Stranger in Dixie

by James Fearn

  ‘No, dear. We’re leaving the nasty war behind us for good,’ said Anna in a tone of relief.

  Anna felt a mixture of joy and sadness. She couldn’t wait to leave this strife-torn country and take her family out of it. But she had an almost overwhelming sadness at the thought that somehow she was abandoning her poor dear husband who had given his life to protect them. But this would be his wish in the circumstances, and she would do her best to fulfil it. Within ten days she would be in Sheffield, and could begin to plan for a new life in a new country. Perhaps she may find some inner peace in John’s Sheffield home.

  The days at sea passed quickly and uneventfully, and they soon found themselves standing amongst the bustling passengers dodged by the harassed porters at the Sheffield railway terminal. Clouds of hissing steam and black smoke from the engine’s fireboxes billowed upwards towards the glassed roof of the station. This was the busy heartland of industrial England whence the mighty iron horses hauled their laden trucks towards London and other centres of British commerce.

  Nervously, Anna stepped down to the slightly raised platform. She was somewhat overawed by the rush and bustle of life scurrying around her. The two elder children nestled close to their mother with eyes wide open, taking in all that they could, while undisturbed by the clatter, baby John slept peacefully in the crook of his mother’s arm. Anna’s heart pounded as she struggled to find her bearings.

  A multitude of painted direction signs hung from the roof or were fixed over doorways. Signs such as ‘Ticket Office’, ‘Gentlemen’, ‘Way Out’, and ‘Travellers’ Aid’ caught her eye. If ever a traveller needed aid, Anna thought to herself she did. Not that she was unused to sizing up stressful situations and making decisions under pressure. Life on the Australian goldfields and the rigours of the American Civil War had engendered in her a certain animal cunning and ingenuity which had served her well on many an occasion.

  The Travellers’ Aid Office was attended by a middle-aged lady with a warm welcoming expression on her face. Her grey hair was drawn into a bun at the back of her head, and her arthritic fingers suggested that her relatively unlined face belied her age. Anna explained that she was anxious to contact her mother-in-law, a certain Lady Oxley, if she was still living. ‘Can you tell me where I might find her?’ she asked.

  The smile on the woman’s face disappeared. ‘I certainly can,’ she responded in a rather offended tone. ‘I should know. I worked for the old crone for several years as her maid. There was no love lost between us, I can tell you. She is the sourest old dowager that ever drew breath,’ she went on. Anna’s heart sank! ‘They say that she was quite a pleasant lady years ago, but when her youngest son disappeared without a trace, her personality changed dramatically. Nobody around Sheffield seems to like her. Her daughter visits her occasionally, they say, but apart from that she lives alone—a sad and bitter recluse. I’ll show you where her house is if you like, but don’t ask me to go in. I’ll take you as far as the front gates.’

  This outburst took Anna quite by surprise. She’d always thought of John’s mother as a sweet soul, not the tyrant that woman was describing. John was always so kindly and considerate of people. How could his mother be so bitter and remote? Perhaps the Travellers’ Aid woman was mistaken, and was describing someone else. But she seemed quite certain that she had worked for Lady Oxley. Perhaps it’s true that disappointment and loneliness can sour the sweetest temperament.

  ‘Come, follow me,’ said the lady at the desk and led Anna and her family out of the railway station to the relative tranquillity of the streets of Sheffield. Splendid horse-drawn carriages rolled at a gentle pace along the rutted roads, their opulently dressed occupants peering out with airs of assumed nobility. Heavy draught horses strained as they hauled their overladen lorries along the same streets, carrying goods to and from the railhead. There was an air of prosperity about this place—such a contrast to war-torn Dixie.

  It was a chilly winter’s day. Anna pulled up the children’s coat collars to shield their chilblained ears from the piercing wind. The slush of yesterday’s snow lay in dirty piles on the edge of the pathway, and the threatening clouds were portents of more bad weather to come.

  ‘Do we have far to go?’ asked Anna. ‘The children are so cold.’

  ‘To the next street,’ said the railway woman. ‘I’ll point out the house to you. It’s Number 17.’

  Reaching the corner of the street, the woman stopped. ‘Down there on the left,’ she said. Anna thanked her guide, and proceeded with a growing excitement along the pathway where John had once walked. He would have looked at these same trees and houses when he was just a lad all those years ago. She looked at young William skipping along in front of her, so carefree and adventurous, and could see in her mind’s eye the ghost of her dear husband laughing and skipping with the boy. How the possibilities and hopes of childhood can be so cruelly thwarted and twisted by the circumstances of life. ‘Oh, John,’ she sighed longingly, as if he was there. ‘John!’

  Anna’s daydreaming was suddenly interrupted. Number 17. There it was. They stood for a moment outside the high wrought-iron gates and surveyed the scene. It was just as John had so vividly described it to her. The large house of cream sandstone was set well back from the road. A verandaed balcony surrounded the upper rooms, and climbing roses, devoid of both leaf and flower intertwined the wrought-iron balustrade. Anna remembered John’s description of the rose-perfumed air that pervaded the house on warm summer nights, and wondered if she would ever be invited to experience it.

  A winding gravelled path, somewhat corrugated by carriage-wheel tracks led up to a stately portico beneath which Anna could see a large oak-panelled door.

  A moment or so passed as if she was trying to summon the courage to enter. Suddenly, with a gulp of nervous excitement, Anna pushed open the great gates and shepherded her offspring inside the grounds of Number 17. Carrying her baby in her left arm and struggling to manage her single portmanteau in her right hand, Anna reached the portico just as rain began to fall.

  This was the moment of truth. Would the old lady receive them? Would she believe their story or dismiss them summarily as imposters?

  Anna tugged on the bell pull. The heavy door opened, revealing a tall, elegantly attired butler who inquired in reassuring tones as to what her business might be.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Anna began. ‘My name is Mrs Francis. Anna Francis. These are my children. We are wishing to visit Lady Oxley, if she will be so kind as to receive us.’

  The butler stood like a ramrod evincing the years he had spent in the Guards prior to taking his present employment. ‘And may I inquire as to your business with, Her Ladyship? I doubt if she will receive you without some idea of your purpose.’

  ‘Please tell Lady Oxley that I bring her important news from Australia,’ Anna announced. The eyebrows under the wrinkled forehead rose a fraction revealing a glimmer of awareness as to the identity of the young woman who stood before him.

  ‘Then please come in, and wait here in the vestibule,’ he said and disappeared into a nearby room, closing the door behind him quietly.

  The spacious vestibule was encircled by an ornate-sweeping staircase. Dominating the scene was a huge portrait of a gentleman of substance. John’s great-grandfather, no doubt; it was just as John had described it. ‘Mummy,’ said Anola. ‘What is that thing hanging up there?’ Anna followed her daughter’s gaze.

  ‘That’s a chandelier. Look at all the candles. They light them at night.’ Four-year-old William had wandered over to inspect a beautiful French-polished table, and was looking at his reflection in its mirror-like surface. ‘Don’t touch that,’ cried Anna in agitation. She recognised it as a splendid piece of eighteenth-century furniture. She had just managed to drag her son away when the door opened, revealing the resplendent butler once more.

  ‘Lady Oxley will see you, but only briefly. She tires very
easily these days. I’ll thank you to keep your children quiet.’

  Anna and the children followed the butler through the door. The room was beautifully appointed with rich Belgian tapestries and paintings of the Yorkshire countryside. Silhouetted against the light entering the room through large French windows was the form of an elderly person in a rocking chair. The gentle movement of the chair fascinated William, who stared in awe. ‘Come this way,’ said the butler, invitingly.

  Lady Oxley scrutinised Anna sternly over her pince-nez as if to say, ‘What gives you the right to disturb my afternoon solitude?’

  Spontaneously, little Anola stepped forward and offered her hand to the dowager. Lady Oxley’s expression softened as she took the little girl’s hand in her own. ‘So you’ve come from Australia?’ she said in the quavering voice of an octogenarian.

  Anna began tentatively, but the old lady’s increasing attention to her story gave her a measure of confidence. She described how she had met John and, although she was a good deal younger than him, had married him in Melbourne some thirteen years earlier. Lady Oxley knitted her brow as Anna recounted the hardship of their life on the Australian goldfields and their subsequent settling in Louisiana.

  ‘And what brings you here? Why are you not with your husband?’ A look of disbelief appeared on the old lady’s face as she heard of John’s enlistment in the Confederate army, and of his capture at Vicksburg. ‘A terrible war! A terrible war!’ she muttered.

  Somehow, Anna could not bring herself to broach the subject of John’s death in the Mansfield fire. It was vividly painful for her. How could his frail old mother bear such terrible news? Anna’s mind was in a turmoil as she sought ways to break the sad news to her as gently as possible.

  Suddenly, Lady Oxley sat forward in her chair and stared into Anna’s eyes. ‘How do I know you are telling me the truth?’ she growled. ‘There are plenty of fortune-hunters about these days.’ She kept glancing at William, who was exploring the fascinating paintings on the walls and the trinkets arrayed on shelves and tables. ‘What a remarkable likeness! Could he really be John’s son—my grandson?’ she mused.

  Noticing that William was about to touch an expensive piece of English porcelain, Anna stretched out her right hand to restrain him. The old lady stood to her feet slowly and grasped Anna’s wrist. ‘Where did you get that?’ she snapped stridently, staring at the signet ring that adorned her hand.

  ‘It belongs to me, Lady Oxley,’ said Anna softly.

  There was a pregnant silence for several moments as both women gazed at the ring, each with their own private thoughts. ‘There couldn’t be two rings like this one, surely,’ thought Lady Oxley. ‘I commissioned it especially as a gift for John on his eighteenth birthday.’ The large gold signet ring embossed with the image of a white stag was unmistakable. This was the family crest, and she had wanted her younger son to wear it with pride.

  Anna’s mind, however, flashed back to that fateful day when John had announced that he had decided to re-enlist with the Confederates. She recalled how he had taken the ring from his own finger, placed it carefully on hers, and pressed it to his lips as if to say ‘Goodbye’.

  ‘It belongs to me,’ she repeated, looking straight at her mother-in-law. ‘John gave it to me just a week before he died in Mansfield.’

  Lady Oxley stared blankly at the young family as the import of Anna’s words registered in her mind. The butler looked somewhat concerned. An expression of desolation swept over the old lady’s countenance. Without a word, she moved slowly across the room to a bureau, opened the top drawer, and searched carefully through some papers. Anna could see that they appeared to be old letters—memories from the past.

  Selecting one, Lady Oxley drew it out of its envelope, gazed at it for a moment, and handed it to Anna. She fingered it carefully as she read. It was dated July 1852, and signed by her brother-in-law, George, in Melbourne.

  George’s letter gave an account to his mother of how John had come to be in Melbourne under the assumed name ‘Francis’, how John would soon be married, and would go to the Victorian goldfields to seek his fortune. Anna stood there somewhat stunned, reading the words over and over again. Lady Oxley held out her arms towards Anna, took hold of her hand, and spoke softly.

  ‘Welcome home, my dear.’

  Synopsis of the Story

  Stranger in Dixie is a biographical novel dedicated to the memory of the author’s great-grandfather, John Francis Fearn. The story is consistent with documented historical facts.

  Set in the middle of the nineteenth century, it traces the eventful life of the youngest member of an affluent family of the industrial midlands of England. John’s involvement with the Chartist Movement sprang from a growing uneasiness with his own privileged social position amid so much poverty in the Britain of the 1840s.

  Circumstances led John to be tried and convicted at the Lancashire Assises, and he was sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land as a convict for a term of fifteen years. Following the granting of a conditional pardon after seven years of servitude, John married and took his bride, Anna, to the Ballarat Goldfields in Victoria, Australia. It was here that his political heart led him into active involvement with the Red Ribbon League, a rebellious movement against the oppression of the miners by the British establishment. It was here again by working alongside former Californian gold prospectors, he caught a vision of a life of freedom and equality in nineteenth-century America.

  The period of John’s employment as an overseer on a Louisiana plantation took place in the context of a significant deterioration in relations between the Confederacy and the Union.

  John’s concern for oppressed minorities demonstrated itself in each of these dramatic periods in the histories of the three countries in which he spent his life, and led to his untimely death in 1864 at Mansfield in the American Civil War.