Anna St. Ives

Anna St. Ives

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anna St. Ives, by Thomas Holcroft
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Title: Anna St. Ives
Author: Thomas Holcroft
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9468] [This file was first
posted on October 3, 2003]
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Language: English

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IVES ***

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ANNA ST. IVES
THOMAS HOLCROFT
1792

CONTENTS
Volume I Volume II Volume III Volume IV Volume V Volume VI
VOLUME VII
Explanatory Notes
ANNA ST. IVES
A NOVEL
VOLUME I
LETTER I
_Anna Wenbourne St. Ives to Louisa Clifton_
_Wenbourne-Hill_
Here are we, my dear girl, in the very height of preparation. We begin
our journey southward at five tomorrow morning. We shall make a
short stay in London, and then proceed to Paris. Expectation is on
tiptoe: my busy fancy has pictured to itself Calais, Montreuil, Abbeville,
in short every place which the book of post roads enumerates, and some
of which the divine Sterne has rendered so famous. I expect to find
nothing but mirth, vivacity, fancy, and multitudes of people. I have
read so much of the populousness of France, the gaiety of its
inhabitants, the magnificence of its buildings, its fine climate, fertility,

numerous cities, superb roads, rich plains, and teeming vineyards, that I
already imagine myself journeying through an enchanted land.
I have another pleasure in prospect. Pray have you heard that your
brother is soon to be at Paris, on his return from Italy?--My father
surprised me by informing me we should probably meet him in that
capital. I suspect Sir Arthur of an implication which his words perhaps
will not authorize; but he asked me, rather significantly, if I had ever
heard you talk of your brother; and in less than five minutes wished to
know whether I had any objections to marriage.
My father is exceedingly busy with his head man, his plotter, his
planner; giving directions concerning still further improvements that
are to be made, in his grounds and park, during our absence. You know
his mania. Improvement is his disease. I have before hinted to you that
I do not like this factotum of his, this Abimelech Henley. The amiable
qualities of his son more than compensate for the meanness of the
father; whom I have long suspected to be and am indeed convinced that
he is artful, selfish, and honest enough to seek his own profit, were it at
the expence of his employer's ruin. He is continually insinuating new
plans to my father, whom he Sir Arthurs, and Honours, and Nobles, at
every word, and then persuades him the hints and thoughts are all his
own. The illiterate fellow has a language peculiar to himself; energetic
but half unintelligible; compounded of a few fine phrases, and an
inundation of proverbial wisdom and uncouth cant terms. Of the scanty
number of polite words, which he has endeavoured to catch, he is very
bountiful to Sir Arthur. 'That's noble! That's great your noble honour!
Well, by my truly, that's an elegunt ideer! But I always said your
honour had more nobler and elegunter ideers than any other noble
gentleman, knight, lord, or dooke, in every thing of what your honour
calls the grand gusto.' Pshaw! It is ridiculous in me to imitate his
language; the cunning nonsense of which evaporates upon paper, but is
highly characteristic when delivered with all its attendant bows and
cringes; which, like the accompaniments to a concerto, enforce the
character of the composition, and give it full effect.
I am in the very midst of bandboxes, portmanteaus, packing-cases, and

travelling trunks. I scarcely ever knew a mind so sluggish as not to feel
a certain degree of rapture, at the thoughts of travelling. It should seem
as if the imagination frequently journeyed so fast as to enjoy a species
of ecstasy, when there are