Josiana and David Dirry-Moir

Josiana and David Dirry-Moir are presented as lovers whose relationship persists alongside the royal plan for Josiana to marry Gwynplaine. Their connection reaches the reader through a short, publicly circulated letter attributed to Josiana: it treats the proposed marriage as acceptable while declaring that David can remain her lover. The passage makes the contrast between dynastic arrangement and personal attachment the defining feature of their relationship, but does not establish whether the letter is genuine.

The Proposed Marriage and Josiana’s Reply

At the House of Lords, copies of a three-line letter pass from hand to hand. It is said to be Josiana’s answer to Queen Anne, who has instructed her to marry the new peer, Gwynplaine, lawful heir of the Clancharlies. In the reported reply, Josiana accepts that the arrangement would suit her because she could have Lord David as her lover. The letter thus presents the marriage and her attachment to David not as mutually exclusive, but as concurrent parts of her intended life.

Public Circulation and Uncertain Authorship

The narrative explicitly withholds certainty about the document: it may be a true copy or a forgery. That qualification matters. The Lords respond enthusiastically to the letter, but their reception cannot verify Josiana’s authorship or establish the full circumstances of her relationship with David. The passage records a public claim about their intimacy, rather than an independently witnessed exchange between the two.

Place in the Plot

The letter places Josiana’s connection with David against the royal marriage plan involving Gwynplaine and turns a private attachment into courtly spectacle. The assembly’s amusement makes the proposed marriage seem less like a simple romantic union than a political arrangement that Josiana claims she can accommodate without giving up David. In the later account of Gwynplaine’s humiliation, Josiana and the House of Lords form part of the surrounding scene, while David’s sword is figured as a threat to Gwynplaine. That context links the relationship to the conflict surrounding Gwynplaine’s new status, without resolving what Josiana and David privately feel or do.