CHAPTER SEVEN

‘It is as if I had lost a part of myself.’

Letter to Fanny Knight on 20 July 1817 from Cassandra Austen

On two or three occasions in my teens, I had noticed Bapops absent from his library chair for a couple of days. ‘Bapops is unwell,’ my father would say and reassure me that he would get better. The details were not shared, and I did not ask. Bapops stayed in his bed for a few days, with regular visits from his doctor. Granny would tell me to make myself scarce, and I would leave my grandparents’ quarters in good time so as not to be in the way. Within a week or two, Bapops would take up his daily routines once more, and the incident would not be mentioned again.

A month or so into my secretarial course, my father suggested I visit Bapops who was ill and confined to his bedroom. It was such an unusual request that I didn’t need to ask why—there was only one possible reason. As I wondered what I should say to Bapops, I felt a knot of apprehension tighten in my stomach. I asked my father when I should go, how long I should talk to Bapops and how this visit was to be arranged. We agreed that I would see Bapops when I got home from college the following afternoon, and my father would let Granny know of my plans.

It was early October and autumn was setting in. The morning passed at college without incident—I pushed Bapops to the back of my mind. I arrived home with a false air of normality and tried to convince myself this was like any other day. I dropped my bags in my room and went to see Granny, who was sitting in her chair in the library. The chair beside her was empty. Her smile was as warm as ever, and she betrayed nothing of her inner thoughts or of the inevitable change she was about to endure. ‘Bapops is expecting you,’ she said. I smiled, walked out of the library, turned immediately left and walked up the main staircase.

The sloping stairs creaked with my every step, and I held the inner rail firmly as I purposefully walked towards the first floor of my grandparents’ quarters. I stepped off the staircase onto the first-floor landing and, with a lump in my throat, stood for a moment outside Bapops’s bedroom on the left. Opposite his bedroom door, behind a curtain, were the stained-glass windows and a screen obscuring the southern end of Suicide Alley. Bapops had lived in the house the longest, so I assumed he knew where everything in Suicide Alley had come from—who had owned the old shoes and when the furniture had been broken.

I had been in his bedroom only briefly before, when I dropped off linen to help Granny. I wasn’t sure who changed his bed linen—he would not have done it himself, that was for certain. Granny did have a woman who came in a couple of hours a week to help, so perhaps she did it. I was suddenly struck by the peculiarity of his choice of bedroom. My grandparents’ quarters had five bedrooms: Granny’s large bedroom above the library at the back of the house; Uncle Robert’s bedroom, also known as the Oak Room, at the front of the house; and two large bedrooms above the Great Hall that shared magnificent views down the front drive. These were the childhood bedrooms of my father and Aunt Ann, and they had not been used for decades, other than for the occasional guests. Yet Bapops preferred to sleep in this small dark oak-panelled room overlooking the lawns to the south-west.

The room was so small that I imagined it had been intended as a dressing room, but an inventory of the ‘Goods & Chattells of Sr. Richard Knight’ in the back of Montagu’s book lists a ‘little Chamb. at ye staire head’—I had been mistaken. There was room for only a single bed, bedside table, small desk, chair and small wardrobe. The south-west face of the house was covered in ivy that turned a vibrant red in the autumn. The ivy was regularly cut back from the windows so as not to obscure the light or the views, but not from Bapops’s bedroom window, where it was left overgrown. I couldn’t see out of the window, and the daylight struggled to get in to brighten the dark room.

I wondered why Bapops slept in a cupboard, which is exactly how it felt in comparison with the other bedrooms in the house. Surely, as squire, he would have had first choice of room. How long had he slept in this room? Even if he had not wanted to move Granny or Robert from their bedrooms, two other grand rooms lay empty just across the hall. I stood outside the room and pondered his choice for the first time. Bapops had slept in this room for at least the whole of my life, and I had never considered it, never wondered why a man of such privilege and position would shut himself away and spend his days in either a poky dark bedroom or the corner armchair of the library. I had never seen him walk about the house, and he never came to our quarters. Chawton House had so much life: the resident family and tenants, visiting family and guests, the tea room, community events, parties and celebrations. But other than quiet attendance at private family lunches and traditions, Bapops didn’t join in.

I breathed slowly in and out to calm my nerves, lightly knocked on the dark oak door and pushed it open. Bapops lay in his bed, supported by pillows, with his cotton pyjamas buttoned up to the neck. I remember it as if it were yesterday. ‘Hello, how are you?’ I asked.

‘Hello,’ he responded but ignored my enquiry about his well-being. Why did I ask how he was? What a silly question to ask someone who is very sick. No one had specifically said Bapops was dying, but it didn’t need to be said. Why else would he want to see me? It then occurred to me that I couldn’t be sure he wanted to see me. Perhaps this visit had been Granny’s or my father’s idea. I ignored the thought and chose to believe that Bapops had instigated it.

As my eyes adjusted to the poor light, I could see his frailness under the blankets. I sat on a wooden chair that had been placed next to the bed, and we exchanged awkward superficial words about the weather while I struggled to think of something more interesting to say. I didn’t know what he knew about me, and I didn’t know anything personal about him. We had lived in the same house for seventeen years, but I didn’t know his likes or dislikes. We didn’t share any interests, and other than immediate family, we didn’t know the same people.

I looked around the room and noticed on his desk an ornate leather-covered box with a brass lock. It was beautiful, and I stood up to admire it. ‘Can I look inside?’ I asked. I carefully undid the brass latch at the front, and the lid hinged backwards to reveal compartments for writing paper. Next to the box lay what appeared in the dim light to be a large matching leather book. I picked it up and discovered it wasn’t a book. It was a hard leather document folder with fabric lining which had been used as a writing blotter—it was covered in small ink stains. I admired the writing set; its brown leather was highly embossed with an ornate gold pattern, a little faded with signs of use.

Bapops said he liked it too, but he didn’t tell me where it had come from. Had it been a gift to him from someone special, his mother perhaps, or had it been in the family for generations? It had been manufactured by Dreyfous of London, Paris and New York, according to the gold writing embossed on the rear of the box. I later discovered that it was likely to have been made towards the end of the nineteenth century, around the time Montagu became squire, so perhaps it had been his. What letters had been written while leaning on the folder? Is this where Bapops had signed the many documents authorising the sale of the estate’s assets over the years?

I placed the document folder back on the desk and continued to make polite but somewhat awkward conversation about my college courses. Bapops’s contribution was limited to acknowledging my words. He seemed calm, with no signs of distress either physically or mentally. He appeared comfortable with my presence and content with my chatter but offered no opinion or words of guidance. He tired after a few minutes. Neither of us made mention of his health or said our goodbyes in any way, and we didn’t acknowledge the reason for my visit. ‘Well, I need to go and help Granny’, I said, and he nodded, happy to let me go. ‘Take care, and see you soon,’ I said cheerfully and left the room. I walked downstairs to let Granny know I was finished. She didn’t ask how it had gone or what we had talked about.

I attended college as normal for the next few days and occasionally thought about the interaction with Bapops—I hoped our conversation had not disappointed him. I felt numb and didn’t know what to think. On the Tuesday of the following week, I was in a shorthand lesson at college. The morning had passed without incident, and I had entered the class in good spirits. As the teacher, a kind woman, turned from the whiteboard, she noticed the tears streaming down my face. Without warning, I was overwhelmed with emotion and sobbed, unable to stop. She took me into a nearby empty room and asked what had happened. ‘My grandfather is dying,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry to hear that—you are obviously very close,’ she said. I didn’t know how to begin to explain. No, we were not close; we had never really spoken, but I didn’t want to admit that. I barely knew him, but I loved and respected him as the head of our family. His death would spell change for Granny and Robert, for my family, for Penny and her family and for Richard, who was to inherit a house in need of significant repair and investment that was full of tenants and his resident half-siblings. This inevitable change was more than I could imagine or come to terms with and brought a fear I had learnt to ignore.

‘I just wish it was over,’ I said. I was surprised at my words, but the wait had become unbearable. The teacher could see I was horrified by the words I had uttered, and she told me it was to be expected and that I should not feel bad. I didn’t know what to expect; no one I was related to or was close to had ever died. I had never even been to a funeral.

Three days later, on Friday, 8 October 1987, my mother told me when I awoke that Bapops had passed away that morning. ‘Oh, right,’ I said. It had been expected, so I wasn’t surprised—I didn’t know what I felt. My mother and I spoke for a few minutes; she asked whether I was OK, and I asked when the extended family would arrive. Bapops was still in his bed, she said. The doctor had confirmed his death, and the undertakers would be coming in the afternoon. I decided to be elsewhere when they arrived.

I washed, dressed and walked through to the library to see Granny, who was sitting in her chair. Robert and my aunts were keeping her company, and I leant down and gave her a hug. She smiled, but her eyes were red from recent tears. I had never seen such emotion from Granny, and I struggled not to cry. The conversation was kept superficial—who was coming for lunch and what was needed from the shops.

Everyone was calm in the days after Bapops’s death. There were no hysterics and no outward signs of grief, and if any disagreements over arrangements did occur, they were discussed in private, out of my earshot. Over the next few days, a slow but steady stream of close family and friends came to see Granny and give their condolences. Meals were cooked, shopping was done, and the mantel clock ticked as always, but the atmosphere in the house subtly changed. Chawton belonged to Richard now, and it was unavoidable: our time at the manor was coming to an end. What would happen to Granny? Where would we go? My parents planned to buy a house in Alton. I simply couldn’t imagine living as a family of four in an ordinary house, without our extended family, the portraits of our ancestors and the freedom to roam the estate.

My parents answered my questions as best they could. Yes, we would eventually have to leave, but Richard had not given a firm indication of when that would be. It wasn’t likely to be soon, however, as there was a lot to be sorted before he would know. The house was in such poor repair, and although Richard was a successful farmer, he did not have the millions needed for renovations. With so many affairs to be sorted and the financial challenges of the estate to be faced, it would be some months before any of us would have answers—perhaps longer. But whatever happened to Chawton House, my parents reassured me we would settle well in a new home. I listened but was not wholly reassured. I didn’t want to live anywhere else. I so desperately wanted to stay.

The funeral was arranged for Thursday, 15 October, to be held in the church, followed by a burial in the Knight family corner of the graveyard, opposite Montagu’s grave. A couple of days before the funeral, I missed a deadline for an assignment at college and asked to see the teacher (a different teacher from the previous week’s outburst) after class to apologise and agree to a new deadline. Before I could speak, she said, ‘It’s all right, Caroline, I know what’s happened.’ I was very grateful I didn’t have to explain.

The funeral was planned for eleven o’clock. I had breakfast, washed, and dressed in a dark dress and coat for the day. I had seen funerals on television, so I had some idea of what to expect. I wasn’t looking forward to Bapops being lowered into the ground—I imagined this to be the most difficult part. At a quarter to eleven, my parents, Paul and I walked together through the Great Hall, out of the main entrance and down the front drive. There were already many people in the church; the pews were almost full. We walked calmly down the centre aisle of the church to take our place in one of the Knight family pews at the front. We sat on the left-hand side.

The coffin was already in place, resting on wooden stands in the middle of the nave in front of the pews. I thought about Bapops lying in the coffin, there, right in front of us. Paul briefly held my hand and smiled, as best he could, to comfort me. Bapops had never held my hand. I couldn’t recall him ever touching me.

The church continued to fill, and as I looked about, I saw many familiar faces from the village and many I did not know. After a short time, Granny entered and walked up the central aisle to take her position in the front pew on the right. She didn’t talk to anyone or make eye contact with the congregation. I saw her attempt to take her seat at the front as quickly as she could manage—her arthritis slowed her down. She sat and leant forward, her head in her hands.

It was as if I were in a film. Time seemed to move quickly and slowly simultaneously. I can’t remember any details of the service. I was in a daze. Hundreds of people were packed into the church to pay their respects to Edward Knight, the fifteenth squire of Chawton House. The pews were full, and many had to stand. All I could think about was Bapops lying in the coffin, there, right in front of me. I would never know him now. The service passed without incident, and the family maintained their dignity throughout. After the final prayers, the coffin was carried out of the church. Granny led the procession, followed by her children and grandchildren and other family members before the rest of the congregation poured out of the church.

As we left the church and turned towards the Knight section of the graveyard, I struggled to keep my composure. I stopped my mother and quietly told her that I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t watch as Bapops was lowered into the ground. Aunt Ann’s husband offered to escort me back to the house, which I gratefully accepted. I broke down in tears as soon as we left the churchyard.

As we walked slowly to the house, I gradually regained my composure. We waited in the Great Hall for the rest of the family to return. My parents were quick to find me when they arrived and hugged me in quiet comfort—no words were necessary—before we joined the family around Edward Austen Knight’s grand dining table once more for lunch. It was such an extraordinary occasion and yet so completely ordinary. I had conflicted emotions and many questions, but this was not the time to express them. I couldn’t mourn Bapops as a person because I hadn’t known him. Yet I was devastated he had gone and fearful of the future. Who would we be if we were no longer the Knights of Chawton? That was now the rightful privilege of Richard and his children.

When I went to bed that night, I felt drained. It had been a difficult day, and I was relieved the funeral was over. I usually enjoyed the hustle and bustle of visitors and events, but not this time. We were all exhausted and needed time to recover.

At five the following morning, I was woken by voices in our kitchen. I poked my head out of my bedroom door to see what was happening. There had been a storm overnight, a windstorm, the strength of which had not been seen in the south of England for centuries. The council had already been on the telephone—every tree surgeon in the county was needed to clear trees from the roads. My father made a cup of coffee for Paul, who looked bleary-eyed. I pulled on jeans and a jumper and, after Paul had set off, joined my father on a walk around the grounds. Everywhere we looked, in whichever direction we turned, was mass destruction. The forces of nature had left their mark. Ancient oaks had been torn up by the roots. Most of the trees in the South Lime Avenue that Montagu had planted on the parklands a hundred years earlier had been ripped out of the ground. The air was still—the calm after the storm.

It was difficult to take in the level of destruction. After the events of the previous day, the effects of the storm seemed to heighten the magnitude and apocalyptic nature of Bapops’s death and this moment in Knight family his­tory. In playful reference to our motto, Suivant Saint Pierre (Follow St Peter), the family joked that Bapops must have created havoc when he got to the gates of heaven.

The estate was eerily quiet, except for the distant sounds of chainsaws. Cars had been crushed and houses damaged, but fortunately no lives were lost in Chawton or the neighbouring villages. Other areas were not so lucky. In just three hours, eighteen lives had been lost in England and four in northern France as strong wind gusts reached 115 miles an hour. The storm brought down fifteen million trees, including historic trees in Kew Gardens and Hyde Park. Six of the seven oak trees after which the town of Sevenoaks is named were blown over. It was the worst storm since 1703—Elizabeth Martin Knight’s first year as squire. What a shock it must have been for her to wake to devastation across the estate and what a challenge to clear thousands of fallen trees before the invention of tractors and chainsaws.

Every road in Hampshire was closed. Home Secretary Douglas Hurd called it the ‘worst, most widespread night of disaster’ since the Blitz. A cross-channel ferry, the MV Hengist, was driven ashore near Folkestone, and a number of ships capsized. London was blacked out for six hours, and hundreds of thousands of people were left without power, in many cases for several weeks. Three people were killed when their chimneys toppled. Others died on the roads or when struck by falling trees. A fisherman was killed in Hastings when a beach hut hit him, and two men in Dover died when their ship sank.

Schools and colleges throughout the area were closed, and the following week was half-term, so I didn’t return to college for about ten days. The after­math of the storm lasted for weeks, longer in some regions. Paul worked around the clock for the council, and my parents cleared fallen trees and branches on the estate.

The obituary in the local paper of ‘The late Major Edward Knight of Chawton’ reported that Bapops ‘always held the village cricket club dear to his heart’:

Major Knight, who was 77, was a cricket enthusiast from an early age and made history as the only first-year boy at Sherborne School to play for its first eleven. Major Knight, who inherited Chawton House in 1932, played cricket for Alton. His sporting interests also extended to hunting as a member of the Hampshire Hunt and to polo. An A.D.C. in Kenya in 1932–34, he played for the Kenya Polo Club. He had been in the Territorial Army before joining the Queen Victoria Rifles, serving in the Second World War in France before being seconded to the 17th–5th Jat Regiment in India.

The obituary mentioned only his military service and the sporting achievements of his youth, but I suppose there was little to say about his later life.

A few days later, my father said he had something that Granny had asked him to give me. In his hands was the Dreyfous leather writing box and document folder I had admired in Bapops’s bedroom. I was astonished and didn’t know what to make of the gesture. It was hard to believe that Bapops had remembered our conversation and specifically asked Granny to give it to me, but how else would she have known? What did it mean? Did he regret not knowing me better and want me to know that he cared after all? I was overjoyed to have something so personal of his, but I was also saddened that this was all I would ever have of Bapops now. I knew I had to treasure it, but I didn’t want such a personal reminder of the relationship I had missed having with Bapops—or of his death—in my bedroom, so I asked my parents to look after it until I was older.

At the beginning of the following year, my father confirmed that beyond all doubt we would have to leave our ancestral home. Richard would have to find a way to make the estate viable or find a buyer. It was hard to imagine summer without events to organise and Christmas Eve without Snap-Dragon. I didn’t like the thought of Chawton House in the hands of another family or of it being run as a business. It was hard to comprehend that four hundred years of history were coming to an end. I thought about the prospect of saying goodbye, of the day when we would close the door to our north-wing quarters for the last time and drive away. Jane wrote of the very moment in Sense and Sensibility:

Many were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. “Dear, dear Norland!” said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there; when shall I cease to regret you?—when learn to feel a home elsewhere!—Oh! happy house! could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more!

I wasn’t sure whether Jane shared the sentiment or whether she was mocking Marianne’s oversensitivity, but that didn’t matter. I couldn’t bear the thought of it and resolved to be away from home when that day came. I didn’t want to say goodbye, and I certainly didn’t want to watch Granny leave for the last time. According to what my father had told me, Granny had always known this day would come. Richard was, and always had been, the rightful heir to the Chawton estate, but Granny had spent decades as mistress of Chawton House. She had worked tirelessly and had little to show for it, other than her memories. It was sad to think of Granny in a small bungalow or apartment somewhere, which seemed the most likely outcome. It wasn’t Richard’s fault she had to leave. There was just no way she could stay. The house was in desperate need of investment, and he had inherited a heavy responsibility: to find a way to preserve Chawton estate for future generations if it were at all possible. What a challenge that was going to be.

I resolved not to enquire about the fate of the house any further, as it upset me. I would not dwell on it—there was no point. If it were to be turned into a business or sold to a private family, I didn’t want to be informed of the details until it was all over, and I certainly didn’t want to know on which day Richard would be parting with the house. I didn’t want to experience Anne Elliot’s sorrow:

and now Anne’s heart must be in Kellynch again. A beloved home made over to others; all the precious rooms and furniture, groves, and prospects, beginning to own other eyes and other limbs! She could not think of much else on the 29th of September; and she had this sympathetic touch in the evening from Mary, who, on having occasion to note down the day of the month, exclaimed, “Dear me, is not this the day the Crofts were to come to Kellynch? I am glad I did not think of it before. How low it makes me!”

Anne Elliot, the Dashwood sisters and the Bennet sisters—all had to secure a future because they could not stay in their family home. Jane herself had experienced the loss of her childhood home in Steventon, although Jane’s real-life approach to securing her future differed greatly from the solution she gave her characters. Her heroines always found long-term security and happiness with an advantageous marriage based on genuine affection and love. Jane refused her only offer of marriage and set out to make some money as an author. The conflict between her stories and her actions was a puzzle. Jane was a realist and, like the rest of her family, practical in her approach to money. She wanted her novels to appeal to the reader of her day and to be circulated by travelling libraries. But did Jane truly believe in happy endings? Perhaps she was dedicated to her novels above all else and didn’t want to compromise her writing time with the responsibilities of a husband and children. Perhaps she just never found her own Mr Darcy.

There and then, I decided I would be financially independent. I wanted to be in control of my own destiny and not beholden to a wealthy husband. I would earn my own money, pay my own bills and make my own way in the world. I would decide where I lived and when I moved. I had no idea what I wanted to do or what career I would have. I couldn’t go to university as I had dropped out of my A levels, but I was confident I would be able to secure some job or other and make something of myself.

I had plenty of female role models to draw upon. Elizabeth Martin Knight had been one of the most significant squires in our history. Granny ran the house and the tea room and was landlady to the tenants. When I was little, my mother had taken an evening course in business administration at Basingstoke College, and she passed the diploma-level course with distinction. She had tired of her job at the hospital and wanted to develop her career. When I left school, she took a leap of faith and resigned from her job at the hospital, unsure of where fate would take her—a good decision in the end. She was much happier working in the office of a local business. Trish also left the hospital and built an extension on the side of their home for a private physiotherapy practice. It was one of the first in the area and became a huge success, so much so that Dennis left his career to help Trish run the business.

And, of course, there was Jane. Against all odds, she went on to write six books which are so extraordinary that she has attracted a continuous following for nearly 200 years, is hailed as one of the best female classical writers of all time and has brought joy to millions. What an inspirational achievement and legacy. To think that a member of my family had created such iconic stories and characters! A poem written to Jane in 1813 by James Edward Austen Leigh (James Austen’s son who later went on to publish A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870) summed it up perfectly. He was fifteen and had discovered that his aunt was the anonymous author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

To Miss J. Austen
No words can express, my dear Aunt, my surprise
Or make you conceive how I opened my eyes,
Like a pig Butcher Pile has just struck with his knife,
When I heard for the first time in my life
That I had the honour to have a relation
Whose works were dispersed through the whole of the nation.
I assure you, however, I’m terribly glad;
Oh dear! just to think (and the thought drives me mad)
That dear Mrs Jennings’s good-natured strain
Was really the produce of your witty brain,
That you made the Middletons, Dashwoods, and all,
And that you (not young Ferrars) found out that a ball
May be given in cottages, never so small.
And that though Mr. Collins, so grateful for all,
Will Lady de Bourgh his dear Patroness call,
’Tis to your ingenuity really he owed
His living, his wife, and his humble abode.
Now if you will take your poor nephew’s advice,
Your works to Sir William pray send in a trice,
If he’ll undertake to some grandees to show it,
By whose means at last the Prince Regent might know it,
For I’m sure if he did, in reward for your tale,
He’d make you a countess at least, without fail,
And indeed if the Princess should lose her dear life
You might have a good chance of becoming his wife.

I was particularly amused by the suggestion that Jane might seek notice of the Prince Regent, given her opinions of him.

I returned to college after half-term and was at home less and less frequently. I didn’t go to see Sir Richard in the church again or look at the pedigree book, the stained-glass windows, the bookplates or any of the portraits. I didn’t go to Jane’s cottage or sit in her garden.

My mother dropped me at college each day on her way to work and collected me on her way home, unless I got a lift home with a college friend. I spent a couple of hours at home and normally went out after having dinner with my parents. A quiet evening at home would usually initiate a restless night of nightmares in which I was homeless, so I went out as often as I could. As long as I was busy, in the pub or at a party, I could ignore my thoughts, and that was all that mattered.

It was as if I had lost a part of myself.