by Cecily Ross
Next is Jane, two years younger, a studious grey bird caught in that shifting territory between our older sisters and Katie and me and the boys. One day, Jane is the diligent taskmaster drilling us in botany and geometry; the next, she is a child screaming in delighted terror as we comb the attic for old Martin’s ghost. We call her “the worrier” for her tendency to fret about everything. She is undemanding and gentle by nature, and I fear she is so overshadowed by the rest of us, her noisier siblings, that she spends much of her time by herself, reading or walking. Even when Jane is in the room, she makes herself so small that it is easy to overlook her altogether.
Then there is my beloved, gentle Catharine. At thirteen, she is a year and a half older than me and possessed of such a sunny disposition that when it is paired with my own stormy restlessness, we are as night is to day, as at odds as heaven and hell, and yet in our differences, we are like two sides of the same coin, forever conjoined in a single purpose. And though I often chafe at her relentless cheerfulness (as well as her status as Papa’s obvious favourite), she is the light of my life.
As for the children, Sam and Tom, they are boisterous and charming but with characters as yet unformed, though Sam at ten shows signs of a shrewd, if manipulative, intelligence and a physical prowess I envy. He can outrun any of us without breaking a sweat.
MARCH 6, 1815
Napoleon Bonaparte has escaped and is marching to Paris! Papa gave us the news on his return from Norwich at suppertime. I could not contain myself and whooped loudly for joy. “My prince is on his way!” I shouted, jumping up from the table. I thought Mama was going to faint. “Mr. Strickland, this is too much. These seditious outbursts must stop. Do something, please.” And so I am confined to my room again.
Never mind, I have started a new poem: a ballad to heroic love. I shall call it “To the Fleeing Emperor.”
More news: Sam and Tom are to attend school in Norwich beginning in the fall. They will live at the new house there with Mama and Papa on weekdays while the rest of us remain here at Reydon in the care of the servants. Papa, who has always insisted that a good education is as essential for girls as it is for boys, was almost apologetic when he gave us the news. Oh, how I should love to go to a real school. I was tempted to beg Papa, but once again Kate dissuaded me. (“I know your behaviour might suggest otherwise, but you’re a girl, Susanna. Accept it.”) Then she pointed out how blessed we are to have at our disposal an extensive collection of reading material inherited from Sir Isaac Newton. (Papa’s first wife was a grandniece to the great mathematician.) And she’s right. The hundreds of volumes include important works of philosophy, history, mathematics and science, which have been invaluable to our collective education. But I still think it isn’t fair. Papa has promised Agnes that she and Eliza may accompany them to Norwich from time to time to avail themselves of the libraries and booksellers there. As for the rest of us, our schooling will continue under the supervision of the two eldest, a haphazard affair at best. Not like real school. If only I had been born a boy, then I should read history and geography and great literature and never again be bothered with needlework and drawing. When I expressed these sentiments to Sam, he scrunched his face into something resembling a cabbage and dared me to race him to the river and back. I shall miss him, though, and little Tom too. Much as I love dearest Katie, sometimes her goodness is too much to bear.
APRIL 10, 1815
This morning, after breakfast, I returned to my room and spent more than an hour sitting in the alcove under the gable watching the mist drift over the river like shreds of linen. Rooks called from the green willows; black-and-white cows ambled along the far bank. I wanted to capture the beauty of this familiar scene somehow, but the words would not arrange themselves in my head; and the strange and lovely feeling was gone before I could grasp it, like a stone thrown into a pond, leaving only ripples of melancholy and then nothing. I spent the whole of our French lesson sitting there pondering the elusiveness of my imagination and was not missed until lunchtime.
Mama says we are to hold a ball here at Reydon Hall. She says it is time Eliza, Agnes and Sarah were introduced to society. Eliza is mortified and insists she has no interest in coming out—or marrying—ever. I suspect it is too late for her anyway. Agnes pretends to be above it all, but I think she is secretly pleased. Only Sarah allowed her excitement at the prospect to show. Poor Jane, forgotten again.
MAY 7, 1815
Tomorrow, we travel to Norwich by coach for our final dress fittings. Mama says Kate and I are too young to take part in the dancing but that we shall nevertheless have new gowns of cream-coloured muslin, mine with blue satin ribbon at the bodice, my sister’s pale green, and both with matching reticules. Eliza’s and Agnes’s dresses will be trimmed with gold and silver braid. Of course Mama has her matrimonial hopes pinned on the beautiful and saintly Sarah, but Papa says she is far too young to marry and that providing six daughters with dowries will surely land him in the poorhouse. He seems to view the prospect of the imminent ball with bemused contempt.
“A young woman today would be better off pursuing an education than a husband,” I overheard him telling poor bewildered Vicar Sexsmith, following last Sunday’s service. Since only eldest sons can inherit property, the necessarily few eligible bachelors are hopelessly outnumbered by the hordes of desperate spinsters preening and parading themselves in the faint hope of making a suitable match. (At least that’s the way he made it sound, as though we are a pack of beribboned hounds pursuing a single golden fox.) Mama sighs when he harangues her on the subject and continues with her Debrett’s.
“Do you think,” she muses, “that we should have the dancing in the long drawing room or, if it is a warm night, in the conservatory with doors open onto the garden?”
In any case, the only young men invited other than the new curate, Mr. Headford, who has nothing to recommend him save a fearful stutter and a conspicuous squint, are the magistrate Mr. Beauchamp’s two sons, whose acquaintance we have never made, but whose pallid visages I have often observed peering from the windows of their father’s offices in Bungay, where they serve as junior clerks. And then there is Robert Kent, heir, Papa says, to a London distillery fortune. His family settled into the stately hall at Fornham St. Genevieve only a fortnight ago. Not gentry exactly, sighed Mama, but then . . .
Agnes has agreed to accompany us to Norwich today, but only grudgingly. Like Papa, she now considers the entire project folly. She is influenced, she says, by her recent discovery in the library of a book written by a woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, who, says Jane, wears blue stockings. Odd. It is called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Agnes has begun reading it aloud to us by candlelight after Mama and Papa have retired. I think the book has made a strong impression on her, as she goes on and on about independence and equality between the sexes. In spite of her demonstrated opposition to the literary arts, she spends an inordinate amount of time in her room composing dramas and poems, which she is only too happy to perform for our education and entertainment.
The dance will take place on the eve of the summer solstice.
MAY 15, 1815
Robert Kent has accepted our invitation to the ball and will be accompanied by his two cousins (male or female—he did not specify). Mama immediately ordered new crystal from Staffordshire and table linens from Ireland. Her customary lassitude has vanished. Instead, her blue eyes sparkle like the sea and roses seem to bloom on her smooth, pale cheeks.
“Your extravagance will be the death of me, Mrs. Strickland,” said Papa, but his protests are muted by his obvious pleasure in our mother’s renewed vigour.
“You will see, the expense is a double necessity,” she responded. “It is high time the older girls had proper trousseaux; their clothes are in a shameful state. If they are to have suitors, they must have the appropriate accoutrements.”
The whirl of activity as Mama and Lockwood ready the old house for the merciless scrutiny of society has infected us all—fr
om Molly, the scullery maid, to young Tom—with unparalleled joie de vivre. Even Eliza is positively giddy, though she takes great pains to hide it. This morning, Katie and I observed her humming to herself as she settled down to her needlework.
All this talk of suitors and trousseaux! Yes, I am eager for the dance and very curious to glimpse Robert Kent and his cousins, but I swear upon these pages that I will never marry. I dream of writing great books, of fame and fortune and independence—not for me the strictures of parlours and nurseries and bedchambers. When I told Kate of my resolve on our walk this afternoon, she smiled patiently and said she longs to fall in love and that marriage must be a woman’s greatest adventure. I was quick to remind Kate of Agnes’s devotion to Miss Wollstonecraft’s notion that marriage as it exists is little better than slavery for women, and that, ideally, relations between the sexes should be based on “a higher friendship” between equals. I do not see any evidence of this in the marriage of my own parents, who, when they are not squabbling like children, seem to tolerate one another with amused condescension.
JUNE 20, 1815
Napoleon has been defeated in a fierce battle at the town of Waterloo in Belgium. Papa says we shall see if the war is well and truly over this time (a war that began in the year of my birth!), and if it is, he declared, the world is poised on the brink of a new era—whether better or worse, he would not say. I did not mention that my ardour for Bonaparte lives on though his fate seems doubtful. I cannot risk courting Papa’s or Mama’s disapproval with the great festivities so close at hand.
Kate and I will be allowed to remain downstairs until one hour after the dancing has begun, and then we must join Sam and Tom in the nursery. No amount of cajoling has moved Mama in this; she refuses to weaken and I fear that continued petitioning will only harden her resolve.
Much consideration has been given to how the dancing will commence. Agnes insists that convention decrees that Mama, as mistress of Reydon, must have the first dance with Mr. Kent. Though he’s not of high rank, his substantial fortune makes him easily the most desirable match in attendance. Mama, for her part, says that the honour of the first dance belongs to the eldest daughter, but Eliza must not dominate the young man’s attention. “Perhaps a minuet and one or two reels, my dear, and then you must present Mr. Kent to your sister Sarah.”
Hearing this, Sarah blushed fetchingly and smiled the enigmatic smile that is often upon her lips these days as she contemplates her almost certain destiny as doyenne of Fornham Manor. We were in Mama’s chambers, supervising Georgia, the housemaid, as she set out our ensembles—the gloves and reticules, the petticoats and caps—in readiness for tomorrow evening. Eliza’s face reddened with shame or anger, or both, at Mama’s words. Perhaps if my eldest sister smiled from time to time, she might have suitors too.
Agnes sniffed and resumed her scribbling. Then Jane, with a vehemence that shocked us all into silence, spoke up. “Perhaps Sarah’s God-given gifts of a fair complexion, flaxen hair and a talent for baking will win her a husband one day, but I, for one, do not consider them accomplishments. I shall be in the library if you want me.” And with that, she strode out of the room.
JUNE 22, 1815
Robert Kent is a troll! He and his absurd retinue (two gleaming coaches, each drawn by four chestnuts and attended by six footmen clad in scarlet livery adorned with enough gold braid to hang an earl) arrived promptly at 8:00 p.m. Mr. Kent occupied the lead coach, while his two cousins, Mr. Cecil Dalton and Miss Charlotte Dalton, were in the second with a lady’s maid. Two grooms on bay mares rode behind. Their approach, heralded by the crunch of scores of hooves on gravel and a drawn-out series of trumpet blasts, could be heard long before the parade reached the Hall. We all, including the servants (even Cook and Molly left the pheasants unattended in the ovens), gathered on the portico to witness the spectacle. Mama tried to shoo us inside as Mr. Kent’s entourage pulled into the driveway, but to no avail; we were frozen stiff with astonishment, none of us having ever encountered such lavish ostentation.
“A thoroughly tasteless display,” Mama said this morning, “for someone whose antecedents were likely pirates and rum-runners.” (I heard Papa murmur, “Or dockworkers like me.”) I fear that Mama, who claims a tenuous ancestral connection with Catharine Parr, one of Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives (indeed, my dear sister Kate is her namesake), sometimes loses sight of Papa’s humbler beginnings.
In any case, Mr. Kent is very rich indeed, but his lack of breeding, to say nothing of his short stature, bowed legs, balding pate and high-pitched voice, was a grave disappointment to us all, particularly Sarah. After acknowledging his arrival, loudly announced by one of his footmen, Eliza presented herself with an adequate, if somewhat awkward, curtsey and ushered her companion into the conservatory, where the couple began the first quadrille accompanied by Mrs. Sexsmith, the vicar’s wife, who had been commissioned to play the piano, and a Scottish boy from Southwold, who has attained legendary status on the violin.
Katie and I, being forbidden to take part, positioned ourselves halfway up the staircase, from whence we enjoyed an uninterrupted view of our dear sisters’ initiation into local society. The conservatory, lit with hundreds of candles, and these in turn reflected in the dusk-darkened windows, glittered like the sea on a moonlit night. The nearly forty guests formed two lines and began walking about in pairs, each man holding his partner’s hand high while the ladies grasped their skirts with the other. The men and women, old, young, stout and thin, circled one another, engaging in brief conversation, before passing on to the next partner and beginning the same sedate walkabout again. The scene was nothing like the “dance” I had conjured in my imagination—an abandoned tumble of whirling slippers and glinting spurs. This was more like a leisurely stroll on the common than the ecstatic celebration I had anticipated.
“Poor Eliza,” whispered Katie. “How wretched she looks.”
“No more than usual, surely?” I responded, and immediately regretted my unkindness as Eliza did indeed appear miserable. Conversation has never been easy for my eldest sister, and what the quadrille lacks in athletic demands, it makes up for in social necessities. Eliza stared fixedly at her feet as she passed from one man to the next, some trying gallantly but vainly to elicit a few brief words from her as she trudged along with all the grace of a lame cart horse. Mama’s fears that her awkward eldest daughter might commandeer all Mr. Kent’s attentions proved unfounded. He gave Eliza no more than a cursory nod as they were reunited at the end of the first round before mincing off, his chinless jaw thrust forward like a turtle’s, in search of more genial feminine company. He quickly spotted the lovely Sarah and was headed to where she and Agnes and the Hardwick sisters, Catherine and Elizabeth, stood in a small circle by the potted palms, fanning themselves. But alas, the unfortunate Mr. Kent was a moment too late.
“Oh, Katie, look.” I pressed my forehead into the space between the banister rails. “I believe Mr. Dalton is asking Sarah to dance.”
Cecil Dalton, unlike his illustrious cousin, boasted the suave good looks of a young squire. He was a little shorter than my sister, perhaps, but possessed of a full head of fair hair, broad shoulders, straight legs and unblemished cheeks.
I grabbed Katie’s hand and squeezed it rather harder than I meant to. “Do you think Mr. Dalton may be heir to a distillery fortune too?”
Katie winced and delivered one of her withering (and I must say wearying) sermons. “My dear Susie,” she began, “it matters not the size of a man’s purse so long as his character is unsullied and he is kind and forbearing in all his—”
“Shhh. Oh no. Mama . . .” We watched as our mother, overseeing the unfolding drama from her position on the dais by the door to the library, glided through the mingling guests with the intention of intercepting Mr. Dalton and diverting him from Sarah so that she might be open to the full attentions of Mr. Kent. But Mama was too late and could only watch in dismay as Sarah and Mr. Dalton turned toward whatever destiny h
ad in store for them. I must say, they looked like a prince and princess, and I found my heart beating like an African drum as I watched them cross the floor together. Mama, in an attempt to salvage the lost opportunity, grasped the hand of Agnes, the daughter nearest her (Jane had scurried away like a little mouse at our mother’s approach), and placed it on Mr. Kent’s forearm before giving both young people an encouraging squeeze and retreating with a forced yet determined smile to our father’s side.
Agnes bowed her head dutifully and led poor bewildered Mr. Kent into the fray. Despite his ungainly bearing, he proved a graceful dancer, and to my utter astonishment, it seemed that our hours of practice every afternoon in the drawing room before tea (throughout which Agnes grumbled and stomped like an angry hen) had paid off. She conducted herself so admirably that Mr. Kent soon shed his air of distraction and gave himself over wholly to the dance. Mrs. Sexsmith and the boy stepped up the tempo somewhat and launched into a lively reel. Before long, the hall was charged with excitement. The last thing I observed before Agnes, who had managed to extricate herself from Mr. Kent’s charms, came to shepherd Kate and me to bed was that the handsome Mr. Dalton was no longer dancing with our promising sister Sarah, but had taken up with the equally beguiling Elizabeth Hardwick. Mama, half hidden by the potted ferns at the window, glowered.