Chapter 2 Rosie

Meantime in the women's rooms we could see quite a different picture. Ladies or rather their maids were occupied with luxurious toilets. When the party had already been started, the young lady was still being dressed. So her mother came to see her. Rosie by herself was very pretty and in that dress and trinkets she was almost beautiful. The gown she chose herself and it was one of the best works of the best tailors of London. Only the face of our charming girl was very tired and sulky. Well, she was a woman but dolling up wasn't her most favourite pastime. One thing is to make something or someone beautiful and quite another is being combed and pinned for so unbearably long. Then it was "free" Empire fashion: high waist, comfortable cut that didn't prevent movements and so on. I wonder, what she would have been doing, if she had been born in Spain of 16th century with such women's armour, in which you couldn't even scratch your nose without somebody's help. Today was her seventeenth birthday. In her some childish plumpness hasn't passed yet. The girl was of medium height. Her legs were long enough, only their form wasn't perfect but a beautiful trunk made up for it. Her waist was slim and with it her forms were good and puffy. All of these made her resemble an ancient statue. Her hands and feet were really aristocratic. You'll have to seek such slim fingers. Even her mother's youth rings were a little bit too big for them. Her figure was very soft, pleasant and without any sharp angles, just like a cat. That's why she was liked to be snuggled from the mere childhood but she allowed fondling herself only to the chosen ones. From others she scratched, beat off and just tried to run away. Well, our Rosie was of the type that is called an English rose. Her skin was very white as if from china, her hair was long and golden-brown. And to this a pretty nose, a profile though far not Greek but no less wonderful, lips, which were always red because of her intolerable for a lady and incorrigible habit of biting them. But the most attractive attribute of her face were eyes. The dark blue fathomless eyes, which often seemed to be black, looked like two huge lakes. There always had been some mystery unsolvable for everyone who would look into them. Rosie for almost all the time was silent and deepened in her thoughts known only to herself. When she was dreaming away she looked very like some romantic heroine. Only in the real life she was rather awkward, with strangers shy, with nearest and dearest sometimes lovely, sometimes very interesting, sometimes boring, sometimes malicious and when she was in a bad mood ?C just impossible. In the childhood her brother used to call her "The aggressive pussy" and her father "The little old woman". Why, and then they called her thus. This paragraphs, my dear reader, you may not read and skip to another chapter unless you want to understand our character better. Rosie had many avocations. Among them were such traditional for women as embroidery and knitting. Her little childish hands, those nimble fingers always needed to do something, thank heaven to handcraft she had far less bad habits. Also she liked drawing and painting, as you could see earlier, music and literature very much. She melted in art, forgot herself in it and rested from those numerous homely faces. Also she was very good in her studies and became the best pupil in her boarding school. Vernons were a family of great readers, except only Vernon junior, who through his life performed an exploit of overpowering a couple of short stories. The head of the family read such books as "Il Principe" by Machiavelli, economical memoirs by Adam Smith and understood them in his own particular way. Also he liked to study the history of Ancient Rome. Lady Vernon was very interested in mathematics and succeeded much in it. Lord Byron called his wife "The princess of parallelograms". Well, Lady Vernon preferred much better algebra to Euclid ergo her daughter nicknamed her "The empress of formulas". Of the fiction as a woman she preferred romantic, adventurous and love novels, which she also imposed to her daughter. Rosie was some little copy of her mother. She too was good at math but alas not so brilliant and too liked to read about romances and adventures. But the range of her library was greater than you think. On her shelf you could see both "Childe Harold" and "Gulliver". There were also Defoe, other Byron, Richardson, Shelley, Keats, Shakespeare of course, Rousseau, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Moli??re, Goethe, Schiller, Petrarca, Dante, "Odyssey" ("Iliad" with all its fights too was read by her but, frankly, it didn't impress her. She is a girl after all) etc. To this not so long ago were added two first novels by the rising star Walter Scott. By that time he had published only "Waverly" and "Guy Mannering". Amazingly, but here you could also find "Manon Lescaut" and "Les Liaisons dangereuses". Old Vernon heard something about these books, that they were famous, but thought them to be just some women's novels so let them in. With them little Rosie began to understand that this world doesn't consist of only honest and worthy at all. She had a great weakness before works by authors-women. An outstanding place in this collection was occupied by Jane Austen's novels. The exception of women's creativity was only Mrs Redcliff's "Udolfo", that was hidden somewhere far away. Thrilling stories, which prevent you to sleep all night, were not exactly Rosie's cup of tea. Besides Patricia Fitzroy gifted this book to her, the sister of her fianc??, and she didn't like her. Each book, each author she liked in her own way and couldn't find some particular favourite, she read them all, and "Udolfo" too, learned their histories and other interesting facts. Also she liked reading encyclopaedias from the family library. By all these books she learned this wide world and also hid from it. As you can see, reading meant very much for her. Literature played such important role in her life that she herself took a pen in her hands. She saw that some women could do much more than lots men and desired to make something grand, a real masterpiece. Her imagination was vivid, so with plots she had no problems, the problem was how to realize and finish them. At school she had a lot of things to do. How funny it is sometimes, assignments are given to high-class and poor students equally. Only to the first ones these are given so impossibly much, while to the others - so surprisingly little. Now she was free but the adulthood was trailed by numerous receptions, balls, dinner parties, five o'clocks, in five words ?C the life of the capital. On top of this, she was pretty, modest, high-born and rich so the old generation was glad to invite her to be their guest (and would be even gladder to see her as their daughter in law). Plus let's return to the frocks. Endless measurements, trying-ons, the tortures of choosing... Vernons loved their daughter very much and wanted that she had only the best. Rosie herself thought that they were too wasteful and sometimes wanted her parents to be a little bit more miserly. As the result, she had loads of clothes and just one body. But what was I writing about? Ah, yes, about the writing. During the breaks she wrote after all. Besides her nights were sleepless (she was an owl and couldn't sleep at this time), hence, when nobody had such foolish idea of giving a ball, if you went round her room, you could see her either reading, either writing something of her own. The exception was the theatre. She loved both dramatic and opera performances. She loved them so much that she even wrote plays herself. These were comedies. In the real life she was an always-serious frump, so her entire sense of humour she poured out in her creativity. Also she didn't like bad ends and wanted though even made up good people to live happily. In her works women characters were central, women with all their minds, souls, reason and sensibility. Who preferred the types of Helen and Cleopatra; our Rosie preferred the type of Penelope. Lope de Vega would write a play, and all his plays were written in verse, in 2-3 days?? time. Rosie wrote her plays much longer but at the same time de Vega's a couple of days was longer than her months. She wrote both prose and lyrics but the latter made her scratch a head longer because she wasn't Lope de Vega. To this she made a lot of editing. Obviously, for her to write something was a long process; some of her projects had never been finished. After having finished a narrative at last, she had other obstacles before her. When she was writing, she was obsessed with a story so much that she didn't pay any attention to her grammar. These works needed correcting but who could do it? Frankly, Rosie was very shy and afraid of critics. She could argue as much as she could and wanted about things concerning this world, whereas she worried about people's opinion of the fruit of her own world. If you want something to be done well and fast, do it yourself. This was one of her life credos. So she started correcting them herself and each time found more and more mistakes. This made her lose interest in her work. Besides, each time as she reread her "masterpieces" she noticed the influence of some other author. She understood that she had nothing new to say and many of these were forever locked in her drawers. She began painting very early and early succeeded in it. Maybe much more than in the literature... At fifteen she tried to copy a woman's portrait by a Swedish 18th century artist. It came out not exactly the copy, the woman's face became of the modern for Rosie beauty. All the same the work was wonderful and, to say the truth, a lot of people didn't exactly believe that she painted it herself. She made one more couple of such imitations and they were fantastic. In such way she learned how to paint properly and practiced her skills. And yet she was not satisfied in what was of her own plan. She loved and knew many things about music. She played the piano, but in fact she was a dilettante. For singing her diaphragm was wide enough for a chorus girl though not enough for a prima donna and she didn't like to be just one of the many. She always liked showing off and that??s why she left singing to real talents. Her play was poor but she listened to others with great enthusiasm (if of course they were professionals). Her favourite hearing was opera. She loved strong voices and those melodies that could wake up her fillings. She loved such touching moments that created "resonance" with her blood. Then there weren't any stereo and players although she didn't need them. Melodies sounded in her head. By what she was remembering at a moment you could indicate her mood. Such thing as mood is always different but after all she had found her favourite in music. It was Mozart. In spite of the eternal stiffness she was all the same young and blooming. Mozart's gaily music like no one else??s was able to raise her mood. And at least that Austrian didn't move like Beethoven his fingers too much apart and she could play him somehow with her little hands. From the operas she liked best of all "The magic flute" by the same author, the good fairy tale with philosophical sense and just wonderful music. I'm finishing, my dear reader. Right now it is time to return to events.