12 August 1851; In Which Mrs Pennylegion Forms an Opinion of A Natural History of Dragons

 

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennen

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 336

Published: 5 February 2013, by Tor Books

Purchased: 7 August 1851, from Mr. Doe's Bookshop

Recommended? No, it seems

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Dear Gertrude,

What strange books this Mr Doe stocks. I have just finished Lady Trent’s memoir, A Natural History of Dragons & fear this letter will be less coherent for my having done so.

First, no one I have asked has heard of a Lady Trent. This comes as no surprise, as she seems to have gone through quite a lot of trouble to disguise herself—pretending, even, to be writing from a place called Linshire in the year 5658. I don’t know why she couldn’t have simply called herself Lord Trent and have done with it like all the rest.

Actually, Gertie, I do.  It is because she is a madwoman. I think it must be the only explanation.

Mad Lady Trent begins at her childhood playing with dead things and being called unladylike (don’t you remember those days, Gertie? I think we must be rapidly returning to them, especially when Mrs Impleton joins our whist table). From there, she marries a man with a library and convinces him to take her on a scientific expedition to study dragons. This is no metaphor. Mad Lady Trent is actually chasing dragons, and pretends this is only remarkable because of her sex.

Could it be that there is no truth in this book at all, and that it is nothing but a lampoon of all the stuffy scientific papers that the men crow and huff over? Is any of this real at all?

Oh, help, Gertie. I am getting philosophical.

I confess, I read the book a second time, not because I enjoyed the first experience overmuch, but because I half expected it to be different the next time through. This was not the case, yet I found that I was better equipped to recognize which nonsense to ignore, which in turn led me to own that I quite like this Lady Trent, whoever she actually is and however actually addled her brains are. She is wonderfully frank and perfectly indelicate.

But while you and I have read many long-winded books by longer-winded people and enjoyed them, none of them ever pretended to be anything but sane and stolid and aggressively learned. Mad Lady Trent promised adventures and delivered them, yet at times, I was conscious (and I fear this seems ridiculous, given all I have already said) of them being presented to me on dead paper between two dull brown covers. Or else, they are all sensationalism and none of the substance which is also promised. This is much the case for the end, which I found difficult to take very seriously even upon a second read.

While I would quite like to unleash Mad Lady Trent onto one of the Highmore’s odious dinner parties, I am not convinced that I will be tempted to read this memoir a third time. If you wish to read it Gertie, you may borrow my copy. No need to buy your own.

With confusion,

Prudence Pennylegion