ABSTRACT
Joan’s mother’s diary records Joan’s success at the local Hunt Balls, but her family find her cold. On the advice of the novelist Mrs Annie Steele, Joan’s mother apprentices her to the dressmaker Mrs Ida Nettleship in Marylebone. Mrs Nettleship made conventionally beautiful clothes, but also dazzlingly original costumes for the actors Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. The diary of another apprentice, Elsbeth Phelps, is used to show how creative and physically demanding the work of an apprentice was. While working there, Joan lived in lodgings and the chapter discusses the increase in independence for young women. Joan becomes engaged to a Chancery barrister, Evelyn Riviere, who was seven years older. His emotional fragility had echoes of her father. The chapter describes the milieu of Evelyn and his father, the highly successful painter Briton Riviere. Joan now moved in a circle of artistic and wealthy people. An account of a Lincoln’s Inn Ball is used to illustrate the opulence of that way of life. The chapter ends with Joan’s marriage to Evelyn, overshadowed by worries about Hugh Verrall’s health.
