Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Canterbury Tale

Such, of course, had not been the experience of one Adelaide Thane Fiske MacCallister—and I reflected, as I returned the ribbons to Fanny’s capable hands, that therein lay a question: Had Adelaide acquired so many surnames—so many changes of station and fortune in her brief four-and-twenty years— because of her willingness to flout convention, or in despite of it?

Endeavour to learn what her relationship has been with James Wildman , Edward had urged in a lowered tone as he handed me up into the tilbury. I must ask her about the tamarind seeds, of course, and what her movements were after the ball was done at Chilham that night—but you, Jane, have the whole of her life to discover .

The whole of her life. I wished I did not feel so daunted by the task; I am accredited a subtle conversationalist, I own, and am not unperceptive regarding the motives of much of the human race—but I dislike playing the busybody, and Adelaide MacCallister had no reason to confide anything to a stranger. Her family was all about her, did she require a confessor. To urge her conversation at such a time must be repugnant to any right-thinking person’s sentiments. I should be forced to contrive.

It seemed but a moment more, and we were trotting up the broad sweep that led to the Castle. Fanny pulled up her horse, and a footman ran from the hall to Rowan’s head, while another stood ready to help us down. I heard Edward call carelessly as he swung from the saddle, “Is your young master at home, Twitch?” and the Wildman family’s butler, a rather stout figure in black, scraped a bow.

“Mr. James is at home, sir, as is Mr. Wildman, but I must enquire whether they are receiving visitors. The household is a trifle … discomposed.”

“I’m here as First Magistrate, Twitch,” Edward said gently, “not as a neighbour paying a call. Please convey my apologies to your master and his son, and beg that they receive me on business that may not be delayed.”

“And the ladies, sir?”

Edward’s eyes drifted over me and Fanny.

“We had intended to pay a call upon Mrs. Wildman, but if that is inconvenient, pray do not disturb her,” Fanny said impulsively. “We are quite happy to send in our cards, and drive home. It is a lovely day for an airing, after all.”

I had not expected my niece to wilt before the manners of an imposing upper servant, and was momentarily exasperated with her. But I reflected that even so pert a creature as Miss Eliza Bennet should have done the same, upon arriving at Pemberley, had she been aware that Mr. Darcy was already in residence—and that perhaps some explanation might be found for Fanny’s unwillingness to thrust herself into the Chilham household.

“Twitch,” said a voice from the doorway, “why do you leave our visitors dawdling on the sweep, when they ought already to have been announced? Step lively, you fool!”

I glanced towards the entry, and saw a formidable figure: iron-haired, thin-lipped, her eyes dark and imperious as Cleopatra’s.

“Yes, Mrs. Thane,” Twitch answered woodenly, and led us into the Castle.

22 October 1813, Cont.

It is only now that we are returned home, and I am established in a comfortable chair before the library fire with a shawl draped over my chilled feet, that I may reflect a little on the strangeness of the atmosphere at Chilham Castle today. I have been somewhat acquainted with the household and family in past years, and have reckoned them to be a fine, high-spirited, handsome collection of people, without much seriousness in their heads or purpose in life; a family that enjoys giving pleasure to others as much as to themselves, and which has been marked out neither for great distinction nor hideous misfortune.

Mr. James Wildman amassed his wealth in trade—through the management of a vast sugar plantation in Jamaica, owned by one Mr. William Beckford. Mr. Beckford is grown infamous in the Polite World, I understand, for having seduced at a tender age the son and heir of an earl—and for being forced to flee the country with his wife in the wake of the subsequent scandal. To us Austens, however, he figures merely as cousin to our own Miss Beckford of Chawton, who until this past spring lived at the Great House with all the Middletons. How small is the world between Hampshire and Kent, to be sure! [6] Jane refers here to Maria Beckford, originally of Basing Park in Hampshire, who helped rear her dead sister’s children at the request of Mr. John Middleton, her brother-in-law. The Middletons leased Chawton Great House from Edward Austen from 1808 to 1813, and Maria Beckford visited Jane when both chanced to be in London. —Editor’s note.

William Beckford is known far beyond England, however, for a connoisseur, a collector of art, a musician who once studied under no less a master than Mozart, and as the author of the horrid novel Vathek . It is Beckford’s name that young James Beckford Wildman claims—Beckford having stood as the boy’s godfather. We may assume the choice of both name and patron to signify gratitude on Mr. Wildman Senior’s part, rather than any approbation of William Beckford’s tastes or habits. The amassing of a considerable fortune must be said to sweep all prudish reserve aside—and Mr. Wildman owed his present comfort entirely to Beckford’s Jamaican plantation. He managed the Quebec Estate, as the plantation was known, so well, in fact—and Beckford proved so profligate in his building and furnishing of his absurd pile at Fonthill Abbey—that Wildman was presently able to relieve his illustrious employer’s straitened circumstances, by purchasing the plantation outright; and at a very good price, if rumour is believed.

The revenues from Jamaican sugar proved so lucrative, that Mr. Wildman was gradually able to put enough by to purchase Chilham Castle when his son was but four years old. The Wildman income is thought to be in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand a year. (If only another such Prize might be secured on the Marriage Mart for my own dear creation, Caroline Bingley! But Chilham is no Pemberley, alas.)

The Castle is far older than its present owner’s claims to gentility, having been built in the early seventeenth century on the ruins of a medieval motte and bailey. Set on high ground, and facing the little village of Chilham, it is a pleasant façade in the Italian Renaissance stile, much improved in recent years by Jamaican profits. The building curves in a polygon shape, with the last link missing—establishing an inner courtyard flanked by the horseshoe of the house. All the principal rooms are to the rear, facing some twenty acres of gardens that fall away in gradual terraces below; Capability Brown had the original draughting of it, tho’ later hands have struggled gamely to mar his work.

Today, however, the air of Chilham Castle verged on the tragic, with a fillip of the sinister. Even the sunshine that was wont to stream through its leaded windows had fled hurriedly to more hospitable roofs; wind sighed in the lofty eaves; and had a ghoul commenced howling in the best Gothick manner I should not have been surprized. I must impute such a change to the influence of the Thane family.