Lady Rosamond's book

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

THE PREAMBLE.

Stanton Court, August 21.

I FOUND the original of this book (1710) in my father's library. Remembering well, when I was a child, how my dear and honored mother used to value it, and how she used sometimes to read to us young ones little bits therefrom, I was led to peruse it myself; and since that time I have amused my leisure hours by making a fair copy of the chronicle (for such it really is) as a present to my dear child and charge, the Lady Lucy Stanton.

Amy Rosamond Stanton, spoken of at the end of the book, was my grandmother, my father's mother. She was in many respects a peculiar person, very beautiful and accomplished, but uncommonly retiring and serious in her tastes, given to study and solitary meditation, specially after the death of her husband. My mother ever loved her as an own mother, and we have still her portrait. It represents a beautiful woman indeed, but so absolutely fair and colorless as to seem almost unreal.

There is a tradition in the family that this wonderful fairness is derived from a certain personage called "The Fair Dame of Stanton," whom one of the Lords of Stanton married in foreign parts. The story goes that this fair dame was one of those strange creatures, neither quite spiritual nor yet wholly human, a kind of Melusina or Tiphane Le Fee, and that she vanished at last in some strange fashion, leaving two children. The common people, and some who should be above such notions, believe that the Fair Dame doth sometimes return in the person of one of her descendants, and that such a return always bodes woe to the family. But this is all nonsense. So much is true that the lady came from foreign parts, and that she was possessed of this curious fair beauty, which now and then reappears in the person of some descendant of hers, as in the case of my grandame. She had some peculiarities of religious belief, probably inherited from her Albigensian ancestors, and 'tis certain that she possessed a copy of Holy Scripture as done into English by Wickliffe. This book was found concealed in the apartment known as the Fair Dame's bower, and is still preserved in our library.

My mother also wrote a chronicle of her young days, which is one of my most precious possessions. I would fain have my Lucy do the same, but she is a true Stanton, and cares little for books, being a born housewife. Her father has married a second time, and has a son, so that Lucy is no longer the sole hope of the race. She gets on well with her stepmother, who is an amiable young lady, not so many years her senior as I could wish, but still she loves best to pass her time here with me, in this home of my youth, which my Lord has most kindly fitted up and given me for my life. I have a widowed daughter, who lives with me, and plenty of grandchildren to visit me, so that I am never lonely. But I meant not to write the history of my own life, but only to give an account of this book.

DEBORAH CORBET.

LADY ROSAMOND'S BOOK.