The Greater Inclination

In a sun‑drenched hotel café, the young scholar Danyers finds himself haunted by a name that has shaped his entire literary life—Mrs. Anerton, the elusive muse behind Vincent Rendle’s most celebrated sonnets. His reverence for the poems that first opened his mind to the subtle power of language now drives him to chase a woman who has never granted a portrait, let alone a simple photograph. As he sips his tea, conversations with the gossipy Mrs. Memorall offer tantalising fragments of the woman’s secretive world.

Through witty exchanges and recollections of past winters in Rome, Danyers learns that the woman he idealises may be both more inaccessible and more vulnerable than his verses ever suggested. The narrative weaves together his academic ambitions, the lingering echo of 19th‑century poetry, and the fragile intimacy of a chance meeting in Venice. Listeners are invited into a delicate dance of memory and desire, where the line between admiration and obsession blurs.