Jane and the Genius of the Place

by Stephanie Barron

  “None whatsoever.” Grey affected unconcern.

  “But is not such a coincidence extraordinary?” Neddie persisted.

  “It was the custom for Francoise’s family to correspond in this expensive fashion. A private courier is more certain than the mails across the Channel, at such a time.”

  “I see.” Neddie studied the banker’s face acutely. “And you did not encounter him along the road?”

  “I?” Grey was taken aback. “What should I be doing on the coast road yesterday morning? I was quite fixed in Town, and had been for some weeks. It was your express, which found me at my club late last night, that drew me from Pall Mall as fast as wheels and horseflesh could carry me. I stopped at my lodgings only to collect my man and a change of clothes.”

  And Grey’s man, if he was still to be found, would certainly swear as much, Neddie thought. There was the express rider, too, who could speak to Grey’s presence at his club—and any number of honourable clubmen who would have witnessed his play at hazard or loo. But whether Mr. Grey’s movements for all of Monday might be accounted for, was open to question.

  “I wonder if the courier might be located,” my brother had mused aloud.

  “Neither the courier,” Mr. Grey burst out, “nor this note establishing a meeting-place, can have the slightest bearing on my wife’s death, Mr. Austen! She was hardly murdered on the shores of Pegwell Bay, but in the middle of a crowded race grounds, where someone must have seen something to the purpose! Did you make enquiries among the spectators? Or despatch a constable to all the major coaching inns, where a miscreant might have taken shelter?”

  “One such is even now beating the underbrush about the Wingham road, in search of your wife’s riding habit,” Neddie replied. “I have offered a gold sovereign to the first man who discovers the gown.”

  Grey snapped his fingers in irritation. “I give you that for your gold sovereign, Mr. Austen, sir! I fail to understand why you have brooked such delay. Had my wife’s murderer been pursued in the first moments, I might have seen him hang; but as it is now…”

  “Then I take it you no longer believe Mr. Collingforth responsible, but some other,” my brother observed.

  “Collingforth? Who can say? But I will insist, Mr. Austen, that you have been sadly remiss in your duties!”

  “Why should Collingforth throttle your wife?”

  ‘You would do well to enquire of him”

  “Did he bear her any malice?”

  “Malice!” A contemptuous snort. “He had eyes for no one but Francoise. The man is a lecher, a blackguard, and a scoundrel—as everyone in Kent, including his wife, must be aware!”

  “And so he killed Mrs. Grey because he was in love with her?”

  “I should never deign to call it love.”

  “Did she return his … interest?”

  “Damn your eyes!” The banker hurled a crystal brandy glass against the stones of his hearth. “The lady lies foully murdered, and you would trample her reputation in the dirt?”’

  Neddie was silent an instant. Then he said, “Come, come, Mr. Grey. If all of Kent knows CoUingforth for a scoundrel and a blackguard, they must equally have seen that your wife was what the ton would call fast. She drove her own carriage, bred her own horses, commanded her own card-parties, and was rarely alone—despite the solitude in which you left her. Only consider of the manner in which she was discovered—quite divested of her riding habit, and hardly in her own equipage!”

  A choked snarl of fury from Mr. Grey was the only reply. And at that moment, he threw down his glove.

  My brother told us that he regarded it steadily. “If I am truly the first to broach such a delicate matter in your hearing, I am sorry for it,” he said, “but depend upon it, I shall not be the last.”

  Then he retrieved the glove and secured it in his waistcoat pocket. “Let us put off the matter of satisfaction, sir, until your wife’s murderer is brought to heel. There is enough of blood in Canterbury at present, without spilling our own into the bargain. Good day to you!”

  1 Lady Susan, first drafted in the mid-1790s, was never titled or published during Austen’s life. Even at the time of its composition, the novel’s epistolary form was considered more appropriate to the eighteenth than the nineteenth century. Why Austen abandoned The Watsons, which she had begun in 1803 or 1804, in order to finish the more cynical Lady Susan is a mystery; but some Austen scholars impute the decision to a persistent depression that resulted from her father’s death in January 1805. Despite its flaws, Lady Susan’s calculating and amoral heroine is utterly irresistible. —Editor’s note.

  2 The sweep, in Austen’s day, was the common name for the driveway.—Editor’s note.

  3 From his youth, Jane’s elder brother, Francis Austen, RN, was called “Fly.” He was posted to the Channel station in 1804 as captain of the Leopard, and transferred in 1805 to the Canopus, a French-built ship of the line under Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson’s ultimate command.—Editor’s note.

  4 Warren Roberts, in Jane Austen and the French Revolution (Macmillan, 1979), relates that evacuation plans were disseminated to every household within fifteen miles of the Kentish coast. Godmersham lay some miles west of that perimeter, but perhaps its position along the retreat toward London made it worthy of the Guards’ notice. Sainfoin, also known as cockshead, was a common forage plant used as animal fodder.—Editor’s note.

  5 Edward Austen refers here to a demand for satisfaction in a matter of honor, in which the offended party usually threw a glove at his opponent’s feet or, in extreme cases, struck him with the glove across the cheek. An affair of honor was usually settled at pistol-point. If either party killed the other, the survivor could be charged with murder.—Editor’s note.

  20 August 1805, cont’d.

  “AND SO WE ARE TO CONCLUDE THAT MR. GREY’S CHALlenge is not retracted, but merely deferred,” Lizzy observed. “How very tiresome, to be sure.”

  Neddie handed her a volume of Montaigne’s essays. “I think I may fairly say that the gendeman’s bluster is worse than his bite. Do not trouble yourself about duelling pistols, my dear; it shall come to naught.”

  “Particularly if the gendeman hangs,” I added thoughtfully. “Such an exhibition as Grey’s, Neddie, must give rise to speculation—it has little of real feeling behind it, and too much of contrivance.”

  “Spurred by guilt, you would say?” My brother smiled. “Perhaps he merely affects a posture he believes necessary before the world. Grey is, after all, a bereaved husband, and expected to comport himself as such— however little he may grieve for his wife. Such a condition cannot be comfortable. He must suggest outrage, ire, and a desire for vengeance, when, in fact, all he may feel is relief.”

  “If he cannot feel what he ought, then guilt is natural and just,” I returned; “but I cannot esteem him for it. Such unnatural behaviour must appear like deceit, and direct the suspicion of the world against him. Have you despatched a constable to London, Neddie, to enquire into Mr. Grey’s movements?”

  “One of Canterbury’s fellows rode with The Larches’ groom in pursuit of Grey last night, and remained in Town to discover what he could of the gentleman. I cannot dispute that Grey was in Pall Mall all evening; but I should be happy to learn where he spent the early part of the day. I do not expect Mr. Grey to betray himself so easily, however, Jane. If he had a hand in his wife’s murder—for reasons we have yet to divine—he is not the sort of fool to be discovered.”

  “My dear,” Lizzy interrupted, “if you cannot dispose this morning of the interesting question of Mr. Grey’s guilt, perhaps you might bend your considerable intellect to the problems of packing. I should hate to own to any peculiar weakness, but I confess that I find myself quite overwhelmed. We cannot remove the entirety of Godmersham—and yet, what is of so little value as to be left to the French? I am virtually in despair, while you and Jane debate philosophy!”

  “A thousand apologies, my dearest,” Neddie cried, and knel
t beside the box of books. “Surely you have an adequate supply of novels for our amusement? We cannot hope to shift all the library’s volumes.”

  “Nor yet the better part of the furniture,” his wife agreed mournfully. “There cannot be waggons enough; and besides, I could not answer for the damage along the road. And what of the children, Neddie? Should not they be sent away in safety now?—But what to despatch along with them? Clothes sufficient for a fortnight— or all of the boys’ things for the Winchester Michaelmas term?”

  “Place the matter entirely in Sackree’s hands,” Neddie advised. “Miss Sharpe may serve to assist her. You cannot rule every province, Lizzy, tho’ the impulse to do so must be strong. As for the children—perhaps they should return to Town with Henry. I believe he intends a removal in a few days’ time, and might serve them as escort.”

  “I could never allow them from my sight in the midst of such uncertainty,” Lizzy said with decision. “If we must be forced from our home, we shall quit it together.”

  “Perhaps I might be of service to Miss Sharpe,” I suggested. “I could sort the children’s things without danger of confusion. And perhaps my own departure could conveniently be hastened? My mother cannot expect to be welcomed to a household in turmoil. Her September visit should be deferred until an easier time, and Cassandra and I returned to Bath.”

  “Pray do not consign us all to oblivion in a single paragraph!” Neddie protested. “You excite yourself unduly, Jane. There is no cause to send any of us from home on the strength of a mere rumour.”

  ‘You call it rumour?” Lizzy cried. “But Captain Woodford appeared so grave! His aspect very nearly one of defeat! One sight of his sombre countenance, and I was certain we should all be burnt in our beds—and the vexation of it is not to be borne! I have only just received my new gown for tomorrow’s Assembly, as you know; and now all such frivolity must be suspended!”

  “Not wear your new gown to the Race Week Assembly? Impossible!” Neddie snapped his fingers in dismissal. “I would never suspend any pleasure of yours, for so trifling an affair as an invasion. You shall have your ball, my dear, if Pratt must cut his way through Buonaparte’s ranks to achieve it.”

  Lizzy laughed aloud and cuffed him lighdy with a feather-duster. ‘You must believe me a foolish creature, Neddie, if you can speak to me so. I might be a child of Fanny’s age, and not an old married woman of two-and-thirty. I have quite resigned myself to the loss of the Assembly.”

  “You mistake, my dear. I merely refuse to be goaded into alarm by an idle report of a courier seen on the road, carrying intelligence that no one has actually heard.”

  “A courier?” I said, all alive to the word. “The selfsame courier of Mrs. Grey?”

  My brother nodded. “I encountered Captain Woodford along the Wingham road, a half-hour, perhaps, after his visit here. He told me what his sense of duty must forbid him sharing with a lady—that General Lord Forbes had received warning of the invasion, from a trusty in the service of the Crown, who espied a French courier in the green and gold livery of the Penfleur clan—that is Mrs. Grey’s family—flying along the coast road yesterday morning. Early warning of Buonaparte’s advance should be as gold on the Exchange, Jane, and the trusty surmised that such was the courier’s purpose. The bankers sniff the wind before the politicians feel the storm, as no doubt you are aware.”

  “But the trusty did not learn the courier’s intelligence himself?”

  “Are you suggesting,” Lizzy enquired in a menacing tone, “that all this effort at removal is so much parade and poppycock?”

  “Not at all,” Neddie assured her hastily. “Tho’ hardly brilliant, Lord Forbes is a careful man. His devotion to his duty is legendary. He believed the moment ripe for a plan of evacuation, in the event that Buonaparte is upon the seas; but nothing certain can be known of the Emperor’s movements.”

  “The General regards this trusty as so worthy of credence?” I asked.

  “That I cannot say, being ignorant of the particulars. But I should guess that Lord Forbes has drawn a hasty conclusion, in the belief that no French courier might achieve these shores without the assistance of an invading fleet. He suspects our Navy is routed—but I cannot believe so much. Grey himself assures me that any number of couriers might traverse the Channel with letters of safe passage; and what a man of the world regards as commonplace, a gentleman farmer should never question.”

  “Then are we to live in this suspense,” Lizzy cried, “never knowing whether we are to be turned from our beds?”

  Neddie shrugged. “Such are the vagaries of war, my dearest. We might have removed to Town like our more fearful neighbours, several months since, and viewed the present chaos from a position of comfort; but we placed our faith in the protection of the Guards. Woodford informs me that if the French are sighted, the Canterbury beacon tower shall be fired. Until the flames go up in the night, we have nothing to fear; but if the faggots are lit, we must be ready to fly.”

  “Everything but our writing desks and the silver plate must remain.” Lizzy glanced around with regret “Oh, that I might strangle the fiend Buonaparte myself upon the shores of Pegwell! To think, that he shall have the run of our home—his officers plundering our cellars, his men butchering our pigs, and the rest scrawling careless French boot-blacking in great streaks across our marble floors!”

  “If the Emperor chooses to take up residence,” Neddie advised, “we may consider ourselves fortunate. He might as easily set fire to the place. Content yourself with a minimal removal, my dear, and pray that we shall find ourselves unpacking the lot, in a few weeks’ time. We shall all of us strip to our shirtsleeves, and throw our backs into the endeavour. A few hours may see the worst of it behind us.”

  “Not if I hope to carry myself with credit at the Assembly tomorrow evening,” Lizzy retorted. “A little of the work must be deferred. I cannot expect to do you justice, Neddie (pray forgive the unfortunate pun), without I spend some time under Mr. Hall’s hands. Only consider the state of my hair!”

  Since Lizzy appeared to distinct advantage, the slight blush of her exertions merely adding to her charms, I could not suppress a smile. “As I have long been the despair of the fashionable Mr. Hall,” I told her, “I shall take myself off to the nursery at once, and see to the children’s things.”

  I FOUND THE UPPER STOREYS IN THE THROES OF packing—and a fretful business it was, with far too many female voices raised in a quest for primacy. Mrs. Salkeld, the housekeeper, thought it necessarily her province to carry out Elizabeth’s instructions—except in milady’s own apartments, where Sayce, milady’s maid, was adamant in claiming pride of place. The pitch of argument ran perilously high until milady herself, in her languid voice, banished both women to the ground floor of the house under threat of imminent dismissal.

  When I went in search of Anne Sharpe, I found the case no better served in the attics—for among the children’s things, Mrs. Salkeld had both the governess and the nursemaid, Sackree, to contend with. I drew Miss Sharpe firmly into the schoolroom and left the two older women—well-matched adversaries of longstanding—to sort out the playthings and smallclothes of nine different children, along with their trunks, bedding, keepsakes, and sundry animals, a menagerie that included three kittens, two grass snakes, and an ailing hedgehog.

  “My dear Miss Sharpe,” I said, “you must allow me to assist you with the backboards and the instruction books. Surely you cannot expect to manage all this alone!”

  The schoolroom is a sparsely-furnished, whitewashed, sloping-roofed apartment tucked into a dormer of the great house. A shelf of stout books was ranged under one window; several samplers lay cast aside on a litde stool, and a paint-box—probably Fanny’s—sat forgotten on a table. A rage for transparencies several years back had left the windowpanes dotted with a scene or two, and a similar passion for silhouette-drawing had made of the walls an indifferent family portrait gallery— but otherwise the space can have few charms, particularly fo
r one of Anne Sharpe’s native elegance. Its windows too small and warped to permit of much air, and its grate insufficient for the extent of the space, the schoolroom is perishingly hot in summer and draughty in winter. Such healthful conditions, I believe, are considered necessary to the rearing of children— who must not be coddled in their formative years, or encouraged in the practise of luxury. I should never charge Neddie or Lizzy with a want of interest in their children’s welfare—the number of persons consigned to the litde ones’ care is testament to their parents’ liberality— but I might regard them as suffering from a certain lack of imagination. They rear their children as they themselves were raised—or, perhaps I should say, as Lizzy was raised. Her childhood was a progression from nursemaid to governess and thence to a fashionable school in Town—a period spent almost entirely in the upper floors of Goodnestone Farm. A child of privilege might live the better part of its life in a warren of nursery rooms, sleeping, playing, learning, and dining, all without descending the stairs! Thus are the scions of a baronet raised, in a world quite removed from their parents.

  Neddie’s case, until he came to Godmersham in his sixteenth year, was very different, indeed—for tho’ in our infancy my mother put us all out to nurse with a woman in the village, our childish days were spent in a splendid hurly-burly of crowded rooms and shared beds.

  When I gaze at these attics, I cannot help but think that a sensitive little soul might shrink under their influence, as a delicate plant will wither in a gale. How much more might be accomplished, for the enlargement of a young mind, in an atmosphere of cheerful contentment!

  “Indeed,” objected Anne Sharpe, “you are too solicitous, Miss Austen. I am sure to manage these few things very well alone, and must beg you to turn your energies where they might be of greater use. Pray offer your assistance to Mrs. Austen, who must gready require it, and allow me to order my province.” And then, with a litde hesitation— “It is hardly of such moment, you know, if a few primers fall in the hands of the French.”