Six. Tarpaulin Talk
Six
Tarpaulin Talk
The Road to London, June 29, 1865
The Americans arrived in two carriages for the journey to Chawton: the three men in one Clarence, the three women in the other. The ladies were dressed in an array of pastel colors to suit the bright summer day—lilac purple, chiffon yellow, and rose pink—with bonnets of straw and taffeta to match, while Sir Francis met them on the hill in full military costume. The blue of his wool coat was a rich navy and the gold buttons newly buffed. He tucked a wood-and-brass telescope under one arm, and his right hand inside the white waistcoat as if posing for a portrait.
“Father, stand still, please,” Fanny scolded before he left, having declined to join the expedition. Instead, she circled the admiral in the front foyer, brushing the gold fringe on the epaulettes, pulling at the hem of the requisition waistcoat. Recent navy regulations prohibited the wearing of one’s uniform following honorable discharge, but this was the one rule of his profession that Admiral Austen always chose to ignore.
“I am so grateful for this attention,” he greeted his female companions in the carriage, slowly settling on the rear-facing seat next to Henrietta. “Mrs. Scott, you must be eager to get to London. I am sincerely sorry for any disruption of plans.”
“Denham Scott is surely the most patient man on earth,” Sara-Beth chimed in.
Henrietta blushed, silently recalling the word dangling in that morning’s post from her husband. “How could I give up the chance to walk in the footsteps of our favorite author, and alongside her very kin?” The admiral now blushed himself and patted Henrietta’s hand near his. The carriage headed north on the road to London, giving them both an expansive view of the harbor below, the curve of the medieval sea walls, the billowing white sails of the naval vessels that flocked together like gulls.
“Nash showed us the house where they say Dickens was born,” Charlotte mentioned as they left Portsmouth behind. “Did Miss Austen spend time here, too?”
Sir Francis shook his white fringe of hair with a poignant air, as if summoning the ghosts. “Only occasionally. We lived as one family for a time—my first wife, my mother, and both my sisters—but west of here, in Southampton. After our father died. Those were unsteady years for us all—I myself was often away. But oh, how my sister Jane loved the sea.”
At these last words, Henrietta and Charlotte stole a look at each other— this was exactly why they had crossed an ocean.
“My brother Charles greatly distinguished himself in the navy, and Jane was very proud of our service in war. She had a strong sense of the righteous and was gratified by vindication of any sort. One could not easily sway her.” He smiled weakly in remembrance. “She was much like our mother that way.”
“Did the family ever figure in the books?” Charlotte asked.
“Perhaps you inspired Captain Wentworth in Persuasion ?” Henrietta suggested with an encouraging smile.
Sir Francis grew cheerier at the interest of the three young women surrounding him. “I believe myself most like Captain Harville of that book in taste and occupation.” He held up the telescope. “Carved by my own hand, do you see? Jane did honor Charles and me in Mansfield Park with mention of our ships—seeking our permission first, of course. And when doing corrections for the printer, she would consult us on tarpaulin talk, as we sailors call our turns of phrase.”
The thirty-mile journey was to take three hours, most of it along the road from Portsmouth to London. It was agreed that they would turn off at Liss, then stop in Selborne for luncheon before continuing on to Chawton. Henrietta expressed her astonishment at how quickly the landscape shifted, from the sharp blueness of the rocks and sea to fields of radiant, sun-kissed green, while Charlotte called out the wooden guideposts at every turnpike.
“Will we pass near the Devil’s Punch Bowl?” she asked the admiral.
“That is further north, a stretch of road under the purview of highwaymen not too long ago—but today I am at your protection.” The three women exchanged quick smiles at these last words. “Admiral Byng traveled this road to face the firing squad on the deck of the Monarque —the only British admiral ever to be executed. And the Duke of Wellington, the Tsar, and the King of Prussia marched together here in celebration of Napoleon’s capture. I was away on the North Sea at the time, commanding the Elephant 74.”
“For seventy-four guns.”
“Why, Mrs. Scott, yes!”
“But you are too polite,” Henrietta added with a smile. “Did not the Elephant capture one of my country’s ships in 1812?”
“Why, my dear, how do you know all this?”
“Harry’s been at the Athenaeum in Boston for months, researching your history,” Charlotte boasted, and Henrietta turned to her in gratitude. She had heard few kind words from Charlie since the engagement.
Sir Francis beamed at Henrietta and patted her hand again in his gentle, fatherly way.
“I knew you would come to me,” he said next, so cryptically that all four passengers rode at some length in pleasant contemplation of both his meaning and the view.
Sir Francis had sent a letter ahead to his nephew, Edward Knight junior, to alert him to their arrival. Edward had inherited the Chawton Great House estate in 1852 upon the death of his father and namesake, who was one of four older brothers to Cassandra, Francis, Jane, and Charles. “My brother Edward lived to eighty-five. So many in our family have been blessed with long life,” Sir Francis shared with his companions on the drive. “How tragic to lose the genius in our midst at barely forty years of age.”
As impecunious as his female relations eventually found themselves, the elder Edward had landed on top of the wheel of fortune. At age twelve, he had been adopted by the wealthy childless Knights who, in needing an heir of their own, had taken a fancy to Edward. He had ended up with a new name and enough homes to lend one—the old steward’s cottage in Chawton—to his mother and sisters for the remainder of their lifetime. Here, from 1809 until her death, Jane Austen had written or revised all six of her major novels, making the cottage hallowed ground for her admirers.
“You will find Chawton much as it was in Jane’s time. There is a great debate in the family as to her inspiration for Highbury, the town in Emma . Some believe it to be Alton or even Chawton—there is some argument that the Great House itself was the model for Mr. Knightley’s Donwell Abbey.”
“So, we shall walk in both her and her characters’ footsteps!” marveled Charlotte.
The carriages approached Chawton from Upper and Lower Farringdon, then along Gosport Road. The journey had given the sisters their first sight of the rolling hills of England that they had read and dreamed about since childhood—“If one can dream about hills!” Sara-Beth chided them.
“‘ What are men to rocks and mountains? ’” Henrietta quoted from Pride and Prejudice .
“Jane stood fast to that notion, too,” Sir Francis said to the sisters’ delight. “She was not as romantic as appeared, but rather overarchingly just . She measured everything out most precisely herself, and believed that everyone in life should get their exact due. In the world of her imagination, at least, they always did.”
As the admiral’s female companions mulled over this fascinating glimpse into Jane’s character, the carriage turned right onto a long gravel drive leading to Chawton Great House. Justice Nash and the Nelson brothers stood waiting up ahead, their carriage having arrived first. The coachman helped Sir Francis down from the Clarence, followed by the ladies. As the two groups moved toward each other, the large wooden door to the Elizabethan house slowly opened and a small springer spaniel bounded out.
“Sir Francis, welcome,” the housekeeper announced from the doorway. “Sir Edward sends his regrets. The family has gone on holiday to the sea and are sorry to miss you. We haven’t seen you in some time.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Berwick. Allow me to introduce my guests from America.”
After greetings were exchanged and refreshment declined for the present, the housekeeper gave the admiral a heavy iron ring of keys. “Sir Edward has done some improvements to the walled garden—this is the key here—but the rest of the house will be much as you remember it.”
Sir Francis turned to his collective escort.
“You’ve come so far—where should we start?”
For the visitors from America, there was only one answer to that.