The book I’m enjoying right now is not a new one. Not by a long shot. In fact, the year it was published, the people in my city were in the midst of a war to free themselves from a tyrannical, self-serving king.
I came to Frances Burney’s novel “Cecilia,” because a friend mentioned “Bluestockings,” by Susannah Gibson, a book about 18th century women. And, in the delicious way books will do, “Bluestockings” led me to “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf,” by Rebecca Romney, about the books Jane probably read. And both of those made me want to read one of that era’s biggest hits by the writer Virginia Woolf called “the mother of English fiction.”
The story feels familiar: Cecilia, left without family, but with a comfortable inheritance and the requisite questionable guardians to guide her, leaves her country home to make her way in London among socialites, including the various men for whom her wealth is a glittering object of desire. The book unfolds slowly, in language that demands a level of careful attention from 21st century readers, but rewards with humor, outrage, and a cast of characters we have no difficulty recognizing. It goes so slowly, in fact, that in our time of constant “input” from “devices,” it is a reminder that 18th century entertainments depended in large part on books and conversation.
It will take a long time to finish reading this book and I will enjoy every minute. While I’m reading it I may be able to avoid the unwelcome intrusions of news, especially as no breaking news item will assure me that General Washington is defeating the king’s forces. No stunning the world with a declaration that all people are equal before the law, even if the “all” falls far short of actual all. Nothing about creating from scratch the idea of a representative government with checks and balances to safeguard the fledgling concept of democracy.
At least the story of Cecilia remains unchanged.