Eight. The Walled Garden
Eight
The Walled Garden
Chawton, June 29, 1865
When they returned to the Knight estate, the admiral led his visitors through the lych-gate to the village church of St. Nicholas, where the family regularly worshipped just steps from their house. There were memorials inside the medieval stone building for Sir Francis’s brother, Edward, and the several nieces and nephews whom the admiral had also outlived, and an adjoining graveyard reserved for members of the Knight family.
The stones that marked the graves of Cassandra and their mother were around the back of the church, standing stick upright and surrounded by clumps of wild daisies. Jane was buried miles away in the cathedral of Winchester, where she had retreated in her final days for medical care. “Such an honor, of course.” Sir Francis again turned melancholy with regret. “And another significant occasion which duty prevented me from attending.”
The rest of the group quietly moved away from the two Austen graves, leaving their host standing there with his head bowed in prayer, and passed one by one through the stile at the back of the churchyard. The Great House was now on their left, and on the right was a small wilderness separated by a ha-ha from the farm fields that bordered Gosport Road. When Sir Francis eventually rejoined them, he pointed out the views through the woods of the parkland that led to Farringdon, a walk his two sisters and second wife had often taken. “Jane called Martha and herself ‘desperate walkers,’” he now more happily recalled.
The seven of them broke up into smaller groups, the admiral in the lead with Henrietta and Nicholas, Sara-Beth and Haslett following close behind, and finally Nash with Charlotte trailing at a distance. Her ankle had improved in a matter of days, leaving Nash to wonder if Charlotte’s powers of persuasion—and ambition—extended to her health. The small springer spaniel was back, running about their heels in the short grass, and Charlotte managed to scoop it up.
“Missing Coco?” he called back to her. Nash had always enjoyed seeing the Stevenson family dog asleep in its place by the front parlor fire, with its lovely painted tile surround designed by William’s late wife. Would he himself ever be invited to sit by that hearth again?
“I am not missing home at all,” Charlotte replied, “in case you are still reporting back.”
She tightened her hold on the dog as she spoke, and Nash found himself raising a hand to his cravat in automatic response.
“Your ankle is healing nicely, I see. That was quite the tumble you took.”
Charlotte looked at him over the spaniel’s brown-and-white head. “I forget everything onstage. It’s quite the dilemma.”
She often parroted his words back at him, and Nash was reminded of Ovid, the Amores love elegy that he and his boyhood schoolmates had snickered over in Latin class . Me specta nutusque meos vultumque loquacem : watch me and my nods and my expressions. Nash used to enjoy such watchful mimicry from Charlotte, but lately it sounded snide and taunting, any simpatico of manner seemingly reserved for Haslett Nelson instead.
“I have no such problem onstage, I’m afraid,” he replied.
“Not always.” Her tone shifted, and the back of his neck stiffened in strange anticipation. “And will you be seeing your Lucie Manette in London?”
He started at her question. “Miss Alcott? I have no idea.”
“You should, you know.” Charlotte gave him a look which set something off inside him, he hardly knew what. “You would be lucky to.”
Then she was gone, the spaniel back on the ground as Charlotte did her best to join Haslett and Sara-Beth up ahead. They continued their ascent of the back hill, Haz giving Charlotte his arm while the dog scampered about. Nash was dismayed to see Sara-Beth, her pink parasol twirling in the air, stop and turn to wait for him instead.
“Justice Nash, you look a little weary—or is that wary?”
He glanced about the lawn. “Miss Gleason, I have to ask—where is your chaperone?”
Sara-Beth laughed. “I’ve given mine the slip as well. But don’t fret—such matters are not always personal.”
As they walked up the incline together, Nash contemplated the full meaning of her words. These women had a way of getting what they wanted—and he thought of Louisa again, sitting in the shadows of the departing carriage, a notable exception to the rule. “I’ve tried to keep my distance.”
“Too much so, I’d say. Perhaps you are more like Sydney Carton than you feign at.” He stared in surprise as Sara-Beth nodded at Charlotte and Haslett up ahead. “And don’t fret over that, either. I’m not. Haz is still a boy.”
“Miss Gleason, I really don’t know—”
“No, Justice Nash, you don’t know—why do you think you are in this mess?”
He had no answer to that. Life wasn’t at all like the law. There was no logic to the yearning of his heart, hence he could not reason himself out of it. Nash disliked being at the mercy of something he did not understand, much as he was attracted to it. The members of his profession boasted the skill of comprehension above all; they firmly believed that nothing could ever be worded to outsmart them .
But there were no words for how he felt about Charlotte Stevenson. And he couldn’t help recalling, with increasing panic, Mr. Knightley’s famous statement to Emma upon declaring his own heart:
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
When the entire group was gathered before the walled garden, Sir Francis removed the iron key ring from his pocket and unlocked the gates.
“Our brother Edward started this garden while Jane was still with us, although it took years afterward to complete.” They entered a large en closed space of orchard trees and vegetable patches, all of it symmetrically divided by pea-gravel walkways along which several Dorking chickens tiptoed about. “Edward did not reside here, but at Godmersham Park. He even graciously lent me the Great House for a time. In fact, Herbert, our sixth, was first to be born here in over a hundred years. The children loved to run about inside these walls, and play hide-and-go-seek.…”
The group began to disperse and the admiral advised Charlotte and Haslett not to miss the shrubbery nearby, drawing amused looks from the others.
“This was once your home, too, then?” Henrietta asked Sir Francis as they resumed their stroll together. “No wonder you wanted to come back.”
“I had many reasons for doing so.” His grip tightened on the telescope in his hand. “Whenever Cass visited Portsdown Lodge, we would read the novels together. She brought along the two unfinished manuscripts as well. My daughter Catherine—the writer, Catherine Hubback—read one so often, she was able to finish it from memory and arrange publication when her husband became unable to provide.”
“I understand such devotion to her words. My sister and I both know vast passages of Pride and Prejudice by heart.”
“Jane once teasingly accused Martha of making her read aloud an early draft of Pride and Prejudice enough times so as to commit its entirety to memory.” His piercing eyes filled with tears. “It’s all in our heads—too much of it. The family considers its reputation as much as hers. But what will that matter a hundred years hence? Jane is the one who is immortal.”
“All families would contemplate that,” Henrietta assured him. Her own father was from this more reserved generation—so much concern for propriety, for what others might think, but also respect for those unable to defend or speak for themselves. “But your family has a far greater burden than most.”
The admiral looked fatigued by the very notion, and she motioned for him to rest on a nearby bench. He placed his cocked hat and telescope on the seat to his left, then waited for Henrietta to take her place on his right before joining her.
“Mrs. Scott, you do understand, don’t you?” he plaintively asked.
“I hope so.” She had recognized a special kinship with the admiral from the start. “I think we both struggle with being good and moral, yet true to our own needs and wants all the same. My father will be so disheartened by my sudden marriage—I doubt the generations to come will care. Either way, I’d rather I be the one to get my life wrong.”
“I thought Cassandra was wrong to burn so much. But it was hers to do with as she wished.”
“Precisely,” insisted Henrietta. “And now it’s yours—she wouldn’t have given it to you otherwise. That is both the burden of the legacy and the privilege. We should always be completely free to decide whom to foist it upon.” She sighed. “In my country, there is much talk about freedom, yet still so many restrictions. Freedom, by its very nature, must be absolute and available to all—one should never fight for less.”
“Well said, my dear.” The admiral took up the telescope and pointed it about the garden, twisting it into focus, letting the brass joints catch the late afternoon sun.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I made it myself.” Henrietta smiled as she listened; he had mentioned this fact more than once, clearly proud of his handiwork. “I have come to accept, after so much loss, how only the things we make will last. A topaz cross on a necklace—a family recipe written down—my sister’s books. She didn’t write those letters to last, but they do, and that’s the dilemma.” Sir Francis sighed. “If only Jane herself had destroyed it all.”
“ What do you really think was the admiral’s design in coming here today?” Haz asked Charlotte as they strolled the shrubbery next to the walled garden.
“What do you think is his sudden design when it comes to the two of us ?” Charlotte replied, causing them both to laugh.
“I do wonder if he invited us to England to marry off more than just his ‘certain objects,’ as he calls them.”
“Why Haz, how astute! But then Harry went and foiled him—remember his face at luncheon that first day, when he learned about the elopement?”
“You call it an elopement, do you—when you yourself knew in advance?”
“The word can also mean desertion.”
He grinned at the sour face she made. “We may be too attached to our siblings for our own good. As for this trip to Chawton, perhaps Sir Francis just wanted to be away. That Fanny-Sophia is rather frightening. Reminds me of Lu.”
“Oh Haz, surely not!” exclaimed Charlotte. “Lu is constantly thinking of others and how to please them—that she is so forceful in her opinions is the only similarity there. It’s the same with Sara-Beth.”
“Whatever can you mean?”
“Sara-Beth speaks her mind so—I think you and your brother are intimidated by that. How un fem inine,” remarked Charlotte, stressing the second syllable in that word. “But she, like Lu, is so brave and loyal—something you men claim to value above all.”
Haslett pondered these words as they turned at the end of the shrubbery to complete the landscaped walk. “What cause is Miss Gleason so loyal to?”
“What could she be? Look at how we women are educated! But to her friends—oh, how I wish all my acquaintances were as pleasant and easy as her. She has not complained once during our travels—have you not noticed?” Charlotte tsk ed him. “She gave Lu most of her winnings. And you call her spoiled.”
“She gets everything she wants!”
“She goes after it, is all—I call that brave.” Charlotte shook her head at him in dismay. “She has set her cap at you and the world tells you that this is wrong, somehow, this expression of her will. Why shouldn’t she pursue whomever she likes? If we women waited for men to act, the world would have ended centuries ago, making all this just so much swamp and jungle.”
She jostled playfully against his side, as if prodding him to acknowledge what everyone else could see, and Haslett growled in reluctant response. “I can’t give in to her now, Charlie, not after all these years. I can’t let a girl win at everything.”
“Oh Haz, if you keep considering it in this manner, you will end up the very pic ture of loneliness.” Charlotte laughed.
Mrs. Berwick had arranged tea for the visitors in the dining room of the Great House. They sat about the same long mahogany table where Jane Austen herself once dined with her widowed brother Edward and his eleven children, and enjoyed food prepared from the same recipes that Martha Lloyd had decades ago copied down: white soup, spare rib, carraway cake, and currant wine. Sir Francis was touched by this gesture from a longtime employee of the family, one of many who resided in the village and helped on the estate. For the estate was the center of Chawton still, the main employer, the caretaker of it all.
Before returning to the carriages for the long drive back to Portsmouth, Sir Francis showed his guests the rest of the house: the stained-glass memorial windows in the upper gallery, the paintings of his brother and other past owners displayed on each floor, the library that Jane had read from during her own visits. The travelers’ last stop was the second-floor reading nook off the Ladies’ Withdrawing Room. This was a narrow alcove where one could look out and spy any visitors to the house well in advance of arrival. One needed no telescope for that , Sir Francis thought to himself.
Once the young women had settled themselves in the carriage, they leaned out the windows to wave goodbye to Mrs. Berwick. The little springer spaniel ran in circles around the two coaches until the housekeeper called it inside, shutting the massive oak front door behind its happily wagging tail. The driver was about to help Sir Francis up next, when he patted his naval waistcoat as if in sudden remembrance.
“I should return the keys,” he loudly muttered.
Nash immediately offered to do so in his stead, but the old man was insistent.
“I shan’t be a moment.”
He does not have long .
These words of the physician were always in his head. They were in his head when he read Mrs. Scott’s first letter, and when he answered Mr. Nelson’s. And they were in his head now, as he hurried through the Great Hall of the house. He did not have long.
The collection of books in the Knight family library had always been extensive. His brother Edward had kept first editions of their sister’s books as well as many others, and Sir Francis wondered at the value of the collection as the years passed. Jane herself had often ventured in here, slipped a favorite volume from the shelf, absconded with it to the reading nook upstairs. She had been a determined scholar in her way, even though her formal schooling—such as it was—had ended by age ten. Reading had then become her sole education: what proof his sister was of its possibility for success.
He stood in the center of the book-lined room, worrying that he would lose his nerve. No one knew of the existence of the letter that he had hidden on himself that day—especially not Fanny, whose own admonishment he now heard: What have you gone and promised them? These are private, of no business to anyone . At the thought of his daughter, he began to panic while a wild cacophony of other voices filled his head: I’d rather I be the one to get my life wrong… if only Jane herself had destroyed it all… only the things we make will last.…
Martha had discovered the unfinished letter shortly after Jane’s death and taken it; to her dying day, she could not explain to her husband why. “Of course its words are hurtful to Cassy—I shouldn’t wonder that Jane changed her mind in the writing of it, especially so close to the end.” But still, Jane had kept it, and kept it hidden from Cassandra—and so, upon finding it, had Martha. Upon her death, the unsent letter automatically had become the property of her husband—as a woman, Martha was unable to bequeath it to anyone else. The law gave her no testamentary right, making it now Frank’s burden, too.
What if he hid the letter here and it was found too soon—or ended up burned or discarded like the rest? Nothing in life was promised, he knew that well. For all his clandestine efforts, it could all be undone tomorrow by the dusting of a house girl. At least those with the right to care were gone: Jane, Cass, their mother and father, all his siblings, both his wives. If he acted wisely, the letter would one day enlighten the world; he simply preferred not to be present when that day came.
“Sir Francis?”
Mrs. Berwick stood in the doorway of the library, a concerned expression on her face.
He took too long.
Frank gave the housekeeper an apologetic look.
“Have you forgotten something, sir?”
He shook his head. “No, not forgotten. Only remembering.”
Then he passed her the ring of keys and left the library just as he had found it.