Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume II

Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume II

Rose, Blanche, and Violet is the second volume of George Henry Lewes's novel following the intertwined romantic and domestic fortunes of the three Vyner sisters and those around them at Wytton Hall. The volume opens with Blanche's elopement with the impecunious but charming Cecil Chamberlayne, aided reluctantly by the devoted Captain Heath, who loves Blanche himself but sacrifices his own hopes to see her safely married after Cecil's sudden fit of jealous suspicion nearly wrecks the match at a London hotel. Heath departs for Italy to nurse his private grief, while Meredith Vyner, egged on by his manipulative and vain wife (the former Mary Hardcastle), oscillates between fatherly forgiveness and wounded pride before secretly sending the newlyweds money under the guise of his wife's generosity. Blanche and Cecil set up an impoverished but happy household in a dreary Notting Hill boarding-house run by the grasping Mrs. Tring, where Cecil dabbles at a grand painting of Nero and a comic opera but proves too weak-willed and pleasure-loving to apply himself, drifting instead into idle sociability encouraged by his disreputable friend Frank Forrester, a genial sponger and man-about-town. Through Forrester and Tom Chetsom, Cecil is drawn into the salon of Hester Mason, the vain, provincially "advanced" poetess of Walton who has become the kept mistress of the foolish, aging dandy Sir Chetsom Chetsom, and whose flirtatious intellectual sparring with Cecil poses a quiet threat to his marriage even as Blanche remains trustingly unsuspicious. Meanwhile, at Wytton Hall and in London, the courtships of the other two sisters falter. Rose, in a moment of wilful caprice, fails to give Julius St. John the agreed signal of encouragement after he declares his love, and both retreat into wounded pride; Julius and his mother depart for Italy, leaving Rose in regretful, feverish self-reproach. Violet's grave affection for the passionate Brazilian-raised Marmaduke Ashley is meanwhile poisoned by revelations of his earlier attachment to her own stepmother, Mrs. Meredith Vyner. Stung by his rival Julius's departure and driven by wounded vanity, Marmaduke resumes a calculated flirtation with Mrs. Vyner purely for revenge—only to find himself genuinely reawakened to her old fascination even as his heart remains with Violet. Mrs. Vyner, deceived by his acting into believing his passion sincere, engineers a secret avowal of love via a marked passage in Petrarch, which Violet intercepts and reads, shattering her hopes and confirming her worst suspicions about both her lover and her stepmother's duplicity. The volume closes with Marmaduke fully entangled in a dangerous, half-willing liaison with Mrs. Vyner, Violet stoically suppressing her grief, and the jealous, unsuspecting Meredith Vyner beginning to sense the danger to his own domestic peace—setting the stage for the crises of the following volume.

By George Henry Lewes · First published 1848 · Genre: Domestic Fiction, Romance, Psychological Drama · 30 chapters · 59,622 words

First lines

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds / Towards Phœbus' mansion; such a waggoner / As phaeton would whip you to the west. / Come, gentle night; come, loving black browed night / Give me my Romeo. / _Romeo and Juliet._

Captain Heath and the postilion were not the only persons impatient at the unexpected delay. Cecil leaning against a tree, watching with anxious eyes the window of Blanche's bed-room for the signal, and counting the weary minutes, as they dragged with immeasurable tediousness through their course of sixty seconds, began at length to suppose that she would never come.

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Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume II is listed on Textopian as a novel by George Henry Lewes, dated 1848 CE.

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Victorian fiction · 19th century literature · English literature · Domestic drama · Female characters · Character study · Literary realism · Social commentary · Philosophical fiction · Romance · Episodic narrative · Serialized fiction

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