Portraits of a Wallflower

(Part 1 – Violet’s Story)

By

AnneM

Spring 1820

Most people assume that the girls sitting along the walls during balls, cotillions, and assemblies are to be pitied and looked down upon with no small amount of sympathy. Surely, they are sad creatures with uninteresting pasts, who have present lives of little consequence, and who will have bleak futures with no husband, children or homes of their own, merely because they do not dance.

In the eyes of Violet Starling that made most people idiots.

She supposed most of these idiots would consider her and her three friends ‘wallflowers’ although she hated that word with a fierce passion. And while it was true that none of them danced (or flirted, or even generally turned the heads of many young men) at any of the above-mentioned activities that did not make any of them ‘less’ than other women, did it?

Likewise, Violet often wondered what made a woman a wallflower. Was it merely because a woman was not asked to dance by a man? Could such a simple definition truly define such vastly complex and different, interesting young women? Truly, she and her friends were all ‘wallflowers’ for very dissimilar reasons, although the outcome was immeasurably the same… that being that no one, save for a few of Violet’s brothers or their friends, ever danced with Violet, or her friends, Charlotte, Rose, or Marybeth.

Charlotte was the least likely ‘wallflower’ by looks alone of their little group. She was a true beauty, although she was the oldest of the lot. Dark black curls, deep cerulean blue eyes, porcelain complexion, even Violet’s oldest brother once said that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Still, by most standards, at six and twenty, she was firmly on the shelf. That alone didn’t make her a wallflower. Something almost sinister, and sad, made poor Charlotte Harmon a wallflower.

Her tale will come later.

Rose Westlake wasn’t a conventional wallflower either. The main thing that kept this fiery redhead’s back against the wall (and her seat glued to a chair) was her loud and quarrelsome opinion on every subject from parcel to sundry. Many called her a hoyden, a harridan; some even called her a harpy. The thing was – she didn’t care – for she was the apple of her father’s eye, and if she knew she was right (and she thought she was always right) no one could ever tell her otherwise. If that meant she was doomed to spend every dance up against a wall while girls who weren’t as pretty as she was danced, so be it.

Then there was Marybeth. Quiet, shy, and unassuming, that was sweet Marybeth. She too was pretty, perhaps even beautiful, but like her three friends, she spent every single dance up against the wall in a chair, feigning indifference, even though her heart was breaking at the thought of being asked to dance just one time. She would never be a wallflower if it weren’t for one tiny little problem: her leg. She was lame.

But, this chapter of the story belongs to Violet, and Violet knew exactly why she was a wallflower. It wasn’t because she was too tall. It wasn’t because she was fat. It wasn’t because she had a bad disposition and a temper to match it, like Rose. It wasn’t as if she had an unfortunate set of circumstances, like Charlotte. And it wasn’t because she had an accident when she was twelve years old that made her lame, like Marybeth.

No, her problem was a bit more complex, and yet a bit easier to understand. For one thing, she had all these meddling brothers… four of them to be exact: three older and one younger. That was only one of her problems. Her other problem was that she had a weak heart and she was probably going to die young, just like her mother and her two sisters, Carolyn and Diana.

Her mother, Felicia, was the prettiest woman in all North Cumberland, at least that was what her father, the Earl of Umbridge, supposedly said when he first set eyes on her when he was eighteen and she a girl of sixteen. He apparently told his brother that he was going to marry her, and three months later, he did just that. Their life together was idyllic. She gave him two sons in a row, Adam and Bradford (an heir and a spare, thank you very much) and then two beautiful daughters, Carolyn and Diana, born only eleven months apart.

Only two years would pass before another son and another daughter, Ethan and Violet were born. Violet always wondered why she wasn’t christened with an ‘F’ name, since her parents were apparently on an alphabet craze, but supposedly, her mother and father couldn’t agree on a female ‘F’ name they liked. Her mother liked ‘Fiona’ and her father liked ‘Frances’. If she had been a boy, she would also have been ‘Francis’. Nevertheless, to keep from fighting with his wife, the earl named his youngest daughter Violet.

When baby Violet was five months old, her mother and two sisters caught scarlet fever. Five-year-old Carolyn died three weeks after catching the illness. Four-year-old Diana died three whole months later. The countess survived but with a weak heart. Still, she forged onward, did her wifely duties, and bore him one more child, Violet’s younger brother Gideon.

Gideon came too early, the stress of it was all too much on her mother’s heart, which was weakened by the scarlet fever she suffered years before, and she died. Violet was only five years old when her mother died. She couldn’t look back at her sad childhood and say that it influenced her much, because frankly, she didn’t remember her sisters, and she hardly recalled much about her mother except for the way she laughed and her bright blue eyes. Besides, her father and her brothers made her feel loved and cherished every day of her life.

She never wanted for anything. She was given every sort of music lesson, riding lesson, DANCING lessons, a girl would ever want. She was happy, vivacious, and she honestly smiled all the time, because every day was full of happiness and laughter. She had dark, blonde hair, green eyes, and she was constantly told what a beauty she was. Everyone told her that someday she would turn men’s heads. Someday, she would break men’s hearts. Someday, when she turned fifteen and had her ‘come out’, she would burn as the brightest star the ‘Ton’ had ever seen. Every man would bow down before her, ask her to dance, and then ask for her hand.

However, that never happened, because nothing’s ever quite as it seems. Instead, when she was fifteen and three quarters, only three months before her ‘come out ball’, she caught the very same illness that killed her two young sisters, and that ultimately weakened her mother’s heart, also killing her.

This meant that from age fifteen to her current age of twenty-two, she lived life in a glass shell, a bubble, too delicate for mere mortals to touch or hold, on the verge of breaking, close to shattering, too fragile and frail. After having lost all of their female relatives to the same illness, her father and brothers lived with the constant fear that she too might die or that her ‘weak heart’ might give out at any moment, so she wasn’t allow to do anything strenuous any longer. That meant she couldn’t ride horses, go on picnics, go on walks, or even talk to young men.

She especially could not dance.

Still, just because she had a weak heart didn’t mean her heart couldn’t break.

(More about Violet to come!)