Jane and the Canterbury Tale

21 October 1813, Cont.

Curzon Fiske, Fanny assured me as we settled in for a comfortable coze, was born of highly respectable parents—his father the second son of a viscount, and his mother the daughter of an earl. The family lived in stile in Chartham, Kent, some four miles distant from Godmersham. Fanny was well acquainted with another Chartham family, the Faggs, whose father held the parish living there; and it was in part from the intelligence gleaned by the clergyman’s numerous daughters—all of whom were acknowledged to be lamentably plain, and thus prone to gossip from a persistent desire for Notice—that she was in possession of so many of the whisperings that surrounded Curzon Fiske.

He had been reared, it was said, with considerable indulgence, being privy to the wilder habits of his noble cousins; and tho’ sent away to Eton at the age of ten, where his schoolboy days were edified by the example of one George Moore, a year his senior, he declined further instruction at the higher centres of learning, spurning both Oxford and Cambridge. The death of his excellent father while Fiske was as yet in his minority, threw his estate into the hands of trustees until he should achieve the age of one-and-twenty. Having done so in due course, he came into a respectable competence, without having inherited a fortune. This, according to Fanny, he contrived to dissipate in the swiftest possible fashion, through a determined exploration of the more notorious gaming hells the Metropolis might offer; an unbridled fondness for coats by Weston and boots by Hoby; and a predilection for the maintenance of a string of racehorses that invariably failed to place.

If Fiske’s former neighbours in Kent suspected that his funds were equally at the disposal of a string of High- Flying Cyprians, those frivolous members of the Muslin Company, whose petulant favours must be won with excessive outlays of cash on carriages, jewels, and snug little residences in Richmond—such exploits had never come to Fanny’s ears. Or perhaps she thought her elderly Aunt Jane should be shocked to learn such things from her innocent niece’s lips. Regardless, no mention was made of Mr. Fiske’s amorous proclivities—until the advent of Adelaide Thane.

It was evident to all, Fanny cautioned, that by the age of four-and-thirty Curzon Fiske had achieved so remarkable a degree of dissipation that he was no longer acknowledged by most of his old friends in Kent. There were genial clubmen abiding in Town—rakes, for the most part, or Pinks of the Ton, Slap Up to the Echo, who continued to regard Mr. Fiske as a Knowing One, and the best of good fellows—but respectable mammas, with daughters to push off on the Marriage Mart, shepherded their charges in the opposite direction when Curzon Fiske hove into view. For the pockets of Mr. Fiske were entirely to let, and he was well-known to be hanging out for a rich wife.

By six-and-thirty, he had been forced to sell his patrimony in Kent—the comfortable manor at Chartham—and send his aging mother and unmarried sisters into lodgings in a dismal quarter of Bath. By seven-and-thirty, he had been refused by no less than nine young ladies of unimpeachable virtue and moderate wealth. At eight-and-thirty, he espied Adelaide Thane moving through the figures of the quadrille at Almack’s on the arm of his old friend, George Moore, whose first wife had lately died—and was lost.

She was, at the time, but seventeen years old. She betrayed already, however, the regal bearing and dark beauty that would ripen, in time, to the depth of elegance I had admired so completely last evening. Fiske stared at her as she went down the dance, and determined to wrest her attentions from Moore.

Miss Thane was no heiress. Her father had been a gamester, well-known to Fiske from numerous encounters across the punting tables. She was exactly the sort of woman he ought not to pursue, much less marry—and so of course Fiske was compelled to achieve both. In wooing Adelaide Thane, he pitted himself against one of his oldest friends; George Moore was frank in admitting his object was to gain the lady’s hand, and the rivalry added spice to Fiske’s conquest. He set himself to be all that was charming; devoted himself to Miss Thane and her mother—who was wise enough to recognise a wastrel when she met one, having lived her life in a gamester’s pocket—and succeeded in encouraging that wary female to ride tyrant over her daughter, threatening the young lady with incarceration in her bedchamber and bread-and-water for a week, if Adelaide chose to encourage such an ineligible parti.

Naturally, when Fiske was forced to flee London for relief from his creditors, the impressionable Miss Thane was ready to throw her future into his hands, and elope to Paris. The triumph was achieved one windy midnight, with a headlong flight to Dover and a perilous crossing prolonged by foul weather for some twenty hours, the prospective bride prostrate with seasickness for the duration.

“How long ago was this?” I interjected.

“The year Six, I believe,” Fanny replied, “for it was then that Mr. Moore took Aunt Harriot as his wife.”

“—Seeking consolation in the arms of propriety and baronet’s blood, having been worsted in the fight for Beauty.”

“I should not describe Aunt Harriot as ill-favoured, exactly,” Fanny said doubtfully, “tho’ it is certain she cannot shine when compared to Adelaide Fiske, and she possesses only a moderate understanding. Dear Mamma was still with us in the year Six—and tho’ I was not in request as a bridesmaid, I recollect taking some enjoyment in Aunt Harriot’s wedding. The only peculiar aspect of the ceremony was that the parish clerk at Wrotham, where Aunt was married, held Mr. Moore in such profound dislike that he ensured the funeral hymn was sung instead of the usual Nuptial Psalm.”

“Dear, dear. But to return to Curzon Fiske, and his harum-scarum bride—”

“Miss Thane would, as I have said, been seventeen at the time of her elopement to the Continent. I do not know how the couple contrived to live, tho’ it is rumoured that Mr. Fiske set up a gaming establishment in one of the lesser towns—Lyons, perhaps, or Liege—I am forever confusing the two—and that his beautiful young wife condescended to deal faro at one of the tables.”

Fanny’s intelligence from this point forward was a patch-work of conjecture and fable. Nevertheless a vivid portrait emerged, of the two reckless citizens of the world making their glittering way across the Continent, regardless of Napoleon’s armies or the sudden falls of governments. They were spotted in Warsaw, as guests of a count; they took lodgings in St. Petersburg, and entertained the Tsar; they counted prelates in Rome and renegades in Sicily among their favoured intimates. Whenever they fled a locale the pair were sure to leave debts behind them; but curiously, Curzon Fiske seemed increasingly well-to-do. His wife went in jewels and the latest modes, which set off Adelaide’s figure and looks to perfection; his way of living was invariably of the first stare; and the baggage train that followed from province to province was a marvel of conspicuous display. By the time he returned to England—

“Returned?” I queried. “He faced down his creditors in this country, at last?”

“He must have done. Else Adelaide Fiske could not have been welcomed into the bosom of Chilham Castle by Old Mr. Wildman, as she undoubtedly was, three years after her headlong elopement.”

And so, in the year 1809, Curzon Fiske returned triumphant to the land of his rearing, with the object of devoting his accumulated wealth to the purchase of an estate in Kent. He had matured in his travels on the Continent, it was said, and thrown off his rackety ways in an effort to please his wife; his intention now was to re- establish his good name—and Adelaide’s—in Society. He descended upon Canterbury’s August race-meeting, and renewed acquaintance among the Plumptres and Finch-Hattons and Wildmans and Austens (they were not yet Knights); was much seen at Chilham Castle—and looked gravely into a number of houses said to be available for hire. One was leased at last at considerable expence, and staffed with servants from London; Mrs. Fiske left her cards on visiting days, and formed one of the party at the local Assemblies; and the Fiskes were pronounced by all in Kent as a delightful couple, handsome in the extreme.

Little more than a twelvemonth passed away, however, before Curzon Fiske was off again—bound for India this time, and without the beautiful Adelaide.

“She had borne enough, I suppose, and wished to remain in her settled life,” I mused. “Mr. Fiske was obliged to flee his creditors, I presume?”

Fanny wrinkled her nose. “If it were only that … I have heard that tho’ he arrived in Kent with a considerable fortune—as much as thirty thousand pounds, it has been said—he squandered it in the old way, gambling being a sort of fever with him. But there was some other reason why he could not stay—why Mrs. Fiske, as she then was, remained