‘These are really excellent, Edward,’ he said, turning over a number of mounted prints that I had made of Pump-court, and of Sir Ephraim Gadd’s chambers in King’s Bench-walk. ‘You have an exceptional eye. Quite exceptional.’ He suddenly looked up, as if struck by a thought. ‘Do you know, I think I could secure a commission for you. What would you say to that?’
I replied, of course, that I would be very happy for him to do so.
‘Excellent. I am obliged to pay a visit to an important client next week, and, seeing what you have done here, it occurs to me that this gentleman might wish to have some photographic representations of his country property, to provide an indelible record for posterity. The property in question would certainly afford the most ravishing possibilities for your camera.’
‘Then I shall be even more willing to agree to the proposal. Where is the property?’
‘Evenwood, in Northamptonshire. The home of our most important client, Lord Tansor.’
Whether Mr Tredgold saw my surprise, I cannot say. He was beaming at me, in his usual way, but his eyes had a guarded look about them, as if in anticipation of some disagreeable response. He cleared his throat.
‘I thought,’ he went on, ‘that you might also be curious to see the former home of Lady Tansor – I allude, of course, to her friendship with your last employer’s late mother, Mrs Simona Glyver. But if this proposal is against your inclinations …’
I raised my hand.
‘By no means. I can assure you that I have no objections at all to such an expedition.’
‘Good. Then it is settled. I shall write to Lord Tansor immediately.’
How could I possibly have refused to go along with Mr Tredgold’s adventitious proposal, when Evenwood was the one place on earth I wished to see? I was already familiar, from various published accounts, with the history of the great house, the disposition of the buildings, and the topography of the extensive Park. Now I had been given the opportunity to experience, in my waking being, what I had so often fashioned in imagination.
Since commencing my employment at Tredgolds, I had made little progress in my pursuit of some piece of objective evidence that would confirm what I had read in my mother’s journals. I had suggestions and hints, providing strong and, to me, compelling testimony to the truth concerning my birth; but they were not indubitable, and shed no light on the causes of the conspiracy between my mother and Lord Tansor’s first wife, or on how their plan had been accomplished. By now, I had read every word of my mother’s journals several times over, as well as making copious notes on them, and had begun to re-examine and index every scrap of paper she had left behind, from bills and receipts to letters and lists (my mother, I discovered, had been an inveterate list-maker; there were scores of them). I hoped to find some fragment of the truth that I might have overlooked; but it was becoming clear to me that little more could be gleaned from the documents in my possession, and that I would achieve nothing by remaining in my rooms, and brooding on my lost inheritance. If that inheritance was to be recovered, I must begin to widen my view; and what better way to start than by seeing my ancestral home for myself?
A few days later, Mr Tredgold informed me that Lord Tansor was happy for me to accompany him to Evenwood, where I would be given liberty to roam as I pleased. Next morning, both of us feeling relieved to be escaping the heat and dust of London, we took the train northwards to Peterborough.
Once we had boarded our train, Mr Tredgold and I immediately fell into our customary bookish talk, which we kept up all the way to Peterborough, despite several attempts on my part to encourage my employer to speak of Evenwood and its principal residents. Having arrived in Easton, some four miles from Evenwood, Mr Tredgold went on ahead to the great house, leaving me to accompany the trunk containing my travelling equipment in the carrier’s cart. At the gatehouse, just beyond the village of Evenwood, I got out, leaving the cart to trundle off. It was approaching two o’clock when I ascended the long incline that carries the road from the gates, and rested at the top to look down over the river towards the vista spread out before my hungry eyes.
And now, at last, I am to show you Evenwood, which I first beheld on that perfect June afternoon in 1850 – an afternoon, perhaps, like the one that had seen the arrival of Dr Daunt and his family twenty years earlier. I see it again in memory, as clearly as on that day.
The village lies, in quiet seclusion, close to a slow-moving tributary of the River Nene, the Even, commonly called the Evenbrook by the local inhabitants, which winds through the Park to join the main river a few miles to the east. A church and adjoining Rectory, a noble Dower House of the late seventeenth century, clusters of picturesque cottages, some outlying farms, and then the great house itself: similar compositions can be found all over England; but Evenwood is like no other place on earth.
The always-sighing reed-beds and the overarching willows, the pale stone houses with their roofs of thatch or Collyweston stone,* the undulating Park with its lake and ancient trees, and in the midst, the faery splendour of Lord Tansor’s residence, are sources of deep and abiding solace for those weary of the quotidian world. The whole place seems to be somehow beyond time, shut in and protected from the meanness of existence by the meandering river, and the gently wooded slopes on either side, which, on a fine day, dissolve into long soft swathes of grey-green.
If you consult Verekker’s dull but dependable
What you will not find in Verekker, or in any other guide, is an anatomy of Evenwood’s power to bewitch both soul and sense. Possibly, it is beyond human art to convey the sense of something lost, but eternally present, that such places inspire. In every light, and in every season, it possesses a transcendent beauty; but in summer it is very paradise. Approach it if you can – as I first did – from the south, on a mid-summer afternoon. On entering the Park, you ascend the incline that I have mentioned, at the summit of which you will certainly pause, as I did, to catch your first sight of the great house. To your left, over the low boundary wall, light dances on the river curving gently westwards; and then you glimpse the church – its delicate spire on such a day set against a cloudless sky of deepening blue – facing the ivy-covered Rectory on the far side of a little field of graves.
Proceed a little further. The carriage-drive descends towards the river, crosses it by a fine balustraded bridge, then turns to the right, levelling out to give a fuller view of the house, and the swaying haze of trees behind; then it divides, to sweep either side of a perfect oval of lawn, with a fine Classical group – Poseidon with Tritons – at its centre, before passing through a pair of massive iron gates into an enclosed and gravelled entrance court.
