Page 1: May 27, 2021 Hi there! I told you there had to be more! We had to call around a little to the relatives, but cousin Kate came through with this one. No wonder word drops off, though; an ocean will certainly slow one’s correspondence. We’ll keep digging, but this was all Kate had. I hope the drop off in Georgiana’s correspondence is because she was busy and happy being busy. We did learn a few things: She lived to be very old, and never had kids. She traveled. Something nice: there are a bunch of references in other family correspondence to “Georgiana and her gardener,” which we’ve pieced together to mean she lived a long and happy life with her school’s groundskeeper. I love it — she picks up, moves to New York, and finally finds lasting love with someone who would give Lady Catherine de Bourgh an absolute aneurysm. I do think she’d be glad to know that most of what we know is about her school, though! She was headmistress for a number of years, then left to open her own free school for girls — girls who became doctors, poets, scientists, happy. I hope she saw every sight she wanted to see. I hope she wore yellow and danced with strangers and with people she liked without worrying about what anyone thought. I hope she had more wildflowers than she had vases to hold them. I *think* I found a reference to Henry Stanhope here in the States in some of the research I did, but the odds of them finding each other again are so long. I’m mad at him! I am! But also his dad sounds like the worst, and I hope Henry wore out his shoes seeing the world. I hope he found love again too.
by Meghan Winch | Jun 2, 2021