One. Meeting Fly
One
Meeting Fly
Portsdown Lodge, June 26, 1865
Admiral Francis Austen hardly slept a wink all night. By his own nautical calculations, the SS China would have docked in the evening with the incoming tide. He hoped to receive word from his double set of guests that morning, not knowing where in Portsmouth they would first stay upon arrival. For now, he had asked the housekeeper to make up four of the fourteen bedrooms, just in case.
After a hasty early breakfast of biscuits and sardines, his favorite shipboard meal, Francis Austen took his wood-and-brass telescope and mug of coffee out to the hill before the house. Still in dressing gown and slippers, he eased himself into the deck chair with its woven rattan back and pointed the telescope at the dockyard below. He looked past the Hilsea Barracks, where two batteries of the Royal Field Artillery had recently been installed, past the house where author Charles Dickens had been born, past Her Majesty’s Dockyard where Frank himself had once set off for distant and sunnier climes.
Today, however, even the English sky was without blemish. It possessed all the clarity of midsummer, the fathomless blue of the sea. A perfect day for his new American friends to visit.
“ Admiral Austen?” The strange female voice crackled with energy.
“Sir Francis?” a man’s voice softly inquired next.
Frank’s eyes fluttered open to reveal three young faces—a woman and two men—staring down at him in concern. He must have fallen asleep. He pulled himself up and the telescope rolled from his lap toward the grass, which was kept short for when the grandchildren visited to play croquet and lawn skittles and drink ginger beer. One of the men reached forward with the agility of a fielder to catch the telescope before it landed and passed it back to Frank.
“Is it you?” a bewildered Admiral Austen addressed the woman, still half sitting up. The two young men glanced at each other in confusion while the woman beguilingly smiled. She was wearing a sailor-like outfit of white and navy stripes, playful epaulettes, and brushed gold buttons, as if selected especially for him—and the smell of jasmine and mimosa again came to mind.…
“Sara-Beth Gleason—but you can call me Sara. Never much cared for the Beth part.”
While one man blankly stared at her as if this was news to him, the other stepped forward and extended his hand down to the ninety-one-year-old. “I am Nicholas Nelson, as I wrote, and this is my brother, Haslett. We hope we haven’t caught you unawares.”
Gazing up at the angle of the sun, Frank removed a watch from the front pocket of his dressing gown to confirm the surprising lateness of the hour. “Oh, my dears, no, not at all.” He shook Nicholas’s hand warmly from his chair. “I received your letter from the third of this month and have been greatly anticipating your arrival. You reached us without incident, I hope?”
Sara-Beth glanced at both brothers and gave a pointed laugh. “Oh, just a bruised heart or two. And what do we call you , hmm?”
“Fly,” he heard himself say before he could stop himself.
“Father!”
Everyone turned at the sound of his daughter, standing on the lawn behind them with her arms crossed. “Father, you haven’t been called Fly in fourscore!” she scolded.
Admiral Austen reddened, then reluctantly waved her over. “Fanny-Sophia, do come—allow me to introduce our guests, who have traveled here from the great distance of America.”
Fanny looked the three strangers up and down as greetings were exchanged, taking a little longer when she came to the younger Nelson brother. Admiral Austen was reminded of how rarely he and his daughter made any new acquaintance. Fanny might have ended up at home because she had always been plain and lacking admirers, but the difficult personality had only worsened over time. She refused to change her mood or manners for anyone, whereas Frank had just burst out with an eighty-year-old nickname in the presence of Miss Gleason, so affected by others was he.
“Fly—I like that.” Sara-Beth gave him another winning smile.
Frank had received no clue that she was coming, in her little nautical outfit so perfectly attuned to this moment—could not have even dreamt up such a thing. In his near century of life, he had never met a woman more different from his Fanny or more instantly disarming. Miss Gleason seemed to make both her male companions nervous as well, and Frank began to worry for the matchmaking he had planned.
Justice Thomas Nash woke early. He was used to living on little sleep when legal matters were coming to a head. The seven justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court could easily take all evening to discuss a Jane Austen novel, let alone establish precedent for the future of their state.
Up with the sun, Nash spent several solitary hours walking the soot-stained streets of Old Portsmouth. Like the Port of Boston, there was no clear division here between land and sea. The ground beneath one’s feet might be steadier than on ship, but the sounds and smells were the same: the baritone blast of the mist horn, the salty peat of the ocean marsh, the air fired high with coal. As one of the most defended cities in all of Europe, Portsmouth was full of fascinating history. But no amount of study could have prepared Justice Thomas Nash for arriving a full month ahead of schedule, all the while chasing down one bewildering young woman and a newly eloped bride.
He had spent the night close to harbor at a new hotel called the Claremont. After checking in late, he had immediately sat down by the window with its view of the docked SS China and written at length to William Stevenson. If Nash acted fast enough, the letter should reach the ship’s mail-sorting rooms in time for the return journey back.
He had written and rewritten long into the night, ending up with several rambling pages that featured none of his usual elegance of phrase. He tried to convey what had happened without raising any undue alarm: William Stevenson would not be the first father to lose a daughter to a far-off marriage, no matter the state of his nerves. Given the shock of the contents, however, Nash felt duty-bound to show the letter to Henrietta before posting. He would simply have to find his own nerve, and present himself unexpectedly to the Stevenson sisters yet again.
Charlotte woke late at the Fountain Hotel and nudged Henrietta slumbering at her side. The sisters were sharing a massive four-poster bed in a spacious room decorated with floral trellis wallpaper. Their inn was located on the High Street, away from the oily, fishy smell of the harbor and the noise of ship horns at all hours.
Charlotte nudged Henrietta again, causing her to stir. “Harry, do wake up, honeymoon or not.”
Henrietta sat up on one elbow and smiled as she looked about. “Everything feels like a dream.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes—she was not used to seeing her sister so simpering. “Harry, really—you’ll be the talk of Boston.”
“I will write Father every day if I have to—I already have a letter at the ready—and he shall visit us next summer. You know how he loves all things British.”
“Yes, yes, you have it all arranged.” Charlotte eased herself down from the high mattress and grabbed the cane resting nearby. “Look at the time. Our new friends must be off to London by now.”
“I wonder what Justice Nash will do next.” Henrietta reached up to ring the bell by the bed for breakfast, eager to reach Portsdown Lodge as soon as possible.
Charlotte hobbled over to the washstand and poured out the jug of water. “Louisa wasn’t so wrong in wanting rid of the men.”
Henrietta hesitated. “But you will miss your other leading man?”
Charlotte examined herself in the mirror above the bowl and pitcher. “Haz? Yes, I suppose so—why?”
“I wondered if he liked you—the angel and all that.”
Charlotte splashed her face with water, then patted it dry with a towel before opening her eyes widely at her sister. “Haz is so natural onstage, it would be easy to confuse him with Darnay. But I’m sure I’m just a decoy for his true affections.”
“It is interesting how you use the word ‘decoy.’” Henrietta paused again. “Denham wondered the same about several of the performers.”
Settling herself in the room’s one chair, Charlotte began brushing out the waves of hair from the yarn braids she slept in. “Acting does that—muddles things.”
“Or liberates things already there. Look at Louisa and Nash.”
Charlotte stopped brushing to stare at her. “What are you saying? Honestly, Henrietta—is this how you and Denham speak, when you’re alone together?” she asked in a huff. “Because it’s nothing like you.”
A young chambermaid knocked and entered the room with a tray containing toast, jelly, coffee, and a message from Nash.
“What can he want now?” Charlotte said with a sigh.
Justice Nash was wanting the honor of arranging their carriage to the home of Sir Francis Austen. When the sisters descended the front steps of the Fountain Hotel half an hour later, Nash stood waiting on the pavement below, the brougham behind him, a letter in his hands.
“Mrs. Scott, would you be so kind as to read this?”
Henrietta took the letter from Nash and, seeing her father’s name on the direction, read it then and there. “Justice Nash, it’s a perfectly reasonable account. And you have nothing to write an apology for—the family should never have involved you. We will post both our letters on the way to the admiral to ensure they arrive at the Custom House together.”
“That’s most gracious of you.” Nash paused. “I hope my words also convey, to you as well as your father, how much I admired the female activity on board. The charity performance was exemplary.”
“Not that you men ever begrudge women for putting on a show,” Charlotte interjected.
“I sadly can’t dispute that. Your ankle is improving, though?” At her nod, Nash glanced up the street. “Then may I show you both something, before we stop in at the postmaster? It’s not too out of the way.”
A few blocks later, the carriage deposited the three of them in a cobbled street lined by pleasant red-brick terrace houses, each with matching white-trimmed bay windows and high stone steps. Nash pointed to the one closest before announcing, “They say this is the very house in which Charles Dickens was born.”
“We didn’t know!” exclaimed Charlotte, and Nash was relieved by her sudden enthusiasm. He knew he had to make amends—through literature seemed the wisest and fastest way.
“His father was transferred here from London by the naval pay office,” he explained. “They left when Dickens was only three, but the city must have left an impression. You might recall Nicholas Nickleby and Smike taking the road from London to Portsmouth and seeing the Devil’s Punch Bowl along the way.”
“‘Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own,’” Charlotte quoted. “My favorite chapter. The English countryside, so invigorating to Nickleby and Smike because they experience it together. That’s all we want, Harry and I—or wanted,” she pointedly added, while Henrietta reached forward guiltily to squeeze her sister’s arm.
As for Nash, he remained impressed by their efforts. Nicholas Nickleby and Smike had pushed through their travels “exhilarated by exercise, and stimulated by hope,” and Nash had observed this same newfound spirit in the women on board the China . He recalled his time at sea with Louisa, their many walks together, the sense that she was truly free for the first time in her life. He wondered what might come of that in the end. How much strength did the larger world sap from women, in asking those who could afford to do so, to stand idly still in one spot, while rendering the poor transient—if not homeless—for life?