1816: the Grandest Tour

Switzerland: Chapter 5

A few weeks before these events, Susan Tilney and Clémentine de Sotisse found themselves sitting in the upper-floor bedroom of their house in Amsterdam. A week remained before their departure for Germany, and the young ladies were bored nearly out of their minds. They had seen every gallery half a dozen times, walked over every quaint canal bridge, toured every church, and visited every neighborhood in the Dutch capital with even the remotest claim to interest. And now here they sat.

Susan put down her pocket volume of Vathek (an infamous novel of a decadent Arab prince), and sighed with notable abandon.

"Oh how shall we survive this week, Clemmy!" she said in a plaintive voice to her governess.

Eighteen years old and strikingly pretty, Susan's large brown eyes and delicate features were framed by wavy chestnut hair, which at the moment was pinned up in the Classical style so admired in those days. She wore a tasteful muslin gown – one of several her father Henry had bought her before she left, since he was an expert in this fabric – and a more flamboyantly colored shawl around her shoulders. This last added a touch of her own personality to her ensemble, and also protected against the wretched, unseasonable cold.

"That depends, mademoiselle," Clémentine answered. Susan's governess, only twenty-five herself, had strawberry-blonde hair and a small mouth, which belied the great volume of her laugh and cultivated singing voice. She spoke with an oddly changeable accent, that she could make lighter or heavier depending on her need. The young Frenchwoman had a streak for mischief, and an adventurous spirit that could easily infect others. She, too, was feeling the heavy weight of their boredom. In the silence that followed she turned over various schemes in her mind to make life more interesting. Discarding the first few ideas as too outlandish, she suddenly sat up.

"We could go to lunch –" she said with a bright look.

"Augh..." Susan sighed in premature judgment.

"With! Sofie and Paula."

"Sofie and Paula!" cried Susan in disbelief. "Solve our predicament of incredible boredom by going out with the two most boring girls in Holland? Honestly Clem!"

"Sometimes the antidote is a little more of the poison," said Clémentine with a roguish look.

Susan tutted and shook her head decisively. She would not spend another minute with those two if she could help it.

"Please, chérie, let me show you this once," said the governess with an imploring face. "I think I know a way to make these girls more... vif. And after that, who knows what happens. But you must help me a little, hein?

Susan, as the younger and less experienced of the two, could not long resist the importuning of her magnetic friend.

Downstairs they found the Hendricksen girls with their mother, in much the same position as they'd left them the night before. Margarethe was sewing repairs in Wilhelmus's many shirts, while her daughters were slowly plodding through some very staid needlework patterns of tulip bulbs. In her glamorous and cultivated French, it took only minutes for Clémentine to propose the little outing to the girls' mamma and secure her consent. The truth was, none of the Hendricksen family was very adept in the language.

Susan, Clémentine, Sofie, and Paula emerged from the grand house on Oranjestraat and walked toward the canals. It was another wet and overcast day, so they went only a short distance before stopping at one of the fine inns Clem and Susan had dined in before. The place was bustling inside from the midday rush, but the host found them a table overlooking the canals. It was a lovely view of the rafts and barges sailing past, and the two Dutch sisters seemed to brighten up after a minute looking at the scene. Sofie and Paula had needed some cajoling from their mamma to go out, as generally they seemed, to Susan, to take little interest in anything. Clémentine agreed with Susan, and would often cite the hideous dun bonnets the sisters wore as evidence they might as well join a convent and be done with it. And yet, Susan reflected, here is Clemmy inviting them both to lunch.