My Dear Pippa

It has all been such an ordeal. It took ever so long to get here, what with muddy roads and stuck wheels. Further, any sense of adventure was promptly squashed by Aunt Florence’s pinched face. Indeed, I was forced to travel all this way with Aunt Florence, whose prune face was pulled tight with displeasure the entire time. I do wonder why she agreed to accompany me at all. Any conversation was restricted to mundane comments on the weather and lectures on how I was to behave. My dear Aunt is of the conviction that levity is one of the seven deadly sins, in fact the worst of them all!

Mother dear believes that all her daughters must be able to ‘respectably take care of themselves’. So, with rather short notice I wish to point out, I have been sent away. I am to be trained in the noble art of goverenessing. Does such a word exist, I wonder? Yes, a governess! What a horrid fate to befall me. I do not fancy the prospect in the least. If only it had been a paramour, then perhaps I may have run off to avoid my present fate. Really, can you imagine? What a joke that would have been. The worst of course is that the others have not been sent to such dreary futures. Well, Kitty is going to become a teacher, but at a ladies school in Bath. Besides, she likes children!

As for my current situation, I have been settled in a Boarding House of some respectability, as I was informed upon my arrival. I suppose it must be very respectable, for my room is quite the barren space. I have a narrow bed tucked in one corner, a small desk and chair in another corner and a diminutive wardrobe placed in the third corner. The door is located in the forth corner. There is no fireplace, not that one would fit in here, and my window faces north, with a deary prospect over the grimy looking city. I suppose it is just as well that Mother had my trunk packed. She didn’t wish me to travel with too much baggage, which is just as well for I have very little space.

I have yet to meet the other borders and have only seen Mrs Murphy, the landlady, twice and briefly at that. She appears to be a active sort of woman, always busiling around with one task or another. Not the type you warm too.

Have you met any Ladies of Quality? Oh, how I wish I could be with you now!

There is Aunt Florence calling up to me. I must go! Happily she will be passing on to Edinburgh tomorrow. Then I shall have time to explore.

Your affectionately, etc.

Bitsy