The Project Gutenberg EBook of Deerbrook, by Harriet Martineau

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Title: Deerbrook

Author: Harriet Martineau

Release Date: January 7, 2008 [EBook #24210]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEERBROOK ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Deerbrook, by Harriet Martineau.

________________________________________________________________________
Harriet Martineau was the daughter of a Norwich textile manufacturer of
Huguenot descent--hence the name and trade. In 1829 the bank in which
she, her mother and her sisters, had placed their money, failed and she
was forced to earn a living through writing, at which she was very
talented, particularly on political issues, such as the poverty facing a
family on the death of the wage-earner. In 1839, after her travels in
America, she wrote two long novels, of which Deerbrook was one, and a
book about Toussaint L'Ouverture the other.

This book, therefore gives great insight into the lives of upper middle
class families of the mid nineteenth century. No one in families these
days talks to the rest of the family in the polite, perhaps over-polite,
terms used in this book. For this reason, though it was not meant to be
taken as such, this book is a true social document.

________________________________________________________________________
DEERBROOK, BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.

CHAPTER ONE.

AN EVENT.

Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what
it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation,--in a
shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two
hills,--and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, "I
should like to live there,"--"I could be very happy in that pretty
place." Transient visions pass before his mind's eye of dewy summer
mornings, when the shadows are long on the grass, and of bright autumn
afternoons, when it would be luxury to saunter in the neighbouring
lanes; and of frosty winter days, when the sun shines in over the
laurustinus at the window, while the fire burns with a different light
from that which it gives in the dull parlours of a city.