The Forest (78 page)

It was certainly a very pretty idea. In a journey over to Bristol the previous year, Fanny had seen the thing admirably done. An essentially Georgian house could be remodelled, adding a few embellishments here and there, placing mock battlements round its roof, inserting Gothic tracery in the windows and plaster moulding like fan vaulting in the ceilings of some of the rooms. The result was highly agreeable – a picturesque blend of the Roman and Gothic, which especially appealed to families who wished their house to suggest both medieval ancestry and classical taste, or to echo the atmosphere of some of the grandest aristocratic families whose houses were built around the remains of the abbeys they had acquired in Tudor times.
These mock fortresses, however small, were often called castles – which also sounded rather grand. Albion House, with its intimate setting in a clearing among the oaks in the middle of the ancient Forest, would make a charming little castle.

‘It could be done,’ Fanny agreed. ‘Indeed, I really think it should.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘I do not think, though,’ she continued slowly, ‘that I should care to attempt such a thing alone. I should want the guiding hand’ – she smiled a little mischievously – ‘or at least the willing co-operation of a husband. Do you not agree?’

William Gilpin bowed his broad, greying head, inwardly cursed fate for making him so old and ventured: ‘Have you anyone in mind, Fanny?’

She should, God knew, have no shortage of suitors. Because of her father’s age and infirmity Fanny had not, by her own choice, made any attempts to show herself in society. But she was not in the least bashful. She was very cheerful. She knew perfectly well, at the age of nineteen, that although not a great heiress, her inheritance would recommend her wherever she went. It was an age when every young man and woman who claimed or aspired to gentility carried their incomes like a price tag round their necks. Every hostess knew the money value of each of her guests. It was probably a more mercenary period in English history than any before or since. And luckily for her, she was well placed in the system.

Whom ought she to marry? There was no single candidate whom neighbourly relations or family interest obliged her to consider. The greatest family in the Forest was that of the old Duke of Montagu, but the Beaulieu estate was split between the families of his two daughters now, who both lived far away; only the steward actually resided at the old abbey ruin. Next, in Fanny’s own estimation, were the most ancient landed families like the Albions. There were still several in the Forest: the
Compton family still had Minstead; just north of them a family named Eyre had reputedly been in the region since Norman times; on the eastern side of the Forest, the Mill family, who had done so well in Tudor times when Beaulieu Abbey was dissolved, had a large estate. Then there were the old Lymington families – which really meant the Burrards. And finally came the relative newcomers to the Forest area. There were many of these now, who had come in during the past two generations. They had built splendid classical mansions all the way along the coast from Southampton to Christchurch. Some had high titles; others came from gentry families, having made fortunes in the city or in trade, as had the Morants in sugar, or the Drummonds, from a noble Scottish family, who had become bankers to the king and financed his war in America. Nearly all these newcomers were very rich indeed.

Great mercantile families have often shown a predilection for the sea – no doubt because, for most of human history, trade has always been carried by water. And so it was, during the eighteenth century, that the New Forest had acquired this new layer to its ancient identity – as a pleasant coastline wilderness where the rich could build their mansions and enjoy the sea. It was a view of the world which the old Forest folk, for all their occasional shoreline activities, never entirely understood; and Fanny, coming as she did from the Forest interior, was, despite her genteel education, closer in spirit to the Prides than she was to some of the new landowners. But still, it could not be denied, marriage among them might be considered a desirable outcome. And even if, secretly, she yearned for something else, she didn’t like to say so and didn’t know what it was.

‘No one at present,’ she told the clergyman.

‘You are going to visit your cousin Totton at Oxford soon, I believe?’

‘Next week.’ Edward Totton was just about to come down from the university, and she and his sister Louisa
were going to pay him a visit there for a few days. It was an expedition she had been greatly looking forward to.

‘Why, then, I’m sure some poor professor with a taste for the Gothic will impress you with his merits,’ her friend said playfully. ‘And now,’ he added, ‘I must go to my little school. We have a special duty to perform there today. As it lies on your way home, shall we walk together?’

Samuel Grockleton moved cautiously down Lymington High Street.

The size and shape of the town was almost the same as it had been in medieval times, even if nearly all the houses lining the broad slope had Georgian façades now, some arranged as shops with bow windows.

He passed the entrance of the Angel Inn. Mr Isaac Seagull, proprietor, standing in the door, gave him a bow and a smile. He glanced across the street. The landlady of the Nag’s Head, dead opposite, also outside, was smiling too.

‘Good morning, Mr Grockleton.’

He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it a bit.

He noticed the wooden sign of the Nag’s Head swing, just an inch or two, with a faint creak in the sea breeze. Was it a mere chance, or had people stopped all down the street? His feet alone were ringing on the cobblestones; the rest of the town had paused to watch him: a hundred masks, like painted figures in a carnival, or mummers at Hallowe’en. And behind those masks, so polite and smiling?

He knew. The long tail of his black coat, his starched cravat, his white knee-breeches, all suddenly felt as though they had turned to solid mortar, trapping him as securely as if he had been put in the stocks. His high, broad-rimmed hat seemed to be made of lead as he forced himself to raise it to a lady in front of the little bookshop. He knew what the friendly faces meant. They were all in on it.

There had been a run the night before and he was the Customs officer.

Customs and Excise. There had always been taxes to pay for the shipping and landing of goods. And traders had always tried to avoid them. The owlers of Lymington had shipped wool out of England illegally for centuries. But it was not the exports that were the main concern now. It was the goods coming in. And there lay the huge problem.

It was the scale of the business. As Britain’s commercial empire grew the tide of imports swelled at an ever increasing rate. Silks and laces, pearls and calicoes, wines, fruits, tobacco and snuff, coffee and chocolate, sugar and spices – the list was huge. Fifteen hundred different items were liable to Customs duties now. And greatest of all were the two items without which, it would seem, Englishmen would lose all their vigour and their island would probably sink beneath the waves. Tea: if drinking coffee and chocolate was fashionable, everyone, from highest to lowest, drank tea. And brandy.

Brandy was the elixir of life. Its uses were manifold. It protected against the plague, cured fever, colic, dropsy. It stimulated the heart, cleaned wounds and kept you young. If you were frozen, brandy warmed you. Why, if the surgeon had to saw off your leg, he’d give you a pint of brandy first before he hit you over the head. Or, of course, you could always drink it for pleasure. And on every drop of brandy you bought, Customs were due. But nobody wanted to pay.

‘It is unreasonable that people curse the Customs,’ Grockleton would observe plaintively to his wife, ‘when it is the Customs money that pays for the Navy vessels to protect the very trade which brings them the goods they desire.’

‘I am sure there is nothing rational about it,’ she would agree.

But however unreasonable – and Grockleton was perfectly right – everyone tried to avoid paying; smuggling was widespread. It was the job of the Customs officials to stop it. Customs officers were not popular.

The chief official for the whole region, the collector, was based at Southampton. The next most senior man was Grockleton at Lymington. Then there was another officer, rather less senior, in charge along the coast at Christchurch. In theory, the Customs officers had quite impressive forces at their disposal. There were sea vessels – swift cutters, usually – to intercept the smugglers’ boats. There were riding officers, one every four miles, to patrol the coast. There were tide-waiters to check incoming ships, gaugers to inspect barrels, weighers, searchers – the titles changed as the Customs men thought of new ways to regulate the trade. The senior men like Grockleton were almost always posted in from outside, so as to be free of local ties; quite often they had just retired from some other branch of government service. Salaries were modest, but the officer was granted a handsome share of any contraband that was intercepted: a good inducement to be vigilant, one might have thought, yet to Grockleton’s certain knowledge, the supervisor at Christchurch had told his riding officers not to patrol and not to report anything they did happen to see.

Not all the Customs men were so cowardly, though. Over on the Isle of Wight, the Customs officer William Arnold had won the grudging respect of the whole region by the way he had gone about the job. With little support from the government, he had paid out of his own pocket for a swift cutter to patrol the local waters; and very effective it had been. If the other towns had had such cutters, the smugglers along the coast might have had a hard time of it. There were other ways to catch them, though, and whatever Grockleton’s faults may have been, he had a strong sense of duty and he had courage.

That was why, if his plan worked, he was soon going to be the most hated man in the county.

He continued down the street towards the quay. People were moving about now, but they were still watching him.
He could imagine the looks behind his back, but he did not turn to see. At the bottom of the street just off to one side was the Customs house which was his official place of business.

He was just in sight of it when he happened to see the Frenchman. The Frenchman, also, bowed and smiled politely. But for a different reason. He and his compatriots were in Lymington as guests of His Britannic Majesty. It was his duty to be polite, therefore, even to a Customs official.

The count – for as well as commanding a regiment, he was also an aristocrat – was certainly a most agreeable man and a great favourite with Mrs Grockleton whom he treated as if she were a duchess. Several of his relations having met their deaths by the guillotine in the recent French Revolution, he carried, at least in Mrs Grockleton’s eyes, a certain aura of tragic romance about him. With his fellow aristocrats and troops quartered in Lymington, and some other émigré French forces taking refuge in England, he was anxious to go and fight against the new revolutionary regime in France at the first opportunity.

‘Soon, Monsieur le Comte.’ Mrs Grockleton would sigh. ‘Soon, we shall see better times, I trust.’ That England during the last hundred years had been engaged in, or close to, hostilities with royalist France for most of the time was a fact which, faced with the charming French aristocrat, she had now entirely forgotten.

There was nothing very surprising, therefore, if, seeing the Frenchman, the Customs officer should have reached into his coat pocket, drawn out a letter and handed it to him with the words, overheard by a passer-by: ‘A letter from my wife, Count.’ Then he passed on towards the Customs house.

Only a little while later, in the privacy of his lodgings, did the count open the letter and read its contents with an expression of horror. ‘
Mon Dieu
,’ he murmured, ‘what shall I do now?’

From the Reverend William Gilpin’s front door the lane ran straight between the hedgerows of small fields until it met another track at right angles. Down the lane, in pleasant sunlight, came Gilpin wearing a large clerical hat and carrying a stick, and Fanny in a long coat and cape. The two friends enjoyed the pleasant walk. Their object was the small building on the left just before the end of the lane.

Gilpin’s school was a somewhat different establishment from Mrs Grockleton’s academy, yet possibly just as useful. The Boldre parish never having had a school before, Gilpin had founded it not long after his arrival there and the little seat of learning had such charm that you might almost have called it picturesque.

The whole building was hardly forty feet long and built in the shape of a ‘T’. The long central section was a single high room, twenty-five feet long. The cross section was divided into two low storeys, with accommodation for a teacher and a classroom for the girls. The end of the central section facing the lane was charmingly shaped like a classical façade with a triangular pediment. This jolly little structure was perched on a tiny plot of ground. Below it the track led down towards the river and the bridge at Boldre. On the eastern side it led towards the old medieval vaccary, long since a hamlet, of Pilley.

‘Who sold you the plot of land for the school?’ Fanny had once asked him. She knew the ownership of almost every inch of land around there, but could not place that particular piece.

‘I stole it,’ the vicar had replied amiably, ‘from the King’s Forest. They made me pay a small fine later.’

The purpose of the vicar’s encroachment was simple enough: to take twenty boys and twenty girls from families in the Boldre parish hamlets, and teach them to read and write and cipher, as basic mathematics was then termed. For reading, naturally, they used the Bible, on which they were tested twice a week. Every Sunday, they put on the
smart green coats with which the school provided them and paraded to Boldre church. This last feature also provided the vicar with a useful incentive. He knew his parishioners. If now and then a child was needed to help its parents in the field, no questions were asked about a day’s absence; but the strong woollen and cotton clothes the school provided free along with the green coats were a powerful inducement for a country family. And if any of the parents expressed doubts about the value of so much learning for their daughter he could assure them: ‘As writing and arithmetic are less necessary to girls, we spend more time on practical things – knitting and spinning and needlework.’ Beyond this level of education the parish school did not venture. To go further might, everyone agreed, have been to make the village children discontented with their lot.