Not surprisingly, my dear parents insisted that I travel with a suitable companion, and she has already proven an incredible nuisance. Remember my mother’s friend Mrs. Taylor? She recommended her daughters’ former governess, and my mother snapped her up at once. I call her Medusa, as she’s turned me to stone at least a dozen times since we left England.
Other than that, I’ve little of interest to report. Mr. Michaels has been sending me the most supremely ridiculous love letters every day. I’m sorry to say they’re rather badly written—too scholarly—but the sentiments are heartily appreciated nonetheless.
I am, your most awful and debauched friend,
Margaret Seward
Chapter 7
I’d refused to get out of bed that morning, insisting Meg bring my mail upstairs, where I burst out laughing more than once while reading Margaret’s letter. My American friend, daughter of a fantastically wealthy railroad baron, was a kindred spirit whose love of the study of classics had brought us together while I was in mourning for my first husband. Although she was a Latinist (formally trained at Bryn Mawr) and I preferred Greek, our interests overlapped enough to provide for an intellectually stimulating friendship unlike any I’d known before. She’d become, in the span of a few years, as close to me as Ivy, though the two of them couldn’t be more different. Margaret challenged me while Ivy offered comfort, and I couldn’t imagine doing without either of them.
Margaret’s modern thinking and passionate belief in the rights of women inspired me, and the way she managed to convince her parents to support her studies was impressive. She was an expert at negotiating trade-offs with them. A mere year ago, she’d agreed to a Season in London (with the theoretical goal of catching a titled husband) in exchange for a term at Oxford.