This tale starts, I think truly and as many do, with my parents. Though in reality this is more of my doings, but how else was I to be here if not for them? I also wish to lay a background so if you, my friend, find yourself at odds with my behavior, you may have a template to refer to.

And just in the name of respect I think it is important to lay a ground for my family. First I would like to say that of my parents, and I being Edward Roland Rochester II, you would not have found or known a more loving couple. To each other and their children, and in their own somewhat different ways, but the love was strong and there.

My Mother, Jane Rochester née Eyre, you should know, is over a decade younger than my Father. He was nearing forty when she was eighteen, though this made no difference in their union, I just said their love was great. But she, who I should add a orphan, had worked for sometime as a teacher before advertising her services, and was answered. Employed to be a governess to my soeur adoptive Adéle, who I will speak more of later, she was then thrust into my father's path, and eventually they married.

I remember her with each fondness possible for a son, and my earliest memories of her were those of us playing in the garden, and her holding tightly to my hand and guiding my bare infant feet through the soft grass of summer. She'd show me how to make a couronne of flowers and I made many for her.

Gentle by nature, though stern when she had to be, and a natural teacher, she handled my education until I was ten years old, and then sent to school, for they wanted me to have friends my age. But she had shown me how to sketch, and herself had many books filled with renderings of her children, husband, and many other things. Father had always remarked I inherited her artistic eye.

And before I speak of Dear Papa, I wish, my Friend, to say some of my siblings. I have spoken of Adéle, and I regard her to be as much of my soeur as my birth sister. Though in school by the time I came along she would spend her holidays with us, and I recall how she'd lift me by my arms and spin me about. She also helped me learn French, with Mother, and would help me to steal sweets from the kitchen.

She was adopted by Father some time before he met Mama, as I mentioned Mama was her governess. It was a long time before I was aware completely of her origins, and for most of my life I only knew she was native to France, which is where she now resides married, happy, and writing often.

Now, concerning those who come of Mama as I, there is Leland and Helen-Marie, who came to their first breath when I was eight years old, and five years after there came Branwell. I had always gotten along well with them, having the usual trivial disputes among siblings , I often found myself confused and annoyed by how pouty the twins could be and how difficult Branwell was at times. They butted heads with each other more than with me, often, but I had managed to find ways to calm them and avoid confrontation with them.

Like I said we got along, and they'd follow me to hell and back if it were possible. When I first came home from school I was tackled by the twins and told of how they would tottle into my room and wail when they saw it vacant.

Once they had learned to write I received more letters from them then from Mama and Papa. When with me they made effort to be still, in contrast to their own high-strung and moody natures. Papa often, and still does, conclude I also inherited Mother's mildness, while he had given my brothers and sister his own passion.

And now to my Dear Papa, who I was christened after. Do not think harshly of him, when I say I think he had never much enjoyed a child's company. I have said before he was loving to Mama and us but in his own way. Still he never had much patience or understanding of a child's prattle or fancies, and I remember when I was younger he often sent me Mother's way when I brought him the latest cookings of a child's foolishness, and with my youngers I remember him being just as awkward.

Perhaps the most apparent difference between him and Mama, since she had been a teacher years before my birth, she had a natural nurturing spirit, the kind that is made for mothers and caretakers. Father I don't think ever fancied the idea of parenthood, because he never cared for a child's company, and must have known the irony when he went on to have five, if you counted Adéle.

But this is not to say he was cold to us, for I had said he was and still is loving, but not as enthusiastically jolly as Mama was at times. But he smiled and laughed and teased many times, and had his bouts of sudden playfulness. I have a memory of when I was six years old, and awakened by him falling upon me in bed one summer morning, and making pretended lion noises to my delight as we wrestled. It seemed like ages until Mama heard our commotion and was beside herself when she saw Father's unexpected gaiety.

These sudden bursts did not come often, but they were warm and a delight when there. Mother would always remind us that it is a miracle Papa found the bed anyway. For you see some weeks before his marriage to Mama he was blinded, though for some time the details of how this came about were kept a secret from me, but by the time of my birth he could see out of one eye, and see my infant face with the same brilliant dark eyes Mother told me he once had. Also by this time he could move about on his own, and by the time I was seven he was able to take me on small fishing expeditions. Though he had to employ teachers for me to shoot, ride, and box, and fence (for until I was sixteen I was a small for my age, thin for my age, fragile looking thing, and no doubt he knew this was a target for bullies), and saw to it I knew how to be strong in my speech and intellect.

As I grew we conversed more easily and he made me read out loud to improve my voice and vernacular whenever the chance came, and I remember Mama playing many times while I repeated the solfége after him. Indeed this combined with Mother's instruction, by the time I was sent off to Kempton School for Boys, I already knew how to read, write, do maths beyond my years, speak French, shoot, ride, and box, and was already well in public speaking.

But I digress, and just mean to say, though Papa was not as jolly and playful as Mother in my childhood, he was very loving in his own right, and as much as he could be considering his blindness.

And so, my friend, you now have an idea of my background, and I thank you for being patient. But on to what I originally purposed this pen to record.


It happened upon my journey home, I was eighteen and had finished my education at Kempton School. It was summertime and my eyes were half closed, but not in sleepiness.

Rather I had a dilemma, and was brooding over how it was my own doing. The next step in my education was thought by my dear parents to be university, and they thought so by statements made when I was eleven. Statements I made because I really didn't care to think too far ahead and I only repeated what the other boys were saying.

And it had went from that to me specifying the medical field for study, but also that was a repeat of a boy at school. In all truth I wasn't sure what to make of things that far in the future but decided I would someday know, and until then I would repeat the same. University and a medical focus.

And this repetition continued for eight years, whenever I was asked.

But now that I was of age to do so, I faced the same uncertainty of boyhood. I had no trouble with school, and did not mind the idea of going on with what I had said many a times, but the idea was not a particularly fond one. Was I to be a doctor or a field labourer it would not much matter to me. Because neither was a particular desire of mine.

I did not know what I wanted to do with myself other than to do something. But now I had reached that stage of life and found I had waited too long to decide. As far as Mama and Papa we concerned I had always wanted to be a medical man, never changing or wavering as the other boys. Because I was only repeating what I had heard from them. And now going home, I did not know what I wanted or what university to name as place to study. I was lost and fearful to tell them I was so.

They had put time and money into assuring I had opportunity. A week before I received a letter, dictated by Father and written by Mama, that assured me steps have been taken finances secured, and places ready, and all I had to do was name what place was to my liking, the rest cared for.

And that day I was brooding over how I could not enjoy the extreme kindness of my parents and that I could not tell them I have been lying these past eight years about my choice of direction in life.

"Selfish sod." I thought. "Did this to yourself, and now you can't back out of it."

There were many other miserable thoughts in my mind, when the carriage came to a halt and I heard Joseph yell unintelligible things. In one movement I had opened the door, and jumped out to see the matter. And a matter it was.

Joseph was still yelling at her, and I could only stare. Perhaps the so called artistic eye overtook my judgements and rendered my in a hypnosis of her, because I did not feel the fury and anger as Joseph against her.

Because in our path, a young lady, perhaps my age or few years older, had run across. But what had caused the driver's anger and my flustered person, was her attire or lack of it.

Yes, my friend, she was as bare as she had been on her birth, her tanned body ran from the shouts with long curly red hair flying in her winded sprint. She had no shame in her movement, and ran as though any girl would have fully clothed, with no burden. We stayed until she was out of sight, and I was left with my emotions mixed, but I felt anything but anger.

Joseph bid me back into the carriage, less more inappropriately dressed young ladies come, and how he was so sorry I had seen such a unacceptable spectacle.

"What must this world be coming to I wonder? What sort of wildness! I am deeply sorry young Rochester! You must be so shaken!"

Indeed I was, shaken, flustered, abashed, and intrigued. I had questions for her, and yet...she had looked beautiful. Her naked body had been sculpted, her very air in those short moments I saw her seemed otherworldly. She was not a daughter of humans, no she was the lost fairy child, she was the nymph of the land. She was free and beautiful.

And as we continued home, I forgot my misery, and thought myself, that I should like to find her again.


NOTICE: I sincerely apologize for the many spelling mistakes before. I can only say that my PC was acting up and I had to use my phone, but I know there should be no excuse for that many errors, and I thank Bonbonnett for pointing the embarrassment out to me.

If it happens again please do no hesitant to tell me.