Chapter: THIS is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the
Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme
intimacy--or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet
as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain
and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet,
in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe,
a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today,
when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew
nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and,
certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had
known the shallows.

I don't mean to say that we were not acquainted with many English
people. Living, as we perforce lived, in Europe, and being, as we
perforce were, leisured Americans, which is as much as to say that we
were un-American, we were thrown very much into the society of the
nicer English. Paris, you see, was our home. Somewhere between Nice and
Bordighera provided yearly winter quarters for us, and Nauheim always
received us from July to September. You will gather from this statement
that one of us had, as the saying is, a "heart", and, from the statement
that my wife is dead, that she was the sufferer.

Captain Ashburnham also had a heart. But, whereas a yearly month or so
at Nauheim tuned him up to exactly the right pitch for the rest of the
twelvemonth, the two months or so were only just enough to keep
poor Florence alive from year to year. The reason for his heart was,
approximately, polo, or too much hard sportsmanship in his youth. The
reason for poor Florence's broken years was a storm at sea upon our
first crossing to Europe, and the immediate reasons for our imprisonment
in that continent were doctor's orders. They said that even the short
Channel crossing might well kill the poor thing.

When we all first met, Captain Ashburnham, home on sick leave from an
India to which he was never to return, was thirty-three; Mrs Ashburnham
Leonora--was thirty-one. I was thirty-six and poor Florence thirty.
Thus today Florence would have been thirty-nine and Captain Ashburnham
forty-two; whereas I am forty-five and Leonora forty. You will perceive,
therefore, that our friendship has been a young-middle-aged affair,
since we were all of us of quite quiet dispositions, the Ashburnhams
being more particularly what in England it is the custom to call "quite
good people".

They were descended, as you will probably expect, from the Ashburnham
who accompanied Charles I to the scaffold, and, as you must also expect
with this class of English people, you would never have noticed it.
Mrs Ashburnham was a Powys; Florence was a Hurlbird of Stamford,
Connecticut, where, as you know, they are more old-fashioned than even
the inhabitants of Cranford, England, could have been. I myself am a
Dowell of Philadelphia, Pa., where, it is historically true, there
are more old English families than you would find in any six English
counties taken together. I carry about with me, indeed--as if it
were the only thing that invisibly anchored me to any spot upon the
globe--the title deeds of my farm, which once covered several blocks
between Chestnut and Walnut Streets. These title deeds are of wampum,
the grant of an Indian chief to the first Dowell, who left Farnham in
Surrey in company with William Penn. Florence's people, as is so
often the case with the inhabitants of Connecticut, came from the
neighbourhood of Fordingbridge, where the Ashburnhams' place is. From
there, at this moment, I am actually writing.

You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it
is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or
the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have
witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely
remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads.

Some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the whole
sack of Rome by the Goths, and I swear to you that the breaking up
of our little four-square coterie was such another unthinkable event.
Supposing that you should come upon us sitting together at one of the
little tables in front of the club house, let us say, at Homburg, taking
tea of an afternoon and watching the miniature golf, you would have said
that, as human affairs go, we were an extraordinarily safe castle. We
were, if you will, one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a
blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and the safest of
all the beautiful and safe things that God has permitted the mind of men
to frame. Where better could one take refuge? Where better?

Permanence? Stability? I can't believe it's gone. I can't believe that
that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished in
four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. Upon my word,
yes, our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible
occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where
to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and
go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to
the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if
it rained, in discreet shelters. No, indeed, it can't be gone. You can't
kill a minuet de la cour. You may shut up the music-book, close the
harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may destroy the white
satin favours. The mob may sack Versailles; the Trianon may fall, but
surely the minuet--the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the
furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must
be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful
dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? Isn't there any
Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments that have
fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and
everlasting souls?

No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a
prison--a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they
might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along
the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.

And yet I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It
was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from
the mouth of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the
same tastes, with the same desires, acting--or, no, not acting--sitting
here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? If for nine years I
have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover
its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't
it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple? So it may
well be with Edward Ashburnham, with Leonora his wife and with poor dear
Florence. And, if you come to think of it, isn't it a little odd that
the physical rottenness of at least two pillars of our four-square
house never presented itself to my mind as a menace to its security? It
doesn't so present itself now though the two of them are actually dead.
I don't know....

I know nothing--nothing in the world--of the hearts of men. I only know
that I am alone--horribly alone. No hearthstone will ever again witness,
for me, friendly intercourse. No smoking-room will ever be other than
peopled with incalculable simulacra amidst smoke wreaths. Yet, in the
name of God, what should I know if I don't know the life of the hearth
and of the smoking-room, since my whole life has been passed in those
places? The warm hearthside!--Well, there was Florence: I believe
that for the twelve years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed
irretrievably to have weakened her heart--I don't believe that for one
minute she was out of my sight, except when she was safely tucked up in
bed and I should be downstairs, talking to some good fellow or other in
some lounge or smoking-room or taking my final turn with a cigar before
going to bed. I don't, you understand, blame Florence. But how can she
have known what she knew? How could she have got to know it? To know it
so fully. Heavens! There doesn't seem to have been the actual time. It
must have been when I was taking my baths, and my Swedish exercises,
being manicured. Leading the life I did, of the sedulous, strained
nurse, I had to do something to keep myself fit. It must have been then!
Yet even that can't have been enough time to get the tremendously long
conversations full of worldly wisdom that Leonora has reported to
me since their deaths. And is it possible to imagine that during our
prescribed walks in Nauheim and the neighbourhood she found time to
carry on the protracted negotiations which she did carry on between
Edward Ashburnham and his wife? And isn't it incredible that during
all that time Edward and Leonora never spoke a word to each other in
private? What is one to think of humanity?

For I swear to you that they were the model couple. He was as devoted
as it was possible to be without appearing fatuous. So well set up,
with such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm
goodheartedness! And she--so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair!
Yes, Leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real
thing that she seemed too good to be true. You don't, I mean, as a rule,
get it all so superlatively together. To be the county family, to look
the county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly wealthy; to be
so perfect in manner--even just to the saving touch of insolence that
seems to be necessary. To have all that and to be all that! No, it was
too good to be true. And yet, only this afternoon, talking over the
whole matter she said to me: "Once I tried to have a lover but I was
so sick at the heart, so utterly worn out that I had to send him away."
That struck me as the most amazing thing I had ever heard. She said "I
was actually in a man's arms. Such a nice chap! Such a dear fellow! And
I was saying to myself, fiercely, hissing it between my teeth, as they
say in novels--and really clenching them together: I was saying to
myself: 'Now, I'm in for it and I'll really have a good time for once in
my life--for once in my life!' It was in the dark, in a carriage, coming
back from a hunt ball. Eleven miles we had to drive! And then suddenly
the bitterness of the endless poverty, of the endless acting--it fell on
me like a blight, it spoilt everything. Yes, I had to realize that I had
been spoilt even for the good time when it came. And I burst out crying
and I cried and I cried for the whole eleven miles. Just imagine me
crying! And just imagine me making a fool of the poor dear chap like
that. It certainly wasn't playing the game, was it now?"

I don't know; I don't know; was that last remark of hers the remark of
a harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not county
family, thinks at the bottom of her heart? Or thinks all the time for
the matter of that? Who knows?

Yet, if one doesn't know that at this hour and day, at this pitch of
civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of
all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the
daughters in saecula saeculorum... but perhaps that is what all mothers
teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or with heart
whispering to heart. And, if one doesn't know as much as that about the
first thing in the world, what does one know and why is one here?

I asked Mrs Ashburnham whether she had told Florence that and what
Florence had said and she answered:--"Florence didn't offer any comment
at all. What could she say? There wasn't anything to be said. With the
grinding poverty we had to put up with to keep up appearances, and the
way the poverty came about--you know what I mean--any woman would have
been justified in taking a lover and presents too. Florence once said
about a very similar position--she was a little too well-bred, too
American, to talk about mine--that it was a case of perfectly open
riding and the woman could just act on the spur of the moment. She said
it in American of course, but that was the sense of it. I think her
actual words were: 'That it was up to her to take it or leave it....'"

I don't want you to think that I am writing Teddy Ashburnham down a
brute. I don't believe he was. God knows, perhaps all men are like that.
For as I've said what do I know even of the smoking-room? Fellows come
in and tell the most extraordinarily gross stories--so gross that they
will positively give you a pain. And yet they'd be offended if you
suggested that they weren't the sort of person you could trust your wife
alone with. And very likely they'd be quite properly offended--that is
if you can trust anybody alone with anybody. But that sort of fellow
obviously takes more delight in listening to or in telling gross
stories--more delight than in anything else in the world. They'll
hunt languidly and dress languidly and dine languidly and work without
enthusiasm and find it a bore to carry on three minutes' conversation
about anything whatever and yet, when the other sort of conversation
begins, they'll laugh and wake up and throw themselves about in their
chairs. Then, if they so delight in the narration, how is it possible
that they can be offended--and properly offended--at the suggestion
that they might make attempts upon your wife's honour? Or again:
Edward Ashburnham was the cleanest looking sort of chap;--an excellent
magistrate, a first rate soldier, one of the best landlords, so they
said, in Hampshire, England. To the poor and to hopeless drunkards, as I
myself have witnessed, he was like a painstaking guardian. And he never
told a story that couldn't have gone into the columns of the Field more
than once or twice in all the nine years of my knowing him. He didn't
even like hearing them; he would fidget and get up and go out to buy a
cigar or something of that sort. You would have said that he was just
exactly the sort of chap that you could have trusted your wife with. And
I trusted mine and it was madness. And yet again you have me. If poor
Edward was dangerous because of the chastity of his expressions--and
they say that is always the hall-mark of a libertine--what about myself?
For I solemnly avow that not only have I never so much as hinted at an
impropriety in my conversation in the whole of my days; and more than
that, I will vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute
chastity of my life. At what, then, does it all work out? Is the whole
thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the
proper man--the man with the right to existence--a raging stallion
forever neighing after his neighbour's womankind?

I don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is
so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what
is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal
contacts, associations, and activities? Or are we meant to act on
impulse alone? It is all a darkness.

I DON'T know how it is best to put this thing down--whether it would
be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a
story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it reached
me from the lips of Leonora or from those of Edward himself.

So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the
fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me.
And I shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the
distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright
stars. From time to time we shall get up and go to the door and look out
at the great moon and say: "Why, it is nearly as bright as in Provence!"
And then we shall come back to the fireside, with just the touch of a
sigh because we are not in that Provence where even the saddest stories
are gay. Consider the lamentable history of Peire Vidal. Two years ago
Florence and I motored from Biarritz to Las Tours, which is in the Black
Mountains. In the middle of a tortuous valley there rises up an immense
pinnacle and on the pinnacle are four castles--Las Tours, the Towers.
And the immense mistral blew down that valley which was the way from
France into Provence so that the silver grey olive leaves appeared like
hair flying in the wind, and the tufts of rosemary crept into the iron
rocks that they might not be torn up by the roots.

It was, of course, poor dear Florence who wanted to go to Las Tours.
You are to imagine that, however much her bright personality came from
Stamford, Connecticut, she was yet a graduate of Poughkeepsie. I never
could imagine how she did it--the queer, chattery person that she was.
With the far-away look in her eyes--which wasn't, however, in the least
romantic--I mean that she didn't look as if she were seeing poetic
dreams, or looking through you, for she hardly ever did look at
you!--holding up one hand as if she wished to silence any objection--or
any comment for the matter of that--she would talk. She would talk about
William the Silent, about Gustave the Loquacious, about Paris frocks,
about how the poor dressed in 1337, about Fantin-Latour, about the
Paris-Lyons-Mediterranee train-deluxe, about whether it would be
worth while to get off at Tarascon and go across the windswept
suspension-bridge, over the Rhone to take another look at Beaucaire.

We never did take another look at Beaucaire, of course--beautiful
Beaucaire, with the high, triangular white tower, that looked as thin
as a needle and as tall as the Flatiron, between Fifth and
Broadway--Beaucaire with the grey walls on the top of the pinnacle
surrounding an acre and a half of blue irises, beneath the tallness of
the stone pines, What a beautiful thing the stone pine is!...

No, we never did go back anywhere. Not to Heidelberg, not to Hamelin,
not to Verona, not to Mont Majour--not so much as to Carcassonne itself.
We talked of it, of course, but I guess Florence got all she wanted out
of one look at a place. She had the seeing eye.

I haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which I
want to return--towns with the blinding white sun upon them; stone pines
against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all carved and painted
with stags and scarlet flowers and crowstepped gables with the little
saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi and walled towns a mile or
so back from the sea, on the Mediterranean, between Leghorn and Naples.
Not one of them did we see more than once, so that the whole world for
me is like spots of colour in an immense canvas. Perhaps if it weren't
so I should have something to catch hold of now.

Is all this digression or isn't it digression? Again I don't know. You,
the listener, sit opposite me. But you are so silent. You don't tell me
anything. I am, at any rate, trying to get you to see what sort of life
it was I led with Florence and what Florence was like. Well, she was
bright; and she danced. She seemed to dance over the floors of castles
and over seas and over and over and over the salons of modistes and over
the plages of the Riviera--like a gay tremulous beam, reflected from
water upon a ceiling. And my function in life was to keep that bright
thing in existence. And it was almost as difficult as trying to catch
with your hand that dancing reflection. And the task lasted for years.

Florence's aunts used to say that I must be the laziest man in
Philadelphia. They had never been to Philadelphia and they had the New
England conscience. You see, the first thing they said to me when I
called in on Florence in the little ancient, colonial, wooden house
beneath the high, thin-leaved elms--the first question they asked me was
not how I did but what did I do. And I did nothing. I suppose I ought to
have done something, but I didn't see any call to do it. Why does one do
things? I just drifted in and wanted Florence. First I had drifted in
on Florence at a Browning tea, or something of the sort in Fourteenth
Street, which was then still residential. I don't know why I had gone
to New York; I don't know why I had gone to the tea. I don't see why
Florence should have gone to that sort of spelling bee. It wasn't the
place at which, even then, you expected to find a Poughkeepsie graduate.
I guess Florence wanted to raise the culture of the Stuyvesant crowd and
did it as she might have gone in slumming. Intellectual slumming, that
was what it was. She always wanted to leave the world a little more
elevated than she found it. Poor dear thing, I have heard her lecture
Teddy Ashburnham by the hour on the difference between a Franz Hals and
a Wouvermans and why the Pre-Mycenaean statues were cubical with knobs
on the top. I wonder what he made of it? Perhaps he was thankful.

I know I was. For do you understand my whole attentions, my whole
endeavours were to keep poor dear Florence on to topics like the finds
at Cnossos and the mental spirituality of Walter Pater. I had to keep
her at it, you understand, or she might die. For I was solemnly informed
that if she became excited over anything or if her emotions were really
stirred her little heart might cease to beat. For twelve years I had to
watch every word that any person uttered in any conversation and I had
to head it off what the English call "things"--off love, poverty, crime,
religion and the rest of it. Yes, the first doctor that we had when she
was carried off the ship at Havre assured me that this must be done.
Good God, are all these fellows monstrous idiots, or is there a
freemasonry between all of them from end to end of the earth?... That is
what makes me think of that fellow Peire Vidal.

Because, of course, his story is culture and I had to head her towards
culture and at the same time it's so funny and she hadn't got to laugh,
and it's so full of love and she wasn't to think of love. Do you know
the story? Las Tours of the Four Castles had for chatelaine Blanche
Somebody-or-other who was called as a term of commendation, La
Louve--the She-Wolf. And Peire Vidal the Troubadour paid his court to
La Louve. And she wouldn't have anything to do with him. So, out of
compliment to her--the things people do when they're in love!--he
dressed himself up in wolfskins and went up into the Black Mountains.
And the shepherds of the Montagne Noire and their dogs mistook him for
a wolf and he was torn with the fangs and beaten with clubs. So they
carried him back to Las Tours and La Louve wasn't at all impressed. They
polished him up and her husband remonstrated seriously with her. Vidal
was, you see, a great poet and it was not proper to treat a great poet
with indifference.

So Peire Vidal declared himself Emperor of Jerusalem or somewhere
and the husband had to kneel down and kiss his feet though La Louve
wouldn't. And Peire set sail in a rowing boat with four companions to
redeem the Holy Sepulchre. And they struck on a rock somewhere, and,
at great expense, the husband had to fit out an expedition to fetch him
back. And Peire Vidal fell all over the Lady's bed while the husband,
who was a most ferocious warrior, remonstrated some more about the
courtesy that is due to great poets. But I suppose La Louve was the more
ferocious of the two. Anyhow, that is all that came of it. Isn't that a
story?

You haven't an idea of the queer old-fashionedness of Florence's
aunts--the Misses Hurlbird, nor yet of her uncle. An extraordinarily
lovable man, that Uncle John. Thin, gentle, and with a "heart" that made
his life very much what Florence's afterwards became. He didn't reside
at Stamford; his home was in Waterbury where the watches come from. He
had a factory there which, in our queer American way, would change
its functions almost from year to year. For nine months or so it would
manufacture buttons out of bone. Then it would suddenly produce brass
buttons for coachmen's liveries. Then it would take a turn at embossed
tin lids for candy boxes. The fact is that the poor old gentleman, with
his weak and fluttering heart, didn't want his factory to manufacture
anything at all. He wanted to retire. And he did retire when he was
seventy. But he was so worried at having all the street boys in the town
point after him and exclaim: "There goes the laziest man in Waterbury!"
that he tried taking a tour round the world. And Florence and a young
man called Jimmy went with him. It appears from what Florence told me
that Jimmy's function with Mr Hurlbird was to avoid exciting topics for
him. He had to keep him, for instance, out of political discussions. For
the poor old man was a violent Democrat in days when you might travel
the world over without finding anything but a Republican. Anyhow, they
went round the world.

I think an anecdote is about the best way to give you an idea of what
the old gentleman was like. For it is perhaps important that you should
know what the old gentleman was; he had a great deal of influence in
forming the character of my poor dear wife.

Just before they set out from San Francisco for the South Seas old Mr
Hurlbird said he must take something with him to make little presents to
people he met on the voyage. And it struck him that the things to
take for that purpose were oranges--because California is the orange
country--and comfortable folding chairs. So he bought I don't know
how many cases of oranges--the great cool California oranges, and
half-a-dozen folding chairs in a special case that he always kept in his
cabin. There must have been half a cargo of fruit.

For, to every person on board the several steamers that they
employed--to every person with whom he had so much as a nodding
acquaintance, he gave an orange every morning. And they lasted him right
round the girdle of this mighty globe of ours. When they were at North
Cape, even, he saw on the horizon, poor dear thin man that he was, a
lighthouse. "Hello," says he to himself, "these fellows must be very
lonely. Let's take them some oranges." So he had a boatload of his fruit
out and had himself rowed to the lighthouse on the horizon. The folding
chairs he lent to any lady that he came across and liked or who seemed
tired and invalidish on the ship. And so, guarded against his heart and,
having his niece with him, he went round the world....



He wasn't obtrusive about his heart. You wouldn't have known he had one.
He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury for the benefit
of science, since he considered it to be quite an extraordinary kind
of heart. And the joke of the matter was that, when, at the age of
eighty-four, just five days before poor Florence, he died of bronchitis
there was found to be absolutely nothing the matter with that organ. It
had certainly jumped or squeaked or something just sufficiently to take
in the doctors, but it appears that that was because of an odd formation
of the lungs. I don't much understand about these matters.

I inherited his money because Florence died five days after him. I wish
I hadn't. It was a great worry. I had to go out to Waterbury just after
Florence's death because the poor dear old fellow had left a good many
charitable bequests and I had to appoint trustees. I didn't like the
idea of their not being properly handled.

Yes, it was a great worry. And just as I had got things roughly settled
I received the extraordinary cable from Ashburnham begging me to come
back and have a talk with him. And immediately afterwards came one from
Leonora saying, "Yes, please do come. You could be so helpful." It was
as if he had sent the cable without consulting her and had afterwards
told her. Indeed, that was pretty much what had happened, except that
he had told the girl and the girl told the wife. I arrived, however, too
late to be of any good if I could have been of any good. And then I had
my first taste of English life. It was amazing. It was overwhelming. I
never shall forget the polished cob that Edward, beside me, drove; the
animal's action, its high-stepping, its skin that was like satin. And
the peace! And the red cheeks! And the beautiful, beautiful old house.

Just near Branshaw Teleragh it was and we descended on it from the high,
clear, windswept waste of the New Forest. I tell you it was amazing
to arrive there from Waterbury. And it came into my head--for Teddy
Ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come and have a talk"
with him--that it was unbelievable that anything essentially calamitous
could happen to that place and those people. I tell you it was the very
spirit of peace. And Leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of
yellow hair, stood on the top doorstep, with a butler and footman and a
maid or so behind her. And she just said: "So glad you've come," as if
I'd run down to lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having come
half the world over at the call of two urgent telegrams.

The girl was out with the hounds, I think. And that poor devil beside me
was in an agony. Absolute, hopeless, dumb agony such as passes the mind
of man to imagine.

 Part I, Section I Ford Madox Ford opens his novel with Dowell's simple statement that "this is the saddest story I have ever heard." John Dowell proceeds to narrate the history of the nine-year acquaintance between himself and his wife, Florence, and an English couple, the Ashburnhams. The two couples are intimately associated. Dowell and his wife are leisured Americans who live in Paris and summer in Nauheim; the weather is better there for Florence, who has a heart condition. Captain Ashburnham also has a heart condition, and has come to Nauheim with his wife Leonora to recuperate. They are all very close in age, and Dowell calls them "quite good people." All four come from old, established families; Dowell is from Philadelphia and Florence is from Connecticut . The Ashburnhams are descended from old Loyalists who kept their manor in Fordingbridge. Dowell explains to the reader why he is writing: he has seen destruction and longs to get the sight out of his head. He compares the relationship of the two couples to a minuet and to a prison of screaming hysterics. He claims that at least two pillars of their four-square house were rotten, and says that he was blind to the damage until it was too late. He feels horribly alone. He does not blame Florence for what has occurred; he does not understand how she was ever out of his sight. Dowell describes the Ashburnhams as the "model couple," who are and who appear to be the county family. Years ago, Leonora told Dowell that once she tried to take a lover in the back of a carriage, but she was unable and ended up in tears. Dowell considers both Ashburnhams to be morally upright. He describes Edward Ashburnham as "the cleanest looking sort of chap, an excellent magistrate, a first rate soldier, just exactly the sort of chap you could have trusted your wife with." Dowell then vouches for his own cleanness of thoughts and absolute chastity of life. He ends the chapter wondering whether all of morality is a folly and a mockery. He concludes that if the morality of such a basic act as sex is blurred, then there is nothing to guide us, "it is all a darkness." Part I, Section II Dowell begins section II by admitting that he does not know how to tell this story. He decides to imagine himself at the fireplace of a country cottage, "with a sympathetic soul opposite." He describes Florence as a woman with the "seeing eye," as one who loves history, and who loves to talk, but dislikes listening. They travelled frequently, but Florence only needed to see each place once. Dowell's sole function during their marriage is to keep Florence alive by keeping her away from topics that might upset her. Florence's aunts, the Misses Hurlbird, used to say that Dowell was the laziest man in Philadelphia. With all the money he wants, Dowell has no need to work. Dowell describes Florence's family, the Misses Hurlbird and Uncle John, as extremely old-fashioned but lovable. Uncle John was told by the doctors he had a heart condition, and after years of working at his facotry, John finally decided to take a rest and tour around the world, bringing oranges to everyone he meets. Though Uncle John turns out not to have a heart condition, he dies five days before Florence. Dowell has to travel to Connecticut to appoint trustees and take care of the will, since he is now the inheritor of the Hurlbird estate. While he is in Connecticut, Dowell receives a letter from the Ashburnhams asking him to come visit their home in England. Dowell hurries over to England to meet their request and is greeted warmly by Leonora, but senses that Edward is in agony. In this chapter, Dowell includes the story of La Louve, the She-wolf, who refuses Peire Vidal, a poet who is in love with her. He commits crazy stunts to get her attention, and finally her husband forces her to be with him, because courtesy is due to great poets. Dowell adds that, of the two, "she was the more ferocious."

