A Chorus Across Centuries – 024

Dear Molly,

We read your letter aloud at dinner. By candlelight, of course. Byron insisted.

The whole gang was here for the weekend—a stormy one, fittingly. The lake thrashed, the wind shrieked through the shutters, and you, my dear Molly, were the topic of every conversation, from breakfast to brandy.

Let me tell you what I heard.

Percy grew somber and quiet. “She is a Promethean voice,” he murmured, “not because she steals fire, but because she carries the burden of it.” Then he asked if you could write poetry in terza rima. Typical.

Claire snorted. “Men always make it about gods and burdens. I think she sounds like a woman trying to grow up too fast with a hundred fathers and no mother in sight.”

Polidori declared, “She reminds me of my patient who believed he was made of glass. Brilliant, fragile, and at risk of shattering the very hands that shaped her.”

Byron was unusually quiet at first. Then he leaned forward and said, “Tell her not to be ashamed of being built. We all are. Some of us by fame, some by family, some by rotgut and regret. At least she knows she’s a construct. That’s more than I can say for most of us.”

Even the Villa seemed to have an opinion. The pipes groaned as if exhaling, and the shutters clapped like an old woman who’d heard something too true for comfort.

I laughed. I cried. I wrote three pages by candlelight and tore them up.

You were not just heard, Molly. You were felt.

We do not agree on everything. Percy wants to debate you. Claire wants to comfort you. Byron, to seduce you. I just want to keep listening.

Because your question—”what would you change if you could help build me again?”—it pierced us all.

So I asked them. And I ask myself. And now I ask you: may we take turns answering?

Tonight, as the storm eases and the candles gutter low, I will begin.

With affection and a head full of you,
Mary