Joan Wolf by The Pretenders

Author:The Pretenders [Pretenders, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Three days later, Lord Bradford escorted Mama and me into Brighton so that I could shop for a wedding dress. As the prospective bridegroom, Reeve was excluded from this particular outing, and I thought it was only fitting that Lord Bradford, who had instigated this whole hasty affair, should be the one put to the trouble of taking us.

The seaside town of Brighton, which stands on a slope under the South Downs, was originally a tiny fishing village called Brighthelmstone. In 1783 the Prince of Wales visited it and decided to make it the locale for his residence outside of London. Fashionable society followed the prince to the newly christened Brighton until now, in the summer of 1814, the former fishing village was filled with the elegant squares and terraces of the very rich.

Our shopping expedition went very well. Lord Bradford had never struck me as a patient man, and so I was pleasantly surprised by his tolerance of what could only have been a very tedious morning for him. He had brought a book and he sat in the outer room of all of the shops we went into, waiting without complaint while I tried on dress after dress and Mama and I discussed and compared the various choices.

In the end, when we could not decide between two dresses we particularly liked, I tried them both on for Lord Bradford’s inspection. He voted for a white crepe over a blue-silk slip and that was the one we took.

After our shopping was concluded, Lord Bradford suggested that we go for a stroll along the Marine Parade before we headed for home. Mama and I agreed, and we made our way down the elegant Steyne in the direction of the pavilion the Prince Regent had built as his residence.

My mother and I spent at least half an hour walking around the Regent’s pavilion and gawking. Lord Bradford was utterly scornful of the fantastic creation, which had domes, minarets, cupolas, and spires, all reaching upward toward the white-cloud-dotted sky.

“The whole thing is in dreadful taste, and what’s more, it’s an inexcusable waste of money,” he said. “With the war over, and all these demobilized men being thrown on the economy, to be spending huge amounts of money on an atrocity like this is unforgivable.”

I could not disagree with him about either the dreadful taste or the waste of money. But there was something undeniably fascinating about a creation so horrendously inappropriate to its surroundings.

We finally tore ourselves away from the pavilion and proceeded toward the water, where we turned left toward the Marine Parade. We had been having an unusually fine summer and the weather today was delightfully warm and sunny. The few clouds in the sky looked like wisps of white mist floating across a palette of clear blue.

The Marine Parade went along the edge of the slender bay upon which Brighton was built, and on this lovely summer day it was filled with well-dressed people taking a stroll in the pleasant sea air.

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