I would not be at all surprised if I turned out to be a direct descendant of the Spotsylvania hatchetman who relieved Kunta Kinte of his foot.I began life by letting down the side. Her boasts were believable as long as she stuck to kings and queens from the pre-1776 era, but when she claimed a royal grant from William IV, my father started laughing so hard he had to leave the table.'William the Fourth reigned from 1830 to 1837, Granny,' I said.'Be that as it may,' she replied serenely.Our ancestors did arrive very early in Virginia-1672-but they were not the kind of people Granny said they were, and they rose very little in the social scale in subsequent generations. Granny was always careful to keep it in the same place, but the grantor changed depending upon what monarchicalname happened to pop into her head while she was launched on her pipe dreams. We let her go on until she was saying, 'It was Samuel Esmond who married my great-great-grandfather's half-sister.' Preening herself, she added, 'Our royal grant was next to theirs.'I had heard about our royal grant many times. I met his dancing eyes and read the message in them: Don't tell her it's a novel. do I know any Esmonds?'Being an Englishman, my father was singularly unimpressed by Granny's ancestors, so I knew he was getting ready to enjoy himself. Though she hated 'bluestockings'-her name for female intellectuals, who could never be ladies-she actually read a few pages of it herself, muttering, 'Esmond.

››one‹‹ MY ladylike adventures have taken me from Seattle to Paris, but last year I was carried back to Tidewater Virginia, which my ancestors helped to unsettle.A romantic version of my address can be found on the first page of Thackeray's Henry Esmond, which kicks off with a description of the Esmond family's royal grant 'in Westmoreland County between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers.' It was the only book I ever read that Granny did not tell me to get my nose out of.

Confessions of a failed southern lady