As soon as we parted company, I complimented Rob on making such a good impression with the Crowells. He addressed Jack as “Sir” and Beth as “Ma’am,” which, he insisted, was a common courtesy in the western United States.
“Flagstaff is in the West, but it isn’t exactly Dodge City or Tombstone. I kept my six-shooter holstered whenever possible,” he said, smiling.
Walking to the Underground station, Rob continued, “Oh, by the way, Beth is Elizabeth Lacey, daughter of Sir Edward and Sarah Lacey. Jack told me Beth has a letter for you that will explain all that. They figured you knew.”
I had figured it out long ago. I still did not know why Beth felt it necessary to keep this part of her life secret. But whatever her reasons, I was pleased she finally trusted me enough to tell me.
Rob then shared with me some of his conversation with Jack. “Jack and Beth went out to India when their kids were little because he had gotten a job as an engineer with a railroad company. They lived in Calcutta and in these hill towns where the women and children went when the hot weather hit. When the kids turned twelve, they went to a boarding school in Scotland. In ’34, heading home to England to take the younger son to school, Jack got sick with malaria while going through the Suez Canal. By the time they got to Marseilles, he had to be taken off the ship. Beth took care of him because she had trained as a nurse’s aide, a VAD, which stands for Volunteer Aide something, in the First War.
“Anyway, Jack was really sick, and so they stayed in England for more than a year. When he wasn’t working on renovating Crofton Wood, which he pretty much gutted because the building was so old, he worked on the Lacey family history. It was Jack who dug out the boring stuff: estate and church records, real estate transactions, military records, Charles Bingham’s journal from when he was building Bingham Park, and so on. The reason Beth and Jack know so much about the Edwards family was because, in the summer of 1913, they went on a motor tour to a lot of the places mentioned in Pride and Prejudice, and one of their stops was the Edwards farm. The whole idea of a motor tour was cooked up by Beth’s youngest brother, Reed, and the grandmother.
“Beth made her debut in 1912 and had a great time during her first season. But her mother considered it to be a bust because Beth didn’t get engaged, which was the whole point of being out in society. She didn’t think Beth had given the bachelors enough encouragement, and that she had expressed her opinions too freely. Jack said Lady Lacey didn’t mind Beth getting a college education, as long as she didn’t actually use it.
“It was the grandmother who suggested that if Beth made a real effort to land a husband during her second season, she should be rewarded by being allowed to go on this car trip with Reed, who would make sketches of all the places mentioned in Pride and Prejudice for his grandmother, who loved the novel.
“Beth was allowed to go because she had caught the eye of this guy named Colin Matheson, who was rich, owned thousands of acres in Ireland, and came from a distinguished Anglo-Irish family. Jack said he was one of the most sought-after bachelors at that time, and Beth’s mother was convinced that a proposal would be made during the winter season. It all had to be done on the q.t. If word got out that Beth was driving around the countryside without a chaperone, she would have been ‘cut’ from society because people would question whether or not she was still a virgin. Beth’s dad backed her up, saying that all the society bigwigs would be in the south of France for the rest of the summer, and no one would be the wiser. And it all came off without a hitch.
“Get this. The mother agreed that Beth could go on one condition: that Jack go along, because he had been fixing Sir Edward’s cars for a couple of years. This is 1913. Beth’s twenty and Jack is twenty-two. Jack said that even though the Laceys treated him well, it never occurred to Lady Lacey that her daughter would be interested in the son of a servant or that Jack would act in any way other than as the son of her butler. It was a good thing Jack did go because the car, a 1912 Rolls Royce, broke down and had flats because of the crappy roads.
“That summer, Beth and Jack fell in love. It was on that trip that they went to Desmet Park and Hertfordshire. They found the Edwards/Garrison farm, and it was the three of them, not Aunt Margie, who talked to Mrs. Edwards. Jack said there’s a story that goes with Aunt Margie, but he’d tell us at another time. They found Netherfield Park, which was actually Helmsley Hall, but it had been converted into a private girls’ school, and Winchester Cathedral where Austen is buried. Reed made sketches of all these places.
“For Jack, it was the best summer of his life, and he said, ‘I was head over heels for Beth, but she would be returning to Newnham College, and I would be going back to The Tech in Manchester. I could hardly believe she was interested in me at all, and I was afraid that once she got back to Cambridge, she’d come to her senses and throw me over. And then the war! My God! No one could have foreseen the bloodbath that was just a year down the road. During the war, I’d think back to that summer with Beth and Reed, and sometimes when I was standing in the mud and muck in France, seeing my mates come back in pieces or not at all, it would keep me from blowing my brains out.’”
Because I pictured Jack Crowell as a tower of strength, I could not imagine him taking his own life. But could I really get my mind around just how awful trench warfare in northern France had been during the First World War, and wasn’t it possible that there might be a breaking point, even for a man as strong as Jack?
“Jack also told me that his younger brother, Tom, was killed on the Somme in July 1916. That was all he had to say, and I didn’t ask for details.”
From the time I had first met Jack, when he had mentioned the town memorial to those killed in The Great War, I knew that someone he cared about was memorialized on the stone monument on the village green. I remembered Jack telling me about Harvest Home and the two brothers walking the children around the fountain on ponies. His face had lit up at the memory.
My head was bobbing up and down on Rob’s shoulder as we rode the Underground to Mrs. Dawkins’s house. An occasional grunt reassured Rob that I was listening.
“By the way, I’m having dinner with Jack at the Engineer’s Club on Wednesday. He thinks by that time he’ll be climbing the walls, being in such a small flat with two females, even if one of them is only a baby.”
Since Rob would be having dinner with Jack, I decided to make a surprise visit to see Beth and baby Julia. I packed up some sandwiches and coleslaw that Mrs. Dawkins had made, but before heading over to James’s flat, I reread the letter Beth had given to me at the Savoy.
3 March 1948
Dear Maggie,
As I am sure you have already guessed, I am Elizabeth Lacey of Montclair. My parents were Sarah Bolton and Edward Lacey, and I had three brothers, Trevor, Matthew, and Reed. They are all gone now, and I am the only Lacey left. First, I must apologize for the untruths I told you, and I hope that you will forgive me. I wanted you to hear the story of my family, but I was not prepared to place myself at the center of it. Jack’s been after me ever since your second visit to Crofton Wood to share this information with you.
In my defence, I must say that you were not the first person to knock on our door asking about the Lacey/Darcy connection. We British like to be close to our poets and authors. We read Wordsworth in the Lake District and the Brontës in Yorkshire. They can also be very demanding. Several asked us to justify their belief that we were related to the Darcys. After that, I cautioned Don Caton about sending just anyone down to the house even if it meant denying Jack an afternoon of talking to the curious about Montclair.
I believe Jack mentioned that my grandmother, Marianne Dickinson Lacey, loved the novel and was captivated by the Lacey connection to it. When she married my grandfather in 161, Franny Lacey, Will and Elizabeth’s older daughter, was living at Montclair, and she had all of these wonderful stories about her parents, which she shared with Grandma. When Grandma’s health began to fail, she had the servants gather up everything relating to Elizabeth and Will and had them placed in chests and taken below stairs. The information we have been sharing with you came from diaries, letters, and other papers stored in those chests, and I have enclosed selected entries from Elizabeth’s diaries.
Elizabeth and Will Lacey had some wrinkles to iron out in their marriage, but they did succeed and lived full and happy lives. Enjoy!
Fondly,
Beth
Now that the secret was out, I was already thinking of the many questions I would like to ask her. I felt so much of what she wished to keep private was contained in the first paragraph: “I had three brothers… I’m the only Lacey left.” Maybe, when Rob saw Jack at the Engineer’s Club, he would learn something of the brothers, but I was not going to press Beth.