“My lord? Are you all right?"Rothbury inhaled the fresh, almost lemon-tinged air wafting before him, the scent seeping deep into his lungs coaxing forth an unexpected pang of responsiveness.Eyes of sapphire blurred and spun before his gaze. "'Tempt not a desperate man.'""I believe that's enough Shakespeare for one evening, my lord."For a moment the air seemed to sparkle about her head, causing him added confusion. "Are you an angel?" he heard himself mutter.””
“The plot of Love on a Mortal Lease is not unlike those Shakespear would use later, nor unlike those of commonplace Victorian works. The heroine, Rachel Gwynne, has dead parents, as is the case from Oliver Twist (1837) through hundreds of other ensuing tripledeckers. Rachel is a novelist – most of Shakespear’s heroines would be writers – in love with a military man many years her senior. After he refuses to marry her because he fears his mother will dislike Rachel and therefore disinherit him, Rachel becomes his mistress. Once the snobby old mother meets Rachel by happenstance in London, however, they immediately adore each other, and the Colonel may now safely marry Rachel – though she doesn’t love him anymore, and he seems none too fond of her, either. They muddle along in unhappy matrimony until Rachel conveniently discovers (as we’ve known for a while) that the Colonel has had another longtime mistress, a stupid society girl, throughout the course of their marriage, and even during their preceding affair. When the Colonel even more conveniently falls on his head and dies, Rachel is made a wealthy widow in her mid-twenties, free to marry a nice young writer who knows about, but forgives her, her former relationship. A happily wish-fulfilling story, perhaps, for a young woman writer in a bad marriage, and Rachel has some interesting ideas about her profession: speaking of clever girls who scribble, she hopes for the day that “the cleverness and the scribbling . . . fall from her, like a disguise, and she stands revealed in her true form – then she may never write another word, or she may write something immortal.”8””
“A woman must be good,” he said reflectively. “Only a plain woman,” said I. “Who has been behaving ill now?” “I was generalizing; or, to be frank, I was thinking of Bella Sturgis.” “So am I. You surely don’t expect her to possess all the virtues, and that face?” “To be sure, the face is enough,” answered he; and sat staring full at me, but thinking, as I knew, of Bella Sturgis. “Does she amuse you?” I asked. “Amuse me?” said Gerald. “I’m sure I can’t say. One doesn’t think about being amused when one is with her.” “She just exists, and that’s enough,” I suggested.””
Olivia ShakespearOlivia Shakespear was an English novelist and playwright, known for her contributions to early 20th-century literature. Born into a prominent family, she was deeply influenced by the artistic and lite...
“Do you seriously think I’m coming to your dance?” I went on. “Why, I haven’t got a dress, or a face fit to show in a ball-room; and I’ve not been to a ball for years.” They fought this statement inch by inch: they would lend me a dress; my face didn’t matter; and after all, I was only twenty-eight, not really old. I ended the discussion by promising to go, for an idea had flashed into my mind that made me dizzy.””
“My father had taken me, as a young girl, to balls. I had sat out unnoticed, but observant; and it had seemed to me that, under apparently artificial conditions, women grouped themselves into three distinct types, which were almost primitive in their lack of complexity: the beauty; the woman whose claims to beauty are not universally acknowledged; and the plain woman.””