4 Persuasion - Abridged By Stephanie Poppins

In 1813, 54-year-old widower Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall, Somerset reviews his entry in the list of nobles in order to take his mind off his troubles. He has overspent his income and is deep in debt. His daughter Mary is insulated from the crisis because she is married but it impacts the lives of his unmarried daughters, Elizabeth and Anne. Sir Walter dotes on Elizabeth but ignores Anne.

In this episode, the narrator recounts the events of the summer of 1806 in which Captain Wentworth was visiting his brother in the area and became acquainted with Anne. They fell in love and had hoped to marry but Anne's family and her trusted friend Lady Russell thought it a degrading alliance.

Transcript

Hello.

Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,

Your go-to romantic podcast that guarantees you a calm and entertaining transition into a great night's sleep.

Come with me as we immerse ourselves in a romantic journey to a time long since forgotten.

But before we begin,

Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.

Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.

That's it.

Now close your eyes and feel yourself sink deeper into the support beneath you.

It is time to relax and fully let go.

There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.

Happy listening.

Persuasion by Jane Austen Chapter Four The new tenant was not Mr Wentworth,

However,

The former Curate of Monkford,

But Captain Frederick Wentworth,

His brother,

Having been made commander in consequence of the action of St.

Domingo and not immediately employed,

Had come into Somersetshire in the summer of 1806.

Having no parent living,

He found a home for half a year at Monkford.

Having no parent living,

He found a home for half a year at Monkford.

He was at that time a remarkably fine young man with a great deal of intelligence,

Spirit and brilliancy,

And Anne,

An extremely pretty girl with gentleness,

Modesty,

Taste and feeling.

Half the sum of attraction on either side might have been enough,

For he had nothing to do and she had hardly anybody to love,

But the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail.

They were gradually acquainted,

And when acquainted,

Rapidly and deeply in love.

It would be difficult to say which had seen the highest perfection in the other or which had been the happiest,

She in receiving his declarations and proposals,

Or he in having them accepted.

A short period of exquisite felicity followed,

And but a short one.

Trouble soon arose.

Sir Walter,

On being applied to without actually withholding his consent or saying it should ever be,

Gave all the negative of great astonishment,

Great coldness,

Great silence and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter.

He thought it a very degrading alliance,

And Lady Russell,

Though with more tempered and pardonable pride,

Received it as a most unfortunate one.

Anne Elliot,

With all her claims of birth,

Beauty and mind,

To throw herself away at nineteen,

Involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man who had nothing but himself to recommend him,

And no hopes of attaining affluence.

But in the chances of a most uncertain profession,

And no connections to secure even his further rise in the profession,

Would be indeed a throwing away,

Which she grieved to think of.

Anne Elliot so young,

Known to so few,

To be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune,

Or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing,

Anxious,

Youth-killing dependence,

It must not be,

If by any fair interference of friendship,

Any representations from one who had almost a mother's love and mother's rights,

It would be prevented.

Captain Wentworth had no fortune.

He had been lucky in his profession,

But spending freely what had come freely had realised nothing.

But he was confident he should soon be rich.

Full of life and ardour,

He knew he would soon have a ship and be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted.

He had always been lucky,

He knew he should be so still.

Such confidence,

Powerful in its own warmth,

And bewitching in the wit which often expressed it,

Must have been enough for Anne.

But Lady Russell saw it very differently.

His sanguine temper and fearlessness of mind operated very differently on her.

She saw in it but an aggravation of the evil.

It only added a dangerous character to himself.

He was brilliant,

He was headstrong.

Lady Russell had little taste for wit,

And of anything approaching to imprudence a horror.

She deprecated the connection on every light.

Such opposition was more than Anne could combat.

Young and gentle as she was,

It might yet have been possible to withstand her father's ill will,

Though unsoftened by one kind word or look on part of her sister.

But Lady Russell,

Whom she had always loved and relied upon,

Could not with such steadiness of opinion and such tenderness of manner be continually advising her in vain.

She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing,

Indiscreet,

Improper,

Hardly capable of success,

And not deserving it.

But it was not a merely selfish caution under which she acted,

In putting an end to it.

Had she not imagined herself consulting his good even more than her own,

She could hardly have given him up.

The belief of being prudent and self-denying,

Principally for his advantage,

Was her chief consolation.

Under the misery of a parting,

A final parting,

And every consolation was required,

Pushey had to encounter all the additional pain of opinions on his side,

Totally unconvinced and unbending,

And of his feeling himself so ill-used by so forced a relinquishment.

He left the country in consequence.

A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance,

But not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering.

Her attachment and regrets had for a long time clouded every enjoyment of youth,

And an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect.

More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close,

And time had softened down March,

Perhaps nearly all of his peculiar attachment.

But she had been too dependent on time alone.

No aid had been given in change of place,

Or any other novelty or enlargement of society.

No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth,

As he stood in her memory.

No second attachment.

The only thoroughly natural,

Happy,

And sufficient cure at her time of life had been possible to the nice tone of her mind,

The fastidiousness of her taste in the small limits of the society around them.

She had been solicited,

When about two or twenty,

To change her name by the young man,

Who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger sister.

Charles Musgrove was the eldest son of a man whose landed property and general importance were second in that country only to Sir Walter's.

Lady Russell would have rejoiced to see Anne at twenty-two so respectably removed from the partialities and injustice of her father's house,

And settled so permanently near herself.

But in this case Anne had left nothing for advice to do,

And though Lady Russell,

As satisfied as ever with her own discretion,

Never wished the past undone.

She began now to have the anxiety which bores on hopelessness,

For Anne's being tempted,

By some man of talents and independence,

To enter a state for which she held her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.

They knew not each other's opinion,

Either its constancy or its change.

The subject was never alluded to.

But Anne at seven and twenty thought very differently from what she'd been made to think at nineteen.

She did not quite blame Lady Russell.

She did not blame herself for having been guided by her.

But she felt that were any young person in similar circumstances to apply to her for counsel,

They would never receive any of such certain immediate wretchedness.

Over time all Captain Wentworth's sanguine expectations,

All his confidence had been justified.

His genius and ardour had seemed to foresee,

And to command his prosperous path.

Very soon after their engagement ceased,

He got in ploy,

And all that he had told her at nineteen years old would follow,

Had taken place.

He had distinguished himself,

And gained the other stepping rank,

And was now by successive captures have made a handsome fortune.

Anne had only navy list and newspapers for her authority,

But she could not doubt his being rich,

And in favour of his constancy she had no reason to believe him married.

How eloquent she could have been!

How eloquent at least were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment!

But she had been forced into prudence in her youth,

And now she was suffering because of it.

With all these circumstances,

Recollections and feelings,

She could not hear that Captain Wentworth's sister was likely to live at Kellynch without a revival of former pain,

And many a stroll and many a sigh were necessary to dispel the agitation of the idea.

She often told herself it was folly,

Before she could harden her nerves sufficiently to fill the continual discussion of the Crofts and their business no evil.

She was assisted,

However,

By that perfect indifference and apparent unconsciousness among the only three of her own friends in the secret of the past,

Which seemed almost to deny any recollection of it.

She could do justice to the superiority of Lady Russell's motives in this,

Over those of her father and Elizabeth.

She could honour all the better feelings of her calmness,

But the general air of oblivion among them was highly important from whatever it sprung,

And in the event of Admiral Croft's really taking Kellynch Hall,

She rejoiced and knew over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her,

Of the past being known to those three only among her connections,

By whom no syllable she believed would ever be whispered,

And in the trust that among this,

The brother only with whom he had been residing,

Had received any information of their short-lived engagement.

That brother had long been removed from the country,

And being a sensible man,

And moreover,

A single man at the time,

She had a fond dependence on no human creatures having heard of it from him.

The sister,

Mrs Croft,

Had then been out of England,

Accompanying her husband on a foreign station,

It had never been admitted by the pride of some on the delicacy of others,

To the smallest knowledge of it afterwards.

So,

With these supports,

Anne hoped that the acquaintance between herself and the Crofts,

Which,

With Lady Russell still resident,

Would be a good thing,

Would be a good thing,

And she hoped that it would be a good thing.

The Crofts,

Which,

With Lady Russell still resident in Kellynch,

And Mary fixed only three miles off,

Must be anticipated,

Need not involve any particular awkwardness.

Reviews

Awkwardness, a good description of a young girl's heart being trampled on by elders. Tsk tsk, for want of a caring parent. 🌺