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Persuasions #15, 1993 Pages 75-88
The Dower House at Kellynch A Somerset Romance MARGARET DRABBLE It is not always easy to distinguish attachment to person from
attachment to property. I know it is
widely held that Elizabeth was joking when she declared that she fell in love
with Darcy when first she saw Pemberley.
I used to think so myself. Now I
am not so sure. Let me tell you my
story, and you may make your own judgement.
I have yet to make mine. They call it the Dower House, but really it is nothing of the sort. It once fulfilled the function of a Dower House, some time in the last century, the period at which the facade looking down over the pleasure gardens had been refurbished. One of the always more or less unfortunate Lady Elliots (or had it been a Lady Bridgewater?) was said to have been secluded there, and the improvements had been made for her benefit. The terrace with its Gothic alcoves, the urns and the sun dial, the rounded finials on the roof had been added at this time, but it was no more a dower house than nearby Uppercross Cottage was a cottage. Both were renovated farm houses. Uppercross Cottage, incidentally, is now known as The Elms, after the unfortunate whim of an early twentieth century owner who decided the word cottage was inappropriate for so substantial a residence. The elms are all dead, of Dutch elm disease, but the name remains. It is a happy house and well maintained. It belongs to an architect from Taunton. His children and grandchildren play table tennis on the verandah in the summer evenings. The Dower House is neither happy nor well maintained. But it is beautiful. I fell in love with it at first sight. I was taken there by my friend Rose with whom I was staying at her farm on Exmoor. I did not know Somerset well, and we had spent a pleasant few days, walking, swimming in the icy river Barle, looking at churches and country houses. Rose was working on the illustrations for a book of European pond and river plants, and we collected specimens. On the whole we kept our own company, talking over our own affairs – I was still giddy with relief at having not long left my cad of a husband, she was involved with a philandering philosopher – but one evening she arranged for us to go over to Kellynch for dinner. As we left the chalky uplands and descended into the red deeps, driving through increasingly narrow, high-banked purple-flowering lanes of foxglove and rosebay, Rose told me its history. Ever since some early Elliot had been obliged to let the Hall, at the beginning of the last century, the property had been hedged with difficulties. There had been a scandalous liaison round the time of Waterloo, which had scattered illegitimate children through the country, followed – or perhaps accompanied – by a marriage which had promised well, the bride being a Bridgewater and wealthy. But it had ended in long drawn out disaster. The Bridgewaters figured well in Debretts but not in other organs of record. They were, not to beat about the bush, said Rose, barmy. The duties and dignities of a resident landowner had appealed neither to Elliots nor to Bridgewaters. But they had hung on there, as the estate fell to pieces. During the Second World War Kellynch Hall had been requisitioned as an Officers Training Centre and it had never recovered. It was now a Field Study Centre. She herself occasionally taught a course of botanical drawing there. Yes, she said, slowing to avoid a pheasant,
accelerating to overtake a tractor, there had been dramas. There had been suicides and
incarcerations. The men drank and the
women wept. The cold blood of the
Elliots had mingled disastrously with the black blood of the Bridgewaters. One bride had thrown herself from an upper
storey of Kellynch Hall on her wedding night: she had been caught in the arms
of the great magnolia tree and had lingered on, an invalid. A daughter had taken her brother’s shotgun
and blown out her brains on Dunkery Beacon.
A son had drowned himself in the pond.
When the pond was drained, in the 1920s, said Rose, it was found to
contain a deposit of bottles of claret both empty and full: old Squire William,
the one who had sold off Parsonage Farm and the woods beyond Barton, had been
in the habit of wandering down there of an evening, sometimes drunk, sometimes
in a frenzy of remorse. In either state
he had thrown bottles. The tench had
thrived on them: never had such vast fish been seen. There was one stuffed on show in the Hall. With such legends she entertained me as we
drove westward. The present owner of
the estate, Bill Elliot, with whom we were to dine, was now in his late
thirties. His father, Thomas Elliot,
had been a military man and had fought in the desert with Montgomery of
Alamein, but the peace had disagreed with him and he had come home to drink
himself to death, dying of cirrhosis of the liver in his sixties. Bill had inherited a property that was
mortgaged, entailed, and ill-starred.
Oppressed by this legacy, he had made a brief stay of execution by
hiring the house, parkland and pleasure gardens to a film company for a costume
movie. This venture had turned out
well, for his dowerless sister Henrietta had insisted on appearing as an extra
in the hunting sequence, had taken a nasty fall, and had been wooed on her
sickbed in Taunton Hospital by one of the film’s more portly and substantial
stars, who had married her. Did I know
Binkie? Maybe I had seen him as a
bishop in the latest Trollope series?
He was really rather good. But one cannot live off one windfall. And so Kellynch Hall had been let to the
Field Study Centre on a 99 Year Maintaining and Repairing Lease. The Elliots had washed their hands of
it. Bill was now camping out in the
Dower House. I would like him, she
hoped. I wondered. As I struggled with the heavy metal
latch of a broken down five barred gate – for it seemed we were to drive down a
cart track to Kellynch – I struggled also with my feelings about the English
land and its owners. I come, though I
trust you cannot detect this, from the lower middle classes, to whom property
is important – but by property we mean the freehold of a suburban house with a
garden where you can hang out the washing, not farms and tenancies and arable
acres. The Elliots of old would not
have acknowledged the existence of my category of person. To them we did not signify. And now it was they who hung on by a
thread. Kellynch Lodge, which had once
belonged to the Russells, was owned by an absentee Canadian newspaper
proprietor, and the Vicarage by a designer of computer software. Trade and the middle classes had triumphed. Even Rose, who had done her best to declassify
herself, sometimes annoyed me. She
worked for her living, after a somewhat haphazard manner, but she carried with
her the assumptions of a gentlewoman.
She assumed I knew things I did not know, people I did not know. She lives in a world which I know largely
through literature. I am the
second-hand person, the ventriloquist.
She is the real thing. I relatched the gate with difficulty, got back
into the car, and we edged carefully down what I now realised was not a cart
track but an avenue of oaks leading towards Kellynch Hall. This had been the grand approach, and the
trees, though some were stag-crested, were grand still: but they had returned
so much to nature that the formality of their planting, ordained by some Elliot
four centuries ago, was not at once apparent.
They had been reabsorbed into the landscape, as had the great sweet
chestnuts of the park boundary. Soft lumps
of honey fungus sprouted from the old wood.
The gold of a field of barley rose to our right. There was a hint of autumn fulness in the
August air. We descended, past the Big House, down the
curved drive, through what had been the stable courtyard, to the Dower
House. The melancholy deepened and
tears stood in my eyes. I had never
seen anywhere so beautiful in my life.
Pink peeling walls, grey-yellow lichen encrusted stone, single white
roses, white doves. It had reached the
moment before decay that is perfection. Bill Elliot, too, was in his own way
perfect. Decay had hardly touched him,
though perhaps his hair was very slightly receding. He was extremely good looking – the Elliots are famed for their
good looks. He was of no more than
middle height, with the blue eyes, fair tanned skin, fine blonde hair, regular
features and open yet quizzical look of the beleaguered late twentieth-century
English country gentleman. He was
wearing a pair of moss-stained trousers rolled up to the knee and a limp blue
shirt lacking most of its buttons. He
put himself out to charm me, and I was charmed. I felt that it was a privilege to meet him. It was fortunate for me that he was not my
type, I told myself. It was a memorable evening. Bill’s estranged
wife Penny, who now lived with a trout farmer at Winthrop, had come over to
join us. She had not brought the trout
farmer. There was one other couple, a
doctor who worked in Bristol and her husband, an ornamental blacksmith. Bill did the cooking, on an old-fashioned
temperamental solid fuel kitchen range which I was to get to know all too
well. He made us a risotto, with a
mixture of field mushrooms and slices of sulphorous yellow growth called
Chicken-of-the-Woods. He said he would
show me where it grew. It was
delicious. We ate Somerset cheese, and
salad, and blackberries and cream. The Dower House was derelict. Patterned curtains hung tattered and
drooping from bare rails, broken-springed chairs sprouted feathers, and
feathers drifted under the kitchen door from a vast woodshed full of nesting
doves. The wiring dated from between the
wars. I had not seen such bakelite
plugs, such furred and twisted flex since my childhood. We talked of the difficulties of the landed
gentry as we sat around the scarred paint-stained seventeenth century kitchen
table. What should one do? Turn the stately homes into venues for pop
concerts, into miniature zoos, into hotels?
The Big House at Uppercross was now an expensive retirement home. The National Trust would not accept
properties as gifts unless they were heavily endowed. I knew of these problems, but I had never met anyone who faced
them in person. I had never felt much
sympathy with them. But there was
something touching about Bill Elliot, rinsing out a glass and drying it on a
tea towel covered with garish pictures advertising Lyme Regis and its
dinosaurs. I said I had never been to Lyme. We wandered back into the drawing room with
our coffee, and Bill showed us his grandfather’s battered dusty cabinet of
treasures. There were little drawers of
fossils and minerals, all labelled, and drawers full of pinioned butterflies
and moths, and dried leaves from the rare trees in the pleasure gardens. Bill said he preferred the minerals. He had added specimens of his own, some of
them collected at Lyme. He loved
Lyme. He said I should go there one
day. At Bill’s suggestion, we took a turn in the
gardens. It was hardly dark, but Bill
courteously took my arm as we stumbled through the undergrowth. There were nettles waist high, overgrown
rhododendrons, Himalayan balsam, wild garlic.
It was a wilderness. The mild
air was heavy, rank, lush, erotic, sad. We went back to the house for a last glass of
wine. Bill told us that he was leaving
the country. There was, he said, no
freedom for him here. Penny, who was
not hearing this news for the first time, said nothing. She watched a spider walk along the
wall. They had two daughters, both at
boarding school in Exeter. There would be
no more Kellynch Elliots. A Shropshire
Bridgewater Elliot was next in line, would inherit the title and the debts. Bill said he was off to Alaska, to a place
called Anchorage. I asked why. “Because it sounds safe there,” he said, and
we all laughed. He said that he had
been there once, briefly, changing planes on the way to Japan. He had liked it. It was as far from Kellynch as you could get. It was all snow and minerals. He would study minerals there in the long
nights. He had sold a couple of
paintings – a flood-damaged Hudson, a doubtful Reynolds, to finance his
expedition. You could live for ten
years in Anchorage on a gentleman in brown velvet, a lady in blue satin. I did not know whether he was being whimsical
or speaking the truth. It is difficult
to know the difference with that kind of person. On parting, he kissed my hand. The gesture was more intimate than a peck
upon the cheek. “Dear girl,” he
said. “Good bye. Wish me well.” Rose was very quiet on the way home. I think she had once been a little in love
with him. I heard no more of Kellynch for seven
years. I somewhat lost touch with Rose:
she sold her farm and took off to the South Seas to do a book on tropical
flora, and this broke the rhythm of our friendship. In those seven years much happened. My imprudent early marriage came to a final end in divorce, but
my career prospered. I had been no more
than a promising actress in those early days, and not even I had thought I
would be able to do more than scratch a living: but a lucky break in the form
of a film role – as Juliet in a freely adapted version of Fanny Bumey’s The
Wanderer – had come my way and since then I had been able to pick and
choose. Tragic heroines from rustic
romances were offered to me regularly, and most of them I declined. I had become well known and lonely. I was sitting one evening in my flat off the
King’s Road reading a Thomas Hardy screenplay when the phone rang. I picked it up – which I might well not have
done – and an unfamiliar voice said “Is that Emma Watson? Emma?
You won’t remember me, but this is Penelope Elliot. Do you have time for a word?” Of course I remembered her. I could see her face as though it were
yesterday – her silver-yellow hair, her pale high brow, her girlish Alice band,
her freckled nose, her little breasts, her faded jeans, her long thin bare feet. “Penny,”
I said. “Yes, of course. How are you?” She was well.
The girls were well. Bill was
well. She had left her fish man and
married a lawyer. She knew I was well
as she had seen me on TV. She was
ringing about the Dower House. Bill’s
picture money – did I remember the picture money? – was running out, and he was
thinking of letting the Dower House.
They seemed to remember I was rather taken with it, and Rose had thought
so too. Would I consider renting it for
six months, for a year? Would I like to
ring Bill in Calgary, or should she get him to ring me? Whatever is he doing in Calgary, I
asked. Oh, she said, he has fallen in
love with the mountains and the everlasting snows. He says that Somerset is full of putrefaction. We both laughed, and she gave me Bill’s
number. I tried to work out what time
it might be in Calgary and what hours a man like Bill might keep, but I do not
think I got it right because he sounded way out of all things when I spoke to
him. Nevertheless we struck a bargain. I would take Kellynch Dower House for six
months, renewable at six monthly intervals.
He said it had been done up slightly since my last visit. Not too much, I hoped. Oh no, he did not think I would find it
over-restored. Any problems I could put
through Penny and her husband. So useful
to have a lawyer in the family. This time I could detect the irony. He was right in assuming I would not find the
Dower House too much modernised. There
had been attempts at improvement: the roses that had climbed in through the
windows had been cut back, the roughly hacked dog-door had been blocked, the
kitchen range had been given a coat of black lead, and loose covers had been
fitted on some of the chairs. There
were two new lavatories, though the bath still stood on claws in the centre of
a three-doored bathroom. There was a
second hand refrigerator and a washing machine in an outhouse. I was enchanted by my new retreat. How well I remember my first night there, as
I stared at the flames of the log fire I had finally managed to light, and
listened to some early Italian opera on the crackly radio. (Reception was never very good in that deep
valley.) I was as safe as Bill in his
snowy eerie. As I sat, a strip of wall paper, disturbed by
my presence, slowly unpeeled itself. A
quarter of an hour later it began to rain and the chimney began to smoke. Rain fell down the chimney and on to the
hissing logs. Smoke billowed at
me. Coughing, I left the room, and
found a rivulet of red water running through the back door, across the red
tiles, through the hallway, and out again under the front door. I opened the door and saw the water
disappearing into a grate partly blocked by twigs and moss. I cleared the grate, and watched with
satisfaction as the bloody trickle drained away. I was by now muddy, so thought I would take a
bath. The hot water was boiling, and
gushed forth bravely. But alas, the
cold pipes had developed an airlock. I
sucked and blew but to no avail. I had
to wait for the water to cool. I assisted it with ice cubes. When I got to bed, I could hear the sound of
scrabbling in the rafters. Rats, mice,
pigeons, owls, squirrels, doves? I fell
asleep, content. Each day brought some new disaster. It is extraordinary how many faults an old
house can develop. I lived as in the
nineteenth century. I became expert
with bellows and stirrup pump, with mop and bucket, with toasting fork and
balls of string and clothes pegs.
Electricity cuts occurred almost daily.
At times, tormented by the cooing of a hundred doves, I thought of
buying a shot gun, but contented myself by throwing stones. I arrived in a wet March, and stayed through
most of the summer. My agent despaired
of me and sent me threatening messages.
Friends came to see me, were appalled by the discomfort, and went
away. I wandered the hedgerows, climbed
the hills, lost myself in the woodlands.
I trod in the footsteps of the Wordsworths and Coleridge and Loma Doone,
I made my way through a thousand pages of The Glastonbury Romance. I studied the landscape and its
history. I discovered that one of the
oak trees in the avenue was the second tallest in Britain – quercus petraea,
thirty-six metres high, and more than six metres in girth. Once I went to Bath, but I did not like it
there – it was full of young men drinking beer from cans, and the car parks
were crowded and expensive. I never got
to Lyme. I made acquaintances – a young
woman up the valley called Sophy Hayter who kept goats, a retired vet who told
me where to watch for the red deer. I
dined with the Wyndhams at the Elms, had a drink with Dominic the blacksmith,
and spoke, once, to the vicar. I often
called in the church to see the Elliot ancestors. One lay helmeted and cross-legged on his crumbling sandstone
tomb. There was a plaque to the Lady
Elliot who had been so ill for so long. I was on good terms with the people who ran the
Hall, who said I could take my guests round whenever I wished. The Elliot coat of arms, with a date of
1589, was engraved over the three-storeyed porch of the south front, and the
great magnolia still blossomed.
Occasionally I would wander in to admire the lofty plaster ceilings, the
polished floors (which smelt more of the schoolroom now than of the country
house), the quantities of gilt-edged looking glasses, the paintings, the
charming light rococo staircase. It was
hard to think the house unworthily occupied and fallen in destination as one
watched the peaceful pursuits of the students who came on botany or geology or
painting courses. Some of them were
very mature students, grey-haired, tweed-suited, rain-bonneted. They were usefully employed, and they kept
the roof on, which was more than the Elliots had done. The whiff of carbolic and shepherd’s pie was
a small price to pay. Sometimes I indulged a fancy that Bill Elliot
was walking down the grand staircase with a new bride upon his arm, but this
image derived more from Daphne Du Maurier than from the house’s own
history. I could not help wondering how
he felt about the place, and my proximity to it. Since I had become his tenant, he had taken to sending me
enigmatic postcards. One mentioned the
Chicken-of-the-Woods; he had drawn a
little map of its whereabouts, so he too had remembered the details of our
meeting. I did not have an address for
him, so could not have responded had I wished. There was a portrait of Bill in Kellynch Hall,
by an undistinguished member of the St Ives school. He was wearing a sailor suit, and had gold ringlets. In my Dower House, there was another portrait
that interested me almost as much. It
was of a woman dressed in the style of the 1820s, wearing a blue and yellow
striped dress with a low neck. She
stared out of the frame boldly and with a certain effrontery. Her hair was auburn, her smile slightly
crooked. Her largish hands – not well
painted – were clasped in front of her bosom, holding a posy of primroses. I liked her. I wondered if she had been banished from the big house, or stolen
thence by one who loved her. She seemed
to smile at me with encouraging complicity. In August I wrote to Bill’s agent in Taunton
renewing my lease. I was growing more
and more attached to my solitude. I
dreamed of Bill quite often. One fine evening in late September I took
myself up to the deserted kitchen gardens behind my house in search of
rosemary. Some of the more tenacious
herbs still grew there, though the beds were overgrown, the espalier fruit
trees untrained, and the glass of the greenhouses broken. Mr Shepherd at the Hall told me that once
fourteen gardeners worked there, growing asparagus and beans and lettuces and
peaches for the Elliots. Why did they
not put the gardens back into cultivation, I asked, to provide food for the
students? Nobody would do such work
these days, he said. It was cheaper to
shop at the supermarket. Why did they
not run a course on kitchen gardening, I suggested, and let the students grow
their own supper? A good idea, he
said. But I knew nothing would happen. So I was the only ghost who haunted the
garden. I came down with my handful of
herbs, watching the evening light slant and flatten over the cedar of Lebanon,
the tall hollies, the yellow Bhutan cypress, possessed by a luxury of self pity
and self admiration so intense that I was consumed by it. I almost ceased to exist. And as I stood there, in a trance, I heard
someone speak my name. I started with
surprise – yet I was not wholly surprised, for was I not always expecting an
audience, and did I not know that I was, that autumn evening, after a summer of
fresh air, in particularly good looks? “Miss Watson?”
I heard, from the terrace. There
was a man standing there, my binoculars in his hand. I had left them on the little writing table in the outdoor
alcove, along with my book, my pack of cards, and my glass of whisky – a glass
covered, alas, inelegantly, by a postcard, to protect it from the flies. He had been watching my hawk. “Yes?”
I hazarded, a little coldly. Was
he some intruder from the world of commerce, some angry messenger from my
agent? But no, he was a gentleman. “Miss Watson, I apologize for my
intrusion. I could not pass without
seeing the old house, and I was told I would find you here. And then I saw you, up in the walled garden. So I waited. Please – ” he stretched out his hand – “let me introduce
myself. I am Burgo Elliot.” “Ah,” I said.
“You must be Burgo Bridgewater Elliot.
From Shropshire.” “Indeed, from Shropshire.” We shook hands. I was in some confusion.
For this was the heir, and I was the usurper. In the circumstances – which included my glass
of whisky – I felt obliged to offer him refreshment, to invite him in to see
the improvements. Yes, he would like
that, but perhaps we could sit first for a while in the garden? So we settled together in the alcove, I with
my whisky, he with a sherry (he was lucky there, I do not often have sherry in
the house) and a bowl of Bombay Mix between us. I inspected him, and he inspected me. He was, if anything, younger than Bill, so perhaps there was not
much chance of his inheriting anything unless Bill fell down a glacier quite
soon. Was he married, did he have sons,
and would the estate be entailed to them when Bill died? Such thoughts, which were quite unlike any I
had ever had before I came to Kellynch, buzzed around in my head with as much
determination as the wasps buzzed around the sherry. Where had they come from?
Were they bred by the red earth itself, by the crumbling stone? They were not my thoughts at
all. They had slept deep in the ancient
masonry and had crept out at last into the late sun. Burgo Elliot did not seem to hold me
responsible for the neglect of the gardens, the peeling wall paper, the smoking
chimney, the laundry cupboard door. I
was a paying guest, and apologies were due to me, not from me. But it saddened him to see how run down
things had become. Did I not find it
too melancholy? No, I said.
It was the melancholy I loved. I
did not care for fresh paint. I was a
romantic. He smiled.
This was fortunate, he said. We moved indoors, and he made the tour, even
glancing into my bedroom with its embroidered counterpane. He stroked the scarred kitchen table, patted
the settee as though it were an old family dog, and sighed. He said he had not been to Kellynch for
years, not since he and Bill were boys.
Poor Bill, he said. Did I know
Bill well? No, I said, hardly at all,
though even as I spoke I knew this was not quite true. I did know Bill Elliot. I had invested in him, and he had lodged in
me. Burgo Elliot was, like his cousin, a handsome
man, though in a different style. He
was darker, he was taller, he had grey eyes, and a Roman – perhaps a Norman –
nose. He was also very thin. His head was a fine skull of sharp planes
and bone, he had worn thin with time like an antique silver spoon. He was, it appeared, a bachelor. He denied wife and progeny. He also denied Shropshire: although he was
indeed one of the Shropshire Bridgewater Elliots, he lived in London. As, he believed, did I? We sat indoors and he spoke affectionately of
the old days. Here they had played, he
and Bill and Henrietta. He had been an
only child, and had looked forward to his summer holidays, though Lady Elliot
had been a sad lady, and the old man a monster. He it was who had let the Hall go to its final rack and ruin. He had stoked the fire with priceless
manuscripts, buried the family silver in the pleasure gardens without marking
the spot, and shot the local policeman.
He had done nothing to restore the Hall after the war years, and in the
bitter winter of 1947 the tanks had burst and the rococo staircase had been a
cascade of ice. So Sir Henry and his
lady had moved out to the Dower House, evicting old Boniface who had been
squatting there as the sole remaining gardener, and they had camped like
gypsies. The children had learned to
fend for themselves. Bill had shot
rabbits for the pot, and cooked them in the garden on an everlasting
bonfire. They had made great cauldrons
of oatmeal and nettle stew. The last of
the staff had deserted, and the empty Hall had crumbled. When the old man died and Bill came of age,
it was too late to rescue it. Lady
Elliot had gone into a Nursing Home in Chard. It was growing late, and my lamb cutlet would
not feed two. So I fell silent, and he,
being a gentleman, at once took his leave.
He was on his way to see friends in Devon, who would be expecting him,
he said. He was lying.
He would go no further that night than the Dalrymple Arms or the
Egremont at Uppercross. But I accepted
his fiction and let him go. I knew I
would see him again. And I wanted time
to think about his apparition. How could I not have been stirred by it? It would have taken a dulled, nay deadened
fancy not to have been stirred by Burgo Elliot. Why, I wondered, had he remained single? In my experience there were two likely
explanations – one, that he had liked those of my own sex too much, the other,
that he liked them not at all. I pride
myself on having a good eye in these matters, but Burgo baffled me. He had spoken with great fondness of Bill. Had he been in love with the beautiful
boy? Or had it been his own childhood
he mourned ? Bill, he said, had always loved the
inanimate. He had thought it safe. When I had finished my cutlet, I went and
knelt down by the little cabinet and looked at the weathered fragments of
ammonite, the fossilised starfish, the swaying stone flowers of the sea,
labelled in Bill’s childish hand. And
where was Bill now, perched on what ledge, huddled in what remote crevasse,
while Burgo Bridgewater Elliot slept between clean sheets in a warm inn? I became obsessed by Burgo Elliot. Had I dreamed him up? Even his name seemed false. Burgo – surely a name for a novel, not for
real life. A name for a rogue and a
villain? Let me make this plain. Until I went to Kellynch I had no interest
in what is called family. My own family
– well, I have said they were lower middle class, but by the time I was born
they were middle middle class. My
father worked for an insurance company in Newcastle, my mother was a school
teacher. He reads Trollope, she reads
Jane Austen. They are sensible, hard
working people, but they have no connections and are proud of it. Nevertheless, my mother can never resist a
temptation to tell the story of her meeting with the Duchess of Northumberland. It is a pointless story but she will tell
it. My ex-husband, with more reason but
as little excuse, likes to let it be known that his maternal grandmother was a
Dalrymple. He reveals this fact in
order to mock it. But nevertheless he
reveals it. And am I not now letting
you know that I married into the Dalrymples? The Elliots and the Bridgewaters were much more
interesting to me than the Dalrymples.
How could I find out more about Burgo?
I was too ashamed of my curiosity to ask anybody, and it was a happy
moment when I remembered the books in my own back parlour. They were a deeply unattractive assortment of
old bound volumes of Blackwoods and Punch and the Spectator, redolent of Sunday
afternoons of ancient boredom, foxed and mildewed and spotted with birdlime –
jackdaws often came down the chimneys and one of my occupations was to chase
them away. I had never thought of
browsing in this dull library, but now was its moment – and yes, indeed, there
was exactly what I was looking for.
There was the Baronetage, a heavy purplish folio volume with gold
lettering on the spine. I lugged it on to the kitchen table. I was not the first to consult it. The pages fell open, as I might have
predicted, upon the Elliots of Kellynch Hall.
It was clear that the entry had been much perused. There were two whole pages of Elliot this
and that, but I could soon see that they were only of historical interest, for
the last entry, added to the Gothic print in fine copperplate hand, read ‘Heir
presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq. great grandson of the second Sir
Walter.” We were back in 1810. This was no use to me. I needed something more modern. I dug around, and at length found a 1952 volume
of Burke’s Peerage, which also fell open upon Elliots. And here they were, my very own
Elliots. There was Sir Thomas, there was
his son and heir William Francis Elliot and his daughter Henrietta. I read the names again and again, hoping to
wrest some occult significance from the very words. There was no mention of Burgo Bridgewater Elliot. I could not find him anywhere. I needed a sequel, published after Sir
Thomas’s death. In the morning I rang an old friend who I
thought might help, and to whom I did not mind revealing my interest. He is himself a baronet, though he does not
like this to be mentioned as he is also an actor and he hopes (so far in vain)
not to be typecast. He was currently
appearing in Lady Windermere’s Fan.
James seemed pleased to hear from me and delighted by the nature of my
query. The Shropshire Elliots, I
wanted? Well, first of all I must
forget about the Shropshire bit. People
do not come from where they say they come from. Does the Duke of Devonshire live in Devonshire, the Norfolks in
Norfolk, the Bristols in Bristol?
Certainly not. Now I am James
Winch of Filleigh, he said, but I don’t even know where Filleigh is, I think it
is the home of some cricket team where grandfather once got a hat trick while
touring with the Myrmidons …. I checked his flow and asked him to look up the
Shropshire Elliots, to see if they had any money left. “Why, thinking of marrying one, darling?” he
said, and went off to consult his reference library. He came back in triumph, I knew he would have the right
books. People like that always do, however
much they dissimulate. Yes, he said, here were the Elliots of
Kellynch. William Francis, m. Penelope
Hargreaves, 2 d., marriage dissolved 1978.
And the heir was kinsman Burgo Bridgewater Elliot, of the Shropshire
branch. He looked up Burgo, and told me
that he was a company director of Felsham Metal Frame Windows. A very good prospect, said James. I should marry him if I were you, and not
that other fellow. Or would you like to
marry me and take a turn as Lady Filleigh? I thanked him for his gallant proposal and rang
off. I was shaking slightly and almost
poured myself a vodka. I was shocked by
my own curiosity. I could not shock you
more than I shock myself. Burgo reappeared in the spring. I had wintered in London, avoiding the dark
nights and obliging my agent by doing some work. But in March I was back at the Dower House with the primroses, to
find a postcard from Bill that had been waiting for me for weeks upon the red
tiles. Rain had flowed over it,
intruding cats had stepped inkily upon it, and its message was hardly decipherable,
but I think it said “With love to my fair tenant. Have you yet heard the nightingales?” On my first evening the phone rang. It was Burgo. This was not much of a coincidence, it seemed, as he said he had
been ringing me all winter. Where had I
been? In London, I said. Ah, so have I, he said. But now he was in Somerset. Could he call and take me out to dinner at
the Castle Hotel in Taunton? And so it was that Burgo Bridgewater Elliot
re-opened negotiations. And, over his
subsequent campaign, I remained as much in the dark as ever about his nature
and his intentions. Never have I known
so opaque an admirer. Never did he
touch me, save in the way of courtesy – a hand at greeting, a hand to help me
into the car or over a stile or to disentangle me from a bramble. Yet he was in his way translucent. He was worn thin with a lonely pain. One felt one could see through him and
beyond. Like one of those elegant
thoroughbred dogs that appear to have no space for normal bodily organs, he
seemed to have nowhere within him to live a natural animal or emotional
life. He was all stretched tenuous
surface. Bill, in comparison, had been
a solid man. Perhaps, I sometimes thought, it was the place
that Burgo came to see. It had cast its
spell upon him, as it had upon me. Was I falling in love with Burgo? I could not tell. I had nobody else to love, and at this moment in the history of
my heart a second attachment, and to so eligible a gentleman, might have seemed
a natural sequel to a somewhat unfortunate first choice. (Not that I entirely regret the cad. He had his points.) Did I want to fall in love with
Burgo? Again, I could not tell. It was impossible to reject his
attentions. My vanity would not have
permitted it. He was the perfect
escort, who increased my consequence in my own eyes even when there were no
others to watch, and he escorted me gallantly through all weathers. I dragged him up hill and down dale that
spring, that summer, curious to see how far I could lead him. One day I decided to take him to Lyme. I wanted to look for fossils. Bill had sent me a postcard of a dinosaur’s
egg from the Rockies, and I determined to try to find some small dull long dead
creature of my own to add to the Elliot collection. I informed Burgo of my plans, and we fixed a date for our
excursion. I had bought a little
hammer, and I told Burgo to bring his boots.
I was becoming imperious with him, but he seemed to like it. The weather did not look promising, and we
wondered whether to cancel our trip, but out of stubbornness I would not. Burgo did not disobey. It rained as we set off. I insisted on going in my car. I said it would clear but it did not. We drove along twisting lanes, the
windscreen wipers working, the windows misting, and on the high ground as we
moved into Dorset there was fog and I had to put on the headlights. Burgo sat there without a murmur of
complaint. What was he thinking of my
folly and my obstinacy? I spoke to him
of the Black Venn Marls and the Blue Lias and the Green Ammonite beds. I could not even tell if he was listening. I did not know what I was talking
about. I wondered if he knew I did not
know. Maybe, with Bill, he had searched
those beaches as a child, had been there many times before. Why was he so docile towards me? Lyme is a steep little town, not friendly to
the motor car. Various signs ushered us
towards parking places, and we ended up at the bottom, down by the Cobb. The rain had settled into a steady downpour,
but despite this there were a few bedraggled persistent holiday makers huddling
their way along the streets. There was
a smell of vinegar, fish, harsh false sugar and fried onions. There was even a pair of lovers embracing on
the end of the Cobb. There is always a
pair of lovers embracing upon the end of the Cobb. I made poor Burgo march along the Cobb, and we stood there and
looked at the boiling water beneath us dashing against the rocks. It was very slippery underfoot. My trousers were soaked. Burgo, still looking every inch the
gentleman, was wet through. Even then I would not relent. I dragged the poor man off to the fossil
cliffs – and you can guess the rest. We
survived the Cobb, but the Black Venn Marls got us. It was my fault. I was a bloody fool. But
Burgo by this time was not behaving very sensibly either. There is something dementing about that
landscape. The dark raw caked sliced
earth, the ribbed ledges, the steaming fissures, the stunted trees sticking out
of recent landslips, the dreary trickling of small black waterfalls, the dreary
pounding of wave after wave upon the wet curve of the beach – I had never seen
anywhere so desolate. As we walked
along the beach, a great chunk of cliff the size of a packing case dislodged
itself and fell with a mournful thud behind us. We should have turned back, but we went on. We both went on. It was Burgo that saw the devil’s toenail. His eyes are sharper than mine. He should never have pointed it out to me,
but I should never have scrambled after it.
I had not realized the black stuff was so friable. In short, just as I grabbed hold of the
fossil, I slipped, and in slipping I dislodged a small avalanche, and thus it
was that I did whatever I did to my leg. I could not believe it. I am tough as well as stubborn. But I could not walk. There was nobody else in sight. Burgo would have to carry me back. I was covered in black mud, I was in pain,
and I thought the tide was coming in.
It was not a good surface for walking on at the best of times, and with
the burden of a muddy lady Burgo must have found it agonising. I kept apologising. And still Burgo did not lose his temper. I ended up in Weymouth General Hospital with my
leg in traction. I was there for two
and a half weeks. I had plenty of time
to think. At the end of the first week
Burgo asked me to marry him. I asked
him why. He said it seemed to have been
intended, and who were we to struggle against our destiny? If we found we didn’t like it, he said, we
could always get divorced. I was bold
enough to ask him why he hadn’t got married before, and he said that the black
blood of the Bridgewaters had made it seem unwise, but maybe I wouldn’t mind
taking the risk? I seemed quite robust,
he added. I was quite pleased with myself, as you can
imagine. Everything was going according
to plan. I told Burgo I needed time to make up my
mind. He was far too much of a
gentleman to retract his offer, I thought.
I still did not know whether he wanted to marry me, thought he wanted to
marry me, thought he ought to marry me, thought I wanted to marry him, or was
in such despair that he didn’t much care what happened. Or maybe he was up to some other game
altogether? My game by now is, I imagine, quite clear. I want the Dower House. I want it more than I have ever wanted
anything. As I sit here, flying over
the Rockies on my way to negotiate with Bill Elliot, I feel faint with desire
at the thought of it. It is in my
reach. Burgo says he will buy it for
me, if Bill will let us have it. We
shall see. If Bill won’t let me have
it, maybe I will marry Bill instead of Burgo.
I feel such a sense of my own power as I sit here above the clouds. I can move mountains. A very small south coast avalanche was
enough to bring Burgo to his knees. The
Rockies look more formidable, but I cannot believe that they or Bill Elliot are
impervious to my intentions. Bill has
been waiting for me for eight long years.
He will have something to say, surely, when we meet on the shores of
Lake Louise. Love of person, love of property. It is not as simple as that. What if I were to substitute the romantic
word place for that cold Augustan word property? Would you then think so harshly of me? For the Dower House is worthless, as
property. It is its own history. It is Bill and Burgo and Henrietta eating
rabbit in the garden. It is the hawk
and the Chicken-of-the-Woods and the red rain.
It is the dead jackdaw in the book case, it is the avenue of oaks, it is
the smiling woman with her primroses.
She approves of my determination.
So, too, incidentally, does Henrietta – she and Binkie and I get on very
well. She thinks I should probably
marry Burgo, but on the other hand she thinks it is time Bill came home, and I
should try to get him back to the old country if I can. I do not know what will happen. Emma Watson’s story had no ending. Who knows what awaits me, down there on earth?
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