Lying here in bed, for I am become a bedridden old bag of bones, I look back at my wasted life and wonder why it should be prolonged in this unreasonable manner. Letizia! Did either of you young people realise that Letizia means gladness? However, as you insist on an exchange of compliments between this poor infant and myself, why, let your wife kiss her with her own fresh lips and tell her that once the lips of another Letizia were as fresh. I have just picked up the mirror and looked at myself. When I die, ah, mon dieu, when, when ... let me be crumpled up and flung into the nearest wastepaper basket.
Your affectionate ancestor,
Letizia the First.
By the way, I don’t think I’ve written since Master Caleb celebrated his coming of age by sacking all of the older workmen in the factory three months after they presented him with a token of esteem and respect. I understand they were informed that he only took this step for their own good, because he was afraid that they were getting too old for the dangerous trade of making rockets! The Peculiars made an attempt to recapture him from the Church of England (in which your father had recently invested) by offering him a vacant apostolic seat. Caleb replied that he could not see his way to occupy such a position satisfactorily. True enough, for his behind has swollen like a pumpkin in the sun. The pleasant-faced young woman who reads aloud to me is a most capable gossip. I am getting a new insight into local affairs.
Nancy wished that she could meet this strange old woman whose fierce blood ran in the veins of the raspberry-coloured monkey at her breast that was growing daily so much more like a human being. But she and Bram agreed that it would be foolish to involve themselves in the domesticity either of his family or of hers. They must only have one aim, and that must be the joint engagement.
“Once we separate, things will never be the same again,” Nancy said.
“Oh, don’t I know it, dearest! But we won’t separate.”
Nor did they. Difficult though it was sometimes, they did always manage to keep together, those rogues and vagabonds, and what is more they did manage to keep Letizia with them.
“I wonder you don’t let your little girl stay with some relation while you’re on tour,” a jealous mother would observe.
“I like to have her with me during these first years. Time enough to lose her when she goes to school,” Nancy would reply.
“But surely the continual change and travelling cannot be good for so young a child?” the critic would insist.