By an evil chance, or, as I once believed, as a consequence of that fatality which had shaped my history, the Vicar’s wife was the second cousin of Julius Verney Duport, 25th Baron Tansor, of Evenwood Park in the County of Northamptonshire – whose first wife has already been briefly mentioned in connexion with my mother. Several comfortable livings in Northamptonshire lay in the gift of Mrs Daunt’s noble relative, and that of Evenwood itself fell vacant in the early summer of 1830. On learning of this, with fire in her eyes, Mrs Daunt instantly flew south to press her new husband’s claims with his Lordship.
Already, however, something more than wifely duty appears to have been animating this redoubtable lady. Accounts concur that she had often expressed a wish to remove herself and her husband – and particularly her dear boy, Phoebus – from Millhead, which she detested; and it was doubtless kind of her to offer to lay Dr Daunt’s abilities before Lord Tansor. Her husband, I am sure, was touched by his wife’s selfless alacrity in this matter. I suspect, however, that selflessness was not her guiding principle, and that in rushing south, with such demonstrable urgency, she was in fact obeying the urgings of her own ambitious heart. For if her suit was successful, she would no longer be a distant and forgotten relation existing in the outer darkness of Millhead; she would instead be counted amongst the Duports of Evenwood – and who knew where that might lead?
I have no records of the meeting between Mrs Daunt and Lord Tansor; but, from Mrs Daunt’s point of view, it must have been accounted a success. An invitation to join her was speedily sent back to Dr Daunt in the North; the boy Phoebus was packed off to relations in Suffolk; and the outcome was that Dr and Mrs Daunt returned together from Northamptonshire two weeks later in high spirits.
There followed an anxious wait; but Lord Tansor did not disappoint. Barely another fortnight had passed before a letter – tremendous in its condescension – arrived, confirming Dr Daunt as the new Rector of St Michael and All Angels, Evenwood.
According to one of my informants, on the day after his return from his Suffolk relations, the boy Phoebus was called before his step-mother. Sitting in a small button-backed chair set in front of the drawing-room window – that same chair in which the first Mrs Daunt had often sat, looking forlornly out across the remnant of moor that lay between the Vicarage and the encroaching town – she was heard to impress upon the boy the significance of his father’s translation to Evenwood, and what it would mean for them all. I am told that she addressed him in deep melodious tones as her ‘dear child’, and tenderly stroked his hair.
Then she told him something of their relations and patrons, Lord and Lady Tansor; how great was their standing in the county, and in the country at large; how they also had a grand house in London, which he might see in due course if he was very good; and how he was to call them Uncle and Aunt Tansor.
‘You know, don’t you, that your Uncle Tansor does not have a little boy of his own any more,’ she said, taking his hand and walking him to the window. ‘If you are very good, as I know you will be, I am sure your uncle will be especially kind to you, for he misses having a son dreadfully, you know, and it would be such a considerate thing if you were to pretend sometimes to be his very own boy. Could you do that, Phoebus dear? You will always be your papa’s boy, of course – and mine, too. It is only a sort of game, you know. But think what it would mean to poor Uncle Tansor, who has no son of his own, as your papa does, to have you constantly by him, and to be able to show you things, and perhaps take you to places. You would like that, wouldn’t you? To be taken to nice places?’
And the boy, of course, said that he would. And then she told him of all the wonders of Evenwood.
‘Are there chimneys at Evenwood?’ the boy asked.
‘Why, yes, my dear, but they are not like Millhead chimneys, all dirty and horrid.’
‘And is my Uncle Tansor a very great man?’
‘Yes indeed,’ she said reflectively, looking out across the black valley, ‘a very great man.’
At the appointed time, the family’s belongings and household goods were despatched south, and the Vicarage at last stood shuttered and empty. As the fly rattled away from the gloomy windswept house, I picture Dr Daunt leaning back against the seat, closing his eyes, and offering up a silent prayer of thanks to his God. His deliverance had come at last.
*[‘Pray and labour’ (St Benedict).
10
In Arcadia*
Thus came the Daunt family to Evenwood, the place on which all my hopes and ambitions once rested.
His new situation suited Dr Daunt completely. With four hundred pounds a year from his stipend, and another hundred from his glebe lands, he was now able to keep a carriage and a good table, and generally assume a position of some consequence in the neighbourhood. No longer beset by the adversities of his Millhead living, Dr Daunt lay becalmed and contented in the sunlit harbour of Evenwood.
Light and spacious, the Rectory – a former prebendal manor-house – was set amidst well-tended gardens, beyond which was a sweet prospect of sloping meadows and, across the river, the inviting darkness of close-set woodland. Much of the Rector’s work – such as it was in this small and prosperous country parish – could be easily delegated to his curate, Mr Samuel Tidy, a fidgety young man who stood deeply in awe of Dr Daunt (and even more of his wife). Lord Tansor laid infrequent demands on his Rector, and those few duties required of him were painlessly fulfilled. Soon the Rector found himself with ample time, and more than sufficient income, to pursue at his leisure those intellectual and antiquarian interests to which he had clung so desperately at Millhead, and he saw no reason why he should not do so.
It was not long before his wife set to work forging as close a bond as possible between the Rectory and the great house. Her kinship with the Duport family undoubtedly gave her a degree of privilege, which she adroitly used to her advantage. To Lord Tansor, she quickly made herself indispensable, much as she had done to her husband after the death of his first wife. Nothing was too much trouble. She would not hear of his Lordship being incommoded in any way whatsoever, no matter how small the circumstance. Naturally, she did not undertake any menial tasks herself, displaying instead a winning ability to get them done by other people. She soon became possessed of a thorough knowledge of the house’s domestic arrangements, and began to exert a degree of control over them that was wonderful to behold. She did all this, moreover, without a word of complaint from the below- stairs population, who – to a man and woman, even including Cranshaw, his Lordship’s long-serving butler – deferred to her commands like old campaigners to the orders of a much-loved general. Indeed, she insinuated herself into all the doings of the household with such tact, combined with effortless charm, that no one appeared in the least affronted by what otherwise might have been seen as rank impudence.
Lord Tansor was delighted by the active deference and domestic assistance of his relative, whom he had barely known before her marriage to the Rector, but whom he now regarded as a signal adornment to the society of Evenwood. Mrs Daunt’s diplomatic skills were also put to work on mild Lady Tansor, who, far from feeling injured or indignant at the former’s swift assumption of dominance in her house, was touchingly grateful to be relieved of duties which, in truth, she was only too glad to relinquish.
So it was that Dr Daunt and his wife attained to an enviable measure of prosperity and eminence in the country
