I Can So I Will

Mrs Finnegan Faces Tomorrow with a New Pot of Ink

Dear friends, readers, fellow housekeepers, staff members, wayfarers and casual acquaintances

My book burnt to a crisp on the VERY brink of publication!
Destroyed when a WHISKER away from worldwide admiration!

How could I have coped with my life work up in flames without you? I have listened and I have learned.

Imelda disclaimed:

Mrs Finnegan, the tragic but beautifully written account of your maid’s extreme scatter brained idiocy stirred me almost to tears.
First I thought sack her, throw her off Brighton pier or wall, or a passing boat. Let her very body feed the fish. But like you I’m too merciful…
Now I feel she should live but suffer. The exact nature of her penance besides fasting until Easter I can’t devise immediately. In the meantime please take up your quill again, as soon as you may. The words in a newly refined version will flow freely and be doubly satisfying.

My reply: Your righteous anger does you credit, Miss Imelda, but it burns too hot. Sissy is but a child. MY life may be RUINED, but why ruin hers?

LiterateIndy persisted:

If you would not be forgotten,
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading,
or do things worth writing.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Back to work Mrs. Finnegan.

My Response: Mr Franklin was something of a RADICAL but I can overlook it because of the wise sentiments he expressed in his blunt American way (which he could not help).
In my present predicament I am also MINDFUL of another of his instructions.
Hide not your talents, they for use were made,
What’s a sundial in the shade?

Old Toddy sidled up and murmured:

Come on, girl, confess. There never was a book and there’s never going to be one.

A reply only ENCOURAGES the Toddy’s of the world. I need not retort that he was wrong in EVERY detail he uttered. Nay! In EVERY word and letter. The very breath he exhaled was wrong (and smelt of hops and three-day-old herring).

Maria anguished:

 With a heavy heart I read your most gruelling experience…Our memory has twisted paths that will make your ideas come smoothly, even if at the beginning the blank page syndrome may scare you a little. Try hard, and harder, and the satisfaction of having won another battle will be most rewarding in the long run.

My answer: This young lady writes with such felicity of feeling and GRACE of purpose that you would have to be a half-crazed BRUTE to ignore her message.

H.J. Flyte-Fly Esq yawned:

It’s only a book. Why all this bother?

My rejoinder: Sir, a diet of NEWSPAPERS and gossip may be good enough for you, but the rest of us REQUIRE more uplifting reading.

Tiffany pleaded:

Are you quite sure that there are no pages left lingering under the cushions? Perhaps fluttering under the couch? Maybe hiding behind the floor length tapestries?!

Maybe dear Sissy squirreled them away to her room. Put them under her mattress. Fearing your pending fame from the first publishing will take you away from her?

My Riposte: Alas, dear, hopeful friend. It is gone. All gone. I believe the string holding the pages together was SAVED, but I have little use for it now.

Luccia wrote:

Start over! You know how it ends, and how it gets there. Might be like a revision, even improved — and quicker. We are looking forward to your book!

My reaction: I could not be so HEARTLESS as to let you wait in VAIN!

Jennie sighed

O dear!

My reply: Yes, Jennie oh very dear. But I am determined to be a sundial in the sun.

I will start again. And it will be better than before. GONE the religious tracts copied from a well-meaning, but disturbingly dull, tome and I will discard the chapter on sermons and how to make one. I am afraid the instructions on grape peeling and de-furring peaches will also have to wait for another time.

I shall concentrate on the TRULY important. My first chapter will be about LOVE. I shall write it now. My quill is sharp, the ink wet, the paper so-so. What could go wrog?

Accompany Mrs Finnegan on her arduous journey to literary success. Just click HERE and you’ll get a gentle nudge when her next missive is published PLUS you will receive ENTIRELY useful recipes and nuggets of advice ONLY AVAILABLE to subscribers.

Mrs Finnegan is housekeeper at The Regency Town House in Brunswick Square, West Brighton in the very pleasant country of Sussex. The year is sometime in the 1830s, that overlooked period between George IV’s frolics and Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne.