On the drive back to London, I asked Rob why he didn’t mention that he had been a member of a B-17 crew when Clive talked about the bombers he had seen flying over Kent, especially since Rob had been on a bomber that had crash-landed in Kent
“I think Clive was more of a talker than a listener,” he said, and added, “I’m sure he fought in the First War and had plenty of stories of his own.”
Rob quickly changed the subject and asked about some of the things that had been going through my mind from the time I had first met the Crowells. “Maggie, from what you’ve told me about the Crowells, they sound as if they are too intelligent to believe the Darcys are the Laceys unless they have proof. So if this thing is for real, then they have to have all kinds of things — diaries, letters, records.”
“Rob, there’s a lot we don’t know, but for whatever reason, Beth Crowell, and I’m sure Beth is the connection, is not ready to tell us, but I’m absolutely convinced she is leading up to how she is connected to the Lacey family. We’ll just have to wait.”
Shortly after our visit to Kent, I received another letter from Beth. This time it was about Mary, but also Anne Desmet and Charlotte Chatterton, because their stories were all interconnected.
18 February 1948
Dear Maggie,
I was happy to hear that Rob and you were able to visit Austen’s Rosings Park even if you could not see the Thornhill. I can only hope that some conservator will be able to find a way to preserve it because, from what you describe, it is possible that Desmet Park will be torn down for the value of its stone, especially since it appears to be a fire hazard. Every week, I read in the newspaper about manor houses being razed. So many of them were damaged during the war because of their use as barracks, or the costs of maintaining them are so prohibitive that no one can afford them.
It has been a long time since I wrote to you of Mary Garrison because her life was entwined with Charlotte and Anne’s, and I was hoping you would be able to visit Kent before I shared with you their strange, but interesting, relationship.
Mary was a friend of Charlotte’s younger sister, Maria Ledger. It seems that every time Lucy/Lydia came home to Bennets End, Mary arranged a visit to the parsonage with Maria. When Lucy returned permanently to Bennets End following Waggoner’s transfer to Canada, Mary visited Charlotte and never left. You must be asking, why didn’t Charlotte or Mr. Chatterton object?
As the wife of the local pastor, Charlotte had many responsibilities, including visiting the poor and making food baskets for those who were ailing. In addition to these responsibilities, Charlotte acted as her husband’s secretary, copying out his weekly sermons and taking dictation for his correspondence and reports to the bishop. Keep in mind that this was the era when people made their own ink and wrote with quill pens, which required constant repair. Anne, recognizing that Mary’s stay was open-ended, encouraged Charlotte to have Mary take over many of the less desirable responsibilities of a minister’s wife. This allowed Charlotte the time necessary to educate herself in the politics of the church and to learn what was going on in the church hierarchy.
When Lady Sylvia became ill, sometime around 1805, Anne told Charlotte that it was her intention to sell the estate after her mother’s death. This is where Charlotte’s political acumen bore fruit. She knew of an opening in Canterbury for a position that suited her husband’s talents and requested that Anne ask her mother to write a letter to the bishop bringing Mr. Chatterton to his attention. When Lady Sylvia died in 1806, Mr. Chatterton was faced with a difficult choice. In addition to any bequest from Lady Sylvia, Mr. Chatterton, as rector, received an income from a tithe from every farmer or tradesman in his parish. However, Charlotte recognized that without Lady Sylvia’s sponsorship, there was no chance for advancement in the church, but there was a possibility for a promotion if he served on the staff of the Suffragan Archbishop of Canterbury.
It turned out to be the correct move. In 1807, Mr. Chatterton, Charlotte, and Mary moved to Canterbury. They had been living in rooms near the Charter House for fifteen years when Mr. Chatterton died suddenly. With his death, the Garrison estate was entailed away from Charlotte because of her sex, and Charlotte and Mary chose to return to Hertfordshire.
I had been reading this letter aloud to Rob when he stopped me. “How does Beth know all this? She’s stopped saying this information came through Aunt Margie. She must be related to the Laceys.” I nodded and continued.
After her mother’s death, Anne Desmet moved to Bath. The city was in its heyday at this time, and she leased a house in a neighbourhood near to the famous Royal Crescent. She brought with her the butler and her nurse, Mrs. Jackson, whom Anne was devoted to, and who spent a good portion of her life caring for Anne. We know she attended concerts and assemblies in Bath, escorted by her cousin, Col. Alexander Devereaux (Col. Fitzwilliam). Col. Devereaux was wounded at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and after his release from the Army, he went to live with Anne in Bath. The colonel died in 1819. Anne lived another three years.
I hope her years in Bath were happy ones. She certainly deserved it. Her life demonstrates that even the wealthy can be miserable if they are not nurtured and loved.
Your friend,
Beth
After finishing the letter, I told Rob about the conversation Jack and I had during our drive to Pamela’s house. He mentioned that the Laceys had three sons and a daughter, and in Beth’s letter recounting her Christmas visit to Harrods, she mentioned her brothers. “I’m positive the daughter is Beth Crowell.”
“Why the big secret?” Rob asked.
“I don’t know. But there must be something hurtful in this story for her to keep up this pretense.” I wouldn’t have long to wait before I found out, because Beth and Jack were coming to London.
Shortly after receiving the letter regarding Mary, Charlotte, and Anne, the Crowells wrote to let me know they would be visiting London and hoped we could get together for dinner at the Savoy, so they could meet my gentleman friend.
After we were seated in a gorgeous dining room, Beth told us that Jack and she frequently ate out when they moved to London during the winter of 1946–47. “Queuing up for food is unpleasant at the best of times, but with arctic temperatures day after day, I was willing to take advantage of the fact that we didn’t need ration coupons to dine in a restaurant. And don’t think I didn’t feel guilty about doing it,” she said emphatically. “Now, it’s three years since we defeated Germany, and yet we still have rationing and queuing, and people are still walking around town in drab clothes that have been patched and repatched.”
From what I had seen, patched clothing was a minor problem compared to finding enough coal for their homes. All over London, people were still pushing prams they filled up with coal at emergency dumps.
“The lobby of the Savoy was the scene of quite a brouhaha in 1940,” Jack said almost gleefully. “The East End, where the docks and warehouses are, took a pounding night after night during the Blitz. The residents didn’t think their situation was getting the proper attention, so a crowd of them marched on the Savoy, led by pregnant women and mothers with babes in arms. The marchers closed the restaurant and barricaded themselves in. Some of the group tied themselves to the pillars, while others ran down to the shelters where the hotel kept bunks for the likes of the Duke and Duchess of Kent. It all came to an end when the Savoy’s manager wisely ordered tea to be served. That quieted everyone down, and feeling they had made their point, the protestors left.”
After dinner, we went into the hotel lobby, where Jack and Rob discussed the war and the engineering jobs Jack had worked on in India, while Beth and I sat on a sofa just out of earshot of the men. She began by asking me the same questions about Rob my mother was asking in her letters, but without the hysteria. There had never been a Protestant in our family. Beth was amused by my mother’s phobia of non-Catholics and told me about Kathleen Kennedy, the Marchioness of Hartington, and the widow of the man who would have become the Duke of Devonshire.
“Mrs. Kennedy was so appalled when she learnt her daughter was going to marry a Protestant that she checked herself into a hospital. When she finally agreed to meet with the press, she was wearing a black dress as if she were in mourning. She wasn’t impressed by Billy Hartington’s title at all, but her father, a son of Irish immigrants, was delighted. In any event, Kick, as she is known, may lose the title because she seems to be on the verge of marriage with Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam. I hope she knows what she is doing. Peter has a reputation for being a player and living in the fast lane.”
Beth returned to the topic of Rob and cautioned me against doing anything hasty. I assured Beth in person and my mother by mail that marriage had not even been mentioned. However, I was thinking about it quite often, but what Rob was thinking was less clear. He knew the words to all the most popular songs, but his favorite was a Western, “Don’t Fence Me In.”
“We have come to London to take care of our granddaughter while James and Angela go off on a brief holiday,” Beth said. “I probably won’t be able to meet with you again before we go back home, so I thought I’d give you a little bit of Jane and Charles Bingham’s story.”
Beth started from the point where Charles came into his majority at the age of twenty-one. “As you can imagine, at that time in his life, Charles had no interest in settling down. He wanted to go to dances, meet young ladies, ride horses, and attend the races at Epsom and Ascot. Until such time as he married, Charles was given a yearly allowance sufficient to meet his needs, as long as he stayed out of London’s betting parlors. All that changed once he married Jane.
“Charles built a house on property in the southern part of Derbyshire, about thirty miles from Montclair. He really relished this new stage in his life, and to the end of his days, he remained the country squire, riding about his estate and visiting his neighbors. I imagine it gave some shape to his life.” Shaking her head, Beth said that Charles Bingham had been kept in perpetual boyhood by his brothers and even Will Lacey.
“Bingham Park is a very large manor house, and only the finest materials were used in its construction. Marble and tile workers were brought to England from Italy, and because this project went on for years, the craftsmen sent for their families. The Italian community built a small church near Leicester with stunning stained glass windows and mosaics. Unfortunately, the original church is gone. In late 1942, Leicester and the surrounding area were heavily bombed, and one of the casualties was this lovely church.”
I knew there were many places of worship that didn’t survive the war, the most famous being the fourteenth-century Coventry Cathedral. Numerous churches in London were also destroyed or badly damaged, including several designed by Christopher Wren. However, Wren’s greatest creation, St. Paul’s Cathedral, survived several close calls, including one in which it was hit with twenty eight incendiary bombs. One incendiary, penetrating the outer shell of the dome, began to melt the lead, leaving many to believe the cathedral was doomed. Then the miraculous happened; the bomb fell out on to the parapet and failed to explode. One of the war’s most famous photographs was of St. Paul’s emerging from the smoke of what must have seemed to the people of London to be an entire city on fire. It became a symbol of British resolve to fight through to victory.
Thinking of all the British had suffered, I was glad to return to the Binghams’ love story and the nine children that came out of it.
“Charles ran a successful stud farm at Bingham Park and also started a hunting club that still exists. For many years, my parents were subscribers, and I also rode with this club. This was a very important aspect of English society. Members of the British elite visited each other’s country estates and went all out running down that little fox. Please keep in mind that foxes were regarded as vermin to be got rid of, much like the coyotes of your American West.
“If I recall correctly, Jane died around 1833, but Charles lived on for another ten years. For all the difficulties they had in their courtship, Charles and Jane’s marriage was a great success.” And suddenly standing up, Beth said, “I have to go to the loo.”
When she returned, Beth wanted to finish up with the Binghams. “The most interesting Bingham was not Charles but his brother, George. He was a financial genius, who helped many of England’s elite families who were experiencing financial difficulties, which gave him access to some powerful people. He made a fortune for himself, his family, and his investors from trade with China and India. One of his more lucrative businesses was importing luxury items from France while Britain and France were at war. He believed that trade was a great leveler in society, and since the aristocracy continued to buy these luxuries, he was more than willing to supply them with their perfumes and wines and keep the middle-class shopkeepers employed. You have only to look at the public rooms at Montclair, with all of its French furniture, to see that Will Lacey was of a similar mind. However, George was also an ardent abolitionist, and he left a hefty legacy to the Anti-Slavery Society.”
Motioning to her husband, Beth indicated that it was time for them to go back to their room, as they had a little girl to take care of the next day. Beth kissed me on the cheek, and after doing so, handed me a letter and a small parcel bound up with brown paper and string.
“Being married to Jack, a man who spent his whole career working on challenging projects that improved the lives of others, I have always been troubled by Charles Bingham’s willingness to live a life so ordinary when he was in a position to do, I don’t know — something — anything. But you can draw your own conclusions from the letters.”