Chapter Text
It would be easy to dislike the Bridgertons if you hadn’t met them. Their laughter rung beautifully, intelligently and wealthily through the squares and streets of north-central London. Some of England’s most privileged families hid behind security gates in the countryside, and you never found out what had happened to who till you saw it in Tatler, but the Bridgertons could be seen everywhere, joking around together, reading everything under the sun, rolling up the sleeves of their fitted shirts, so close you could almost touch. You could catch them in the mornings in Bedford Square gardens with their coffees and paperbacks or on their townhouse roof (not a roof terrace, mind, just the tiles under the attic window) where they drank good champagne and bad vodka whenever their mother was out.
And now, a new academic year is starting, the older siblings are gathered in London, and their mother is going out. Oh my.
Following her decision to spend the autumn in the Caribbean with her new husband on a much-deserved honeymoon, Violet Bridgerton was heard in one of the little cafes along the canal by Kings Cross telling her friend Agatha she didn’t mind leaving the house in her children’s care. They all seemed to be at university at the same time, and Anthony would keep it from turning into a bombsite.
“He‘ll have his work cut out for him…” Agatha was heard to say.
But Violet was she. Hyacinth and Gregory had got off to school alright, Daphne and Simon were only a phone call and a train ticket away if anyone needed anything, and the five siblings that left in the townhouse were… certainly more responsible than they used to be. They were all such good kids (adults, young adults) really, and how much trouble could they really cause? Agatha nodded, and this author’s source said that she smiled a very thin-lipped smile.
This author chooses to be optimistic.
Shall we do a roll call?
Anthony Bridgerton is settling into the final year of his PhD in Laws, which he decided to take on when being a practising barrister didn’t seem enough like hard work. This year he steps up to the position of managing editor of the University College London Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, and he has been heard telling his siblings and anyone else who will listen very loudly that burnout isn’t a real condition, and he will be absolutely fine this year provided nothing unexpected happens.
Benedict Bridgerton, better at accumulating degrees than actually starting careers, has decided to return to painting at the Royal College of Art (the subject of his original degree) after all. Maybe this will finally be his calling. Maybe he will use this as a stepping stone to further degrees and avoid gainful employment until retirement age - he can certainly afford it. We have to wonder if a point will come when he might finally be bored enough to want to do something with his life, but only time will tell.
Colin Bridgerton, home from the summer in Colombia that followed his Fulbright scholarship year in the United States, has a few months spare to potentially actually write something. The creative writing research academics at King’s College would certainly like him to. It’s clear from his elaborate and beautiful blogs that he’s been having a wonderful time, but one can’t help but notice he never reports spending any time on his projects abroad, but who can say? Writer’s block affects the best of us, after all.
Eloise Bridgerton will be beginning her masters degree in literature back in London, following a star turn in her politics undergraduate degree in which she won multiple academic prizes and made the longest speech without breathing the Oxford Union has ever seen. When she got the train south to the capital, this author is quite sure she heard the Oxford faculty mutter that they hoped London would be able to withstand her. She is reported to be doing an evening study degree so that she can work in the daytime out of a desire to not be dependent on her family’s money.
And Francesca Bridgerton, whose voice you won’t have heard across the square but whose compositions you might, will be moving from performance into composition at the Royal College of Music. Her tutors have been overheard to call her a bright creative spark, if only she could get over her stage fright. The fragments that echo through Bloomsbury on a nightly basis seem like they might be the bones of a first symphony, if only she could find a little inspiration to slot in that final theme.
When you write it all out like that it seems like a lot of life to fit in a twelve bedroom townhouse. But who can say - it may be a very quiet autumn after all.