.
• Fab dads who are really busy.
Here’s where we diverge:
• Katherine is a bit of a twit. All she talks about is parties and some boy she calls “Mister” Whatever and who writes poetry.
• She never actually went to school. I keep seeing the word “governess.” Think
Jane Eyre
. Or
The Nanny Diaries
.
• She has big boobs. There’s a b&w photo of a painting of her with the journal. She looks like Rachel Weisz.
• She thinks dancing the waltz is naughty.
• She gets to drink at every party she goes to.
• She never saw a television, car, hair dryer, or flush toilet.
Yawn.
Onward. Thanks, Kelly, for the partay update and the pix. I especially liked the one of Adam being French-kissed by Hannah’s pug. Who, as we know, is an inveterate butt licker. Most funny. And yeah, absolutely, I think She Who Shall Not Be Named must be taking diet pills. She’s definitely got that pink, crazy, anatrim look going. Josh used to duck whenever she slid her Ford fender into the desk next to him.
I will acknowledge casting stones and glass houses, yada yada. My booty cannot help but expand if I continue with my experiments in English chocolate. They don’t call it Bounty (same as U.S., chocolate and coconut, but so much better . . .) for nuthin’. So I took my booty out for a walk. I thought I would find a bookstore, see what Bridget Jones is up to. So, didja know they paint LOOK RIGHT on street corners to keep us dim-witted tourists from stepping into oncoming traffic. They drive on the left side.
Did I look right? Do I look right? Jeans, UPenn tee, my new sweater . . .
I walked past the American embassy today. Bit of a shocker there. It’s on this really pretty square, one of those London-Jane Austen-Hugh Grant places with brick buildings all around and grass in the middle. But the embassy is this huge, hideous building with concrete barricades all around it. And there were all these people outside, waving signs and screaming about American troops in Afghanistan.
I’m starting to get the idea that they don’t like Americans all that much these days. Lots of postcards of our former pres looking stupid and our current pres looking worried. And I think the guy who owns my chocolate store might have a picture of Saddam Hussein on the wall behind the counter.
Anyway. Keep the e-mails coming. Barring rain, and the BBC seems somewhat confused on the matter, I plan to devote much of tomorrow to Notting Hill. In the event of rain, it’s just me and prissy Miss Percival here. Jane Austen she is not. I guess when you think about it, diaries then were the blogs of today. Think of it . . .
June 27. Met the hottest guy yesterday, but his ’tude makes him a total loser. I am so not going to go there. Fitzwilliam Darcy can go dance with himself for all I care.
Farewell, gentle readers, until next we meet . . .
The Diary of Miss Katherine Percival
I do not care for Miss Luisa Hartnell. She laughs altogether too much when surrounded by young men. I do not understand why she is considered a Beauty. Her hair is so very
red
, after all, and of course there is the matter of those
freckles
.
Nor can I agree that she is nearly so accomplished as people say. She plays the pianoforte tolerably enough, I suppose. But there is no
style
to her playing, no
passion
. Miss Cameron always declared my playing to be passionate, which I quite liked, although I did not care for her forever telling me that I could temper that with proficiency if I were but to practice more. I prefer passion. What would a governess know of passion, after all? Poor unwanted thing, with her flyaway hair and beaky nose. And those ghastly grey dresses she wears! She has always put me in mind of a little bird whose nest has been caught in a gale—frowsy and twittering and fretful, drab wings aflutter. Mama says I must not be unkind about her, that Miss Cameron’s family fell on great misfortune and, had matters but been a trifle different, she would have every bit as much of a fortune as I, and nearly as pleasant prospects.
I do not wish to write of Miss Cameron, however, as she remains in Somerset with her new pupil, and has no part in my story. I cannot help but wish, however, that she had been perhaps a better piano teacher. My performance at the Hartnells’ last night was not met with quite the enthusiasm of Miss Luisa’s. Had Miss Cameron’s repertoire and skill been better, I’m sure I would have quite enthralled the gathering.
I especially did not care for Miss Hartnell’s way of clapping. To an unbiased eye, she would have seemed all that was friendly and encouraging. I, however, know she was not so kind. Certainly she was gloating inside over her triumph, even as she played modest in refusing a second tune.
No, I simply cannot like her, even if others do.
I daresay, as Mama says of poor Miss Cameron, Money begets Beauty. Miss Hartnell has ten thousand pounds. Hence many people will find her quite pretty.
Then, too, it was her mother’s party. Gentlemen are expected to partner their hosts’ unmarried daughters in a dance. I wonder if perhaps in London, two dances are
de rigueur
. I suspect so, as seemed the way of things last night. I have
a bit to learn in my first Season.
I
am expected to be married by the end of this one, and brilliantly. At least Papa expects it. He teased that I must make myself useful somehow. Mama says I am to enjoy the experience, attempt to learn something of life, and not rush into an imprudent attachment which I will have cause to regret. As if I could possibly regret a brilliant match! Sometimes I simply do not understand Mama at all. She insists her writing is about such matters as imprudence and regret, yet she seems to know nothing
at all
about the way life truly is. Honestly!
I wonder if I danced with my future husband last night. It all went too fast. There was a Mr. Troughton, who had very pretty blond curls, but no chin. Mr. Pertwee wears a corset. Mr. Baker I rather liked; he is quite handsome, rather Grecian in his aspect, and called me an “ebon Aphrodite.” I do wish he had not had two dances with Miss Hartnell. There were several others whose names I do not recall. All were young, all tolerable in appearance, all perfect gentlemen.
I believe I am going to like London very well indeed.
The weather these two days has my spirits depressed. It rains, and it rains. In truth, in the country, I do not mind the rain so much. I rather like a good walk outside while the water washes the air and the leaves clean, and makes things shiny black like onyx.
On a day like this, I might walk to the vicarage to visit Annabel Jerrod, or perhaps cajole Phipps into harnessing the carriage and driving me to Highfield to see the Goodwins. Here, there is little to do but sit thumbing through the Ackermann’s alone (which is a terrible tease, as I cannot purchase so much as a ribbon today!), wishing for half the dresses there, and be wearied by the pattering of the rain on the windows and my own foolish thoughts.
There are always puddles in the courtyard at Percy’s Vale—all those hollows in the stone where three hundred years of carriages have turned and deposited their passengers. How I used to love to splash in them. I have a memory of Mama joining me once when I played in a puddle near the old castle wall. She was laughing and teasing Charles, who would have been ten or so to my four years and would not join us, telling him a bit of mud never injured anyone. Then Papa came out of his library and called us wallowing little sows. How pink Mama turned, as if he had just done magic and turned her into a piglet.
Papa is ever so proud of his beautiful boots, and he cannot bear a lady to be blowzy (he would insist on glowering so at Miss Cameron that she did flutter and twitter like the veriest peagoose on his rare visits home—how I giggled!). I find his compliments to me most gratifying. I stopped playing in the mud that very day, of course. Mama tried to make me join her once or twice after, but I would not. She very likely was trying to spite poor Papa. They were much at odds in those days, it seems. I wonder now if Mama was the one who always encouraged me; I had thought it my nursemaid, but I believe I was mistaken.
How I hate Mama today! She will not accompany me shopping and I cannot very well go alone. I am eighteen, after all, hardly a child, and I could take Becky. I have walked often enough into Sparkford with my maid for company. Mama says this is not Sparkford, Becky would likely faint at the first carriage to nearly run her down in the street, and I would no doubt be lost within minutes of leaving the house.
I do not like her any better for being correct on all counts.
Besides, it is raining. I would not wish to be spattered by a passing carriage and arrive home to find Papa on hand to see me muddied. I see him so rarely, not at all, really, since we arrived, I would not like to have a meeting where I’ve disappointed him and given him cause to call me a pig.
Still, my only outing since Monday’s party has been to the very same house. Mama and I paid a call on Lady Hartnell to thank her. We were not there above ten minutes. Despite Miss Hartnell’s presence, I would have gladly stayed longer. Lady Hartnell is all that is pleasing. She knows
everyone
who is in Town and all the parties that will be worth attending. She knows, too, the very best modistes and ladies’ shops: where to buy gloves and ribbons and hats. Mama, of course, had very little to add to the conversation. She, handsome as she is, does not care overmuch for such matters. How very vexing, although I must acknowledge that she did not embarrass me by discussing her Work, as she so often is wont to do in company.
As for Miss Hartnell, she smiled very prettily, complimented my dress (sprigged white; hers of course, was yellow), and looked all the while like a cat in cream. I will not be fooled by her amiable mien. When she asked if there were any gentlemen I especially admired, I held my tongue. One cannot be too careful, after all, when it comes to such matters. An envious young lady may do untold damage to another’s romance, even one yet to begin.
