Title:  The Gentleman of Fifty and The Damsel of Nineteen

Author:  George Meredith

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

Release Date:  September, 2003 [Etext #4496] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 5, 2002]

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THE GENTLEMAN OF FIFTY AND THE DAMSEL OF NINETEEN

(An early uncompleted fragment.)

By George Meredith

CHAPTER I

Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily-shadowed river of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain bright space immediately underneath the vicar’s terrace-garden steps.  My astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth.  I knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men, and my first effort to explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank.  As I advanced along the bank opposed to them, I was further amazed to hear them discoursing quite equably together, so that it was impossible to say on the face of it whether a catastrophe had occurred, or the great heat of a cloudless summer day had tempted an eccentric couple to seek for coolness in the directest fashion, without absolute disregard to propriety.