Misfortune

By Wesley Stace

It's the early 1800s and a baby has been tossed on a garbage heap to die only to be rescued by the richest man in all the kingdom. That is the baby's good fortune, right? Maybe not so good, though, because the man who rescued the baby isn't playing with a full deck. When he looks at the baby he sees his dead sister reborn, this despite the fact that the baby is a little boy. So, living in safety and luxury, yet forced to deny his gender and live his life as a girl, is this his good fortune or misfortune?
This is the conflict that Rose must deal with, raised his whole young life with the belief that he is a girl when, of course, he is not. The truth doesn't begin to dawn on Rose until he enters his early teens and starts to develop those characteristics of a young man on the verge of manhood. At this point, his previously affectionate and indulgent adoptive father turns against Rose, unable to bear the sight of his daughter becoming a man. So distressed is the father that he refuses to see Rose and the father gradually fades away and dies.
Although Rose is the official heir of his father's millions, other claimants appear, scenting the possibility of gaining a toehold on the millions. Rose is soon forced to reveal the fact that he is a boy who was raised as a girl by his mentally ill father. At this point the relatives take charge and Rose is forced to put off his girly garb and don the breeches and boots befitting a man. Rose, who has been raised his whole life only wearing female attire, feels constrained and disoriented in his boy clothes. Plus the relatives who are now running everything because Rose is underage are a nasty and unpleasant lot who are bent on living the high life, no matter how much it costs Rose's estate.
Eventually the truth of Rose's origins is revealed and then the relatives hire lawyers to dispute Rose's claims to the estate. At this point life has become so intolerable that Rose runs away, leaving the evil relatives in command of all the vast assets and the estate that his father left him.

I did enjoy reading about poor mixed up Rose, but the first part of the story was more engrossing than the later part dealing with Rose's life after he ran away. Being a woman and knowing what it is like to wear a dress or to wear pants, I definitely vote for pants as the most comfortable and the most efficient type of clothing and I would think that Rose would have found the shift from yards and yards of stifling fabric to the simplicity of trousers to be immensely freeing. I would think that, as a boy, he would be thrilled with the freedom available to him that girls of that time were not permitted. So at the point where Rose puts off his dresses and corsets and is forced to switch to the hated pants I somewhat lost interest. Later Rose settles on a kind of compromise, wearing dresses but keeping his mustache, a frankly freakish combination that was even harder to understand than his distaste for his men's clothing. Still it was a pretty good story though the ending is too pat. The author was trying to write a novel in the style of the nineteenth century Gothic novel and perhaps such coincidences are typical of those novels. I would have liked to have the novel center less on Rose's life of luxury in the mansion and more about his escapades after he ran off, but that part of his life is touched on very briefly. Still, despite the rather draggy latter part of the story, I mainly enjoyed reading about Miss Fortune's Misfortune.

For another review see BookPage.
New Words

Chaunters: a chaunter is a street seller of ballads and other broadsides. 'There was always the crowd of chaunters, and they'd be looking for the opportunity of some work as the afternoon wore on.'

Lady Skimmington: in Wiltshire bands of peasants protested against the enclosure of common land by dressing as women and calling themselves Lady Skimmington; a man who wears women's clothes. 'Some silently suspected that he might not be interested in women at all, that he was a bit of a Lady Skimmington.

Water budgets and compony counter-componies: In heraldry, a water budget is an emblem which represents the ancient water budget, or bucket, consisting of two leather vessels connected by a stick or yoke and carried over the shoulder. In heraldry, a compony counter-compony is a border composed of two rows of squares or rectangles in alternating colors, like a checkerboard. 'Others could keep their escutcheons of pretense, their water budgets and their compony counter-componies, he was happy with this simple sign and the motto beneath: Amor Vincit Omnia [Love Conquers All].'

Barleybreaks: an old English country game. 'Despite his relative invisibility in the parish calendar, he could be relied upon to appear, with great aplomb, at the annual games in which the May queens and their attendants played at barleybreaks for the whole town.'

Sarcenet: a fine, soft silk cloth. 'The counterpane of the Great Bed, purple velvet edged with a delicate blue and yellow sarcenet, was heavily weighed down by the family arms embroidered upon it.'

Orgeat: a sugared milk beverage with pulverized almonds or originally barley; brandy was frequently added. 'A half-finished decanter of orgeat stood on her bedside table, the stopper still spinning on the silver tray.'

Encaustic: a wax-based paint that is fixed in place by heating; a painting produced using this paint. 'Everything else was an exceptional facsimile, down to the minute encaustic tiles with the family motto inside the front door; if the actual hall ever fell into neglect and disrepair but the Hemmen House survived, then the contents and the spirit of its arrangement would be easily recalled.'

Quidnuncing: a quidnunc is a nosy person, a busybody. 'The lower floor was for noise, dirt, and business, and the most useful rooms were there: a breakfast room, a small dining room and a dinner room, a room for afternoon entertainments, and another for "quidnuncing," all branching from the massive Baron's Hall.'

Parterre: in landscape gardening, a formal area of planting, usually square or rectangular. 'Looking beyond the Terra-cotta Bridge, which crossed the river that snaked along the bottom of the parterre, her eyes fell upon the Northern Avenue.'

Periphrasis: the substitution of an elaborate phrase for a simple word or expression. 'I would have excited your apprehensions with periphrasis such as "It might have been at about this time that ...," or I would have spoken too knowledgeably and later been caught in a lie.'

Recto and verso: the recto is the right-hand page and the verso the left-hand page of a folded sheet or bound item, such as a book, broadsheet, or pamphlet. 'It was a letter, recto and verso, from Mary Day's printer to the author, addressed simply as M, outlining certain changes he was bound to make to the text of "Sophia of Light" to enable him to include the designs she requested.'

Kapellmeister: German for the leader of a choir or orchestra. 'The dispersal of the orchestra around the country, and the return of the kapellmeister to the court at Prague whence he had come, gave my father pause.'

Vitrine: a glass-fronted cabinet which stood independently or on a stand and was used to display china, silver and curios. 'In the downstairs library, the desk sat next to a vitrine called the Museum, full of those family mementos that were valuable to my father: my first tooth, which my mother said he handled as though it were a sacred relic; the cameo broach that bears my mother's profile; the locket containing my miniature drawing of them at the desk.'

Idée fixe: obsession. 'I was my mother's idea and my father's idée fixe.'

Fard: to paint, especially one's face. 'The powder, a noxious combination of lead plate, vinegar, and perfume, prepared (to my horror) in horse manure, suffocated and chafed my skin, so every night I rubbed my face with Mother's fard of sweet almond oil, melted with spermaceti and honey, which soothed me until the next morning's onslaught.'

Rubric: rubrics are the instructions that form chapter headings or titles that are not a part of the text. The word rubric is derived from the Latin word, rubrica, which means “red” because the color of the ink used to write rubrics was red. '"The rubric eludes him, but the pictures will give him enormous pleasure and perhaps stir him to greater dalliance with his muse."'

Senex: Latin for old man. In Ancient Rome, the title of Senex was only awarded to elderly men with families who had good standing in their village. 'Hood, in his usual position by the Hemmen House, was wrapped in a very large towel with, I assumed, some pajamas beneath; this togaed senex was the very same man whom I had only recently seen out of formal attire for the first time.'

Parturient: of or relating to or giving birth. '"Adam -- the first man! The only parturient male!" exclaimed my mother.'

Clinquant: glittering with gold or silver, tinsel or spangles. 'At Calais, she reminded me (not, I thought, that I had ever known), the French had stood, according to the national poet, "all clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods."'

Belvederes: a belvedere is a pavilion or raised turret, built for the view or for its own appearance sake. 'Step back in time as you wander through the spectacular formal gardens and lose yourself on the estate, in a forgotten world of belvederes, follies, and surprise views.'

Son et lumières: sound and light shows. 'Animatronix™ figures bring the servants' quarters to vivid life once again for the twenty-first century in a series of son et lumières in kitchen and laundry.'

Bildungsroman: a novel about the education and maturing of a young person; also known as a coming of age story. 'I wanted to write a novel that creates a whole world and tells a complete story, a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story -- but with a subject matter they couldn't have written about in the nineteenth century.'