Jane and the Genius of the Place

Chapter 11 The Improvement of the Estate

22 August 1805, cont'd.

THE FINCH-HATTONS CAME, IN ALL THE HASTE AND splendour native to the possessors of an elegant green barouche. They came — tho' not, as commonly expected, for the dinner hour, but a bare three minutes after the household had sought our separate rooms to dress. A tremendous scurrying in the lower passages, an anxious banging of Elizabeth's door, and the sudden catapult of Fanny into my bedchamber, alerted me to my doom.

“Aunt Jane!” Fanny burst out in an ill-managed whisper, “you will never guess what has happened! Mamma's guests are arrived, and a full hour before their time— and Mamma not even dressed! She begs that if you are more beforehand, that you might go down and do the civil for a while. Sayce is only just begun on Mamma's hair — and you cannot think how droll Mamma looks, with curls all bunched on one side, and nothing at all on the other! I thought I should die of laughter, until she sent me away in a fury.”

A fury, for Lizzy, must encompass nothing more than a penetrating look, and a suggestion that her husband should show Fanny the dressing-room door; but I apprehended the gravity of her condition in an instant. Lizzy with her hair undone is not to be contemplated.

“Help me with these buttons, Fanny.” I shrugged myself into a passable dinner gown and presented my back to my niece. “If you can but find my pale blue slippers — I believe your mother's pug has dragged one under the bed — I am at your service directly.”

When I entered the drawing-room moments later, the Finch-Hattons stood aloof from one another, in attitudes of flight — for all the world like strangers at a ship's embarkation. There was Lady Elizabeth, her driving shawl still pinned about her shoulders, and an enormous straw hat balanced like a charger upon her head. She had taken up a position near the front windows, which gave out on the entry and sweep, and seemed engaged in a study of her own conveyance. Her husband, Mr. George Finch-Hatton, stood scowling over his pocket-watch, as though the expected ship had failed to make the tide; while Miss Louisa, the eldest daughter, was perched on the edge of one of Lizzy's litde gilt chairs, tapping her foot impatiently.

“What good fortune!” I cried, rushing in with extended hands, the very picture of effusive welcome. “We had not hoped for a glimpse of you until the dinner hour! I am charged with offering a most hearty welcome, in default of my brother and sister, who will no doubt be with us directly. And how did you find the road, Mr. Finch-Hatton? Your horses endured this heat tolerably well?”

“Tolerably, thank you, Miss Austen,” he said, and returned to his watch with studied indifference.

“Allow me to take your wrap, Lady Elizabeth.”

“Thank you, Miss Austen, but I so detest the duty of wrapping myself up again — particularly when travelling without my maid — that I believe I shall retain it yet a while. Your sister is indisposed?”

“Not at all — and most anxious to see you. She is merely dressing for dinner. I expect her every moment.”

“I see. A pity, George, that we have so little time.”

“But I thought…”

“It is quite impossible for us to stay above a quarter-hour. We are expected at Eastwell tonight. An engagement of Mr. Finch-Hatton's—”

Expected at Eastwell! When they had been expected here for dinner! It was quite extraordinary behaviour— almost indicative of a desire to snub my brother. But no — in that case, they should simply have sent a note, filled with regret at the necessity of despising his hospitality. Perhaps it was a family matter, too private for explanation; or perhaps our embroilment in the affairs of Mrs. Grey … I dismissed the last notion as absurd.

“I see,” I said with an effort, and crossed to the bell-pull. “Perhaps I should summon Mrs. Austen, so that you do not escape her altogether. She would never forgive me.”

“If you would be so good—”

It was fully eight minutes by Mr. Finch-Hatton's pocket-watch, I am sure, before my brother and his wife hurried through the door. I endured the interval as gamely as I might — but with little pleasure, I confess. The Finch-Hattons are never a talkative family; in such circumstances, each seemingly lost in a private reverie, they were as mute as sybils. It was impossible to introduce the subject that must be uppermost in all our minds — Mrs. Grey's death; delicacy forbade it. But each of my forays into conversation proved disappointing. Neither the subject of Race Week, nor last evening's Assembly, nor even the prospect of long sleeves for winter dress, could animate the ladies; and as for Finch-Hatton himself— he was preoccupied with pacing off the length of the drawing-room, a habit acquired, I suppose, from his intimacy with architects.

For if the Finch-Hattons are impoverished in speech, they are rich in the passion for improvement. Their estate at Eastwell is never suffered to remain long in one condition — a team of builders must be permanently installed somewhere in the deer park, I believe, as feudal lords once commanded a host of vassals; and there a legion of gardeners is perennially in pursuit of the last word in landscape fashion. The present house — the third to be built on its site — is a fantastical thing, half riding-school and half-Parthenon.[28] Mr. Joseph Bonomi had the designing of it, and managed it in so outlandish a taste — which he persuaded the Finch-Hattons to believe was at once classical and modern—that it is quite the talk of the neighbourhood, though perhaps not in the manner his patrons intended.

Conceive, if you are able, a largish white block of a building, divided along its front with pilasters and capitals set into the facade; exactly three great windows on one side of the entry and three on the other, and an immense arched portico, nearly three storeys in height, dominating the whole. Cumbersome, inelegant, unlovely, and awkward — but classical and modern enough in its expression, that Lady Elizabeth might believe herself a citizen of Rome. I have visited the family at Eastwell several times, and can never find that the place has grown in my estimation. It is peculiarly suited to the humours of its inhabitants, however, who are in general as awkward and inexpressive as their walls. The Finch-Hatton ladies never speak if they can help it, and then only in plaintive tones; the Finch-Hatton men, when not looking at their pocket-watches, prefer to be out-of-doors.

“Lady Elizabeth!” my sister Lizzy cried from the doorway. “What is this I hear of your not intending dinner? Is it possible? And I have had white soup enough for an army simmering in the kitchens!”

“It may yet serve, dear madam, if Buonaparte has his way,” Mr. Finch-Hatton observed drily, and thrust his watch at last into his pocket. Perhaps he had placed an idle bet or two as to the time required for Lizzy's preparation. “You look well, Austen,” he said to my brother with a bow; “surprisingly well, under the circumstances.”

“You mean the evacuation orders?” Neddie enquired smoothly, as though Mrs. Grey had never lived, much less died. “I cannot take them in earnest, however diligently I set the servants to packing.”

“Then I pray the Monster may land on my doorstep rather than yours,” Finch-Hatton returned. “I hope I shall know how to receive the renegade! I have been drilling my tenants these two months at least; and there is powder and shot enough in the stores to hold off an entire brigade of cavalry!”

“I applaud your foresight, sir,” Neddie said, “but I cannot expect so little of our gallant Navy. With an Austen and a Nelson scouring the Channel, the Monster shall not pass beyond a nautical mile from Boulogne.”

“But tell me, Lady Elizabeth,” my sister broke in, “must you certainly go on to Eastwell tonight? If it is the lateness of the hour that concerns you, I am sure there are bedchambers enough.”

“Lateness of the hour! It is not above six o'clock. I am sure that at Eastwell we dine fully as late as you do at Godmersham, Lady Elizabeth returned frostily. “We are never behindhand, you know, in matters of elegance.”[29] Lady Elizabeth is the daughter of an earl, a fact she would have no one forget — particularly the daughter of a baronet

“You! Behindhand! As though anyone could think it,” Lizzy returned, with that pale green gleam in her eye that suggested an inner amusement “I believe that everything at Eastwell is in the first rank of taste — would not you agree, Jane?”

“Entirely,” I murmured. Knowing my opinion of the place all too well, Lizzy was cruelly impertinent; but I endured the test to perfection, and betrayed nothing in my countenance.

“Pray tell me,” Neddie persisted, “what improvements do you presently undertake about that remarkable place? Not that it could be said to require improvement, but I know your artistic spirit too well. It will never rest while the least suggestion of beauty remains at bay.”

Well put, I silently commended my brother. He had got the notion in one. At bay would beauty forever remain, however desperately the Finch-Hattons pursued it.

“The interior of the house is quite nearly complete,” Lady Elizabeth confided, unbending a litde, “but for the trifling matter of some painted Chinese papers that are intended for the drawing-room, and are shockingly delayed en route. And then there is the matter of the dining-parlour's draperies — I could never be sanguine regarding the shade of pomegranate silk; it seemed to me to border on the tawdry.”

“That is often the way with pomegranate,” Neddie remarked, with a compelling command of countenance. “One may meet it anywhere — and not always in the best company.”

“Exactly! I believe I shall change it out for green,” Lady Elizabeth said complacently. “But it must await Mr. Finch-Hatton's present passion, which quite consumes our energies.”

Lizzy's brow furrowed slightly in an effort to discern which, of the numerous Finch-Hatton projects, Lady Elizabeth intended. “The construction of the foyer's free-floating dome?”

“The dome!” Finch-Hatton himself cried out, as if in pain. “No, no, my dear lady — the dome is quite complete, the most marvellous thing you shall ever observe! St. Peter's is nothing to it! Although it might be accused of wanting in frescoes — but I shall attend to that presently, when the necessary Florentines may be shipped with safe-passage.”

“Florentines,” Neddie murmured. “Of course.”

“What I would speak of, my dear Mrs. Austen,” said Lady Elizabeth with her first suggestion of animation, “is Mr. Finch-Hatton's design of the park. It is to be entirely new-laid — approach, prospect, shrubberies, and all!”

“The park?” I could not but be surprised. “But I thought it had been done in your father's time, by Mr. Capability Brown.”

“Not Brown himself,” Finch-Hatton supplied carelessly, “but one of his journeymen. And as for Brown, well—”

“Oh, do not vex me with the name of Brown!” cried Lady Elizabeth. “When I consider how much of the Picturesque that man destroyed, with his sweeps of turf, and his little clumps of trees, and his ha-has built up like a moat about the house, I could weep with vexation!”[30]

Lizzy and I exchanged a speaking look. Neither of us could ignore Lady Elizabeth's recourse to the Picturesque. It had become the chief phrase of Mr. Humphrey Repton's acolytes — those who would dot the landscape with scenes both romantic and wild. Eastwell Park, I surmised, would swiftly be turned into a wilderness, with haunted grottoes and abandoned cottages just ripe for a wandering hermit; a lake would be constructed, with an earth-work island, raised expressly for the purpose of displaying a Gothic ruin — all of it quite modern, of course. How it would all appear, with the Roman fantasy of a house as backdrop, I could hardly imagine.

“And so you aspire to the Picturesque,” Neddie offered, in a dangerous spirit of encouragement.

“How often have I observed to Mr. Austen,” my sister Lizzy said provokingly, “that the little copse on our hill is too insipid for words! — That the walled garden lacked all enchantment! That the path of the Stour might be swelled to something greater — an ornamental pond, perhaps, for the siting of a Chinese pagoda! I even appealed to his desire for coarse-fishing — but to no avail!”

“Perhaps not a pagoda” Mr. Finch-Hatton countered doubtfully, “but a smallish ruin, now—”

“And that avenue,” Lady Elizabeth added sadly. “Bentley, as I believe you call it—”

“Bentigh,” Neddie corrected gently. “It was planted in the first Mr. Knight's time.”

“So I assumed,” she rejoined placidly. “I am sure it is shockingly old-fashioned.”

“I believe the lime trees are over fifty years old,” Neddie agreed. His lips were a trifle too compressed, as though the humourous had given way to the insulting. “Nasty, unnatural sorts of things, limes — don't you agree, Jane?”

“My dear,” cried Lady Elizabeth, “I truly believe that the Austens might benefit from an introduction to Mr. Sothey! Is it not the very thing? Would it not be a service in the calling of Art?”

“Of course,” her husband replied. “You must have Sothey, Austen — he is quite the genius of our little place, as the saying goes, ha! ha! I should not order a spade to be shifted, without I consulted Sothey.”[31]

“He is your chief gardener?” Neddie idly enquired.

” Gardener! Good God, no!” Finch-Hatton cried.

His daughter, the inscrutable Louisa, echoed a shocked and irreverent, “Julian, a gardener? Lord!”

“Mr. Sothey is the second son of the Earl of Matlock,” Lady Elizabeth assured us. “His mother and I were quite the best of friends, before poor Honoria died. I have made it a little cause, you know, to look out for Julian— to further his interest, and so on, where a word or two might help. Particularly since the Earl went all to pieces in that shocking way, a few years ago …”

She left the matter hanging. I had never heard of the Earl of Madock, much less his shocking ruin; but Lizzy nodded shrewdly.

“It is a pity, is it not, that those who most lack success at the tables, are the very ones who game to their ruin?”

“And his heir is just like him!” Lady Elizabeth cried, as hot on the scent as a foxhound. “The Honourable Cecil Sothey has fled to Switzerland these two years or more, and how he lives no one can say!”

“But the younger son takes an interest in … landscape?” I ventured.

“Exactly so! Julian was always of an artistic disposition — a painter in oils, and put to study with the finest masters of Europe, before Buonaparte quite destroyed the Grand Tour, and the Earl's circumstances brought an end to all education. But dear Julian's taste is entirely beyond dispute, is it not, my love?”

Mr. Finch-Hatton had withdrawn his pocket-watch once more, and was studying it intendy.

“Mamma, “Miss Louisa cried in a warning tone, “if you do not leave off chattering, we shall be late for dinner at Eastwell. And then what will Julian say?”

“He is presently a guest at Eastwell Park?” I enquired.

“At last!” Louisa exclaimed. “Julian has been all the summer promising to come, and never setting foot through the door! I declare I was quite distracted with disappointment. But there it is! One lady's misfortune is another's good luck. No one will want Julian at The Larches, I daresay, now that Mrs. Grey—”

“Louisa!” her mother interjected sternly. “It does not do to talk of such things. I am sure Mr. Austen is already sick to death of that odious woman. I quite pity you, Mr. Austen. To be let in for such a tiresome business, and in such heat!”

There was a fractional pause. Then my brother enquired negligently — as tho' merely from politeness — “Mr. Sothey was a guest at The Larches?”

“Julian served Mr. Grey as consultant for nearly half a year,” Lady Elizabeth confided proudly. “And you know how much the park is admired! There is nothing to equal The Larches in all of Kent — tho' it is the Garden of England.”

“So I have been assured. I regret that I have never had occasion to tour the full extent of Grey's grounds,” Neddie replied smoothly. “But as you are intimate with Mr. Sothey, perhaps you have been more fortunate.”

“We were often invited to pay a call,” Lady Elizabeth said vaguely, “but that woman, you know — I could never approve her. To pay a visit might lend a certain countenance to her behaviour. And Julian was so very much occupied — but now that Mrs. Grey is dead, it would not do for him to remain in the house. Julian determined to come to us directly, the very day of the Dreadful Event.”

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa urged again.

“To devote six months,” Neddie observed, “to a single estate! Mr. Sothey must have found a great deal to employ his time.”

“Mr. Grey, I believe, has a passion for improvement,” Mr. Finch-Hatton interjected approvingly.

“And as Grey was called so often to Town, Mr. Sothey must frequently have acted in his stead,” Neddie mused.

The implication — that the landscape designer had found more than mere parkland to occupy his attention — was entirely lost on Lady Elizabeth.

“Julian is a very responsible, steady sort of young man,” Lady Elizabeth cried, “and if he possessed the fortune he ought, I should never say nay to him! Our Louisa and Julian have known one another since childhood, you understand — I make nothing of any trifling attachment, of course — but, then, one does not often meet with a girl as good-looking; and now that Julian is grown into such a sprig of fashion, all the young ladies are quite wild about him.”

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa wailed in exasperation.

“My dear — the time!” Mr. Finch-Hatton exclaimed.

“And how long will Mr. Sothey be with you, ma'am?” I enquired hurriedly.

“We are so fortunate as to have his undivided attention for several weeks,” Lady Elizabeth replied. “We met with him quite by chance at that unfortunate race-meeting, you know, and he told us it would at last be in his power to pay us a visit. I was overjoyed! I declare I could not stop talking of it, until that lamentable woman put flight to every other consideration.” This was the nearest approach she would allow herself to strangulation. “But, however, it is immaterial now. We expect Julian for dinner this evening.”

“Then you had certainly better be on your way,” Lizzy supplied, with her usual good breeding, as though she had never been jilted of a dinner partner herself, nor vexed beyond imagining by the quantity of effort undergone only this morning in the Godmersham kitchens. “I suppose we cannot hope to see you for several weeks, if Mr. Sothey intends to engross all your time.”

“As to that — I cannot say, to be sure — but we are to have quite a little dinner gathering at Eastwell on the morrow — should be charmed, if you are not engaged? You might meet Mr. Sothey, go over his plans for the grounds, and judge of his talents yourselves!”

“You are all kindness, Lady Elizabeth,” said my brother swiftly. A quelling look to his wife, who might have refused the invitation, went unnoticed by the Finch-Hattons.

“You are too good, ma'am,” said Lizzy distantly.

Lady Elizabeth smiled at her with infinite condescension. “Tho' Julian shall be much taken up with our little place, Mrs. Austen, I am sure that Mr. Finch-Hatton would be delighted to spare him, should you require a consultation about your grounds. I am strongly of the opinion that you should have that Bentley down — and I do not think I flatter myself when I say, that my opinions on matters of Taste are everywhere celebrated.”

And so the Finch-Hattons were shown to their barouche-landau, without having taken so much as a glass of Madeira — in a fever, one supposes, to welcome the genius of Eastwell Park.

We watched them the length of the sweep, and when they had crossed the little stone bridge and were labouring up the hill to the Ashford road, Lizzy muttered, “Insufferable woman! I quite detest her. Must we indeed go to Eastwell on the morrow? Could not we decline a full hour after we are expected, and afford them all the misery they have served to us?”

Neddie laughed and carried his wife's hand to his lips. “We cannot. You know it is impossible. Such a display of carelessness would expose you to Lady Elizabeth's scorn; and you could never bear to appear as vulgar as she. I fear that you have been bested by a Gendeman Improver, my dear — and there is nothing for it but to submit.”

“It is of no consequence, Neddie.” She let fall the drape across the window, and turned away. “They had not been alighted from their carriage five minutes, before I considered the exchange an admirable one. Mr. Sothey must be formed of sterner stuff than we, to contemplate a visit of some weeks to Eastwell!”

“Perhaps you underrate Miss Louisa's charms,” I suggested.

“The Finch-Hattons generally rate them so high themselves, that one must forever fall short,” she replied. “But I stand by my original claim. Mr. Sothey is a martyr to a peculiar cause, known only to himself — and is much to be pitied.”

Neddie raised his brows expressively in my direction. He was considering, no doubt, the curious fact of Mr. Sothey's departure for Eastwell Park on the very day of Mrs. Grey's murder. We had heard nothing before this of Sothey's presence in the Grey household; and yet so protracted a visit — even under the guise of an estate's improvement — must be remarkable. Valentine Grey had told us nothing of it, nor of his designer's abrupt departure. Was this the matter he would keep dark — the element of the story that required a desperate diversion?

“I quite long to meet Mr. Sothey,” I observed, “being but too susceptible myself to every Sprig of Fashion. And the delight of uniting the honour with another tour of Eastwell Park, is almost too much to be borne! — Tho' I doubt I am improved enough myself, since last summer, to stand comparison with that noble place.”

“Have a care, Jane,” my brother advised, as the dinner bell rang. “Lady Elizabeth may appear foolish at times, and suffer from a lamentable taste; but she is not a stupid woman. Even an irony so disguised as yours, cannot entirely escape her notice.”