Love and Literature by Aviva Orr

Author:Aviva Orr [Orr, Aviva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical
Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2023-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Since all that I can ever do for thee

Is to do nothing, this my prayer must be:

That thou mayst never guess nor ever see

The all-endured this nothing-done costs me.

—Edward, Earl of Lytton, “The Last Wish”

The roomful of young ladies looked from their marked composition books to Violet with mutinous glares.

I must not show fear or weakness, Violet thought.

She clapped her hands to get their attention. “You heard Mr. Thomas, ladies. Start making your corrections, and I will circle the room to address your questions.” She glanced at Ottilie. “Miss Hamilton, since your dictation was near perfect, you may assist me.”

Ottilie gave her a conspiratorial smile and rose out from her seat.

Violet and Ottilie spent the next twenty minutes scurrying up and down the aisles answering endless questions. They had each been summoned by every girl at least eight or nine times. All the students grumbled about Violet’s tiny handwriting, which they said was near impossible to read, and protested the pronunciation of Greek words like Achaeans and Andromache.

“Use the hard sound k and not the soft sound ch for Greek words and names,” Violet corrected countless times. Yet the women continued to default to the soft sound.

This and other things kept her so busy that it seemed only minutes had passed when Mr. Thomas walked through the door thirty minutes later, as promised, and strode to his podium carrying several books under his arm.

“I trust that every one of you has completed the corrections to your dictation.” He scanned the room.

A collective nodding ensued. Violet wanted to tell him they’d done so without comprehension or any learning that she could see, but she held her tongue and let him take over the class, sure he wouldn’t listen to her any way. “Very well. Miss Greyson, Miss Hamilton, you may both be seated.”

Violet sat and watched as he opened one of the books he’d brought with him.

“Now,” he said. “You have heard how the Trojan prince, Paris, son of Priam and Hecuba, betrayed Menelaus, king of Sparta, who, together with his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, waged war again the Trojans. You have learned that Achilles was the greatest of all the Greek warriors and Odysseus the wisest.”

The students nodded in unison.

“Very good. Today, I will read to you Homer’s invocation to the muse at the opening of The Iliad. It begins in the tenth and final year of the war and details Achilles’s wrath at Agamemnon, who has dishonored the god Apollo.”

Violet smiled at him. He had listened to her after all.

She followed his every movement as he read, with great fervor, the opening pages of The Iliad, and wished that he did not have to stop to explain the rudimentary meaning of several words to the other students, many of whom were obviously hearing them for the first time. She longed to listen to him read uninterrupted—this coveted story she’d labored over many times but had only heard read aloud through stolen moments meant for her brother.

*

Byron hadn’t

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