Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Genius of the Place

“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] Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1715–1783), the supreme interpreter of the natural style in landscape gardening, transformed the English countryside in the eighteenth century. He abolished rigidly geometrical park designs, such as the formal terracing and allees of the French style then predominating, and achieved a free-flowing, bucolic terrain dotted with copses that has come to epitomize the late Georgian landscape. A ha-ha was an elaborate livestock guard, separating the area of free-ranging parkland from die more formal garden space. It was formed of either a sunken ditch or a raised wall. Maria Bertram, in Austen's Mansfield Park , is trapped by a locked ha-ha gate at her betrothed's estate — a symbolic reference to die prison of social convention. — Editor's note.

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] It was Alexander Pope (1688–1744) who remarked that nothing could be achieved in landscape design without respect for the “genius of the place” — the governing spirit of a particular landscape. He referred to an idea first stated by Horace, that every place possessed a resident genie , that must be propitiated if Beauty was to be achieved. Pope probably intended this to mean a respect for the natural attributes of the terrain; but at times his words were interpreted quite literally as a respect for the resident god. Grottoes were built to house Pan or a water nymph, as at the great gardens of Stourhead in Wiltshire. — Editor's note.

“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.”