Persuasion | Page 3

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The Project Gutenberg Etext of Persuasion by Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818)
Chapter 1
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,
for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage;
there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a
distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and
respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents;
there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed
naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless
creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were
powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never

failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:
"ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL.
"Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth,
daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of
Gloucester, by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born
June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, November 5,
1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791."
Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's
hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of
himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth--
"Married, December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles
Musgrove, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset," and by
inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his
wife.
Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family,
in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how
mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff, representing a
borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and
dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and
Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two handsome
duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto:--"Principal
seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset," and Sir Walter's
handwriting again in this finale:--
"Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the
second Sir Walter."
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character;
vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in
his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women
could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could
the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he
held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to
the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these

gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.
His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment; since
to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to any
thing deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman,
sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be
pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had
never required indulgence afterwards.--She had humoured, or softened,
or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for
seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world
herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to
attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she
was called on to quit them. --Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and
fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful
charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited,
silly father. She had, however, one very intimate friend, a sensible,
deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to
herself, to settle close by her, in the village of Kellynch;