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.”
28
Eastwell Park sat four miles south of Godmersham on the road to Ashford, now the A20. It was the home of the Finch-Hattons until 1893. The house designed by Bonomi was razed in 1926, and its successor is presenuy operated as a hotel. —