CHAPTER THREE

‘Those who do not complain are never pitied.’

Pride and Prejudice – Chapter 20

I mixed well with the other young children at nursery school, where I enjoyed painting and collage, making pom-poms, and looking at books. However, I was unable to throw a ball in the playground with any degree of accuracy and quickly learnt that I had no sporting talent whatsoever. I was curious as a child. I always had something to say and was frequently told to ‘stop talking’ when I ‘should be listening’. I was impatient to learn to write. I thought my mother’s joined-up writing was the cleverest thing I had ever seen, and I would write squiggles along the lines in my exercise book as I pretended to be the author of a recipe book—‘Whisk three egg whites in a bowl’—or perhaps even a great novelist—‘It is a truth universally acknow­ledged’. I had carefully inspected Jane’s letters in Chawton Cottage, but I couldn’t read her writing at all.

My earliest memory is of the day my mother brought a basket of puppies into the nursery school, located in the grounds of the hospital where she worked. My father’s gun dog Candy, a black Labrador, had given birth to ten puppies—five yellow and five black—which my father had bred for sale. My nursery classmates were delighted to see them, and there was much excitement as the tiny black and yellow bundles huddled together, eyes tightly shut. One of the puppies, a yellow male, had no fur on its nose and was difficult to sell. But Granny was rather taken with him, and ‘Flash’, as she called him, became her faithful companion for the next fifteen years or so.

Flash was my grandparents’ only pet, other than Granny’s chickens. Dozens of them roamed the inner courtyard of the house and the large coop at the edge of the lawns. Granny rose at dawn every day and let the chickens out to wander freely around the lawns and woodlands. She shut them back in their coops before dusk each night to keep them safe from the foxes that ranged over the estate. A cunning fox would occasionally dig its way into the coop, and Granny would wake to a massacre, much to her chagrin. She was not at all squeamish about animal husbandry and would slaughter and pluck chickens without a second thought. The cockerels delivered their familiar crowing across the estate each morning and ensured Granny’s brood laid well and produced chicks in abundance. Granny collected dozens of eggs daily for cooking and baking; she was always baking for something or other.

For as long as I could remember, I had spent a couple of hours a day with Granny at the weekends; I liked to help her cook and run errands. Granny also looked after Paul and me during the school holidays. When my parents went out for an evening, I slept in Granny’s bedroom, or the Green Room, which was identical in both size and shape to the library directly below. The leaded-light windows on two aspects of Granny’s bedroom overlooked the lawns, the terraced garden and ‘The Bottles’—trees clipped into the shape of wine bottles. There were two double beds, a screen, a wardrobe, two chests of drawers, a large mirror, a couple of mismatched chairs and an ironing table covered in a blanket. On the wall hung an original 1783 silhouette by William Wellings of London (who famously painted a silhouette of Pitt the Younger) which showed George Austen presenting his son Edward to Thomas and Catherine Knight.

‘Time for bed, Mabel Lucie,’ Granny would say at seven o’clock sharp and give me a biscuit and a glass of milk for supper. We all had nicknames. I assume I was named after Mabel Lucie Attwell (1879–1964), a British illustrator or, more likely, after her cute drawings of dimpled children (I had a dimple on each cheek), but I never asked. I have no idea why Paul was called William and other cousins were called Beetle and Bun. It was a long-held tradition—Jane Austen had been called Jennie by her family, and Edward Austen Knight was known as Ned.

I felt safe and secure tucked in to Granny’s spare bed. When the lights went out, it was silent except for the occasional sound of an owl or a fox, and I slept soundly.

When the Chawton cricket team played at home, Granny provided the cricket teas for both the Saturday and Sunday home matches for some years—and on just one of the two days for the other years. By the time I had dressed and arrived to help at about nine o’clock, two cakes were already baked, cooled and ready to ice. Granny was an instinctive cook, calculating most measurements by eye, except when she baked cakes. Then she would use her cast-iron balance scales to weigh the flour, sugar, and butter. These were put into a large Mason Cash cane bowl with some eggs and mixed by hand or with a handheld electric beater—Granny’s only modern appliance. The mixture would be poured into cake tins that were floured but never washed. I would butter rounds and rounds of white bread, to be filled with ham and egg. I mixed coffee essence with softened butter and icing sugar and filled the coffee cake. The Victoria sponge was sandwiched with jam and sprinkled with sugar, and chocolate icing was poured over the chocolate cake.

Granny didn’t ask about my schoolwork, academic achievements or friends. She encouraged me to be ‘accomplished’. I learnt to play the piano, sew, cook, draw, and paint. I also learnt various handicrafts, such as decoupage, and I would proudly show her what I had made. We talked for hours as we worked. She told me many stories of her ‘coming out’ as a debutante—I assumed it was a time she remembered with fondness.

When sharing her memories with me, Granny told me the facts only, such as her attendance at a ball where she was presented as a young woman formally ready to consider marriage—within a select circle. She didn’t tell me how she felt about anything, and she spoke in a manner that did not invite probing questions or encourage a granddaughter with a curious mind to enquire beyond the superficial. Having seen photographs of Granny as a younger woman, I knew she had been attractive and had obviously had an expensive custom-made wardrobe. I asked about the fine dresses she had worn, but she ignored my question as though she didn’t want to remember. Granny was sixty-six at the time, tall and heavy, and she seemed to take little notice of her appearance. Her hair was white, and she never wore make-up, but her face lit up when she smiled.

Granny had been raised in privileged circumstances, but both her parents died when she was a girl—I didn’t know the details. Her mother was from the respected Heywood–Jones family of Yorkshire, descended from Edward III of England, and her father was from the Scottish clan of Hay. My father had a tie made of the bright orange Hay tartan. Granny was well educated and well travelled. She had attended finishing school in France and trained as a chef. She was a capable woman and able to turn her hand to most tasks. She had ridden horses and been quite a good shot by all accounts—legend has it Granny once felled two pheasants with one shot. An aunt told my mother that she and Granny had once driven past Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes, the central site for Britain’s codebreakers during the Second World War, and Granny, who was fluent in French, commented that she had worked there, but she didn’t elaborate.

It was a special time being alone with Granny, uninterrupted in her kitchen for a couple of hours. Granny told me stories about her younger life, but she never once mentioned Bapops, or the diminishing estate, or what would happen to her if Bapops died. Granny didn’t talk about personal things, and I never plucked up the courage to ask. I didn’t know whether she was content with the life she had and the responsibilities that fell on her shoulders.

I don’t know how much input Bapops had behind the scenes, but Granny appeared to run every aspect of their daily lives. She looked after Bapops, shopped, cooked, ran errands, prepared for family events, managed Mr Humphries, dealt with tradespeople and the local community for events held at the house, ran a tea room, liaised with tenants and ensured the house ran smoothly on a day-to-day basis. She seemed happy enough going about her business, other than the physical discomfort of arthritis, and never spoke a bad word about Bapops. Occasionally I would see Granny and Bapops reach across from their armchairs and affectionately hold hands under the side table, so I hoped she had no regrets.

One Sunday morning, I suggested that the cricketers might enjoy some lettuce or tomato with their ham sandwiches. ‘Salad isn’t for sandwiches!’ Granny responded as if it were the most preposterous of notions. I changed the subject and asked Granny what India was like. My father had told me that Granny had visited India in the 1940s with her first husband, who had died while they were away. Bapops, a major in the British Army at the time, was also in India, and that is where Granny and Bapops first met. I didn’t know the details and hoped Granny would tell me, but she ignored my question and didn’t talk about India at all. As I buttered the bread for the plain ham sandwiches, she told me that Jane had turned down a good offer of marriage and what an extraordinary decision this had been, given her circumstances. Granny didn’t talk about Jane often, so I was quite surprised.

Jane was born in Steventon in 1775 and had a happy childhood in the rectory. In 1801, when she was twenty-six, Jane’s father suddenly announced his intention to retire and move his wife and daughters from Steventon to Bath, sixty-five miles away. Jane’s brother James was to take over the Steventon parish. ‘The whole World is in a conspiracy to enrich one part of our family at the expense of another,’ Jane wrote to Cassandra on 21 May 1801. Legend has it that Jane fainted upon hearing the news, but that is hard to believe. No doubt she would have been very sad to leave her childhood home and her friends, whom she was unlikely to see very often, but Jane did not have such a ‘delicate constitution’. The familiar surroundings and memories of her family home would be lost of course, but the tranquillity and open space of the Hampshire countryside would be replaced with the hustle, bustle and excitement of a city.

The house in Bath was much smaller than the rectory, and many of their possessions had to be sold, including most of George’s extensive collection of books. The library was my favourite room in Chawton House, and yet I looked at the books only occasionally. For a writer like Jane, who read many of her father’s books, this must have been a huge loss. Jane also sacrificed her piano. Granny had given me a second-hand piano as a Christmas present when I was five, and I had played ever since. Playing music was one of my biggest joys, and I couldn’t imagine the frustration of being without an instrument. I decided it would be wise to learn to play a portable instrument and chose the guitar.

Jane must have known that her father would likely retire one day, and with her brothers no longer at home, the day would come when they would leave the Steventon Rectory. But she may not have thought that far ahead or she may have assumed they would remain living in the village—or at least in Hampshire in familiar surroundings. I could not bear to think about my family ever having to leave Chawton; perhaps Jane had felt the same way.

Whether Jane had thought about it or not, the family left Steventon in 1801. It was commonly believed that Jane didn’t like Bath, but as with many things said about Jane’s feelings and personality, this was speculation; how could anyone know for certain? Even when reading Jane’s letters in which she wrote of her feelings and views, it can be difficult to determine whether she was purposely being amusing or enjoying a private joke with her correspondent.

In December 1802, Jane was visiting some friends in Manydown House near Steventon and received a proposal of marriage from her friend’s younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, who was nearly six years Jane’s junior. We laughed at how different it would have sounded—Pride and Prejudice by Jane Bigg-Wither, although there would have been little chance of her devoting her time to writing had she married. Jane accepted the proposal, and the house celebrated. After what must have been a sleepless night, Jane changed her mind and withdrew her acceptance the next morning. Jane shared a bedroom with Cassandra, as she had all her life. I desperately wanted to know why Jane changed her mind—it was such a pivotal decision for Jane’s future and our family heritage. But Granny said no one would ever be certain what Jane thought, except perhaps Cassandra, who no doubt had talked it through with Jane overnight. How I wish I could go back in time and listen to that conversation.

The marriage would have offered Jane a secure future, as Harris Bigg- Wither had become heir following the death of his older brother. Jane would have eventually become the mistress of Manydown House, an ancient manor dating back to the fourteenth century, surrounded by 1,500 acres of parklands and 400 acres of plantations. Manydown was not far from Steventon, so the marriage would also have returned Jane to the Hampshire countryside.

Caroline Austen, daughter of Jane’s brother James, described Harris as not attractive—he was a large, plain-looking man, aggressive and almost completely tactless in conversation, hardly a good match for Jane. But a marriage to Bigg-Wither would have offered relief from poverty, a stately home, secur­ity for her parents and sister, and many advantageous associations for her brothers. Jane had a choice: all the practical advantages and lifelong security that would result from marrying a man she didn’t love or remaining in Bath in relative poverty with no imminent prospects of her or her parents’ situation improving. Jane had no way of knowing whether she would receive another offer of marriage. They had been in Bath for only a year, so perhaps she thought there would be other opportunities for marriage, or perhaps she loved someone else. If Jane were in love, I don’t think it was with Tom Lefroy, who she had supposedly fallen for six years earlier in Steventon as Montagu’s book tells a different story:

In the early years of her womanhood she had composed at all events the first drafts of three of the six novels on which her fame rests. . . . Then follow six or eight years of almost absolute silence. Shortly before the beginning of this period occurred, probably, the one romance of her life. We have it on the authority of her sister that about that time Jane met in the West of England a young man between whom and herself was formed a mutual bond of attachment, soon to be snapped asunder by his death.

There was no mention of Tom Lefroy.

Granny and I worked in silence for a while as I pondered Jane’s decision. Perhaps Jane had known that marriage would bring responsibilities that would consume her time and make it difficult for her to write, and perhaps she was not prepared to make that sacrifice. My mother had sacrificed her home and nursing career and moved to the other side of the world for love. Did marriage always involve such sacrifice, whether or not it was for love?

I would never know Jane’s reasons, but in a letter to Fanny Knight, who had asked for advice about a serious relationship, Jane wrote, ‘having written so much on one side of the question, I shall now turn around & entreat you not to commit yourself farther, & not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him. Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection.’ Jane had the determination to follow her heart against the expectations of her friends and family, and I admired her courage. Jane wanted marriage to be a consequence of love, not a means to material security. Jane lived at a time when women were not encouraged to write professionally or earn an income, but Jane did not bow to pressure. She didn’t need someone else to secure her future; she would secure her own.

I commented to Granny how brave this ancestor of Bapops had been. ‘It’s not just Edward; I am a relation of Jane’s, too,’ she responded unusually sharply and with some annoyance, so I did not pursue the conversation any further. Besides, I had just realised my grandparents were related. I didn’t know anyone else with grandparents who were related, and I decided not to tell anyone. I realised much later that this was not unusual for my grandparents’ generation and social class.

I helped Granny pack the sandwiches, cakes, scones, butter, and jam into bread crates for Uncle Robert to take to the cricket ground. Robert had been a talented cricketer, but his sporting ambitions had been thwarted by the early onset of psoriatic arthritis in his twenties. He remained passionate about the game, was heavily involved with Chawton Cricket Club and had maintained the pitch for years.

Granny was a member of the Women’s Institute, and every week she baked cakes, which she would take to the fair in the community centre in Alton. The women at the institute appeared to be Granny’s only company outside the family—my grandparents had no social life. After we delivered the cakes and two trays of eggs to the Women’s Institute fair at the Alton Community Centre, I went with Granny to the post office and to her favourite shops, such as Joyce and Lucas Butchers and Delicatessen, which looked like it had been in the high street for decades. The shop owners called Granny ‘Mrs Knight’ and seemed to treat her with the highest respect. People outside the family and our closest friends seemed to have varying impressions. It was never directly discussed with me, but it was obvious some could see that the family’s fortune was long gone and that other than our surroundings, we were not privileged; both my parents worked, and finances had to be managed carefully. Others clearly thought we were still very wealthy and perhaps eccentric in our choice of budget cars and camping holidays.

I first became aware of other people’s opinions when I started at Chawton Primary School in September 1975. The school was a short distance from the end of the back drive, the drive my parents tended to use. At that time, Chawton House had two approaches—the back drive, as we called it, took an earlier turn off the road in Chawton, skirted past the Home Farm buildings, and arrived at the back entrance of the house. Chawton Primary had around fifty pupils across six school years. Five boys and four other girls started school that year, some from Chawton, others from neighbouring villages or Alton.

With my birthday on 28 August, only four days before the new school year, I was the youngest in the class, just as I was the youngest at home. The year groups were so small that each of the three teachers taught two years together in one of the three classrooms. The original Victorian flint schoolhouse was used for the younger classes, with a modern extension added for the older children, each complete with a blackboard and desks. The small hard-surface area at the front of the school was marked with both a football pitch and a netball court. At playtime, I played hopscotch and French skipping—jumping up and down on long elastic ropes—with other girls.

Mrs Potter was my first teacher, a fair and no-nonsense woman who expected concentration and effort. I enjoyed my first years of school. I learnt to read and write and discovered I had a talent for mathematics. I recited my times tables regularly and liked to solve maths questions; it felt like a fun game, and I was good at it. My sporting talent did not improve, much to my disappointment. I couldn’t run fast or catch and throw a ball, and I cringed at the thought of team games. I was always the last picked and rightly so—I was hopeless. I also struggled to concentrate in silence for long periods, and I was often reprimanded for talking in class. My end-of-term report cards were consistent: Mathematics ‘A’; everything else ‘could try harder’. For my sixth birthday, I was given a Mr Men book—Mr Chatterbox!

For a fun competition, the children were all asked to bring to school one of their baby photographs. The photographs were displayed on a board, and everyone had to guess who was who. I was convinced that no one would guess my photograph correctly as my dark hair had been blonde when I was very young. But mine was the easiest for everyone to identify; I was crawling on oak floorboards, and the panelled walls and large doorway in the background gave it away. I was not happy about it at all and complained bitterly to my mother when I got home.

At the end of one school day when I was six or seven, as parents arrived to collect their children, I overheard two mothers from the village discussing their children’s performance in class in comparison to that of their peers. As I collected my things and turned to leave, one of the mothers remarked, ‘She doesn’t count—anyone with her advantages would do well.’ I was surprised by her bitter tone and turned to look at her. She stared straight at me with an expression of disdain and failed to drop her stare, even when it was obvious I had heard. I was embarrassed and left as fast I could.

I never understood what advantages they believed I had; many of my classmates came from families with far more wealth and opportunity, regardless of their family’s past or the size of their bedroom. They had lots of new clothes, holidays abroad and the latest gadgets—a girl in the village had a new video game called Pong, a table-tennis game that she played on a television. I made my assumptions, just as they did. I concluded that, for some, my family’s earlier history as the chief landowners in the area and employers of many local families, was in living memory and had left a sense of division. Others assumed we were wealthy, and for some, the British class system still defined us. Or perhaps it was nothing to do with any of that—perhaps they just didn’t like me. I tried to tell Granny what had happened, but she stopped me before I could finish. ‘Don’t take any notice. It’s just tittle-tattle,’ she said and moved the conversation on to something else.

It was around this time that Granny’s daughter Penny, along with her husband and children, moved into the top-floor apartment built into the eaves of the house. Our nearest neighbours were too far away for me to visit alone as a young child, and Paul and I didn’t have many other children to play with, so I was very excited. Formerly used as the estate offices, the top floor had been converted into tenants’ quarters decades earlier and had recently become vacant. A long, wide corridor down the centre led to many small rooms with oak beams so low in places that adults had to duck to go under them. Most of the rooms afforded views across the front of the estate. Cousin Jane was the eldest of my generation and a few years older than Robin, who was the same age as Paul. Born just seven days apart, Paul and Robin had become great friends—like brothers. Fiona was a couple of years older than me and went to junior school in Alton, but we often saw each other when we arrived home from school. I loved having other children in the house.

In the summer months, Granny’s tea room was open in the Great Hall on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The long, high wooden refectory table along the wall provided a counter for the display of homemade cakes. Edward Austen Knight’s grand dining table, with a few extension leaves removed so as not to be too long, seated about eight and was pushed to the north wall of the room. Five or six other tables were dotted around the room, each seating four or six people. The crockery was a collection of various types that Granny had assembled over the years. Each table would be set for tea, with odd Wedgwood plates and perhaps some Willow cups and saucers. The old wood cupboard to the left of the fireplace was used as a serving hatch from the kitchen and was plenty big enough for a chair, a duplicate invoice book with bright-blue carbon paper and a cash box.

As well as her cakes, Granny was famous for her scones made from the sourest of milk that would be left to ferment in milk bottles along a ledge in her kitchen. By today’s standards of health and safety, Granny’s tea room would not pass muster, and she ignored modern ideas of reducing fat and sugar. But there was something completely delicious about everything she cooked. The flavours were authentic and the textures just right; it was simply impossible to have just one of anything.

In between preparing orders in the kitchen, Granny would walk along the servants’ passage and enter the Great Hall to check that everything ‘front of house’ was as she wanted. This was her tea room; visitors had entered her home to eat her home-cooked food, and Granny expected a certain level of behaviour and decorum. She didn’t hesitate to reprimand anyone who overstepped the mark. As a matter of principle, Granny would not allow people to choose the type of cake they would be served. If customers ordered cake, they would be served whichever slice she wanted to give them. I wondered whether she had a system. Did she distribute the slices of cake in such a way as to ensure all cakes were used evenly, or did she reserve her favourite cake for the people who made the best impression? I couldn’t fathom it. I never asked Granny about her reasoning—for this or for anything else. Granny gave her instructions with confidence and absolute authority.

When I was very young, Granny humoured me and allowed me to ‘help’ serve customers in the tea room with Fiona. Visitors to the tea room often referred to the long history of the Knights of Chawton as well as to Jane and her works, characters, and quotes. Our heritage and connection to Jane was never more discussed than on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the tea room. When I was about five, I proudly told Chawton visitors that ‘Jane was a pioneer’ even though I had no idea what a pioneer was—I had heard someone else say it.

I gradually took on grown-up tasks until I was old enough to work as a waitress. I set the tables ready for customers; took orders; carried trays of tea, sandwiches, and scones; and collected money. It was a family affair, and over the years my mother and cousins all worked front of house in the tea room. But the kitchen was Granny’s domain. From time to time, a customer would ask to look at the cakes on the refectory table to choose which one they wanted. When Granny was in the kitchen, I would say yes, but I would ask them to be quick; Granny would reprimand me if she saw me allowing customers to take such liberties.

Most visitors to the tea room had been to Jane Austen’s House Museum and understood that the resident family at Chawton House were descended from Edward Austen Knight. Occasionally, a highly enthusiastic Austen fan would be overwhelmed by the opportunity to speak with Jane’s family. One Saturday afternoon, I approached two American couples—friends on holiday together, I assumed—and proceeded to take their order. They enquired whether the Knight family were at home, and I replied, ‘Yes, we are.’ I introduced myself and explained that Jane was my fifth great-aunt.

The darker-haired woman immediately looked up and stared at me. Her eyes filled with tears as she rose to her feet. She grabbed my hand, shouted something about how she had never been so close to Jane, wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in close. I dropped my order pad and pen on the floor, and the tea room came to a hush as everyone turned to view the commotion. I tried to hide my embarrassment and willed the heat in my cheeks to subside. I was quickly released and smiled at the woman who had regained her composure.

I held my emotions in check and proceeded to take the order—tea and cake for four—before I returned to the privacy of the wood cupboard. My heart raced, and my stomach was in my throat. The sudden and intimate nature of the interaction had taken me by surprise, and I had been startled for a moment, but I quickly realised her good intentions. I did not want her to know that she had scared me. Nor did I want her to be embarrassed—for both her sake and mine. I didn’t want to dwell on the incident any longer than necessary, so I took a few deep breaths, stood tall and called ‘order’ through to the kitchen. I was busy again soon enough, and the incident was forgotten.

When the tea room was open, Bapops stayed in the library, the room my grandparents used as a sitting room. On rare occasions, visitors to the tea room would see Bapops on their way to the bathroom if he happened to walk along the servants’ passage, and they would later ask me who the elderly gentleman was. I would proudly say that he was Edward Knight, my grandfather, and quickly move the conversation on to avoid any questions about him—I would not have been able to answer them.

I knew more about my Australian grandfather, Alf, than I did about Bapops. Alf came to England every few years or so and usually combined his visit with a trip through Asia or Europe. He liked going to the pub and had been known to go out and not come back for days. With his sun-aged skin, Australian drawl and walkabout ways, Alf was different from anyone I had ever known. I loved talking to him and looked forward to his visits.

Alf was adventurous, had travelled the world and didn’t seem scared of anything. But one year, when I was about eight or nine, Alf stayed a couple of nights in my father’s childhood bedroom, just off the Tapestry Gallery where the Grey Lady was said to roam. I knew something had happened, but all my parents would say was that he was more comfortable sleeping in our quarters. I later discovered that something had woken Alf in the night. He told my mother he wasn’t sure whether it was a bird in the chimney, but it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Alf didn’t want to admit he was afraid, so my mother moved him into our basement quarters just to make sure the ‘bird’ didn’t disturb him any further.

Some of the visitors seemed to think we were wealthy, but it was plain to see that the significant fortunes of the Knight family had gone. Other than the Great House itself, most of the estate land, property and valuable possessions that would have been familiar to Jane had been sold. Why, when or by whom I didn’t know—I had never heard it discussed. My parents had told me the estate was financially broke and that we were unlikely to be able to stay in Chawton after Bapops died. But it was difficult to know the truth, and I didn’t know what to think. Although all the evidence pointed to the contrary, it was easier to believe that Bapops had a secret fortune hidden away and to dream of the riches that would save the house. It was too difficult to consider the repercussions for Richard and the future of the Knight family in Chawton if what my father said was true.

We were rich in so many other ways, if not financially. We had our heritage, an extended family, acres to roam and most of the house to play in. From time to time, the house was used for filming and appeared on television—the Great Hall was used by Blue Peter (now the longest-running children’s television programme in the world) to film a segment about Jane Austen. The English band Level 42 used the front drive and entrance to film the video for their chart-topping hit Something About You.

I used the house and gardens as my own and moved freely between my family’s quarters in the north wing, my grandparents’ public and private quarters and all the in-between rooms and passages. The tenants in the rented apartments in the house changed from time to time. Some tenants I would simply acknowledge, but others I became more acquainted with and would visit, including a young couple with a baby and a small group of twenty-something sharers. I spent time with my cousins and tenant friends in various parts of the house. I played for hours in the house kitchen, attic rooms and disused servants’ hall, the latter piled high with old wooden furniture and broken chairs; wooden shoe trees; picture frames; rolled-up maps and documents; tatty boxes and old trunks; large wooden shields with painted coats of arms (perhaps made for a play); deck quoits and wooden skittles; bows and arrows; old cricket bags, bats, and pads; riding boots and clothes; and family possessions and keepsakes—all covered in dust.

In the warmer weather, twenty-four acres of gardens and woodlands, along with the outbuildings and the church, provided hours of entertainment. From the middle of summer until the first frost of winter, blackberry bushes in the woods grew thick with delicious fruit. Sometimes I would take a trug and pick enough blackberries for my mother to make a fruit crumble or a blackberry and apple pie. But most of the time, I just popped them straight into my mouth. Towards the top of the woods, a bamboo thicket planted decades prior grew in a neat circle. I liked to stand inside the circle and pretend I was in a far-off exotic land.

In the autumn, shiny conkers fell from the horse chestnut trees in the four-acre paddock in front of the church. A couple of times, Fiona and I cleaned the Knight gravestones in the churchyard and dared each other to stay overnight among the graves—but we never did. In the four-acre paddock, we once found some brass candleholders that had fallen off the chandeliers, which thieves had stolen from the church the night before. The police were called, and we proudly showed them what we had found, not realising we had contaminated the evidence by handling it. Lucky for us, the thieves had dropped a few more pieces as they made their escape across the paddock, so all was not lost.

The only places I didn’t go on the estate were the tenants’ apartment on the first floor of the servants’ wing (it had been rented since I was born to tenants I didn’t visit) and near the old wooden gamekeeper’s hut in the woods at the top of the lawns. My cousins had teased me with stories about a witch living in the hut, so I always gave that part of the woods a wide berth. I was often gone for hours in the afternoon, either alone or with Fiona, but my parents knew I would not leave the grounds without their permission, and I could easily be found. A loud whistle from my father or a high-pitched holler from Granny could be heard across the estate and was my signal to return to the house for tea. The bell that would have been rung in the past to call the estate workers to the house still hung at the top of the house, but it hadn’t been rung for years for fear the old bell tower would collapse.

During the summer, tourists came up the drive most days, despite the ‘Private’ notice attached to the entrance gate on weekdays when the tea room was closed. In the main, visitors would sweep up the drive, stop for a few seconds and then sweep back down again to the church. Occasionally a party of day trippers would bring out their picnic blanket and set out their picnic-ware on our front lawn. From his bedroom at the front of the house, Paul could see intruders much quicker than Granny and Bapops, who were tucked away in the library. He would mischievously wait until the blanket and picnic were spread on the lawn before telling Granny, who would burst out of the side door waving her walking stick in the air to gain their attention before telling them politely, but in no uncertain terms, that they were to be gone, much to Paul’s amusement. I never saw anyone argue with Granny. Not only was she the mistress of the house, but she also had an air of authority. She was not to be trifled with, and if pushed, the tone of her admonishment was not lost on anyone; even the most rebellious were a little intimidated by her. Granny took her responsibilities seriously, but she was also kind and generous.

I had so many questions I wanted to ask Granny. What had Bapops been like as a younger man? Were they wealthy when Granny first arrived at Chawton? Did Bapops have a secret fortune stashed away? When did Bapops become so withdrawn from society? I had never known them to leave Chawton for even one night, let alone for a holiday.

I loved going on holiday. Every summer my parents took Paul and me camping for a week or two, and Granny would be left to cook on her own. My father had been reluctant to go camping at first, but when I was about five, he agreed to give it a try and had a wonderful time—we all did. It was to be the start of many years of carefree camping holidays. We particularly enjoyed Wales and Cornwall, and we often camped on farm sites where the only facilities were a tap and a sewage tank. Supplies from the local shops were expensive, so my mother would shop for all the non-perishable groceries in our local supermarket and pack them into the trailer. It was all very basic, with my mother kneeling on the ground to cook on the gas rings. We made many new friends among the other families staying at the campsites, and we played for hours. Looking back, I realise it was refreshing that no one knew about Chawton. We were just an everyday family on a camping holiday, cooking sausages on the camp stove and building sandcastles on the beach.

In the summer of 1979, we were invited to camp in the grounds of Uncle Richard’s farm near Cirencester. Richard and his then wife, Anna, had three children: Adam, Cassandra and Benjamin. I used to see Richard and his family on their annual visits to Chawton House. Fiona and I would play ‘sardines’ with our cousins, a variation on hide and seek where only one person hides and many seekers look. When the hidden person is found, the seeker joins them in the hiding place and waits for the other seekers to find them. The loser is the person who is last to find the hiding place. It was great fun.

Richard was warm and friendly, and nothing he said or did ever made me feel awkward or inferior. However, I was conscious that he would one day own Chawton, and this left me feeling rather intimidated and my emotions conflicted. On the one hand, I liked and respected my uncle; he was a decent man, a gentleman. On the other hand, he would eventually inherit our home and everything I loved. I longed to ask questions: What was Richard planning to do with Chawton House? Was he planning to live there? Would we be able to continue living in the north wing (he couldn’t possibly need the whole house)? Would Richard have his portrait painted and his own coat of arms as had previous squires? All these questions I pondered in silence. But Richard and his family were exceptional hosts, and with Chawton House far away in another county, I was able to forget my questions—instead, I rode horses, played with my cousins and had a wonderful holiday.