this is mostly intro and i apologize for the namedump

James Christopher Shaw Godwin is seven years old. He lives in a tall house in New York with his mother and father, his two sisters, and two of his seven brothers. They have a housekeeper, Mrs O'Donnell, and a cook, Mrs Malcolm, and a driver named Linwood Sewell, who James and his siblings have been told to call Mr Sewell rather than Linwood.

(James' brother Con calls him Linwood to be contrary, but Linwood himself does not seem to mind.)

James and his sister Aimee, who is nine, have a nanny called Luisa, who came over on a boat from Italy when she was three years old. She has four younger brothers and sisters, who James has heard about but never met, and sometimes she tells James and Aimee and James' other sister Julia stories from the Old Country, which she has heard from her parents and their friends. James' mother Natalie wants Luisa to teach the children to understand Italian, so that when they attend the opera they will know what they are listening to.

( James' mother loves the opera, and believes all the best ones are written in Italian. )

words: 1862
today's quickie research: popular baby names in 1880, biblical quotes, italian girls' names, coney island rides, and andrew carnegie.