Mrs Fytton's Country Life (47 page)

And Angela Fytton has long since put the memorandum book of the redoubtable Mrs Maria Brydges to the back of the bookshelf for occasional reference only. And she continues to make her own mistakes from time to time. For it does not do in this life to be seen to be too clever by half. Angela Fytton is now a pragmatist, not a country dreamer. She knows that a woman must learn both to swoon, when swooning is required, and to shin up a ladder and fix the roof when that is also required. Her task in life is to be sure not to do the swooning bit when she is
up
the ladder. Get that right, baby, thinks Mrs Angela Fytton, and you too may find yourself saying to your hives one night that life, on the whole, is Good.

Very good.

Addendum

The Rudges, of course, had to leave. They simply could not bear the vandalism prevalent in the community of Staithe.

Why, whatever might the local miscreants not do to their swimming-pool filters and suchlike when they were away? Let alone those nasty, omnipresent leaves. So they moved on. Somewhere else. Maybe to a village near you.

Select
Bibliography

Bishop, Frederick (late cuisiniere to St James's Palace, Earl Grey, the Marquis of Stafford, Baron Rothsc
hild, Earl Norbury, Captain Dun
combe and many of the first families of the Kingdom),
The Wife's Own Book of Cookery
(1856).

Although several of the recipes and pronouncements on a well-run household come verbatim from this book - a happy find which, of course, reflects its times and predates Isabella Beeton by five years -the memorandum book of Maria Brydges is wholly invented. Filbee, Marjorie,
A Woman's Place
(Ebury Press, 1980) Fisher, Helen,
Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce
(Simon and Schuster,
1993).
Very regrettably now out of print.

Glob, P. V.,
The Bog People
(Faber
-
and Faber,
1969)
Mass Observation,
Report of People's Homes
(1943)
Mendelsohn, Sara, and Crawford, Patricia,
Women in Early Modern England
(Oxford University Press,
1998)