Loveliness E-Book

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In "Loveliness," Elizabeth Stuart Phelps delivers a poignant exploration of the intimate interplay between beauty and virtue, capturing the cultural anxieties of the late 19th century. With a lyrical and reflective prose style, Phelps weaves together themes of aesthetic philosophy and moral obligation, challenging conventional notions of femininity and social propriety. This work, situated within the context of the Transcendentalist movement, also reflects the author's engagement with the emerging discourse on women's rights, making it a rich text for understanding the period's evolving social fabric. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a prominent figure in American literature, emerged as a voice for women's issues in her time. Influenced by her upbringing in a family of intellectuals and writers, she became a trailblazer within the literary world, known for her advocacy of social reform and gender equality. Her personal experiences, including the loss of loved ones and her own health struggles, deeply inform the emotional depth found in "Loveliness," as she contemplates the societal roles imposed upon women. "Loveliness" is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of gender, beauty, and morality, offering invaluable insights into the struggles of women in the 19th century while resonating with contemporary audiences. Phelps's work invites readers to reflect on the nature of true beauty and the societal expectations that can often overshadow it.

Leseprobe

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Loveliness

A Story

Published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4064066142148

Table of Contents

A Story

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

SARAH S. STILWELL

LOVELINESS.

FICTION AND BIOGRAPHY

A Story

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BY

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

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"Be my benediction said, With my hand upon thy head,Gentle fellow-creature!"

E. B. Browning.

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1900

THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE BY

SARAH S. STILWELL

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For the smoke of their torment ascendeth.

LOVELINESS.

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Loveliness sat on an eider-down cushion embroidered with cherry-colored puppies on a pearl satin cover. The puppies had gold eyes. They were drinking a saucer of green milk. Loveliness wore a new necktie, of cherry, a shade or two brighter than the puppies, and a pearl-gray, or one might call it a silver-gray jacket. He was sitting in the broad window sill, with his head tipped a little, thoughtfully, towards the left side, as the heads of nervous people are said to incline. He was dreamily watching the street, looking for any one of a few friends of his who might pass by, and for the letter-carrier, who was somewhat late.

Loveliness had dark, brilliant eyes, remarkably alert, but reflective when in repose. Part of their charm lay in the fact that one must watch for their best expression; for Loveliness wore bangs. He had a small and delicate nose, not guiltless of an aristocratic tip, with a suspicion of a sniff at the inferior orders of society. In truth, Loveliness was an aristocrat to the end of his tongue, which curled daintily against his opalescent teeth. At this moment it lay between his teeth, and hung forward as if he held a roseleaf in his lips; and this was the final evidence of his birth and breeding.

For Loveliness was a little dog; a silver Yorkshire, blue of blood and delicately reared,—a tiny creature, the essence of tenderness; set, soul and body, to one only tune. To love and to be beloved,—that was his life. He knew no other, nor up to this time could he conceive of any other; for he was as devotedly beloved as he was passionately loving. His brain was in his heart. In saying this one does not question the quality of the brain, any more than one does in saying a similar thing of a woman. Indeed, considered as an intellect, his was of the highest order known to his race. Loveliness would have been interesting as a psychological study, had he not been absorbing as an affectional occupation. His family and friends often said, "How clever!" but not until after they had said, "How dear he is!" The order of precedence in this summary of character is the most enviable that can be experienced by human beings. But the dog took it as a matter of course.

This little creature loved a number of people on a sliding scale of intimacy, carefully guarded, as the intimacies of the high-born usually are; but one he loved first, most, best of all, and profoundly. I have called him Loveliness because it was the pet name, the "little name," given to him by this person. In point of fact, he answered to a variety of appellations, more or less recognized by society; of these the most lawful and the least agreeable to himself was Mop. It was a disputed point whether this were an ancestral name, or whether he had received it from the dog store, whence he had emerged at the beginning of history,—the shaggiest, scrubbiest, raggedest, wildest little terrier that ever boasted of a high descent.

People of a low type, those whose imagination was bounded by menial similes, or persons of that too ready inclination to the humorous which fails to consider the possible injustice or unkindness that it may involve, had in Mop's infancy found a base pleasure in attaching to him such epithets as window-washer, scrubbing-brush, feather-duster, and footmuff. But these had not adhered. Loveliness had. It bade fair, at the time of our story, to outlive every other name.

The little dog had both friends and acquaintances on the street where the professor lived; and he watched for them from his cushion in the window, hours at a time. There was the cabman, the academic-looking cabman, who was the favorite of the faculty, and who hurrahed and snapped his whip at the Yorkshire as he passed by; there was the newsboy who brought the Sunday papers, and who whistled at Loveliness, and made faces, and called him Mop.

To-day there was a dark-faced man, a stranger, standing across the street, and regarding the professor's house with the unpleasant look of the foreign and ill-natured. This man had eyebrows that met in a straight, black line upon his forehead, and he wore a yellow jersey. The dog threw back his supercilious little head and barked at the yellow jersey severely. But at that moment he saw the carrier, who ran up the steps laughing, and brought a gumdrop in a sealed envelope addressed to Loveliness. There was a large mail that afternoon, including a pile of pamphlets and circulars of the varied description that haunts professors' houses. Kathleen, the parlor maid,—another particular friend of the terrier's—took the mail up to the study, but dropped one of the pamphlets on the stairs. The dog rebuked her carelessness (after he had given his attention to the carrier's gumdrop) by picking the pamphlet up and bringing it back to the window seat, where he opened and dog-eared it with a literary manner for a while, until suddenly he forgot it altogether, and dropped it on the floor, and sprang, bounding. For the dearest person in the world had called him in a whisper,—"Love-li-ness!" And the dearest face in the world appeared above him and melted into laughing tenderness. "Loveliness! Where's my Love-li-ness?"