Epilogue. Chawton Revisited
Chawton, July 1880
OC APTAIN ! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman
Charlotte and Nash ascended the incline to the walled garden, where the playful shouts of children could be heard coming from inside. Husband and wife held hands tightly as they walked—it was an emotional return to Chawton for them both.
Fifteen years had passed since their last visit to the village, and Charlotte Stevenson was now one of America’s premier actresses. All the major roles had been performed in theaters across that country: the Duchess of Malfi, Marguerite from Faust , Beatrice, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth. Charlotte was soon to make a much-heralded return of sorts to the London stage—the long-ago audition before Richard Fawcett Robinson would finally reach its fruition in her West End debut at the Adelphi as Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities . Few other roles could have enticed her more.
It was July, the crowning time of summer in England. The midpoint of the year and a month of endless days when much could happen—when much did happen, fifteen years ago. It was strange to think of what the day at hand owed to the happenings of that earlier July, when Charlotte had enjoyed her first taste of womanly power over Nash and Henrietta had begun and ended a marriage in a matter of days, leaving behind a young man in Hanbury Street with much growing up to do and a heart so broken, he had resorted to the law to restore it.
Reaching the top of the incline and the gates to the walled garden, Charlotte put her hand over her husband’s arm in a motion to stop.
“You must be tired, my love.”
“No, I only mean to look out.” She breathed in the fragrance of nearby roses. “Such storybook beauty here.”
“As only an author could dream up.” He nodded down the lawn toward the Great House, which after three centuries was showing its Elizabethan age. “Denham was wise to sell his interest in the Reynolds’s when he did, and at such profit. One never knows what the future holds—look at how much even a house can change.”
“Not Eleven Beacon Street, though—thank you for that.” She squeezed his arm, then let go as he went to open the garden gates. A handful of children ran about on the other side, descending in age from thirteen to five and calling out each other’s nicknames—Lu, Billy, Nicky, Ally, Gray—until Charlotte heard her own.
“Charlie!” Henrietta cried as she ran down the pebbled path toward her, the long narrow skirt to her white cotton day dress scooped up in her hands. They collapsed in each other’s arms, sobbing, and Charlotte felt the shocking frailty to Henrietta’s bones, a literal wearing down from grief. She couldn’t help but remember the last time that Harry had run into her arms like this, at the end of a very long London hotel corridor, although from a very different kind of loss.
Nash held back from the reunion until Henrietta lifted her head to motion him forward. “Brother, I am so glad you could come.”
“A much longer visit this time,” Charlotte promised as Nash and her sister hugged. “The new chief justice can accompany me until September—not that I ever needed a chaperone.”
The three adults smiled in allusion to that long-ago voyage, before descending back into melancholy as the children, all of them possessing the high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes of their parents, continued to run about.
“They’ve grown so in the past two years,” marveled Charlotte. “Look at Louisa, corralling them all.”
“She would do anything for her younger brothers and sister. Just like her father.” Henrietta’s eyes filled with tears and Charlotte pulled her close.
“Harry, I’m afraid now Louisa’s not well.”
“You saw her?”
“Just before we left. She doesn’t always take visitors, being the most famous person in the world.” Charlotte sighed at the memory. “Her spirit was as indomitable as ever, though I worry it’s a brave act.”
Nash nodded. “Lu was never one to put anyone out.” He took his wife’s other arm to gently pull her back as the littlest of the children ran between them.
“Gray, stop .” Henrietta scooped up her five-year-old son, and they pressed their foreheads together in a familiar manner. “Mummy wants you to meet someone. Graydon, this is your Aunt Charlotte’s husband, Chief Justice Thomas Nash. He heads up an entire court in America. He makes the law.”
“Well, we interpret the law…” the youngest chief justice in the history of Massachusetts was quick to correct.
“Oh, Nash,” teased Charlotte, exchanging a knowing look with her sister. After all, they had both witnessed the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, in a complete legislative and judicial vacuum, rule that Henrietta had a right to retain both British property and her American citizenship. The 1865 decision in Scott v. Scott had since become a staple of legal education across the States, where a handful of law schools had even recently begun to admit women.
Henrietta capably lowered her youngest to the ground, and Charlotte bent to give Graydon an affectionate hug hello. She would always feel for his plight as the baby in the family who would end up with no memory of a parent. Not being born a boy had led her own mother to persist in childbearing against everyone’s advice and wishes; the putrid fever that Graydon had recovered from last winter had killed Denham, who had nursed his wife and family for weeks, instead.
“Billy is interested in the law,” Henrietta said as the older four children now straggled over. “His namesake has written from Egypt—he and Justice Mackenzie leave for Constantinople next, but promise to be back with us in the spring.”
“I am so glad Father travels again. He was not enjoying retirement as a widower.”
“Neither was Mac,” added Nash. “Their friendship is a real blessing, for all they sometimes disagreed on the law.”
“Thank God I have the children to occupy me.” Henrietta pulled all five close to her, kissing the tops of the girls’ heads, rustling the cowlicked locks on the boys’.
“And there is your suffrage work with Dr. Pankhurst and his new wife, Emmeline,” Nash pointed out. “Connie would be so proud of you both. What is it Richard often says—life is nothing without enthusiasms?”
“I remember the admiral telling me on this very spot how he returned to sea on the Vindictive after Lady Austen’s death.” Henrietta’s drawn face softened, just for a second. “His taking as many of his own children as he could fit on board.”
“And how lovingly he, too, spoke of both his wives.” Charlotte bit her lip. “So much good fortune perhaps brings more than one’s fair share of pain.”
Nash patted his wife’s arm in consolation at these words. Despite all the roles and efforts and tears, there were no children running about their own home. Charlotte remembered too well the other fortune told her in the heart of Cremorne Gardens—another reason why she rubbed Henrietta’s silver sixpence in her hands before leaving the wings of any stage to perform.
A silence fell on the small group, and little six-year-old Ally—named Alice after a beloved maternal grandmother—pulled on her mother’s sleeve to whisper something in her ear.
“Always hungry—like someone else I know.” Henrietta smiled at Charlotte before tapping Ally’s nose. “Mrs. Berwick has been most accommodating. We agreed on four o’clock for a picnic tea.”
Henrietta led everyone out of the red-brick walled garden where so many family and friends, lovers and strangers, had gathered over the century. A very different group of visitors from fifteen years ago now descended the sloping lawn, the littlest members running ahead and occasionally tumbling down. The children of Sir Francis had also played here once, and Henrietta mentioned what the housekeeper, Mrs. Berwick, had earlier shared: the tobogganing on this very hill by generations of Knights and Austens, the summer fêtes thrown for the village, the Christmas Eve gatherings held here after church.
Mrs. Berwick stood waiting for them near the eastern wall of Chawton Great House, where yew hedges shaped like salt-and-pepper cellars towered before the ivy-covered red brick. A handful of wool blankets had been laid out nearby on the freshly mown lawn, and the children were already digging into the wicker picnic baskets, but Mrs. Berwick didn’t mind. “We haven’t as many little ones here as of old. A house needs a family, I think, to keep it young.”
They dined on cold chicken and salad from the estate’s kitchen garden, followed by Martha Lloyd’s famous pound cake. Then the children ran off in the direction of the man-made Wilderness, carrying sugar buns brought warm from the kitchen in their dirt-stained hands. Eventually they disappeared inside the red-painted shepherd’s hut that stood among the oak, beech, elm, and many other trees that had been planted a century ago.
The three adults lay back on the blankets, grateful for the sudden calm, and looked up at the bright blue sky in quiet contemplation and mourning. They had visited together so many times over the years that there was never any awkward silence between them, nor any need for words.
Despite the ocean that separated the sisters—just as the fortune-teller in Cremorne Gardens had foretold—hardly a summer went by without one of them undertaking the ten-day crossing. The arrival of the telegraph in 1866 further fostered their closeness, conveying frequent good tidings of yet another child for the Scotts and Charlotte’s latest triumph onstage, as well as the tragic news of Constance Stevenson’s death from cancer only five years after she and William were wed.
Both sisters had often wondered at how differently life might have turned out if the telegraph had been invented sooner—if Justice Thomas Nash had not managed to jump on ship in time and Denham Scott had not failed to—if Graydon Saunders hadn’t breached his ethical duty to his client in the pursuit of love. For it was Saunders who had told Henrietta that Denham Scott was at Long Wharf and aiming to leave on the last steamer of the season.
Denham had written daily to Henrietta since the court’s verdict—letters that she showed only to Charlotte—while repeatedly delaying his departure. He quoted John Stuart Mill, owning up to his need to develop as a husband and to not just financially provide. He praised Henrietta’s composure and effectiveness in court, claiming no such talent for himself and desperately wanting back his wife with so many talents of her own: “I once wrote you, in my arrogance, that I am only better for your presence and attendance on me, whilst you only deserve the very best. I see now that in those pretty words, there was an ugly ignorance regarding your own development.” He even begged Henrietta for the honor of paying his respects to her father and stepmother. This brave willingness to face a family so hardened against him threatened to soften Henrietta’s heart—and succeeded in melting Charlotte’s. She inched closer and closer to the legal and marital tinderbox, treading carefully with her own words, until one night by the painted parlor fireplace she finally blurted out, “Oh Harry, are you really so sure?”
But it was the threat of Denham’s permanent removal to England, news of which arrived courtesy of Henrietta’s lawyer, that had cleared the horizon and granted clarity at last. Henrietta found herself racing in a phaeton next to Charlotte as they had once done at the break of dawn, Samuel again at the reins. The sisters arrived to discover Denham exiting the Custom House, unable to procure a ticket home ahead of winter and stranded on their shores after all. Graydon Saunders would later claim his own share of credit for the marital reunion, telling anyone who would listen that he had once let a remarkable woman board a ship home without him and knew too well the hindrance to romance that can come from distance. “And besides,” Saunders loved to opine, “the courtroom’s no place for courtin’.”
As for his commitment to Henrietta’s development, Denham had ended up as good as his words, having learned from his wife their true power and import for all his practice of journalism. His was a profession of economy—Graydon and Nash’s of exactness. It was Henrietta, with no profession to call her own, who had shown how words can sting as much as actions, false accusations can upset the world, and the genuine expression of remorse and understanding can—with a loving and superior partner—breach almost any divide. In the many years since their newsworthy rupture, Denham had proved to be a most doting father, the very brother that Charlotte had al ways wished for, and the attentive and supportive husband that her sister today so greatly mourned.
“ Mummy, may I look?”
Henrietta opened her eyes; she hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She sat up with a start and gazed about. Charlotte and Nash lay closely together on one blanket, quietly talking and pointing up at the rain clouds that loomed on the horizon, while Nicholas stood before his mother, tiny hands outstretched. One end of the walnut box could be seen poking out from her bag. “Would you like a look, Nicky? Come, sweetheart, sit with me.”
He was her most solitary child, much like his own namesake Nicholas Nelson—the one to whom a heartbroken Henrietta had entrusted so much. Nick remained a bachelor, filling his days by writing critical reviews for The Atlantic Monthly and other periodicals while continuing to run the shop. Recently he had asked Graydon Saunders to help him establish a trust to which he would bequeath the entire contents of Nelson Brothers and Co. upon his death, with the hearty permission of his politician brother. Nicholas planned to establish a museum in Philadelphia to house the various literary collections that he had amassed and kept safe from customers’ prying eyes in the private rooms above the shop: collected first editions of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley’s astonishing Frankenstein , the personally inscribed copies of Louisa May Alcott’s books. Lu always sent these to Nicholas from the first printing, as he was her most fervent devotee. Senator Haslett Nelson also often sought refuge above the shop, the happy but fatigued husband and father of three daughters who each took after their mother to various and alarming degrees.
“Here, see?” Henrietta said to her middle son, removing the telescope from its carved box. She had never shown it to the children before. For all the admiral’s delight in his handcrafted toys, the telescope represented a most painful chapter in Henrietta’s life.
“You pull apart, then twist! Perfect for spying pirates up ahead.” Nicky fumbled with the telescope, which gave its tell-tale click. The unsent letter was back inside, returned to Henrietta by special messenger from Philadelphia immediately following the groundbreaking decision in Scott v. Scott . The admiral’s deathbed instructions for its safekeeping had been both generous and vague: My master claimed the greatest of confidence in Mrs. Scott to do what is best when the time is come. Henrietta was still unsure. She now knew that she always would be. But that was never a reason not to act.
Henrietta guided Nicky into her lap and helped him bring into focus the new flint-walled church at the bottom of the sloping lawn—rebuilt in 1871 after its medieval predecessor was destroyed by fire—then the graveyard, then past the old stone wall to the farm fields and beyond. Meeting Charlotte at the Great House had been no coincidence—nor had waiting until the Knight family’s annual July stay by the sea to invite themselves here.
“A lovely old man made this, the sea captain—Mummy told you? He gave it to me before he went to heaven, just like Daddy.” She kissed his head. “And one day, I will give it to you.” Nicky looked back up at her so excitedly that for a second she forgot the pain—the early loss of her mother and the recent one of Connie, the strangely lasting trauma of the first separation from Denham and this most permanent and much more painful one. Then it all came flooding back. The past always would—she knew that now, too. But finally she felt ready to cast the most contentious part of it to the winds of chance—the ultimate mark of both freedom and forgiveness.
Mrs. Berwick opened the large Elizabethan oak door; a new springer spaniel nipped about her feet. The Stevenson sisters stood together on the front stone step, a slender walnut box in Charlotte’s hands.
“You’ve been so kind,” Henrietta was first to speak, “and we don’t mean to impose on the family in their absence, but may we see the house again one last time?”
“Of course, Mrs. Scott—Mrs. Nash—do come in.”
Mrs. Berwick closed the door behind the two sisters and led them into the Great Hall, the scene of so many Knight family and Chawton village celebrations. It was a large square space, with high dark wainscotting made from the estate’s fallen oaks and family portraits proudly displayed about the walls. Charlotte looked for and found the series of carved witches’ marks by the mantel that the admiral had once shown her and Haslett in his matchmaking zeal.
“When I think of Sir Francis, his final visit here…” Mrs. Berwick stopped to collect herself. “I don’t dare speak of it to the family, of course. But with you ladies… so tragic, all of it. The fire—the needless ruination. We’ve none of us quite recovered from the loss. Mr. Austen-Leigh’s book is such a godsend that way.”
The memoir by Jane Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh had been published on Jane Austen’s birthday in 1869, four years after the admiral’s passing. Ironically, it was the death of Sir Francis—hastened by the destruction of the legacy—that had motivated the writing of the book. For the first time since Jane’s brother Henry had composed the notice to the posthumous publication of Persuasion , the family had shared with the world all that they were willing to.
For several years and with the assistance of his large extended family, Austen-Leigh had gathered what letters he could, most of them having been scattered over time or otherwise destroyed, the various drawings and sketches—scant as they were—of his aunt and certain family homes, and the recollections of those in the family who could speak to Jane Austen’s manner and looks. They wanted to help the world understand how to birth, nurture, and grow such genius in its midst, while still respecting the private life of its greatest novelist. It was this continuing discretion that had long haunted the Stevenson sisters as they grappled with Henrietta’s unique burden: not only a private letter, but one never sent or even finished.
The sisters had watched with shared pride and interest as the Austen-Leigh memoir created a sea change in Jane Austen’s popularity, moving discourse on her books from judicial reading circles and the educated elite to people of all backgrounds around the globe. Finally, readers could glimpse the ordinary woman behind the books—making her genius all the more extraordinary and accessible—and the interior worlds she ruled over with the infinite wisdom and unblinking justice of a god.
“Oh, we have them now, you know.” Mrs. Berwick stood with her back to the sisters, staring out the large mullioned front window of the Great Hall. “They wander down the drive, take a peek over the gate. Little pilgrims, I call them. More and more they come, walking in her footsteps, trying to find what was in the books. George Knight is only twenty and not yet master, but already he fumes about it all.”
Mrs. Berwick turned around to see the walnut box ajar in Charlotte’s hands and a telescope now tightly gripped in Henrietta’s. The housekeeper looked curiously back and forth between the two women.
“You know, Mrs. Scott, it’s most strange. I saw Sir Francis once stand just as you are, on his last visit here. I came upon him unawares in the library. He was looking about the books, quite dazed-like if you ask me. Almost as if searching for something. Rather suspicious—but then again, that was his way.”
And right away, both sisters knew. They knew exactly what to do. They could picture the sweet and confused old admiral hoping to slip the unsent letter inside some random book, where no one would find it too soon, but one day someone might. Wanting the world to know more about his own sister—only not on his captainly watch.
Everything eventually reveals itself, if we don’t destroy it first.
At this silent thought, Henrietta looked over at Charlotte: there was no need to repeat the words aloud. The sisters’ eyes met in instant understanding, the gift of their birth and childhood, the great fortune of their own story’s beginning. They turned back in unison to the housekeeper, their faces brightened with all the emotion, enthusiasm, and adventure of life.
“Mrs. Berwick,” Henrietta announced as Charlotte nodded her agreement, “we would love to see the library.”