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‘The Didactic Novel’ — English Literature Terminology

Didactic Literature

Didactic literature refers to texts designed to instruct, educate, or morally guide the reader. It is a literary mode that prioritises teaching over entertainment, often embedding lessons on virtue, ethics, or social conduct within its narrative structure.

In British literary studies, didacticism is frequently associated with moralising fiction, religious allegory, and social critique. Medieval texts such as Piers Plowman exemplify early didactic traditions, using allegory to impart lessons on morality and spiritual duty. In the eighteenth century, novels like Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa framed personal virtue as central themes, aiming to instil moral guidance through sentimental storytelling.

The Victorian period saw the expansion of didactic literature into social reform narratives. Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë employed fiction to expose injustices, using literature as a means of shaping public awareness. In modern British literary criticism, didacticism is examined in relation to persuasion, ideology, and artistic integrity, questioning whether explicit moral instruction enhances or restricts literary value.

Though didactic literature is often defined by its intentional instruction, many literary works carry implicit lessons, raising debates over whether all literature, to some extent, instructs the reader.

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— In which we shall begin to recall the circumstances that would secure Daisy’s fate as Sir Charles’ unhappy wife.

In that inland county of a most irregular figure, known to most as Oxfordshire, took place the very first dealings of the Finsbury family with the Lyons. Sir Charles was in possession of a pretty estate not unworthy of a baronet and justice; it was here he lived with Tom and it is here, eighteen years before the start of our tale, we shall redirect our attentions for a short while.

Sir Charles had not seen fit to marry till later in life; he took up the nuptial yoke at the age of two-and-forty to a beautiful young creature who, in the years before her death, bore him five sons, four who died in infancy and none for whom he felt any partiality or fondness, the very least of all being Tom who was his eldest and only surviving child.

At the time we shall look in upon the Finsburies in their state of quiet retirement in the country, Tom was then twelve years of age. You may find, quite unlike the grown gentleman with whom we have been lately acquainted, young Tom was remarkably silent and shall not, for this portion of our tale, say anything very much at all.

At thereabouts the age of seven, he had been sent away to school. Before this ill-fated transportation to an ancient establishment of education near Windsor, Tom had not been much concerned with the permanent red hue that fell upon a large proportion of one side of his face. It had often been noticed and many eyes had avoided it; many mouths had spoken of it. But only his father had been pleased to mock the boy for it, that was, till Tom left for school.

As it has often been elegantly observed and described by other esteemed writers, I need only say that such places as these public schools naturally housed that next generation of our social superiors who made torturing and tormenting younger children one of their favourite sports. Tom, with his distinguishing feature, young, and a little inclined towards weeping owing to the recent death of his Mamma, was a prime target for the tyrants of the school who found great amusement in harassing, humiliating, and abusing the child in as many ways as their expansive imaginations could conjure; I would not, for Tom’s sake, name half the things he suffered at their hands.

If this daily circumstance was not enough to cause the boy heartbreak and misery, the effects of it found Tom, whenever he attempted to speak, in awkward contortions of countenance and unable to utter any single word continuously; every word was habitually interrupted by stuttering repetitions and very often he was without the means of surpassing one syllable of what he had hoped to say.

This was a great source of entertainment to his classmates, who were very fond of laughing and elicited only fury and impatience from his schoolmaster who whipped the boy with more vengeance than any of Tom’s schoolfellows, and, eventually, after he had been found attempting to drown himself in a pond for which he was far too tall to find any great success, Tom was, at the age of eight, returned home in disgrace to his father who left the useless boy to the management of whichever servant might take pity upon him. This, of course, was Mrs Prudence.

Need I inform the reader that Sir Charles was a vulgar man with a wicked and vindictive heart? There was not a mean-hearted fellow in his acquaintance who did not think him a great wit nor a female servant in his house who did not hear his name without being put upon her utmost feelings of disgust or terror.

At this juncture of our tale, a circumstance of some particular business had called Sir Charles away from his Oxfordshire home for several days. What this business was, I do not know; we shall, therefore, presume it does not belong to the important facts of the story. His chaise arrived home late that evening, when all in the world was quite still and dark. When the gentleman prepared himself to enter his home, he saw, in the corner of the vestibule, a sleeping infant wrapped in a bundle of dirty linen.

With the astonished footman, he gazed at the tiny child for several moments before his rage began to rise within him. Every female servant was dragged from her bed. The neighbouring surgeon was woken from his own slumber to inspect each woman and girl for symptoms of a recent maternal delivery. Mrs Prudence, who was, owing to her age and appearance, above the master’s suspicion, took the child in the meantime, conveying it to the kitchen for a meal of milky pap whilst Sir Charles began to anticipate, with a hateful glee, the scene of his throwing the whore and her bastard into the embrace of the cold winter night.

‘You poor wretch!’ said Mrs Prudence to the baby as she later placed him atop her bed. ‘What is to be done with you, young sir? My master shall not allow me to keep you, you can be sure of that.’

Indeed, when it had been made clear by the surgeon that the mother of this child inhabited not Sir Charles’ home, Sir Charles had been quite ready to order the infant to be carried into the far-off woodland from which he would not hear its petulant crying.

Nature, he said, might there take its course. At this, Mrs Prudence fell upon such great weeping and theological admonishments that the tyrant decided his peace would be greater to leave the child within the care of this hysterical old wench till the mother could be found out. The night shortly passed, Sir Charles clinging to vicious excitement, thinking what he might do to this whore mother, and Mrs Prudence clinging to the precious infant whose sweet, sleeping face was so at odds with the precarious nature of his immediate future.

The next morning, a consultation was held with the squires and men of esteem and consequence in the neighbourhood. Having satisfied himself and his friends with great humour that, ‘Not one of the ugly scarecrows in his service had managed to trick a stupid fellow into investing his interest in her bedclothes.’ Sir Charles ordered an inquiry into every eligible creature in the vicinage. A list of suspected hussies was to be drawn up and the potential criminals were to be examined by the surgeon who rested presently in his bed, making amends for the slumber of which he had been bereft the night prior.

The search was over before it had hardly begun. Mr Squealer, the lord and master of the inn some half a mile from Sir Charles’ home, had, by happenstance, found his ear pressed to the door of a lady traveller and her daughters. With his person contorted in this fashion against the wood, he had overheard the muffled sounds of a young woman’s cries followed shortly thereafter by the cries of what sounded very much like the wails of a new baby. The offer of a small pecuniary reward caused this all to weigh very heavily upon the poor man’s conscience, and so, Miss Lyons and her daughters, each in a state of sleepy undress, were marched down the road to the home of the justice who would find out the whore among them and determine her awful fate.

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‘You’re a Doll, Daisy!’ Chapter Ten — In Which We Are Introduced to Captain George Fielding.

It was neither a great strife nor distance for Tom to discover the whereabouts of George Fielding, for he had been playing billiards with him only two hours earlier. If there were two necessary facts for the reader to know about George Fielding, it would be these: that he was not at all a sensible man, and when he had been far younger, and even less sensible, he had, for a short while, been married to Daisy.

The former will shortly prove self-evident, and the latter we shall reserve for an explanation at a later stage of our tale. A more tragical hero could not have appeared at Captain Fielding’s lodgings that late night; the knowledge of Daisy’s brutal punishment produced a torrent of tormenting images to percolate through every path of Tom’s mind and overwhelmed all but the most animal of his senses.

The threat of even the most trifling of offences flung in Daisy’s direction had always brought about a passionate and dauntless gallantry in Tom. Certainly, as a besotted boy, Tom would have died for Daisy, and he would happily die now if it would ensure her security and safety; if only the answer to relieving her suffering was so simple. Long, quivering limbs tripped and trembled through the barely dark streets, eyes red and mangled with tears, little able to find their way. When Tom arrived at George’s door, he had a gun in his hand and a horrifying tremor in his voice.

Tom had been quite correct. Daisy had barely spoken to George in seven years and was always avoiding his conversation and company. Thus, Tom had not spoken of his continued friendship with his cousin in all this time. Though constant, it was not a very serious friendship; the two did not so much seek out one another’s company as stumble upon it. They played cards and billiards and talked mostly of guns and horseraces. George would often talk about women and Tom would feign interest in one or two from time to time, though he simply mimicked the thoughts of his friend, thinking really that all women looked perfectly alike; excepting, of course, Daisy, who possessed more beauty than every other woman combined.

‘Damn me! What is it, Tom? You look like you’ve escaped from Hell! But–’ Here the half-undressed captain interrupted Tom before he could answer. ‘If it’s not very urgent, be a friend, would you, and wait here twenty minutes in the parlour? I’ve had my eye on this pretty little drab all week, and she’s finally–’

‘Urgent!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘Odd’s life! The deuce is in it, George! It is Daisy. She is gone, and… by gad–’ The tears appeared to have fallen down Tom’s throat, preventing him momentarily from completing his thought. ‘…if we act not with haste, sure as a gun… sure as hell, she may shortly be dead!’

‘Dead!’ replied the Captain, suddenly forgetting the woman he had left in his bed. But Tom could utter not another word of explanation, and for many minutes drove George’s worry and curiosity into a frenzy by pacing about the room crying and pulling at his hair till Captain Fielding was nearly as mad as he was. ‘For God’s sake, Tom! I wish you would die if you will not explain what has happened to Daisy!’

‘Daisy is taken with the maternal state,’ said Tom in a quiet, emotionless tone, forcing some composure over himself.

‘Good God!’ replied George, laughing at first. ‘I did not think the old baronet had it in him! And Daisy, I thought she could not–’

‘It is my child.’

‘What!’

‘It is not my father’s child. It is my child.’

‘Oh,’ answered the captain looking genuinely surprised. ‘Good for you, Tom!’ George firmly slapped his cousin on the shoulder. ‘I always thought it behoved her to let you have a few cracks at it after jilting you and all that. Just for the sake of common decency. One cannot go about leading men into ideas of marriage for years and years only to at last choose his father’s fortune over his own without thought of some compensation. I tell you, that’s a good lot to fall upon for any man; to have your enjoyment of the wife without any of the expense or harassments of actually marrying her! But are you sure this child is yours? Always best to wait until they come out the other side and get a good look at the thing before accepting any of that, I say! Even if it does look like you, you can always claim otherwise. There are several plucky youths trotting about England who look so like me that one might think I had split myself in two and duplicated.’

Here Captain Fielding was greatly amused at his own thought. ‘But I remain convinced that my previous intimate knowledge of their mothers is nothing more than a coincidence. Learn from me, you must simply take offence at one or other of the child’s features and exclaim with fury that nobody in your family has ever possessed a chin, or nose, or ears that look like–’

‘It is my child!’ exclaimed Tom earnestly and quite furious with this calumny against the faithful nature of his beloved and yet more furious at the notion that he should ever deny the child’s being his. ‘There is no doubt of it. I have been in Daisy’s bed at least twice a day, every day since the week she married my father, except when I have had cause to be away from her, which is not very often. If I had believed this may have been a consequence… by Gad, I should not have taken such freedoms. But we had made a plan, and everything would have been fine, had not, by some miserable accident, my father prematurely learnt the truth. And so he has sent me here to first lie to you and claim that Daisy and her baby are lying flogged to death in some ditch, and secondly, to kill you in a duel.’

‘What!’ replied George, not sure which part of the above explanation he was most astounded by. ‘Me?’ he said, latching onto the last revelation. ‘Why should your father wish for me to die when it is you who has been slipping into his wife’s bed!’

As we are already privy to this information we shall not traverse old ground by witnessing Tom explain what he understood of the circumstance to George. Why Daisy had not owned Tom as the father needed little explanation. If you knew Captain Fielding’s reputed penchant for married women and the complicated path that constituted his history with our heroine, you should not wonder at why she had happened upon his name as a perfectly plausible culprit for this offence against Sir Charles. George, though somewhat concerned for the material consequences of this charge, was not displeased to have been named by Daisy.

In her seven years of marriage to his old uncle, the captain had frequently put himself among public parties in which Daisy was also present. Ever she had behaved with a haughty coolness. She smiled at him, of course, but then Daisy smiled at everybody. In her conversation there was no depth, no familiarity, no hint of their long acquaintance, nor that she had once been his wife.

Yet, to see himself named and blamed by her for this licentious crime appeared to be such a pleasing confession of a continued secret affection. To inculpate him in this offence, when she might have named any man in the world, was seeking his assistance; it was throwing herself into his power and falling prostrate at his gallantry.

The lady, it seemed, would still rely upon his benevolence and protection all these years after the dissolution of his conjugal duties. Whatever her airs and appearances had been at their public meetings, it was clear that Daisy, generous-minded and forgiving as she was, held still her veneration for his fortitude and skill in all matters of conflict and that she was willing, for a second time in her life, to depend her happiness upon the strength of his protection. Captain Fielding’s vanity was flattered in the extreme.

‘Will you help me, George?’ asked Tom after his cousin had become distracted gazing at his own reflection in a looking-glass.

‘The Devil take you, Tom! I ought to be hanged if I had not the feeling of heart to help you save the life of the woman who was once my wife! But what should you have me do? My uncle wants you to shoot me. Yes,’ he said, thoughtfully, drawn again to his own handsome image in the mirror, ‘perhaps I would take a bullet for Daisy. Nowhere fatal, of course. But an arm or leg, I could suffer that for her, I think. Though our legal union is long since abolished, I must confess, I have never felt myself truly absolved of my spousal duty. And, damn me, I do feel the weight of my own misdeeds in the circumstances of our parting. Faith, Tom, I have quite convinced myself! You may shoot me, for Daisy’s sake. Best do it quickly before I change my mind!’

‘By Gad, there’s no need for any of that talk!’ began Tom, feeling a little jealous of his position as Daisy’s gallant. ‘I have, I believe, come to a sort of plan,’ he continued. ‘I believe… I believe I will need you to shoot me, George.’

I never met that young lady who would spend her evening employed in satisfying the demands of Captain Fielding in a manner very different than those she had conceived at the beginning of her night in his bedroom. Knowing Captain Fielding, I imagine she was decked with the charms of great beauty and an accomplished affectation of perfect feminine stupidity. That the young lady was not stupid is quite evident from her capable undertaking of the role unexpectedly thrust upon her.

She was to report an entirely fictional sequence of events, to be witness to the confrontation that would lead an army captain to murder his own cousin before turning the gun on himself. Though he would not see her many retellings of this fictional narrative, she hoped George would be pleased with the results of her cunning perfidy.

He had offered her two hundred pounds to play her part but, infatuated as she was, the girl would accept nothing for payment but the promise that he would send for her when he was free of danger. Whether or not Captain Fielding intended to honour this promise, I shall allow the reader to surmise for themselves. But the young lady was convinced, and thus, Tom’s scheme began.

Allow me to give my reader a little stimulating variety in the presentation of this narrative, or I fear we shall all get very tired of one another. You will, below, find an excerpt of a letter written by the young lady who had been waiting in George Fielding’s bedroom during the course of his above conversation with Tom.

It was one of many letters she sent to newspapers and magazines, addressed to the editor and signed anonymously. This particular letter would be published in a periodical under the ever-popular section of the ‘Cuckold’s Chronicle’ a week after the events of this night, wedged between the narrative of a sixty-year-old Duchess who ran off with her young footman and some other very witty anecdote proving beyond doubt the innate wickedness of the female sex.

‘Sir — I am under the necessity of communicating my witness account of a famous scandal of heroic gallantry and abominable cowardice. For the length of an unfortunate se’nnight, I found myself a lodger in the same house in Bath as the now dead and lately infamous murderer Captain Fielding, who was, by the bye, not half as handsome as he has been reported to be by the dozens of giddy and vain creatures of whom he has been the ruin. I hope my narrative might illuminate the hours preceding this wicked Captain’s murder of his poor cousin. If only he had lived to be justly punished for this awful crime!

Quite some time after midnight of that fateful morning, I was awoken by Captain Fielding’s ugly and cruel voice, shouting from a sitting-room below my bedroom. Feeling a little stupid with indignation, I sought the man out, but paused before entering the parlour when I realised the impropriety of my attire, for I have heard many times that he is a violent ravisher of innocent women. Before I could return to my room, I heard a second voice, much softer, and very gentlemanly and virtuous in its quality, which I later learnt was the voice of the Captain’s poor cousin, the late Mr Thomas Finsbury. I heard not much of their conversation but this, which I shall relate as exactly as my memory shall allow:

Mr F: Pardon me, good sir. My dear stepmother, what, oh what have you done to my poor mamma!

Capt: Your mamma? Indeed I have the greatest regard for your mamma! I have nothing for which I must answer but regarding her as the best of women.

Mr F: Libertine! You have done far more than only regard her! You must answer for her ruin! How unnatural it is to do this to your aunt, sir!’

Capt: Oho, cousin! She is not your natural mother, and she is not my natural aunt. But beauty as she is, even if she were–

Mr F: Lord, strengthen me! What a devil you are, sir!

Capt: That is just what your mother used to say to me. Though in a far more charming voice!

Mr F: Damn your eyes! You shall answer for your crimes, wretch!

Capt: And who shall make me answer, cousin? I will be gone from Bath this very hour, and from England by tomorrow.

Mr F: I shall make you answer for your wicked sins! You shall not leave while I am here to prevent you.

That is all I heard of the fateful conversation. I saw Mr Finsbury leave the house shortly afterwards, followed by the murderer and his duelling pistols an hour later. Other than his wicked murderer, I may be the last person to have seen the poor man alive. — A young lady who wishes her name and location to remain anonymous. I pray daily that the bodies of these young men will shortly be recovered from the river into which they were seen falling.’

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‘You’re a Doll, Daisy!’ Chapter Nine — In Which Tom Forms a Scheme.

When Tom arrived home not half an hour after the happenstance of the previous chapter, such were the effects of an evening parted from Daisy’s company that, with little resistance, he shortly resolved to break his self-imposed abstention from her bed-chamber. There was a distinctly different air to the fashionable streets at this hour.

A pair of cheerful and amorous evening revellers, noticed by Tom on his slow stroll towards Camden Place, appeared to drive all his thoughts upon the darling creature who awaited him at home. A light was glowing in her window, and though he could not see her perfect form sitting at the other side of the glass, he did not doubt for a moment that she would be waiting and watching for his arrival home.

Quite bounding through the street-door and up the stairs, our young hero clattered through the halls only to meet with the puzzling sight of his lover’s door open. ‘What ho, Daisy!’ said he, doubting not that she resided within. ‘You wouldn’t believe the score of good luck I’ve had this evening!’ But when he stepped beyond the doorway, he saw not Daisy, but Mrs Prudence, weeping and packing her lady’s clothes into a trunk.

‘Where is Daisy?’ asked he, in suddenly wild spirits.

‘To be sure,’ began the old waiting woman, breaking into a new flood of tears, ‘she is gone!’

‘The devil take me! What are you talking about, Prudence!’ exclaimed our hero, though, the second explanation offered by Prudence was perhaps less informative than her first. After several more moments of water falling from her tear-swollen eyes, and flinging her hands up to high Heaven with accompanying mutterations of prayers, Mrs Prudence reached into her pocket and passed Tom a note hastily written by Daisy.

Now that Tom had within his hands what must have been an object of the greatest curiosity and concern to him, Mrs Prudence found her words again, and took Tom’s hands within her own so that, even if he had been tempted to ignore her in favour of the epistle, he should not have been within his power to do so.

‘My master, sure he knows my lady’s condition,’ began she, squeezing with each word his hands, ‘and sure he knows it could not be his child. When first he discovered the news — and sure, it was that wicked doctor who told him, foul ungodly fellow he is ruining the lives of young women — he sent me to my room. And when he called me back again, my lady was stretched out, with her face pressed against the floor. She looked, to all appearances quite dead. I surmised she was not once your father told me that she was to be taken by cart to Bridewell prison that very evening. Sure enough, she was dragged most unhappily from the room and I watched from that very window there as your father superintended her being fixed to the awful vehicle by a rope bound to her arms.’

‘When, for God’s sake, did this happen?’ demanded he, pulling his hands free from the restraint of the weeping woman. Mrs Prudence answered to say that it had not been two minutes since the cart rolled away. ‘To be sure, had you been any faster in walking, you should have seen her out there for yourself.’ An agitation of mind immediately seized Tom in consequence of this thought, such that he was ready to fly from the house that instant in pursuit of his treasured lover.

He felt he must do something instantly. While his feet were ready to run — to follow, to find, to free the singular object of his heart — his hands had already, almost unknown to himself, begun to unfold Daisy’s note.

‘Do not follow me, Tom.’ This was the first line of her message to him. ‘I begged your father for a few moments to say my farewell to Prudence, and it is these moments I used to hastily pen this note to you. Forgive my scrawling hand but I must tell you not to follow me. In the first instance, we can neither of us know which road your father will have chosen for my journey; you cannot be sure of choosing the right one. Your father had, in our younger days, always been resolutely determined to believe that I never could be in earnest in my loving you, but if you run away in pursuit of me, he must comprehend and believe me capable of loving you very earnestly indeed and what a danger that shall be to us both. Our case will be utterly hopeless for the truth must then be out. Good Heavens! I realise I have forgotten to mention, your father knows not that you are to blame. Do you see, there is some hope of recovering our situation, so long as he knows not the truth. I shall not tell you whose name has been given in place of your own as the perpetrator of this crime because I should like you to appear convincingly outraged and surprised by it! Do as your father bids you. I must, my love, be gone. Play your part, Tom, and all may yet be well!’

What Tom’s part was, he did not exactly understand.

The was no great length of time produced for rumination upon the omitted details of this office as, within moments of Tom placing the note within his own pocket, Sir Charles entered the room. ‘Whatever has happened to Daisy?’ Tom asked affecting a tone of someone utterly ignorant of all happenings.

‘Bless me! Whatever has happened to Daisy! She is an adulterous slut, my boy. Pay it no concern. She shall be dealt with appropriately.’ What rage this inspired within Tom! Instinct would have him confess his own fault in pursuit of defending the honour of Daisy. Yet, her words span about his thoughts. If his father knew the truth, he would, perhaps immediately, attempt to enact some violent revenge upon Daisy or those people for whom she cared deeply.

Save for his father having suddenly developed theatrical talents, it was clear that Sir Charles neither blamed nor suspected his son. Even prior to Daisy naming Captain George Fielding as the illicit lover, Tom’s being responsible for the creation of this adulterous abomination did not once enter the peripherals of his father’s mind.

Long before she had married Sir Charles, Daisy had spoken adamantly and openly of her admiration and love for Tom. But Tom’s father had never been capable of seeing his son as anything greater than a disfigured idiot. Tom was, in the eyes of Sir Charles, bound always to look concomitantly hideous and ridiculous. If he could not see beyond this happenstantial mark on his son’s face, it was impossible he should believe anybody else might, especially pretty young women; and was not Daisy the prettiest of them all?

Daisy’s former confessed adoration of Tom was, in the mind of Sir Charles, by reason of her adoration for his inherited fortune. Now that Daisy was married to the father, she could have no reason to concern herself with the son. To Sir Charles, the thought never occurred, that in what he might view as an ugly mistake of nature, Daisy might see the height of all God’s creation.

In spite of all the evidence of their mutual affections, the old baronet had never once suspected his son’s treachery. Daisy smiled at Tom so perpetually because she pitied him; she spent so many hours in his singular company because she was not suffered to make or keep friends. It gratified Sir Charles to render his wife an isolated and lonely beauty — but his son, now, why should not he enjoy the company of his stepmother who might yet teach him to speak easily with womenfolk?

Daisy surely laughed in Tom’s company so often because social economy frequently produced a sharpened sense of humour in ugly men. Never had Sir Charles entertained any of the above as symptoms of love, much less of lust. That Tom had ever adored Daisy, Sir Charles did not doubt; it was, in part, the triumph of daily tormenting his son’s unrequited and hopeless admiration for this young woman that gave the old tyrant such pleasure in the possession of her.

‘I have been saying she was becoming a round thing, have not I?’ said Sir Charles, in the course of putting on his greatcoat. ‘Hang me, what a trusting fool I am become in my old age. It is George’s child — of course it is! Saucy slut would have passed it off as my own!’

‘By Gad! Hang me! George?’ exclaimed Tom, naturally exhibiting the surprise and alarm that had been Daisy’s hopeful expectation. ‘The deuce fetch me, George Fielding! Daisy has barely spoken to him in these past seven years. She is always avoiding him.’

‘Cuckolding whore!’ shouted his father, seemingly unable to keep that epitaph to himself any longer. ‘Perhaps she has barely spoken to him, but sure as a gun, she has been abed with him plenty! See what comfort he will be to her once she learns he is dead!’

‘Dead? But I was just with him, playing billiards. George isn’t dead!’

‘Not yet he isn’t. But you will, Tom, perform your duty by the stepmother you adore and kill the man who has debauched her in this foul manner.’ Sir Charles, appearing ready to quit the house at this strange and late hour, left the bedroom and began to step heavily towards the stairs.

He shouted across the hallway the remainder of his thoughts, ‘Thirsty for a fight as you always are — bless me! — I should hope you are capable of defending the honour of your family and enacting your revenge upon this whore. Has not she plagued your heart since you were a boy? You are not afraid to shoot your own cousin are you, Tom? The pretty hussy might have been duping you for twenty years but she will not get away with duping me! I ought to have had her sent to Bridewell the first time she flung herself at George!’ Though he could not see it, Tom could sense the excitement of a cruel jealousy behind his father’s eyes.

‘But what have you done to Daisy now?’ bellowed our hero, sticking his head over the threshold of the door. ‘What has happened to her? Have you sent her to Bridewell?’ The reader will remember that Tom already knew the answer to this question and will therefore congratulate the young man on his quick wit to feign absolute ignorance of the fact.

‘Don’t you worry about her, my boy,’ replied his father, pausing as he passed by the first steps on his journey downstairs. ‘She and her bastard will soon be rotting away in a gaol where they belong. Boldface slut! I have ordered her to be strung up to the back of a cart and belted with the horsewhip all the journey there. You can tell Mrs Prudence to stop her weeping.’ Mrs Prudence was now crying with an exceptionally loud vehemence. ‘It is only what she deserves. And you can tell your cousin before you kill him, that she and his bastard child were whipped dead on the road to London. That should give him something pleasant upon which to reflect!’

Hearing his father leave the house, Tom took Daisy’s note from his pocket again. ‘Do not follow me, Tom.’ This was the first line of her message to him and he read it again and again, considering if he would trust in her scheme and leave his pregnant lover at the mercy of this cart driver.

‘Do as your father bids you. I must, my love, be gone. Play your part, Tom, and all may yet be well!’ The unrequited, jilted admirer, destined to be only known as Daisy’s stepson and friend, this was his part.

Even if he could kill George — who was not innocent of many things, but was innocent of this — and convince his father to forgive and pardon Daisy, Tom felt he could not return to play that part for seven years more.

To resume this platonic performance — to witness every day this child be disguised as that of his own father. He could not tolerate the notion. Daisy and he would live together, they would own publicly their affections and he would have nobody take his place as the father of this child! Though I cannot say whether it was a very good one, Tom had, in these short moments of reflection, formed a scheme of his own.

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‘You’re a Doll, Daisy!’ Chapter Eight — In Which Sir Charles Learns Half the Truth.

The doctor, though deeply unamiable, was, if we were to weigh the sum of his learning, a man of sense, though not sensibility. It is, therefore, that Daisy did not doubt the man when he determined that life was still present in her husband.

A prevailing goodness in her heart made it impossible that she should be anything but relieved to hear that her husband was not dead. It had been a naturally good thought, and Daisy was pleased with her ability to think good things when her circumstances ought to excite musings of a more selfish and sinister genre. Sir Charles was not even very ill; his fall, so the doctor said, was likely a deliquium brought about through the combined effects of liquor and fatigue.

Taking in the prospect of her husband, who now rested, half-sleeping in her bed, our heroine had begun to feel that her evening of trial was over. Of course, it was not. Mrs Prudence, in a flutter of agitated fury with the tyrant baronet and feeling that the physician had shewed too much sympathy for the old man, put herself upon exposing his impolite behaviour to the doctor. ‘Sure, my master will not tell you,’ began she, sitting at the bedside, ‘that he fell from chasing his poor wife about her bedroom! Thank Heavens that his punishment was served so quickly before he frightened my poor lady to death. Drink will make a devil of any husband!’

‘And what, sir, do you mean by this?’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Why was the lady being chased about her room?’

Everyone looked at Sir Charles. The lightly bobbing head and closed eyes continued their sleeping appearance, and it seemed, after a moment, that he had not heard the question to answer it. Daisy was not displeased and, being very tired herself, hoped that would be the end of the doctor’s inquisition. ‘Because she was not offering what a wife ought to give,’ answered Mrs Prudence with a sour tone that left no clarity for determining whether it was Daisy’s reluctance or Sir Charles’ demand that was causing the offence.

‘Good God, sir!’ decried the doctor, standing to tower by the bedside. ‘And do you think to carry on this way when your wife’s condition is so delicate? May I recommend, sir, for the sake of your wife and child, that you leave her be till she is brought to the delivery bed and at least a month or so after that! Or I verily believe you will hunt her to death!’

This doctor had correctly assumed that the large, gallant stepson was the actual father of this child. Yet, it had also been his assumption, and an incorrect one, that Daisy’s child would be disguised as this stepson’s sibling. Being a man of conscience, the doctor would have happily outed the vile lovers the day he comprehended their awful affair, but two hundred pounds from Tom and a penchant for imprudent romance novels convinced him to take a role in this theatre of conspiracy. The doctor did not consider that Sir Charles would not know that his wife was pregnant at all.

Still a little in his cups and confused from the shock of his fall, Sir Charles first laughed, confused and hardly comprehending what he had heard. He might never have comprehended it and fallen instantly to sleep again had not Mrs Prudence, turning her eyes to Daisy’s fear-struck face, exclaimed loudly, ‘Lord help us! Sure, my master did not know a thing of my lady’s pregnancy till now. And for good reason too! Till tonight, he has made no eyes for the girl in two or three years. Lord help us! To be sure, I said the truth would out, did not I, my lady?’ Wringing her hands, Mrs Prudence found yet more to say on the matter. ‘I have told my lady that she has acted the part of a vile and wicked slut, and her punishment would come harsh and painful. You are beyond my help now, to be sure you are!’

Sir Charles opened his eyes. The doctor looked at Sir Charles, Sir Charles looked at Prudence, and Prudence continued to talk obstinately at Daisy. Our heroine did not hear a word more of this rebuke; her ears were too full with the sound of her terror-stricken heart. Daisy did not hear a word, that was, till her husband, having regained his faculties, ordered the doctor and Mrs Prudence from the room.

He spoke to his wife, who had found herself, moments earlier, fallen prostrate at the feet of her husband. Sir Charles stood furiously above her, ‘If you wish to live,’ said he in a voice sharp and quiet, ‘you will give me his name.’

That Daisy, who was caught in her betrayal of the most merciless of husbands, might have any cause to feel happy at this moment, seems to be impossible. And yet, it was when her husband asked her to name the offending father that our fearful heroine realised only she had been betrayed by the doctor and Mrs Prudence and not Tom.

Her passionate love for Tom might have induced her to own to Sir Charles that his own son was the child’s father. Yet her thoughts, in this moment of crisis, turned to pragmatism. Tom, she considered quickly, with her face hidden against the coarse fibres of the rug beneath her, had not yet brought his pecuniary affairs into order, and she did not know what control Sir Charles could exert over his son’s fortune if he was so provoked.

Besides this, she knew that if Sir Charles discovered Tom was the culprit, he would be inspired to enact the most awful revenge; this she did not doubt. They would be obliged to flee continually, that is, if she and Tom managed to ever escape. For Tom’s sake, for her sake and for the sake of their child, it was necessary to denounce her lover and blame another. There was only one name of any plausibility.

‘Captain Fielding,’ said she, barely lifting her head from the floor. ‘The child belongs to Captain George Fielding.’

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‘You’re a Doll, Daisy!’ Chapter Seven — In Which Sir Charles Remembers Daisy’s Beauty.

It was a regular habit of Tom’s to pass the evenings displaying the high flush of his youth and sportsmanship, but a certain resolution with Daisy had forced him to exhilarate his virile spirit that night in a billiards room and not her bedchamber.

The lady was quite bereft by the loss of his company; her attachment to him was immutable, and in all their years together, she had rarely cause to part with her love for even a few hours. How many adultresses might say that? Daisy wanted to tend to this wound in her heart — this sickness of being parted from Tom’s presence — away from company; does not the smile that yearns to be a frown weigh heavy upon a face that would not be looked at? Is not even the politest conversation a necessary irritant to the ear that yearns for silence?

I do not doubt that, should this young lady have been capable of suspending her own existence in the absence of her lover, she would have been pleased to turn to stone every moment his eyes were not upon her. She had been parted from him once in their youth for a great length of time; the passing of many months had no lessening effect upon the wound of this loss. A life without Tom, she knew already, was a miserable existence indeed.

Our heroine had successfully pled the case to Sir Charles; she was violently out of spirits and ought to be allowed to forgo the theatre that evening. Besides, they had seen this play four times already, and they neither liked it very much nor found it at all deserving of being titled ‘a comedy.’ He might pass the evening however he pleased without the dampening effects of her weary spirits weighing down his diversions.

Sir Charles would not have found Daisy’s weary spirit any weight upon his amusement. Beyond this conversation, he would not allow whatever went on in the mind of his wife to burden him for an instant. Daisy’s pleadings, therefore, could have been of no material influence upon her husband, yet, conveniently for this young wife, Sir Charles had already engaged himself to an appointment of cards at a gentleman’s club, having forgotten entirely about the play.

So long as she did not leave their lodgings nor suffer any visitors in her company, Daisy was free to be as ill-humoured as she pleased in the solace of only her own company.

Sir Charles had not cared a thing for his wife’s ill spirits when he had left the house that evening, and the passing of several hours and near a dozen glasses of a great variety of intoxicating liquids had not improved his concern for her; rather expectedly, it had caused him to forget that she had ever been out of spirits at all.

‘My darling, how do you do? I am sure I did not expect to see you till morning. Will not you be soon to your bed?’ said Daisy, mere moments after being rudely awoken in her bed, proficiently disguising her alarm with an accomplished smile.

‘Aye, child. Very soon, I hope I shall be to a bed, though I do not intend it to be mine,’ her husband replied, placing his candlestick at the bedside and getting under the sheet beside her. ‘And how pretty your person looks in this candlelight. Come here and kiss me, you hussy!’

‘Fie, sir! This is very impolite — fancy a man calling his own wife a hussy!’ Daisy exclaimed loudly, smiling and struggling to break free of the hold he had put suddenly on her shoulders. ‘I feel still quite unwell. I am really very out of humour with myself. I am sure my temper is quite foul at present. Another night, perhaps.’ Daisy had now released herself of his grip, escaped the bedsheet, and was seeking protection behind a bedpost.

‘I’ll call you far worse things than a hussy, child, if you do not give way tonight,’ shouted he, too freeing himself of the bedsheet and his breeches, stockings and shirt. ‘Hang me if I care a thing for your humours! All the better if you do have a foul temper, for I ever did love a saucy woman. Run your pretty, bold mouth at me, child. I shall only kiss it the harder. Now come back here, little girl, sit yourself over my knee and let your old man kiss you.’

‘Pray, sir, pray,’ said Daisy in a tender bellow, quite horrified at the sight before her and not sure what else she might say to delay the matter. Affecting a yawn, she continued, ‘It is so late. I will surely make much better company for you in the morning. I think, does not fruit taste all the sweeter if you wait for it to ripen in its own time.’ And here, she leapt across the length of the room.

‘Do not think I am too old to run after you, strumpet!’ ejaculated her husband, leaping after her. It had been many years since a chase such as this, but it was impossible that our lady could have yet forgotten her husband’s fancy for hunting her about the house in this manner. ‘Pray, sir. Let us not exhaust ourselves in this way,’ laughed she. ‘Return to me in the morning, and indeed, I will be waiting to receive you. Here, I shall ring the bell for some tea. Tea will calm both our spirits.’

‘Ring that bell, you teasing slut, and I shall wring your neck!’ Daisy did not disbelieve him. If only Tom were within hearing of all this! Still, better, in fact, that he was not. His defence of Daisy had always been vehement. What humour Sir Charles found in these skirmishes with his son; how Tom would become a merry object of derision and ridicule in the eyes of his father, yet, did not their mutual affection for violence and weapons of all genres make an eventual fatality such a likely prospect?

On contemplation, Daisy felt she was glad that Tom was gone from the house. She laughed in a way that she hoped would please and placate her husband and slipped from his sausage-fingered grip once again. ‘Have a care, sir!’ began she with a pretty smile. ‘Let us not struggle about the room in this way.’

‘Struggle, child!’ boomed the old tyrant in an awful voice. ‘The next time I get hold of you, I tell you, you’ll have something to struggle with!’

‘Pray, do be civil! This is being very rude, sir! See here, you have torn my nightgown!’

Sir Charles, rabid with drink and revisited by an eruption of passionate vigour he thought himself to have parted ways with many years ago, would not be content till he had ripped the whole gown from the shoulders of our heroine, or till he was dead. Daisy had always been possessed with repulsion when on the receiving end of her husband’s passions and so long had Tom been her only lover.

She felt all the offence to him and his unborn child. It appeared to our young lady that to give way to such advances would be a treachery worthy of the most appalling execution. In her heart, she was Tom’s wife, and whatever the circumstances, she would not be brought to betray him.

Daisy fled about the room from corner to corner, her nightgown losing further stitches of its integrity with every temporary hold made by the old toad. Daisy would not tire, nor lose her integrity and ran about her bedchamber, seeking momentary relief on and behind furniture, till Sir Charles collapsed, like a fallen chimney, to the floor. A scream brought Mrs Prudence into the room, and the passing of twenty minutes brought the doctor.

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‘You’re a Doll, Daisy!’ Chapter Six — In Which Tom Takes Pragmatically to Fatherhood.

Beyond the steamy windows of that rented house on Milsom Street, the gay guests and residents of Bath flitted and meandered about in all the glory of the most constant sun that had been produced of any day yet that week. It really was a glorious day.

The arm-linked girls, the bustling old widow, the pretty young creature in sprig muslin and her enamoured beau were all making their dance on the pavement. Hot with the effects of yet unquenched anticipation, Daisy sat by the window of her bedroom and, enjoying that regularly occurring repose of her ancient husband, was struck to the heart by meeting eyes with her lover who was returning home.

So easily won was she by a single glance from this man. Tom stopped suddenly in the street; he had an armful of little parcels and, shifting their weight to only his left arm, he employed the service of the other to doff his hat to the beauty in the window. He could love her in the street, amongst the sharp eyes of onlookers, but only at a studied distance. It was then that he waved to her and, for a moment, Daisy forgot that Tom was not her husband.

I will forbear entering into the precise details of Tom’s journey from the street below into Daisy’s apartment, but let it be said, in a most handsome and gallant manner did the pretty giant make the necessary walk. The spot in the street in which he had last stood continued to hold Daisy’s attention.

She attempted in vain to reclaim that forgetful instant; she attempted in vain to forget that his awful father was truly her husband. After a few moments of searching for that delightful feeling, Daisy was met with another. She felt the soft salutations of his tongue upon her ear.

Her door opened and that voice, brimming with West End airs, said, ‘What ho, Dais! How are things?’ She turned to discover the fellow, whose eyes were studded with utter delight, standing, in all his great height, by her bed. Was not this the most perfect man in all the world?

‘By Gad, Daisy. I tell you, my damn pockets felt light on the walk home today!’

Daisy smiled a real smile. ‘But what heavy arms, though! What on Earth have you been buying? Why did not you take a servant out with you? It is mighty strange for people to see a nobleman’s son walking through the streets holding all his own parcels!’

‘Hang what anybody thinks, Daisy. I should not have had any man in the world but I carry these things home to you!’

‘Oh,’ Daisy sighed, so pleased with his declaration that she did not think to ask what was in the parcels. Could her heart really be conscious of its agitations and fear at present? That sweet face, overcome with a joyous sort of pride — how could she take in the perfection of its presence and feel anything but utter contentedness? If only — if only he could always be at her side. Her mind had stumbled upon that blissful, forgetful thought once again. There was no husband in her heart but Tom.

‘Well — would not you like to open them?’ replied Tom, pouring the heap atop the bed.

‘I am certain I have never been in such eager anticipation in all my life, Tom. Whatever could you have bought me!’

Dear Tom, I must tell the reader, had not bought a single thing for Daisy. There were, within these parcels, two tiny sheets of linen for a crib, some knitted mittens in soft blue wool, three tiny plain cotton gowns, an extraordinarily small pair of silk shoes, and a white bonnet overgrown with the most elaborate floral stitches; it was this Daisy took instantly into her hands. ‘Odd’s life, Daisy! Do not you see how small it is? Hang me if that is not the smallest bonnet I’ve ever seen in all my life! What!’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, it is very small,’ replied Daisy quietly, smiling a strange smile.

‘By Gad! That’s a sorry smile you’re pulling.’ Tom’s eye could discern the markings of a true Daisy smile, and this was not her happy smile, nor was it her false smile; it was something altogether different. ‘It’s not bad luck or something, is it, Dais? Hang it… I hadn’t thought of that. It was a little shop I walked past, that’s all. I can give them away to some–’

‘No! Good Heavens! Do not give them away,’ said she in absolute earnest, almost breaking into a sob that had crept upon her unnoticed. ‘They are all quite perfect. I could not have bought a thing better myself! I have never in all my life made nor bought a thing for– when you are made certain of disappointment, who would further raise their hopes? And yet, I am sure I never once hoped for a child if it were not yours, Tom. Do you think God means to tell us something?’

Daisy held still the little white bonnet in her hands. There had been one not unlike this — she remembered it with astounding vividity — in a milliner’s shop window she had once been in the habit of viewing.

Her younger sister was only a few days old the first time she saw it; our young heroine, then a grand ten years old, possessed, at that exact moment, not even a tenth of its price, and for many days she had walked to visit her sister’s bonnet, as it became in her mind.

She had written to her brother to ask him for the necessary funds but he was spent up for the time being and would have no means of conveying the money to her till he could go home to his father. It mattered not; a friend of her mother, a young gentleman of about three or four-and-twenty bought the bonnet for Daisy.

She cried a real, happy cry and clasped her wiry little arms about his neck. Daisy cried often at that age. The gentleman had also gifted Daisy a five-pound note to do with ‘as you like, my little wife.’ Daisy gave the money to her mother who permitted her daughter to buy some ribbons which the girl knotted into a sort-of bracelet.

Our heroine was still in possession of that ribbon jewellery. It lived in a drawer near to her bed in which she kept a stock of handkerchiefs, a little phial of hartshorn salts and a pretty enamel box of cigars for Tom, who only liked to smoke after being abed with his elderly father’s wife.

‘Oh,’ sighed she half-despondently, ‘I really think Mrs Prudence cannot be right. What matters it how a child came to be? One child born cannot be more destined for eternal misery than another simply because their parents are not and cannot be married.’

‘The deuce fetch me if I cannot provide for the eternal happiness of my own child, Daisy! We must do all but that which we cannot do. I have thought on it at great length.’

‘Have you really?’ said she with genuine surprise. ‘But we cannot do the one thing of any material purpose and we cannot change how or when this child was brought into being. I really think we can only yet hope that Mrs Prudence is misguided in her notions; I am sure she means only to moralise us.’

‘I don’t know, Dais. What if the old woman is not wrong?’

‘If she is not wrong — Oh!’ Daisy cried out, falling into Tom’s great arms. ‘If she is not wrong, then am not I damned too? For my mother was never lawfully married to any man. And for that, will all her children be punished for eternity? There is something sounding quite unchristian in all of that!’

‘By Gad, Dais. What’s the matter? You are crying again. It is not like you to cry so. Does your bladder ail you? I can fetch the doctor. And, faith, Dais! How could a perfect creature like you be damned for no good reason at all? What have you ever done deserving of damnation? I’m sure you’ve never done a thing wrong a day of your life.’ Here, Tom kissed his father’s wife; a happily received and tender act of consolement. ‘Let me fetch you the doctor, Daisy. You do not look well.’

‘No, good Heavens, do not call the doctor! But what can we do for this child? The one thing we could do is something that cannot lawfully be done. We cannot get married, Tom. We must surely run off. Even if I would — and I would not — wish to disguise the child as your father’s, he should not believe me. He may be old, but he is not senile. So we must live illegitimately together. What a crime Mrs Prudence says that shall be! Unless, oh, unless–’ Here Daisy was belied to a most ferocious attack of weeping. ‘…unless you mean to abandon me!’

Tom mopped her tears with the corner of one of the tiny cotton gowns. ‘Abandon you! Odd’s life, Daisy! If I did not suspect all this child-growing business to have weakened your mind, I should really be quite offended. But as it is, I am not going to abandon you. My father was fifty when I was born, Dais. He surely cannot live too much longer. The very day you are his widow, I shall make you my wife. One day, I shall set it all right. But till then — as I had been saying — I have been thinking on all this and I really believe there are some things we might do.’

Dear Tom had indeed been thinking on what he might do to provide for the eternal happiness of the woman he would make his wife and the child she would shortly deliver him. He was not married to Daisy, and this he could not yet correct. But could he be, then he would in an instant, and besides, the two had, many years ago, been engaged to be married, which he believed ought to count for something.

He loved no other woman, and she no other man. They were unwaveringly faithful to one another. Each knew the very depths of the other’s heart. Their passion was undeniably a sin and a crime in the face of her marriage to his father but they could stop all that for a short while, purify their souls, wait to get married and then live happily ever after.

‘…so, I’ll sell my properties and put all the money somewhere my father cannot get at it. Once that’s all sorted, we’ll get a little cottage somewhere quiet. Tell everyone that we’re married, but separate beds and all that till we can truly be wed. Go to church every Sunday. Get the little chap — or girl — christened. Make them learn their prayers and that sort of thing. I really can’t see how things could go sour. What!’

‘I see,’ replied Daisy, who was now sitting on the bed amongst the heap of infant things. ‘This is all very practical of you, Tom. I am quite impressed!’

‘Faith, nothing will turn a man to pragmatism like impending fatherhood!’

‘And do you really think that we must keep to separate beds? You said yourself that we are, in our hearts, married, and if we could be, we would be. The child is made already; the damage, in that respect, is long done. I do not see what good keeping to separate beds might do and — good Heavens! — it might be years before your father dies!’

‘My wife! That is what I shall soon call you. Faith, Lady Finsbury, how sweet it shall sound upon you when you are my wife. I like your reasoning,’ smiled Tom, very pleased with how Daisy had set her tender caresses upon the more delicate parts of his person. ‘Yet I had thought, before I knew about the child, that you had been more — well, you know — than usual of late. I could not swear that I was in any way unhappy with the change. By Gad, Daisy! Look at you! What sensible man could complain that the prettiest woman in the world was desiring him too often? But the doctor himself said the condition will set your mind at a funny angle. And if you cannot think clearly, then I must do so for both of us. I will enquire with some men of theology to help us come to an answer on that question, Dais. But till then, perhaps it’s best to play things cautiously. It is best, I think, if I keep from your bed.’

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You’re a Doll, Daisy! Chapter Five — Containing Some Sad Reflections and a Catheter.

‘Brother, what would you say to me now? Tom and I went to church this morning with Mrs Prudence. It was really nothing troublesome at all; we sang a little and sat mostly. “How comes my sister to be going to church on a Sunday morning?” — I quite heard you say it, my dear. It was Tom’s idea. Well, to be particular, it was Mrs Prudence’s idea that Tom took on as his own till I agreed to the scheme. I did not write a thing to you yesterday, for I was quite sure, within another day, I would join you in eternal life. I shall not burden you with the intimate details, but it is enough to say I really thought I would die. I persuaded Mrs Prudence to call for me a doctor.’

‘She says I will infect this child’s soul if I do not cleanse my own. I will condemn it to a life of misery if it is born into sin. Yet what can I do? Tom and I would marry this instant and she knows very well we cannot. How I wish you could tell me the old woman is wrong! I thought of you, my dear, and the miserable end you were met with. What did you ever do wrong but be born to our mother? I could not bear the thought — what woman could? — to deliver a child born to hang. For a moment, I wished earnestly that I would die.’

‘Yet, when this medical misery brought me the prospect of my own end, I wanted nothing more than to live. The threats put on this innocent child by Mrs Prudence caused me to weep as if I had been a baby myself. So that, by the time the doctor arrived, I was half-dead already with the fright. Sir Charles was sleeping in the sitting-room and so only the good woman attended me with the doctor.’

‘He was not a pleasant man and complained greatly about being hushed through the hallways. I had no intention of confessing my condition to him lest he convey the information to my husband; Mrs Prudence made me look a fool by shortly betraying me. I said I thought the detail was of no great significance. “Significance, woman!” shouted the awful man, “when a woman is pregnant, it is almost the only detail of significance.” He went on and on at me, rebuking my sex in general for always thinking they knew better than men trained in the practice of medicine. Mrs Prudence was scarlet red by the time he had come to the end of his point and reminded him violently that I was no woman but Lady Finsbury; doctor or no, he was nought but a commoner, and his patient was a nobleman’s wife. He soon remembered himself.’

‘What a timely reminder! For I was shortly to produce a new trial for his temper. “Suppression of the waters.” For that was my condition, Brother. “Was no uncommon thing in pregnant women, and if the issue did not correct itself, he would come to the house and correct it himself twice each day.” I am sure I did not understand a word of his meaning, or I should have run from the room at that moment. I asked him, “And how do you mean to correct it?” The butcher turned about with a most horrendous instrument in his hand and called it a catheter. “And where do you intend to put that, sir!” I was already out of bed and ready to quit the room. “Sure, it is for the best that her ladyship does not learn the answer to that question,” came no reassurance at all from Prudence.’

‘I have always said I hate a doctor, have not I? And yet, till this moment, I had entirely forgotten why. It is not, as some would have it, because they enjoy inflicting torment. I am sure there is no real appearance of that. But they make themselves such stoney gods — or perhaps they are all born that way. It appears to me, that they do not comprehend they inflict any torment at all. The doctor did not take Mrs Prudence’s hint and told me very well what he intended to do. “I would sooner die!” said I, flinging to the door, “And soon you shall, Lady Finsbury, if you will not lie down on this bed for me to get at you with my instrument!” shouted the wicked doctor. My dear Tom must have been hovering in the hall because, before I had time to think of a reply, he had burst open the door — knocking me to the floor — and was ready to fight the doctor.’

‘For a few minutes, the room fell into chaos. Tom had the doctor’s tiny neck wrung in his beautiful, giant hands, declaring the man a wicked ravisher and ordering Prudence to fetch him a sword. “Pray, pray, dear Tom,” began I very sweetly, tapping at his arm like a little dove, “pray, release this man. He is no ravisher. He is a doctor.” Tom unclasped the physician at once, leaving him to clatter to the floor, and he turned to me and enclasped me in his great arms and said, with the sweetest look I ever saw, “And are you really so ill, Daisy?” The doctor, rising to Tom’s shoulders, answered for me, “Your wife, sir, is not very ill. She suffers a malady not uncommon for women at her month of pregnancy.” Oh, to hear myself be called his wife, how my heart did swell! But how this set the room all into a tumult once again!’

‘In the warmth of Tom’s enormous arms, I melted like a little candlestick and pressed my face against the white of his shirt so that I should not see his eyes. I did not know then if he would be angry that I had forborne telling him. “And, is it true, Daisy?” said he, gently prying my face from its resting place. “Your wife, sir–” began the doctor, before being interrupted by Prudence, “That is not Lady Finsbury’s husband, sir. That is her stepson.” Tom and I cared nothing for a word they either said, and he only repeated to me, “By Gad! Tell me — tell me it is true, Daisy! But, hang me! Hang my doubting mind! Certainly, it cannot be true. Tell me it is the truth, and I shall kiss you in the street for all the world to see.” I laughed and tumbled down into his arms once again. “That is a very odd way to speak to your mother. Will you put her down, sir!” said the doctor, and I laughed again, my dear.’

‘Tom did not release me but, all of a sudden, remembering that the doctor was there for my sake, demanded reassurance that all was well with the child and me. “You are very free, sir, in the company of your stepmother,” said the doctor, stiffening his mien and not answering Tom’s question. “Sure, you would not like to know the freedoms Mr Finsbury takes with her. If his father knew but half of it, he would have Lady Finsbury’s pretty little neck twisted by the rope till her head fell clean off — just like he did her mother!” I need not tell you who spoke this amusing reflection. Unless the doctor is an idiot, he is now privy to the paternal claims on this child. Mrs Prudence raised my dear Tom’s temper severely. It was a wicked tease, for she well knows it is his greatest fear that his father will have me hanged. To prevent the room from falling into chaos once again, I cried out that my pain had become unbearable (it really had) and asked the doctor had not he some draught he could give me?’

‘The doctor would have given me no draught. The procedure, said he, could take only a few minutes, and if I did not fuss nor whine, there should be no cause for any pain greater than that which any woman could burden. His temper still greatly risen, Tom knocked the man to the floor and informed him, for every cry I made, he would make the doctor cry out twice as hard. The man soon gave me a little phial of something, and I remember nothing of what happened next. Mrs Prudence informs me the doctor intends to return in the morning if my water does not part with me before eight o’clock. Drat — the old tyrant is awake, and I must fly to him with a happy little face. I best practice my laughter, my dear. What a funny sort of life I have had, indeed! I am sure I shall finish this letter shortly.’

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Do not read if you wish to avoid spoilers!There’s nothing worse than a book spoiler unless, like me, you can appreciate and enjoy tragic tales much better when you are given the foresight to emotionally prepare for any unpleasant surprises awaiting the characters.

‘Oh dear, Maria!’ — a novel split into three (roughly 300-page) volumes is not quite a tragedy. ODM is intended to be funny and farcical. It is mostly a satire and pseudo Regency romance but Maria’s story is not a happy one, and its ending will leave much to be desired for lovers of the HEA (Happily Ever After).

The first volume/book of ‘Oh dear, Maria!’ details a year in the life of the titular character after she marries Mr Sidney Jackson Jr., Esq., M.P.

Below, you will find content warnings, a brief synopsis and specific details of scenes with difficult or upsetting content.

Content Warnings

This story contains scenes of physical assault, sexual assault, miscarriage and acute emotional distress. It also contains references to domestic violence, suicide, slavery, racism, mental health problems, and the death of a child. There is no explicit detail of sexual activity in the book, though many references to sexual desires and implied scenes of sexual activity.

Synopsis

‘Oh dear, Maria! Part One’ follows a turbulent year in the life of Maria Harrington, spoilt child, emotional grenade, devout Methodist, ignorant abolitionist and abuse victim who seems most comfortable in her marriage when it replicates the feelings of her childhood with her violent and controlling father. Maria is forced by her father to marry the deceptive libertine (Mr Jackson) to whom she secretly lost her virginity.

After their marriage, Maria quickly falls head-over-heels for Mr Jackson once again. He remains resolutely uninterested in her beyond sexual gratification and ignores her obviously-declining emotional stability. Maria eventually leaves her husband to live with her cousin, Ralph, a doctor and employer of her best friend, Penny. Penny is the sister of a Black Methodist preacher. While living at Ralph’s home, Maria is involved in an abolitionist petition. Maria’s leaving impacts Mr Jackson significantly and he uses his position in Parliament to engage with the abolitionist petition to gain her good favour.

Maria again becomes obsessively attached to Mr Jackson and begins encouraging him to be controlling and sexually violent. Mr Jackson becomes increasingly concerned for Maria’s mental stability but cannot resist engaging in her erratic sexual behaviour. As others become concerned for Maria and begin to mistakenly believe that Mr Jackson is abusive towards her, Maria furiously defends him. This leads to behaviour that causes Maria to miscarry a pregnancy. It is revealed that Mr Jackson lost an illegitimate daughter to a fever only a year earlier. Maria blames herself for losing his second child and appears detached from her own feelings about the loss. Throughout the novel, Maria’s former abuse at the hands of her father becomes more obvious, and it is lastly revealed that Maria experienced seizures as a young child caused by her mother intentionally feeding her salt water.

Grief

Parts of the book are narrated through Maria’s letters to her dead grandfather. Maria is still dealing with her grief for his loss.

Physical Assault

At the end of Chapter 24, Maria is slapped across the face by her brother-in-law, Richard.

Hints of the physical abuse Maria has suffered by her father increase throughout the book and in Chapter 36, we will see her father squeezing her arm and striking her hard across the face.

Maria clearly fantasises about her husband being sexually violent towards her. In Chapter 33, Maria admits to another character that the bruises on her neck are from Mr Jackson choking her, after she had asked him to.

Sexual Assault

In Chapter 28, Maria’s brother-in-law, Richard, becomes enraged with her and begins to kiss and grope her against her will. He attempts to force her into accepting his sexual advances. Maria threatens to stab herself with a letter knife if he will not leave her alone; he persists in the attack. He is prevented from completing the act when a parliamentary colleague disturbs the scene.

Miscarriage

In Chapter 33, Maria holds her breath in a fit of rage while sitting by the sea, she falls into the water and is almost drowned. Later she begins bleeding significantly in a bath. She miscarries a second-trimester pregnancy she did not inform her husband of.

Acute Emotional Distress

Maria’s father is, throughout the book, dismissive and unpleasant about Maria’s emotional instability. Many situations, sometimes benign, sometimes unpleasant, throw Maria into an emotional spiral — her emotional distress is often self-blaming and self-flagellating and she will routinely hold her breath until she faints to avoid emotional distress.

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You’re a Doll, Daisy! Chapter Four — In which Daisy Contemplates the Length of Eternity.

It is not an uncommon thing for a serving woman, advanced in her years, to take up the role of a universal fortune teller with every young woman in her familiar acquaintance.

The foibles of the female fate become rather easy to predict when one has seen the same bleak patterns embroidered to their last stitch a dozen times before. There is a secret aspect of the world concerning women, viewable only to women. Mrs Prudence knew and had long known Daisy’s little secret and there was, to her mind, nothing of greater importance to a pregnant woman than to avoid low spirits and wicked thoughts.

The impressions made upon a weak mind could well prove fatal to a mother and her child. It cannot be said that a great many people heard Mrs Prudence’s puritanical exclamations without thinking her a strange relic of the century past. Daisy was, and had long been, the primary object of Mrs Prudence’s matriarchal affections; she loved Daisy and thus she scorned her relentlessly.

One of the foremost constitutional particulars of many a young lady belongs to a clandestine dimension. A husband, perhaps, may notice this occurrence. A lady’s maid certainly will; or, in Daisy’s case, her stepson. Tom did not, though, perceive its partial and confusing absence.

Nature had put our heroine upon her guard, but nature, contrary creature she is, had also put on appearances that left dear Daisy, for many months, in doubt of her maternal position; that is to say, the bloody occurrence intermittently persisted.

Mrs Prudence had long observed these flutterings of female confusion and had watched for growing signifiers that the great law of the animal economy was at work; the good woman was now as satisfied as our heroine that Daisy was pregnant with what could only be Tom Finsbury’s child.

It had been an odd sort of day. Daisy had not risen from her bed. She would not admit even Tom and only saw Sir Charles because he would not be refused. The girl who was always perfectly at ease with the world was now all irritability, fidgeting and wittering; Daisy was suffering from what could only be described as a fit of hysterics.

‘My lady must think upon it, that the soul of any young woman will fill a vacancy in Hell. Sure, the Devil is not particular. But those of the young mother, these are the souls that need most saving; a mother shall drag more than just her own soul down to that inferno,’ said Mrs Prudence, mopping Daisy’s affrighted brow with a damp cloth.

Daisy, consumed as she was with the unagreeable nature of her present predicament, did not hear a word of Prudence’s preaching, certainly not the mention of young mothers. How she wished she might have diverted her thoughts by listening to the old woman’s repetitious, maternal witterings! Beneath the brimstone of Mrs Prudence’s impassioned ramblings, there was a persistent hope that — one day — Daisy might yet be redeemed.

What hope could there be now? It was, indeed it was, much too late for that. The winds of Providence, which had hitherto allowed our heroine such happiness in the arms of Tom, had swiftly and unexpectedly turned against her. You see, in almost six-and-thirty hours, Daisy had hovered above her chamber pot, all to no avail. At first, she had thought little of it, but time was not a friend to her in this ailment, and every hour that passed brought no passing of water but only increased agitation and, at length, pains and paroxysms that left our young lady certain she would die before the day’s end.

‘Prudence, I think you must fetch me a physician.’

‘Sure, my lady, I would do so gladly. But Sir Charles has ordered me to do no such thing, for he said these men will take a feeble female mind and fill it with all notions of ailments so that she will never again think herself well a day of her life. My master has strictly forbidden any interference from medical men — he will not have a hypochondriac for a wife.’

‘You may tell your master that without any such interference, he may soon have no wife at all!’ Speaking the agitations of her mind aloud could not relieve Daisy’s fears; it served only to increase her anxieties. The fear, the ever-swelling, unrelenting fear, was far more unpleasant than the pain itself. ‘Good God, Pru! Do not you understand me? If I see not a physician soon, I am sure I will die!’

‘Sure, my lady, these nervous symptoms may like to be very severe, but the more you pay them mind, the worse they shall become. A good woman must learn to hold her nerve. Do not I always say that sin decays the mind; my lady would be better to call for a priest than a doctor, if you won’t mind my saying so.’

Daisy wept.

‘Sure, I never intended to make her ladyship cry!’

‘Please, Prudence,’ replied Daisy with a weak voice and strong earnestness, ‘I fear my time has come, and I do not want to die. Will not you believe me when I say I am in desperate want of a doctor? If you will not provide me with a doctor, at least bring Tom to me so that I may implore him to save my life.’

‘Save your life? Well, my lady, you pregnant women will go and get all sorts of ideas into your–’

‘Pregnant!’ exclaimed Daisy, quite forgetting her imminent death. ‘Who said anything about pregnancy? What do you know of pregnancy, Mrs Prudence?’

‘Sure, my mother was a midwife. I wager I know far more of it than you do, my lady. And I tell you, it is not uncommon for the weak-minded women to fall into hysterics at the change and pains they are to undergo. And do I not always say that a sinful mind will be a–’

‘Yes, yes!’ said Daisy with impatience. ‘But do you mean to say that you have found out my secret and said nothing of it to me till now?’

‘I have hinted long enough. I supposed her ladyship did not like me to mention it, which I did not wonder at, assuming it is the fruit of your vile sluttishness.’

For a brief moment, Daisy smiled. ‘And have you told anybody else? Sir Charles? Tom? Any servants of our house or another?’

‘I am sure I have not told a soul!’ replied Mrs Prudence appearing rather offended.

‘Oh, good lady!’ cried out Daisy, pulling the serving woman into her arms. ‘You are a kind friend to me. You must help me, Prudence. I am struck down with no fit of hysteria. Would to Heaven I was! My calamity is entirely of the physical realm. For near two days, try as I might, my water will not part with me at all.’

‘Sure, my lady has drank very little water to part with. You have refused every cup brought to your lips.’

‘That, Prudence, is the effect and not the cause. I am tormented by the most excruciating discomfort. I really think this mischief shall not resolve itself. Will not you, good lady, call for me a doctor?’

If she would refuse to help, then Daisy would be left with no option but to confess herself to Sir Charles. Wretch he was, I wonder he would not have subjected his wife to this violent death as justice for her crime — Daisy wondered this too. At length, Mrs Prudence answered, ‘Aye, I shall fetch a doctor for my lady. Heaven knows how I shall do so without my master catching wind of it.’

‘Good Mrs Prudence! Are not you, my dear, the best of women?’

When she knew a doctor had been called for, our heroine had the patience to listen to her woman’s moralising once again. She wanted the diversion. Imagine, then, her horror when these heavy words did not amuse her, or fill her heart with sentiments of familial affection, but brought her to those useless tears once again! Her security from death was not promised; her child’s security was not promised — Tom’s child — good Heavens! There was no cheerful outlook to be found and in no part of this awful event could our ever-good-humoured heroine find any cause for laughter. She loved Tom; she had always and only loved Tom.

‘…He visits the sins of the mothers upon the children. Does not my lady consider this? If she will not unblemish her soul before the day of reckoning, this child shall be base-born and damned to a life of misery here and hereafter. Your rotting soul will poison that of an innocent. There is no crime worse. A mother who cares not for the soul of her child deserves to be drowned for the witch she is. Sure, carry on your criminal ways, and that child shall be born to hang — just like your elder brother. That is if it survives so long and the base-born rarely do. Did not your own whore mother have a dozen children, and now only remains you and Mr Freddy — whose vices ought to break your heart. What a thing to do, my lady, to cast your poor child down to a cradle of thorns; the only embrace it shall ever know is that of the demons who shall tear apart its tiny limbs.’

‘Good Heavens, Prudence! I cannot bear for you to go on in this manner.’ Daisy wept into her pillow. The scent of Tom lingered on it still; this caused Daisy to cry all the more. ‘And my mother never had twelve children. You know very well she did not!’

‘Half-a-dozen or a dozen; it’s all the same to wrinkle-bellied whores! Heed my word or do not, my lady, but if you do not repent shortly, that child shall live to wish it had never been born at all.’

Daisy clutched her stomach and wept again. Fortunately arresting the tongue of Mrs Prudence from inducing any further weeping fits came news that the doctor had, at last, arrived.

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