Crotchet Castle - Thomas Love Peacock

isanovelpublishedin1831. The storyassemblesa collectionofeccentrics,eachobsessedwithpecu liar notions,generatinghumorthroughtheirclashingconversations. Among them are a clergyman suspicious of intellectual progress, a romantic who believes civilization peaked in the twelfth century, and a cynical lady deter mined to marry for money. The action unfolds during a house party and a journey toward Wales, culminating in a parody of contemporary riots.

IN one of those beautiful valleys, through which the Thames (not yet pol luted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey) rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, un der the shade of old beech woods, and the smoothmossygreenswardofthe chalk hills (which pour into it their tributaryrivulets, as pureandpellucidas the fountain of Bandusium, or the wells of Scamander, by which the wives and daughters of the Trojans washed their splendid garments in the days of peace, beforethecomingoftheGreeks);inoneofthosebeautifulvalleys,on a bold round-surfaced lawn, spotted with juniper, that opened itself in the bosom of an old wood,whichrosewithasteep, but not precipitous ascent, fromthe rivertothesummitofthehill,stoodthecastellatedvillaofaretired citizen. Ebenezer MacCrotchet, Esquire, wasthe London-bornoffspringof a worthy native of the "north countrie," who had walked up to London on a commercial adventure, with all his surplus capital, not very neatly tied up in a not very clean handkerchief, suspended over his shoulder from the end of a hookedstick, extracted fromthefirst hedge onhispilgrimage; andwho, after having worked himself a step or two up the ladder of life, had won the virgin heart of the only daughter of a highly respectable merchant of Duke’s Place, withwhomheinheritedthehonestfruitsofalongseriesofingenuous dealings.