The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann by Virginia Pye

Author:Virginia Pye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Weeks passed, the days blending one with the next, and Victoria fell into a routine. She made small improvements to the cottage and tended her garden. At low tide, she collected oysters and mussels from the black mud beneath the cliff. In afternoons, she met the fishing boats at the town dock and brought home haddock, cod, or mackerel for supper. She stopped by the store to chat with her uncle, and on several rainy afternoons, she sat in on a game of cards with his fishermen friends. Every day she took long, solitary walks along the rocky shore where sea wrack swayed, and periwinkles crawled in tidal pools. Further out, grey seals threw themselves onto flat outcroppings to lounge in the sun before slipping below the bright surface of the waves. The long summer days expanded in her open arms.

And in the cool Maine summer evenings, she stoked the wood fire and curled on the wicker sofa with the novels Jonathan had lent to her. She would have liked to discuss them with him. In the bookish quiet, what she wanted most was to sit side by side with someone she loved and read together. That’s all she had ever wanted. With her many quiet hours, she reflected on her life. At sixteen, she had stood before Miss Sullivan’s desk and announced that she was not only a reader but a writer as well. For years, the bony, wall-eyed, and infinitely kind librarian had been impressed by the self-educated girl. On hearing Victoria’s pronouncement, she had used her position to arrange her an introduction to Concord’s most esteemed elder statesman of letters.

Wedged between her father and Ruthann on the buckboard and wearing a calico dress that she had sewn herself, and a straw bonnet woven with fresh wildflowers, Victoria had arrived at The Old Manse. She knocked on the plain front door, curtsied, and was led into the somber library. The ancient Mr. Emerson had asked her name several times during their tea together, reiterating that his memory wasn’t what it used to be. Mr. Lowell was more congenial but mumbled so badly Victoria had to lean forward to catch his pleasantries. By the end of the tedious visit, she had felt certain she never wanted to grow old and that she didn’t much care for overly dense books or those who wrote them. She preferred a good yarn and set out to write one.

Ruthann had despaired that her young charge had missed the opportunity of a lifetime, but eventually, despite her misgivings, the librarian had handed over to Victoria a stack of thin stories that she kept hidden behind her desk. Each was flimsy, but charmingly designed, with intricately drawn covers depicting young women in various settings and attires, surrounded by floral and ivy borders in the decorative style of Art Nouveau. Ruthann had explained that these pamphlets were a newer breed of publication: the dime novel, sold for not more than that and published at a frantic pace to an eager following.

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