A Garden of One's Own

Chapter 1

I was born in the year 1900. It is said that it was a good year. There was no war, only progress, industry, and beauty, riches unending and eternal. We were ruled by a wise and benevolent monarch, Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India. The British Empire spanned the world, encompassing the beaches of the West Indies to the jungles of Africa and the mysteries of the Orient. Even the oceans bowed to the power of the Royal Navy; none could best it. Rising above it all was the crown jewel herself, England, destined to outshine a sun that could only rise higher.

It was thus that I entered into the world on the crest of optimism and a new century to a country that feared only hesitation and half-measures. Cecilia, my parents called me, and so Cecilia Grant I became. Later, as my relatives aged and began reminiscing as elders are wont to do, they would tell me of a little girl and her mop of golden curls tucked beneath a blue bonnet, a little girl who preferred the solitude of her mother's rose garden than the company of her peers, a little girl who grew into an Englishwoman proper, waist corseted and expression prim. They would tell me I was all that was right about England.

Certainly, there was a measure of exaggeration in those words - alas, there is a measure of exaggeration in anything one's grandparents claim - but exaggeration never fails to find its basis in truth. I am a child of my age, and always diffused into me was the faith that, in the end, nothing would err, and if it did, I would have the power to change it. But I am also a child of my parents, my father James and my mother Annabel, and their respective attitudes. We are "new money," as the landed aristocracy deigns to call us. We live a comfortable life in this bustling town of Great Hangleton, and Father pulls in a decent salary as a lawyer, but it isn't enough. No, Father says, for one must always have one's eyes on betterment, on something greater than the status quo.

The aristocrats are correct, then: the singular aim of the middle is to find its place among the high.

It is this aim that Mother must have been nursing in her mind when she informed me that I would be paying a visit to neighboring Little Hangleton in a two weeks' time to meet a family with whom she had become acquainted. "The Riddles," she reported one night over dinner. "A fine name that commands much respect where it is known. Their manor has been in the family's possession for over three generations, and did you know, they have a son. His name is Tom, if I remember correctly. Why, he's your age, Cecilia! Born not five months before you."

I demurely directed my eyes back down to the slice of ham on my plate. "I shall be most pleased to visit, Mother."

"Excellent. We shall have to buy you a new dress. Yes, a new dress. That should make quite the impression, I think. You would like one, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, of course!" I picked up my fork and knife and cut a sliver of ham, placing it in my mouth and chewing it slowly. It was a little bit bland, I decided. I'll have to tell Anne to add a bit more salt next time. "I would love a new dress."

Mother clapped her hands together as a child might on his birthday. Next to her, Father smiled to himself. "Well, we shall have to stop by the seamstress's soon, won't we? This is simply wonderful."

We had called on other families before, all of whom, rather incidentally, had sons. Mother never told me why we visited these particular families, but I knew very well that I, now approaching my twentieth year, was at an ideal age for marriage, and marriage, as all know, is a most powerful tool. These visits had brought nothing more to me than a few kisses on the hand and new additions to my wardrobe, but I was born in the year 1900 under the auspices of fortune that had already carried England so far. All that was asked of me was to lift my head and to never let it fall, and Providence would oversee the rest.