Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Author:Sylvia Townsend Warner [Sylvia Townsend Warner]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11 The Search for an Ancestress

The Elfin Court of Zuy, in the Low Countries, was wealthy and orderly. No winter gales penetrated its polished windows; if the summer sun shone too vehemently, blinds were pulled down to protect the furnishings. Drinking bouts were long, taciturn, and ended in somnolence. The Queen was celebrated for her pearls.

Wealth, if not a mere flash in the pan, compels the wealthy to become wealthier. Zuy had a profitable stake in the East India trade, importing fine muslins, mazulipatans147, spices, and leopard skins for muffs, exporting musical boxes, marrons glacés148, fowling pieces149, starch, suppositories, and religious pictures—the sufferings of the martyrs were always in demand. Reliable working fairies, skilled in accountancy, accompanied the voyages, to keep an eye on the traders and study new lines of export.

This commercialism, though unadmitted, was known and scorned in other Elfin courts. When Sir Eusebius went with an embassy to Brocéliande he was soon made aware that Zuy was little better than a gilded grocery shop. It was not said in so many words, but the implication was enforced by references to Brocéliande’s unique cultural heritage, preserved after the original Peri dynasty was lost in the earthquakes and invasions that destroyed its kingdom in Persia. The state and elegance of its Kingdom in Europe reposed on a unique combination of pillage, feudal extortions, money-lending at high interest, insolvency, smuggling, and a fathomless national debt. There was also a steady revenue of profits from the wagers, sweepstakes, gaming-tables, lotteries and sporting events by which the visits of Elfins from other Courts were enlivened. Eusebius, smarting from his losses at cards as he smarted from the midges who sucked his blood during picnics in the forest, felt that despite the honour and glory of Brocéliande it was better to be rich and honest, like Zuy.

It had been a toss-up whether he or his cousin Joost should go with the embassy. Joost was one of those characters who are always considered and always passed over. There was nothing against him; he was well mannered, personable, more obliging than Eusebius, and had better legs; but he was always passed over. Eusebius felt this as a slight on the family. In case Joost should also feel slighted, he was careful, on his return to Zuy, to tell him he had not missed much.

‘It rained incessantly. And as if that did not make it wet enough, we had green salads at every meal.’

‘And then?’ Joost knew what was expected of him, and supplied it.

‘The conversation: their incessant brag about those Peris.’

Eusebius spent the next ten minutes deriding the cultural heritage of Brocéliande: the pink turban yearly renewed—when any Indian crossing sweeper would put on a clean one daily; those ineffably peculiar cats—the alley cats of every Asiatic port (did not Master Jacob of the Rosa Mundi keep a dozen in the hold to quell rats?), whose favourite food was fish heads; those laws of the Medes and Persians which dictated when gavottes should be danced and when corantos.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.