John Dryden - "Palamon and Arcite"

Paul Heyse - "Der letzte Zentaur"

Various - "Graded Poetry: Seventh Year"

Alexandre Herculano - "Lendas e Narrativas (Tomo I)"

A  /  B  /  C  /  D  /  E  /   F  /  G  /  H  /  I  /  J  /   K  /  L  /  M  /  N  /  O   P  /  R  /  S  /  T  /  U  /  V  /  W  /  X  /  Y  /  Z

The Case of Richard Meynell by Mrs. Humphry Ward

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> The Case of Richard Meynell




For his own affairs, they were desperate. As he stood there, he was
nothing more in fact than the common needy adventurer, possessed,
however, of greater daring, and the _debris_ of much greater pretensions,
than most such persons. His financial resources were practically at an
end, and he had come to look upon a clandestine marriage with Hester as
the best means of replenishing them. The Fox-Wilton family passed for
rich; and the notion that they must and would be ready to come forward
with money, when once the thing was irrevocable, counted for much in the
muddy plans of which his mind was full. His own idea was to go to South
America--to Buenos Ayres, where money was to be made, and where he had
some acquaintance. In that way he would shake off his creditors, and the
Scotch woman together; and Meynell would know better than to interfere.

* * * * *

Suddenly a light figure came fluttering round the corner of the road
leading to the chateau and the town. Philip turned and went to meet her.
And as he approached her he was shaken afresh by the excitement of her
presence, in addition to his more sordid preoccupation. Her wild,
provocative beauty seemed to light up the whole wintry scene; and the few
passers-by, each and all, stopped to stare at her. Hester laughed aloud
when she saw Meryon; and with her usual recklessness held up her umbrella
for signal. It pleased her that two _rapins_ in large black ties and
steeple hats paid her an insolent attention as they passed her; and she
stopped to pinch the cheek of a chubby child that had planted itself
straight in her path.

"Am I late?" she said, as they met. "I only just caught the train. Oh! I
am so hungry! Don't let's talk--let's _dejeuner_."

Philip laughed.

"Will you dare the hotel?"

And he pointed to the Pavillion Henri Quatre.

"Why not? Probably there won't be a soul."

"There are always Americans."

"Why not, again? _Tant mieux_! Oh, my hair!"

And she put up her two ungloved hands to try and reduce it to something
like order. The loveliness of the young curving form, of the pretty
hands, of the golden brown hair, struck full on Meryon's turbid sense.

They turned toward the hotel, and were presently seated in a corner of
its glazed gallery, with all the wide, prospect of plain and river spread
beneath them. Hester was in the highest spirits, and as she sat waiting
for the first _plat_, chattering, and nibbling at her roll, her black
felt hat with its plume of cock feathers falling back from the brilliance
of her face, she once more attracted all the attention available; from
the two savants who, after a morning in the Chateau, were lunching at a
farther table; from an American family of all ages reduced to silence
by sheer wonder and contemplation; from the waiters, and, not least, from
the hotel dog, wagging his tail mutely at her knee.

Philip felt himself an envied person. He was, indeed, vain of his
companion; but certain tyrannical instincts asserted themselves once or
twice. When, or if, she became his possession, he would try and moderate
some of this chatter and noise.

For the present he occupied himself with playing to her lead, glancing
every now and then mentally, with a secret start, at the information he
had possessed about her since the morning.

She described to him, with a number of new tricks of gesture caught from
her French class-mates, how she had that morning outwitted all her
guardians, who supposed that she had gone to Versailles with one of the
senior members of the class she was attending at the Conservatoire, a
young teacher, "_tres sage_," with whom she had been allowed once or
twice to go to museums and galleries. To accomplish it had required an
elaborate series of deceptions, which Hester had carried through,
apparently, without a qualm. Except that at the end of her story there
was a passing reference to Aunt Alice--"poor darling!"--"who would have a
fit if she knew."

Philip, coffee-cup in hand, half smiling, looked at her meantime through
his partially closed lids. Richard, indeed! She was Neville all through,
the Neville of the picture, except for the colour of the hair, and the
soft femininity. And here she sat, prattling--foolish dear!--about
"mamma," and "Aunt Alice," and "my tiresome sisters!"

"Certainly you shall not pay for me!--not a _sou,_" said Hester flushing.
"I have plenty of money. Take it please, at once." And she pushed her
share over the table, with a peremptory gesture.

Meryon took it with a smile and a shrug, and she, throwing away the
cigarette she had been defiantly smoking, rose from the table.

"Now then, what shall we do? Oh! no museums! I am being educated to
death! Let us go for a walk in the forest; and then I must catch my
train, or the world will go mad."

So they walked briskly into the forest, and were soon sufficiently deep
among its leaf-strewn paths, to be secure from all observation. Two hours
remained of wintry sunlight before they must turn back toward the
station.

Hester walked along swinging a small silk bag in which she carried her
handkerchief and purse. Suddenly, in a narrow path girt by some tall
hollies and withered oaks, she let it fall. Both stooped for it, their
hands touched, and as Hester rose she found herself in Meryon's arms.

She made a violent effort to free herself, and when it failed, she stood
still and submitted to be kissed, like one who accepts an experience,
with a kind of proud patience.

"You think you love me," she said at last, pushing him away. "I wonder
whether you do!"

And flushed and panting, she leant against a tree, looking at him with a
strange expression, in which melancholy mingled with resentment; passing
slowly into something else--that soft and shaken look, that yearning of
one longing and yet fearing to be loved, which had struck dismay into
Meynell on the afternoon when he had pursued her to the Abbey.

Philip came close to her.

"You think I have no Roddy!" she said, with bitterness. "Don't kiss me
again!"

He refrained. But catching her hand, and leaning against the trunk beside
her, he poured into her ear protestations and flattery; the ordinary
language of such a man at such a moment. Hester listened to it with a
kind of eagerness. Sometimes, with a slight frown, as though ear and mind
waited, intently, for something that did not come.

"I wonder how many people you have said the same things to before!" she
said suddenly, looking searchingly into his face. "What have you got to
tell me about that Scotch girl?"

"Richard's Scotch girl?"--he laughed, throwing his handsome head back
against the tree--"whom Richard supposes me to have married? Well, I had
a great flirtation with her, I admit, two years ago, and it is sometimes
rather difficult in Scotland to know whether you are married or no. You
know of course that all that's necessary is to declare yourselves man and
wife before witnesses? However--perhaps you would like to see a letter
from the lady herself on the subject?"

"You had it ready?" she said, doubtfully.

"Well, considering that Richard has been threatening me for months, not
only with the loss of you, but with all sorts of pains and penalties
besides, I have had to do something! Of course I have done a great deal.
This is one of the documents in the case. It is an affidavit really,
drawn up by my solicitor and signed by the lady whom Richard supposes to
be my injured wife!"

He placed an envelope in her hands.

Hester opened it with a touch of scornful reluctance. It contained a
categorical denial and repudiation of the supposed marriage.

"Has Uncle Richard seen it?" she asked coldly, as she gave it back to
him.

"Certainly he has, by now." He took another envelope from his pocket. "I
won't bother you with anything more--the thing is really too absurd!--but
here, if you want it, is a letter from the girl's brother. Brothers are
generally supposed to keep a sharp lookout on their sisters, aren't they?
Well, this brother declares that Meynell's inquiries have come to
nothing, absolutely nothing, in the neighbourhood--except that they have
made people very angry. He has got no evidence--simply because there is
none to get! I imagine, indeed, that by now he has dropped the whole
business. And certainly it is high time he did; or I shall have to be
taking action on my own account before long!"

He looked down upon her, as she stood beside him, trying to make out her
expression.

"Hester!" he broke out, "don't let's talk about this any more--it's
damned nonsense! Let's talk about ourselves. Hester!--darling!--I want
to make you happy!--I want to carry you away. Hester, will you marry me
at once? As far as the French law is concerned, I have arranged it all.
You could come with me to a certain Mairie I know, to-morrow, and we
could marry without anybody having a word to say to it; and then, Hester,
I'd carry you to Italy! I know a villa on the Riviera--the Italian
Riviera--in a little bay all orange and lemon and blue sea. We'd
honeymoon there; and when we were tired of honeymooning--though how could
any one tire of honeymooning, with you, you darling!--we'd go to South
America. I have an opening at Buenos Ayres which promises to make me a
rich man. Come with me!--it is the most wonderful country in the world.
You would be adored there--you would have every luxury--we'd travel and
ride and explore--we'd have a glorious life!"

He had caught her hands again, and stood towering over her, intoxicated
with his own tinsel phrases; almost sincere; a splendid physical
presence, save for the slight thickening of face and form, the looseness
of the lips, the absence of all freshness in the eyes.

But Hester, after a first moment of dreamy excitement, drew herself
decidedly away.

"No, no!--I can't be such a wretch--I can't! Mamma and Aunt Alice would
break their hearts. I'm a selfish beast, but not quite so bad as that!
No, Philip--we can meet and amuse ourselves, can't we?--and get to know
each other?--and then if we want to, we can marry--some time."

"That means you don't love me!" he said, fiercely.

"Yes, yes, I do!--or at least I--I like you. And perhaps in time--if you
let me alone--if you don't tease me--I--I'll marry you. But let's do it
openly. It's amusing to get one's own way, even by lies, up to a certain
point. They wouldn't let me see you, or get to know you, and I was
determined to know you. So I had to behave like a little cad, or give in.
But marrying's different."

He argued with her hotly, pointing out the certainty of Meynell's
opposition, exaggerating the legal powers of guardians, declaring
vehemently that it was now or never. Hester grew very white as they
wandered on through the forest, but she did not yield. Some last scruple
of conscience, perhaps--some fluttering fear, possessed her.

So that in the end Philip was pushed to the villainy that even he would
have avoided.

Suddenly he turned upon her.

"Hester, you drive me to it! I don't want to--but I can't help it.
Hester, you poor little darling!--you don't know what has happened--you
don't know what a position you're in. I want to save you from it. I
would have done it, God knows, without telling you the truth if I could;
but you drive me to it!"

"What on earth do you mean?"

She stopped beside him in a clearing of the forest. The pale afternoon
sun, now dropping fast to westward, slipped through the slender oaks, on
which the red leaves still danced, touched the girl's hair and shone into
her beautiful eyes. She stood there so young, so unconscious; a victim,
on the threshold of doom. Philip, who was no more a monster than other
men who do monstrous things, felt a sharp stab of compunction; and then,
rushed headlong at the crime he had practically resolved on before they
met.

He told her in a few agitated words the whole--and the true--story of her
birth. He described the return of Judith Sabin to Upcote Minor, and the
narrative she had given to Henry Barron, without however a word of
Meynell in the case, so far at least as the original events were
concerned. For he was convinced that he knew better, and that there was
no object in prolonging an absurd misunderstanding. His version of the
affair was that Judith in a fit of excitement had revealed Hester's
parentage to Henry Barron; that Barron out of enmity toward Meynell,
Hester's guardian, and by way of getting a hold upon him, had not kept
the matter to himself, but had either written or instigated anonymous
letters which had spread such excitement in the neighbourhood that Lady
Fox-Wilton had now let her house, and practically left Upcote for good.
The story had become the common talk of the Markborough district; and all
that Meynell, and "your poor mother," and the Fox-Wilton family could do,
was to attempt, on the one hand, to meet the rush of scandal by absence
and silence; and on the other to keep the facts from Hester herself as
long as possible.

The girl had listened to him with wide, startled eyes. Occasionally a
sound broke from her--a gasp--an exclamation--and when he paused, pursued
by almost a murderer's sense of guilt, he saw her totter. In an instant
he had his arm round her, and for once there was both real passion and
real pity in the excited words he poured into her ears.

"Hester, dearest!--don't cry, don't be miserable, my own beautiful
Hester! I am a beast to have told you, but it is because I am not only
your lover, but your cousin--your own flesh and blood. Trust yourself
to me! You'll see! Why should that preaching fellow Meynell interfere?
I'll take care of you. You come to me, and we'll show these damned
scandal-mongers that what they say is nothing to us--that we don't care a
fig for their cant--that we are the masters of our own lives--not they!"

And so on, and so on. The emotion was as near sincerity as he could push
it; but it did not fail to occur, at least once, to a mind steeped in
third-rate drama, what a "strong" dramatic scene might be drawn from the
whole situation.

Hester heard him for a few minutes, in evident stupefaction; then with a
recovery of physical equilibrium she again vehemently repulsed him.

"You are mad--you are _mad_! It is abominable to talk to me like this.
What do you mean? 'My poor mother'--who is my mother?"

She faced him tragically, the certainty which was already dawning in her
mind--prepared indeed, through years, by all the perplexities and
rebellions of her girlhood--betraying itself in her quivering face, and
lips. Suddenly, she dropped upon a fallen log beside the path, hiding her
face in her hands, struggling again with the sheer faintness of the
shock. And Philip, kneeling in the dry leaves beside her, completed his
work, with the cruel mercy of the man who kills what he has wounded.

He asked her to look back into her childhood; he reminded her of the many
complaints she had made to him of her sense of isolation within her
supposed family; of the strange provisions of Sir Ralph's will; of the
arrangement which had made her Meynell's ward in a special sense.

"Why, of course, that was so natural! You remember I suggested to you
once that Richard probably judged Neville from the same Puritanical
standpoint that he judged me? Well, I was a fool to talk like that. I
remember now perfectly what my mother used to say. They were of different
generations, but they were tremendous friends; and there was only a few
years between them. I am certain it was by Neville's wish that Richard
became your guardian." He laughed, in some embarrassment. "He couldn't
exactly foresee that another member of the family would want to cut in. I
love you--I adore you! Let's give all these people the slip. Hester, my
pretty, pretty darling--look at me! I'll show you what life means--what
love means!"

And doubly tempted by her abasement, her bewildered pain, he tried again
to take her in his arms.

But she held him at arm's length.

"If," she said, with pale lips--"if Sir Neville was my father--and Aunt
Alsie"--her voice failed her--"were they--were they never married?"

He slowly and reluctantly shook his head.

"Then I'm--I'm--oh! but that's monstrous--that's absurd! I don't believe
it!"

She sprang to her feet. Then, as she stood confronting his silence, the
whole episode of that bygone September afternoon--the miniature--Aunt
Alice's silence and tears--rushed back on memory. She trembled, and
the iron entered into her soul.

"Let's go back to the station," she said, resolutely. "It's time."

They walked back through the forest paths, for some time without
speaking, she refusing his aid. And all the time swiftly,
inexorably, memory and inference were at work, dragging to light the
deposit--obscure, or troubling, or contradictory--left in her by the
facts and feelings of her childhood and youth.

She had told him with emphasis at luncheon that he was not to be allowed
to accompany her home; that she would go back to Paris by herself. But
when, at the St. Germains station, Meryon jumped into the empty railway
carriage beside her, she said nothing to prevent him. She sat in the
darkest corner of the carriage, her arms hanging beside her, her eyes
fixed on objects of which she saw nothing. Her pride in herself, her
ideal of herself, which is to every young creature like the protective
sheath to the flower, was stricken to the core. She thought of Sarah and
Lulu, whom she had all her life despised and ridiculed. But they had a
right to their name and place in the world!--and she was their nameless
inferior, the child taken in out of pity, accepted on sufferance. She
thought of the gossip now rushing like a mud-laden stream through every
Upcote or Markborough drawing-room. All the persons whom she had snubbed
or flouted were concerning themselves maliciously with her and her
affairs--were pitying "poor Hester Fox-Wilton."

Her heart seemed to dry and harden within her. The strange thought of her
real mother--her suffering, patient, devoted mother--did not move her. It
was bound up with all that trampled on and humiliated her.

And, moreover, strange and piteous fact, realized by them both! this
sudden sense of fall and degradation had in some mysterious way altered
her whole relation to the man who had brought it upon her. His evil power
over her had increased. He felt instinctively that he need not in future
be so much on his guard. His manner toward her became freer. She had
never yet returned him the kisses which, as on this day, she had
sometimes allowed him to snatch. But before they reached Paris she had
kissed him; she had sought his hands with hers; and she had promised to
meet him again.

While these lamentable influences and events were thus sweeping Hester's
life toward the abyss, mocking all the sacrifices and the efforts that
had been made to save her, the publication of Barron's apology had opened
yet another stage in "the Meynell case."

As drafted by Flaxman, it was certainly comprehensive enough. For
himself, Meynell would have been content with much less; but in dealing
with Barron, he was the avenger of wrongs not his own, both public and
private; and when his own first passion of requital had passed away,
killed in him by the anguish of his enemy, he still let Flaxman decide
for him. And Flaxman, the mildest and most placable of men, showed
himself here inexorable, and would allow no softening of terms. So that
Barron "unreservedly withdrew" and "publicly apologized" "for those false
and calumnious charges, which to my great regret, and on erroneous
information, I have been led to bring against the character and conduct
of the Rev. Richard Meynell, at various dates, and in various ways,
during the six months preceding the date of this apology."

With regard to the anonymous letters--"although they were not written,
nor in any way authorized, by me, I now discover to my sorrow that they
were written by a member of my family on information derived from me.
I apologize for and repudiate the false and slanderous statements these
letters contain, and those also included in letters I myself have written
to various persons. I agree that a copy of this statement shall be sent
to the Bishop of Markborough, and to each parish clergyman in the diocese
of Markborough; as also that it shall be published in such newspapers as
the solicitors of the Rev. Richard Meynell may determine."

The document appeared first on a Saturday, in all the local papers, and
was greedily read and discussed by the crowds that throng into
Markborough on market day, who again carried back the news to the
villages of the diocese. It was also published on the same day in
the _Modernist_ and in the leading religious papers. Its effect on
opinion was rapid and profound. The Bishop telegraphed--"Thank God. Come
and see me." France fidgeted a whole morning among his papers, began two
or three letters to Meynell, and finally decided that he could write
nothing adequate that would not also be hypocritical. Dornal wrote a
little note that Meynell put away among those records that are the
milestones of life. From all the leading Modernists, during January,
came a rush of correspondence and congratulations, in all possible notes
and tones of indignant triumph; and many leaders on the other side wrote
with generous emotion and relief. Only in the extreme camp of the extreme
Right there was, of course, silence and chagrin. Compared to the eternal
interests of the Church, what does one man's character matter?

The old Bishop of Dunchester, a kind of English Doellinger, the learned
leader of a learned party, and ready in the last years of life to risk
what would have tasked the nerves and courage of a man in the prime of
physical and mental power, wrote:

"MY DEAR RICHARD MEYNELL: Against my better judgment, I was persuaded
that you might have been imprudent. I now know that you have only been
heroic. Forgive me--forgive us all. Nothing will induce me to preach the
sermon of our opening day. And if you will not, who will, or can?"

Rose meanwhile descended upon the Rectory, and with Flaxman's help,
though in the teeth of Anne's rather jealous opposition, she carried off
Meynell to Maudeley, that she might "help him write his letters," and
watch for a week or two over a man wearied and overtaxed. It was by her
means also that the reaction in public opinion spread far beyond Meynell
himself. It is true that even men and women of good will looked at each
other in bewilderment, after the publication of the apology, and asked
each other under their breaths--"Then is there no story!--and was Judith
Sabin's whole narrative a delusion?" But with whatever might be true in
that narrative no public interest was now bound up; and discussion grew
first shamefaced, and then dropped. The tendency strengthened indeed to
regard the whole matter as the invention of a half-crazy and dying woman,
possessed of some grudge against the Fox-Wilton family. Many surmised
that some tragic fact lay at the root of the tale, since those concerned
had not chosen to bring the slanderer to account. But what had once been
mere matter for malicious or idle curiosity was now handled with
compunction and good feeling. People began to be very sorry for the
Fox-Wiltons, very sorry for "poor Miss Puttenham." Cards were left, and
friendly inquiries were made; and amid the general wave of scepticism and
regret, the local society showed itself as sentimental, and as futile as
usual.

Meanwhile poor Theresa had been seen driving to the station with red
eyes; and her father, it was ascertained, had been absent from home since
the day before the publication of the apology. It was very commonly
guessed that the "member of my family" responsible for the letters was
the unsatisfactory younger son; and many persons, especially in Church
circles, were secretly sorry for Barron, while everybody possessed of any
heart at all was sorry for his elder son Stephen.

Stephen indeed was one of Meynell's chief anxieties during these
intermediate hours, when a strong man took a few days' breathing space
between the effort that had been, and the effort that was to be. The
young man would come over, day by day, with the same crushed, patient
look, now bringing news to Meynell which they talked over where none
might overhear, and now craving news from Paris in return. As to
Stephen's own report, Barron, it seemed, had made all arrangements
to send Maurice to a firm of English merchants trading at Riga. The head
of the firm was under an old financial obligation to Henry Barron, and
Stephen had no doubt that his father had made it heavily worth their
while to give his brother this fresh chance of an honest life. There
had been, Stephen believed, some terrible scenes between the father and
son, and Stephen neither felt nor professed to feel any hope for the
future. Barron intended himself to accompany Maurice to Riga and settle
him there. Afterward he talked of a journey to the Cape. Meanwhile the
White House was shut up, and poor Theresa had come to join Stephen in the
little vicarage whence the course of events in the coming year would
certainly drive him out.

Site of the Week: The International Literary Quarterly

An intricate, kaleidoscopic, all-embracing history of 20th-century music from Mahler to La Monte Young is the winner of this year's Guardian first book award. Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise was the clear and undisputed winner of the £10,000 prize, which has been presented at a ceremony in central London tonight.

The chair of the judging panel, Guardian literary editor Claire Armitstead, said: "In some quarters this book has been seen as not having a popular appeal. Our prize – which, uniquely, relies on readers' groups in the early stages of judging – proves that, on the contrary, there is a huge appetite among readers for clear, serious but accessible books."

According to one judge: "Where Ross lifts his book above the 'expert' and impressive to the 'good read' category is in the way he wears his learning lightly, never clutches for false or contrived ways of explaining music, and never dumbs down in order to explain."

One of the members of the Waterstone's reading groups, who helped in the judging process, said: "Every time I felt overwhelmed by the technicalities, along came a sublime metaphor or simile that would light up the prose."

Ross, who is the music critic of the New Yorker, has distilled a lifetime's enthusiasm and learning into a rich narrative of musical history, setting the works of Mahler, Schoenberg, John Cage and the rest into their cultural and political contexts – but also giving a vivid sense of what the music he describes actually sounds and feels like.

Of all the artforms, modern and contemporary classical music is often seen as the most rebarbative. Ross brushes aside the mythology of 20th-century music's "inaccessibility" as he charts its meandering histories. Along the way, fascinating connections are made: hip-hop has more in common with Janacek than you might think; Arnold Schoenberg and George Gershwin were tennis partners; Gershwin, in turn, was an ardent fan of Alban Berg and kept an autographed photo of the composer of Lulu in his apartment. If there is an overarching idea to the book, it is perhaps contained in Berg's pronouncement to Gershwin: "Mr Gershwin, music is music."

Ross, 40, was born in Washington DC, and studied English and history at Harvard. An enthusiastic teenage musician and student broadcaster, he began writing music criticism after university and in 1996 was appointed music critic of the New Yorker. His blog – also called The Rest Is Noise – has been a trailblazer in harnessing the internet as a way of amplifying (often literally) his writing on music.

The New York Review of Books described The Rest Is Noise as "by far the liveliest and smartest popular introduction yet written to a century of diverse music". The Economist noted: "No other critic writing in English can so effectively explain why you like a piece, or beguile you to reconsider it, or prompt you to hurry online and buy a recording."

Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican and a former Observer music critic, said: "At a time when people are still talking about 20th-century music as if it were a problem, here is a lucid and entertaining book about what I regard as some of the greatest music ever written. It's a wonderful way to advance the cause of 20th-century music to an ordinary, intelligent general reader. It's the ideal mix of enthusiasm and information."

This year's judging panel comprised novelist Roddy Doyle; broadcaster and novelist Francine Stock; poet Daljit Nagra; the historian David Kynaston; novelist Kate Mosse and Guardian deputy editor, Katharine Viner. Stuart Broom of Waterstone's also joined the deliberations, speaking as the representative of the readers' groups.

The other books on the shortlist were Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes; Ross Raisin's God's Own Country; Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole (which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker prize) and Owen Matthews's Stalin's Children.

Previous winners of the prize have included Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters (2005) and Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2000).

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Win copies of The Art of Romance
Highlights from a century's worth of romantic fiction told through 100 years of Mills & Boon covers. Plus your chance to win them all

Rowling's Beedle the Bard revives Harry Potter midnight magic
Your chance to win a copy of this beautifully illustrated pictorial history of the venerable romantic fiction publisher