Chapter the First.
Genevieve, at 17.

Pl. 03.Boyfriend · upper sixth at Fettes · only emotional voice in the volume.

Gen — I am writing this in the south room at Aunt Iona's house in Pittenweem on a Tuesday at half past nine and the rain has, for context, not stopped for three days. I am told I have four hundred words and I have, characteristically, used the first sixty on the weather. I want, very seriously, to say one thing. The night in March on the wall behind St Cecilia's — you were reading aloud out of the Bishop in the small voice you do, and you got to the line in "One Art" about the houses, and you stopped, and you said — quite calmly — "Hugh, I do not, I think, ever want to be a writer who has nothing to lose." It was, on the wall, half past ten. I am writing this seven months and three days later. I have, since, not forgotten the sentence. I will not, I think, ever. Seventeen, Gen. I love you a great deal. The candle is on, the window is open, the room — as ever — is yours. — H.

Pl. 04.Friend · St Hugh's summer Latin course, 2025.

Gen — Es here, from the summer Latin course at St Hugh's, July. We sat next to each other in the back row of the Caedmon room on the first morning because we had, both of us, brought the wrong edition of the Ovid. You whispered, by way of introduction: "I have, alarmingly, brought the Melville." I whispered back: "I have, alarmingly, brought the Lombardo." We were, both of us, wrong. The Mandelbaum was, of course, on the desk. We agreed, by lunchtime, to never speak of it. That fortnight I learned, in this order, the second-conjugation passive, the difference between the Loeb and the Penguin, and the fact that you read in a low, steady, slightly amused undertone that is the most exact pleasure I have, in my life, found in a classroom. I have, since, been intermittently insufferable about Latin to everyone I know. ad multos annos, Genevieve. The Mandelbaum is, on reflection, still the wrong one. — Es.

Pl. 05.Godfather · senior editor, Faber & Faber · London.

Genevieve — Your godfather, briefly, from a desk at Faber on a Wednesday afternoon. The room is overheated, the manuscript on the desk is, frankly, a disappointment, and I am — as instructed by your mother — writing this in lieu of attending the dinner on the 4th, which my flight will, with the usual inevitability, prevent. I want to put two things on the record. The first: I have, since you were eleven, been reading what you write — the essays, the marginalia in the Loeb I gave you for confirmation, the small grey notebook you keep in the side pocket of the satchel. They are, by some distance, the most precise sentences I have read by anyone under twenty in the eleven years I have been an editor. You do not, yet, know how good they are. I am, in this letter, formally and on company paper telling you so. The second: when you are ready — not at the end of school, not in the second year at Cambridge, but when you are ready — there is a desk for you on the third floor of this building. We will, on your account, move it slightly closer to the window. ad multos annos, Genevieve. The room, as ever, is yours. — Owen.

Pl. 06.Latin master · George Watson's · formal, impressed.

Genevieve — It is, I think, the convention that a Latin master does not write to a pupil on her seventeenth birthday. I am, on the strength of your translation of Catullus 101 in the Trinity term, breaking the convention. You will recall that I asked the upper-fifth to render frater ave atque vale in three lines and to defend the choice. The class produced, broadly, three lines. You produced eleven, including a footnote on the rhythmic problem with "and farewell" in English, and a marginal note (in a 0.3 pencil, which I do not, on principle, supply) on why the line is, you wrote, "the saddest a Roman ever sang, and the most difficult, because the sorrow is in the meter and the meter is in Latin, and English does not have feet long enough." I have, in twenty-two years of teaching, not before been schooled by a fifteen-year-old. I have, since, recommended you read the Loeb against the Carson and write me a paragraph on which is more honest. I do not need it by Michaelmas. I would like it by Easter. ad multos annos, Genevieve. The room downstairs is yours when you need it. — A. R. C.

Pl. 07.Maternal grandfather · retired professor of medieval history.

My dear Genevieve — Grandpapa writing, from the long room at the cottage in Anstruther, on the Friday before your birthday. Forty-one years ago I taught the medieval-history paper at Edinburgh to a girl in the front row called Catriona, who married, three years later, a perfectly decent and slightly dull lawyer called James, and who is now, of course, your mother. I tell you this not because the story is interesting (it is not — it is the only story your mother has) but because she sent me, last week, a copy of the essay you wrote on Bede for the lower-sixth Michaelmas paper, and I read it on the train back from St Andrews, and I have, since, been carrying it in the breast pocket of the same tweed jacket I have worn since 1989. You wrote: "Bede did not write the Historia to be true. He wrote it to be remembered." I have, in forty-one years, not read a better sentence about the early-medieval chroniclers. I have, this week, written to the master at Magdalene about you. He is, broadly, expecting your application. Do not, please, become a literature scholar. The medievalists need you. The literature people, frankly, have enough. ad multos annos, mo neighean ghràdhach. The cottage, on the day, is yours. — Grandpapa.

Pl. 08.Mother · solicitor · mostly quiet, observes.

Genevieve — Mum, briefly, on the page. Seventeen years ago today, at eight minutes past five in the morning, in the small Edinburgh hospital at the bottom of the hill, you arrived (three weeks early, which was, even then, a refusal to be on the obvious schedule) and you opened your eyes, immediately, and looked at the ceiling, for a long time, with the particular small grave attention you have given everything since. I have, in seventeen years, not interrupted that attention. I do not intend to start today. I love you very much. The breakfast is laid. Theo is, against my better judgement, in the kitchen. — Mum.