THE BISHOP'S DAUGHTER
By
Like Russell's Princess Pamela (1979), this testament of her mother, Melissa, writing in 1811 at age 25, chatters and rockets along, thanks to frolicking dialogue, headlong confessions, a slyly inventive use of real personages, and a zapping of pretensions--with emphasis, here, on the tragic persistence of England's anti-Semitism and caste-based injustice. Melissa Worthing confesses at the outset that she has lied and killed and ""committed unspeakable grossness in the name of love."" But the very young Melissa is a happy one, busy in the confines of her family: her father, the kindly Bishop, who intones unkind pronouncements about such matters as the Luddites and Jews; wise Mother; dear brother Freddy, a Bertie Wooster sort, from whom Melissa gathers a rich vocabulary concerning the nature and use of the ""privities""; and widowed sister Esme, who laments the late Mr. Cooper and occationally has odd visions of the future (as well as a spectral nightly visitor). Like any highly placed family, the Worthings mingle with the available literati, so Melissa is invited to parties and a Newgate hanging (Russell taps horror with the lightest of touches) with such celebrities as: Charles Lamb, who reports on Cole-ridge's opium addiction (""Sam is in 'orrible cyse . . . Sad innit?""); Jane Austen, to whom Melissa offers the Pride and Prejudice title; Shelley, who sports a Venus crucifix; wily Beau Brummell, with unplumbed depths of what might be goodness; theatrical producer Cholmoneley-Cockburn, on whose boards brother Freddy is a smash hit (and from whom Melissa learns a brand-new word which she happily traces through some of Shakespeare's naughtiest quips); and the Prince of Wales, who, in amorous advance, begs Melissa to look past the ""mountain of blubber"" to see ""the wand-like boy beneath."" There are also bucketing excursions into the new science, Biblical translations, and a spluttering of theatrical bloopers. But through all this there is the growing love of Melissa and handsome brewery-owner Wilfrid Summerfield, of whom her family approves . . . until Mellssa discovers that not only is he quite possibly none other than ""King Lud"" (the mythic leader of the factory destroyers) but also half-Jewish. So: agonies of mind follow, then a rape, then the killing of the rapist--and, before the happy close, Melissa will share in a spooky premonition of the 20th-century horror to which bigotry will lead. It's no easy matter to bring off a slightly fantastical period potpourri like this, but Russell has just the right touch: busy, funny, witty, yet powerfully anchored--perhaps a mite too preachily--in gravely timeless matters.