The Fair with Golden Hair by Bernard Capes
Sir Richard Avenant, an explorer newly returned from Abyssinia, is told that London regards him as a savage conqueror of women. Learning of a beautiful and unapproachable heiress known as the Fair with Golden Hair, he whimsically declares that she is the woman he must marry. Taken to her crowded boudoir, he finds her surrounded by admiring poets, lords, minstrels, and suitors. Instead of flattering her, he mocks the vanity of her court and coolly answers her provocations, angering her while intriguing her with his refusal to behave like the others. When she summons him privately to accuse him of insulting her, Avenant claims that he desires only her magnificent hair, offering a thousand pounds for it as though it were an ethnographic trophy. Outraged, she dismisses him; but he vows, swearing by his beard, that he will possess her hair. She derides him for swearing by what he lacks, and he declares that he will not shave until his oath is fulfilled. He then leaves England to rejoin his expedition. Eighteen months later, Avenant returns and discovers the Fair living in poverty, though her golden hair remains. An inquiry reveals that her guardian has stolen her trust funds, reducing her to destitution. Worse, an elderly nobleman possesses bills bearing her signature and is using them to press his dishonourable advances upon her. Avenant writes to renew his former offer for her hair, arranging to call for her answer. Before visiting her, he buys something from a perruquier and has his own beard shaved off. The Fair receives him in a shabby lodging, her hair hidden beneath a cap. She bitterly rejects his assumption that poverty will make her accept his proposal, and insists that she will defend her virtue even if forced to arm herself. Avenant realizes that she has sold her hair to pay her debts, for only a hundred pounds. He reveals that he has bought the tresses himself, recognizing them as he passed the perruquier’s window. The Fair collapses in grief, calling her hair her one beauty and begging to buy it back. Avenant tells her that, having sacrificed his beard as she has sacrificed her hair, he has staked everything on her response. He asks whether his offer of hand and heart is truly an insult. Astonished, she understands that he is proposing marriage. He kisses her and declares that only marriage can repair the impropriety of the act. She admits that love, long asleep in her heart, is ready to confess itself. The nobleman is forced to accept a settlement, and Avenant and the Fair marry. On their wedding evening, she acknowledges her former vanity and asks to be placed on the middle shelf of his imagined cupboard, among Beauty, Virtue, and feminine Truth. He replies that the cupboard has become a closet for skeletons, since he was a bachelor then.
By Bernard Capes · First published 1906 · Genre: Literary Fairy Tale, Historical Romance, Romantic Fiction · 4,461 words
First lines
Ho! bring me some _lovers_, fat or lean, / That I may crunch 'em my teeth between! / I could eat so many, so many, so many, / That in the wide world there would not be left any.
Ho! Here is Avenant to be seen, / Who comes to draw your teeth so keen; / He's not the greatest man to view, / But he's big enough to conquer you.
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Genres
- Literary Fairy Tale — The story deliberately reworks Madame d'Aulnoy's 'The Fair with Golden Hair,' using fairy-tale names, archetypal beauty, trials, symbolic hair, and an ultimately transformative courtship, while relocating the material to a socially recognizable world.
- Historical Romance — Set in eighteenth-century London and shaped by period social customs, fortunes, guardianship, duels of reputation, and marriage expectations, the narrative centers on the developing romantic union of Sir Richard Avenant and the Fair.
- Romantic Fiction — The principal plot follows antagonistic attraction becoming mutual love: Avenant and the heroine begin through insult, pride, and rivalry, then discover emotional vulnerability and commitment.
- Comedy of Manners — The work satirizes fashionable society, idle suitors, aristocratic vanity, sexual double standards, gossip, status, and the calculated rituals of courtship through epigrammatic dialogue and social caricature.
Tags
Georgian London · eighteenth-century England · Abyssinian exploration · fairy-tale retelling · romantic comedy · courtship · marriage proposal · beauty and vanity · golden hair · hair as commodity · gender roles · female virtue
What this Textopian page supports
The Fair with Golden Hair is listed on Textopian as a short story by Bernard Capes, dated 1906 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Short story
- Author: Bernard Capes
- Date: 1906 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Literary Fairy Tale, Historical Romance, Romantic Fiction, Comedy of Manners, Satire
- Length: 4,461 words
- Structure: 1 section, 114 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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