Victoria Read Free Page A

today at teatime. Toire was probably making it all up, about the poison. I expect she has been reading about the wicked emperors of Rome. I believe their families were treacherous.

Later
    Night light not quite guttered, Lehzen snoring delicately in her chair. I crept to the maids’ closet and got a piece of rushlight to put in the candleholder, to keep the last of the wax burning. I am in the mood to write more about my day, lest I forget.
    After lessons and before luncheon, Lehzen and I played dolls. I was going to make the two Dutch peg dolls we bought last week into opera characters – von Weber’s Oberon, perhaps, and Beethoven’s Leonore. But instead, we made them into Duke Omar and Duke Zepho. They are in the Bible. They were Joseph’s cousins.
    Omar had a sort of dressing gown of dark red plush, and Zepho, of Roman-striped ribbon, blue, red, green, and white. (I made Zepho.) We made sashes of gilt soutache trim, and cunning little white head-cloths tied on with black buttonhole thread. I drew Duke Zepho’s face with brown ink, and one eyebrow goes up so he looks comical, though I didn’t plan that. Lehzen drew Omar in black ink. She says her hand slipped, and he looks like an Italian dandy. But I think he looks more like Mr Punch in the puppet show at Uncle York’s when I was eight.
    Katherine is still my favourite doll, though. I tuck her in by my pillow every night.

5 April
    Finally! A fair day, warm and pleasant! Mr Westall, my art tutor, and Aunt Soap and I went outside to sketch in watercolours. The footman, Grampion, went back and forth four times and brought out three India rattan chairs and two easels which, however, we did not use after all, it was so breezy. It turned out to be much easier to work with the drawing board on one’s lap, so one could hover over the painting and keep the colours from drying too fast and streaky.
    I painted a charming clump of ferns, with a VERY real-looking heartsease next to it, purple and gold with a saffron centre like a pheasant’s eye. Mr Westall painted the vista overlooking the lime walk, with the yellow jasmine just opening. He painted it so quickly, but he captures so much perspective with the littlest quirk of his brush! I fear I will always be awkward, compared to his genius.
    But the heartsease has a look to it.
    Aunt Soap fiddled constantly with the lumpy brooch holding her shawl. She only wears it because my Uncle King gave it to her, not because it’s well suited for the task. Other than that, she read the whole time. She does not turn pages very often. I think she is a slow reader. I am a fast reader. She says when she takes me to visit Uncle Sussex in his library, since it is practically on the other corner of the palace, she does not like to hurry right back to our apartments. I can read a good deal in his books without having to bring them back here – and without Aunt Soap catching on that I read so much. It’s almost the only way I manage to read any novels for myself.
    Mama and Lehzen don’t approve of my reading novels. It’s not part of the Kensington System of Education. They say I am too young for most fictions, except Mrs Trimmer. Mrs Trimmer supposedly writes “improving” stories that will make one a wise child. I think they could use much improving, themselves.
    Here’s a secret, Feo: Uncle Billy says so, too. He gave me The Last of the Mohicans last winter on a Sunday carriage ride, and advised me to keep it hidden in my fisher-fur muff. Sometimes he calls himself Good Old Hawkeye (like one of the heroes in the book), and then he laughs.
    â€œRead now,” he said. “Presently, it’ll all be nothing but dispatches and newspapers.”
    I said, “Aye, aye, sir.” He liked that. But I wish I could have Mamma’s permission to read novels. I want to be good, but I must read stories.
    I hope Mamma does invite Lady Northumberland to be my English governess,