Sir Walter Elliot's last action in Persuasion, perhaps his most purposeful action in the whole course of the novel, is "to prepare his pen with a very good grace for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour". Captain Wentworth's handsome person and "his well-sounding name" (p. 248)-not everyone will know that his branch of the Wentworths is " 'quite unconnected; nothing to do with the Strafford family'" (p. 23 )-count for more, with Sir Walter, than his personal merits or his professional achievements. And so Sir WaIter ends as he began, absorbed in the Baronetage, an uncommonly well-preserved fly rejoicing in his amber.
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