 Persuasion by Jane Austen, CHAPTER I Sobalta Elliott of Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the barantage. There he found occupation for an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one. There his faculties were roused into admiration and respect by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents. There any unwelcome sensations arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century, and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened. Elliott of Kellynch Hall Walter Elliott, born March 1, 1760, married July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson Esquire of South Park in the county of Gloucester, by which lady, who died 1800, he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785, Anne, born August 9, 1787, a stillborn son, November 5, 1789, Mary, born November 20, 1791. Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands, but so Walter had improved it by adding for the information of himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth. Married December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove Esquire of Upper Cross, in the county of Somerset, and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife. Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family in the usual terms. How it had been first settled in Cheshire, how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of High Sheriff, representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty and dignity of baronet in the first year of Charles II, with all the Mary's and Elizabeth's they had married, forming altogether two handsome duo-decimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto, principal seat Kellynch Hall in the county of Somerset, and so Walter's handwriting again in this finale. Air presumptive, William Walter Elliot Esquire, great-grandson of the second Sir Walter. Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character, vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth, and at fifty-four was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy, and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion. His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment. Since to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to anything deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable, whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned, the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards. She had humid or softened or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years, and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children to attach her to life and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them. Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge, rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father. She had, however, one very intimate friend, a sensible, deserving woman who had been brought by strong attachment to herself to settle close by her in the village of Kellynch, and on her kindness and advice Lady Elliot mainly relied for the best help and maintenance of the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously giving her daughters. This friend, Anne Sir Water, did not marry, whatever might have been anticipated on that head by their acquaintance. Thirteen years had passed away since Lady Elliot's death, and they were still near-neighbours and intimate friends, and one remained a widower, the other a widow. That Lady Russell, of steady age and character, and extremely well provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no apology to the public, which is rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not. But Sir Water's continuing singleness requires explanation. Be it known, then, that Sir Water, like a good father, having met with one or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications, prided himself on remaining single for his dear daughter's sake. For one daughter, his eldest, he would really have given up anything which he had not been very much tempted to do. Elizabeth had succeeded at sixteen, to all that was possible, of her mother's rights and consequence, and being very handsome and very like Sample complete. Ready to continue?