The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [259]
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