Word: cornelias
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...Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage (Random House; $3.95). Evans, 52, a professor of English at Northwestern University, wrote the book with his like-minded sister, Cornelia Evans, 56, a writing consultant to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Their book has the same zestful flair that turned Bergen Evans into a national TV personality as the earnest, rapid-talking moderator of CBS's The Last Word (TIME...
Talking Through His Hat. Ohio-born Cornelia and Bergen Evans first developed an ear for the nuances of the English language in 1908, when their family moved to Sheffield, England and took a house near the Yorkshire moors. There they picked up a broad North Country dialect that stirred loud hoots of delight among their friends when they returned to Ohio in 1915. Recalls Cornelia: "We really spoke three languages: Middlewestern American, Yorkshire and the King's English...
Meanwhile, Pierce had come to England too, as tutor for the son of a prominent Catholic peer; he tried to take a strong hand in running Cornelia's society. In Rome after their separation, the Connellys had seen each other every ten days; but in Protestant England even the most carefully chaperoned visits could start tales of convent immorality. He alarmed the hierarchy by bursting into Cornelia's convent. Bitter over the furor that arose, Pierce retaliated by taking their three children to Italy. In 1848 he returned to England, made a second descent on the convent...
...antipapist English press of the period, Pierce's next move was meat for scandal. In 1849, only a short time after he had tried unsuccessfully to get a cardinal's hat, he made another spectacular switch ("my allegiance to Rome was a culpable delusion"), sued Cornelia for resumption of his marital rights, and renounced his priesthood. He won the judgment; the Court of Arches ordered Cornelia to leave the convent and return to her husband or go to jail. For weeks Cornelia kept street clothes in her cell, ready to leave the country if Pierce or the authorities...
...scandal had its inevitable effect on Cornelia's new religious order. It was not until eight years after her death that full papal approval was granted to the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. But in spite of opposition from the hierarchy and sniping from Pierce (he continued to flail the Catholic Church until his death at 80 in 1883), Cornelia enlarged her order. The society spread throughout England, and in her lifetime chapters were opened in France and the U.S., where the society now runs 36 schools, including Rosemont College on Philadelphia's Main Line...