Now, as the lamps were lit in Lamb House, he went back to his desk and began to think over what she had said about Venice. He had a letter in front of him from Mrs Curtis, the owner of Palazzo Barbaro, whose hospitality he had enjoyed so many times. She used the same words about the city. She wrote about its sadness, and about the streets close to the building from whose second-floor window Constance Fenimore Woolson had flung herself.
Her death, like that of his sister Alice, lived with Henry day after day. Images of her came and went, sometimes of her inert body lying broken on the street below her window, and sometimes a detail, the way her lips moved quietly as he spoke to her, how desperately, despite her bad hearing, she tried to follow what he was saying. He saw her in the sunlight of Bellosguardo, maybe her happiest time, under a parasol wearing white and smiling at him, as though she were sitting for a cleverly arranged portrait and offering him, as she did so much, her full, proprietorial approval before he even spoke. She had been, he supposed, his best friend, the person outside his own family who had been closest to him. He still could not believe she was dead.
AMONG THE objects which Lady Wolseley had encouraged him to purchase for Lamb House was an old map of Sussex that testified to the changes of relation between sea and land in his corner of the coast. It gave him pleasure to think that Rye and Winchelsea belonged to shifting ground, the endless mutation of the shore. The lines here were not ordained or set in stone, but open, he liked to think, to suggestion. Sometimes, when he walked slowly up and down the bright space of his garden room, or sat upstairs in the drawing room looking out at the light, he fancied that with one stroke of his pen, or the sound of his voice, the river could change its course, the sea come rushing in, or a new, small indentation appear on the coast.
Both Rye and Winchelsea seemed almost foolishly placed now. He loved telling his visitors how Winchelsea was practically destroyed in the thirteenth century by a huge storm which cast up masses of beach, until it was clear that the future of the town was precarious. And thus the town was moved, the old one left like a ghost, he liked to tell his guests, or like an old family down to its last member, holding only memories and fading treasure while a usurping family thrived. But the success of this new enterprise was to be short-lived also. When there is a battle between the sea and the land, he would continue, it is generally the sea which emerges victorious and the land which melts away. Rye and Winchelsea, the new Winchelsea that is, were ready to be great ports with great plans and dreams. But then, in the centuries that followed, the land won, and slowly and slyly a modest plain where sheep now grazed began to form between these towns and the sea, pushing the sea back gently but effectively.
If the first Winchelsea suffered death by drowning, the second was left high and dry. He would talk as though this were a hard fact to accept. This plain, this strange addition to the land, he would say, put there by a quirk of nature, gave him a satisfaction, as though he had been personally involved in helping things along. It added to the mystery of Rye, and to his engagement with it – the sea had once come right to its front door, and now it had withdrawn, leaving only sea light and sea gulls and a flat plain, an ambiguous loan which the water had made to Sussex and its inhabitants.
To this world, from which the ocean had so politely withdrawn, he had moved, in his own gentle and polite way, creating space for his work to flourish and his sleep to come easy. He now had a household, much larger than any his parents had ever dreamed of, and the smooth running of his small empire was a matter of care and pride and worry and high expense.
From London, where they had served him loyally, he had transported the Smiths, Mrs Smith to cook and her husband to function as butler. In Rye, he had employed Fanny the parlour-maid, pretty and quiet and careful, and in Rye too he had found a treasure called Burgess Noakes, gnome-sized and not pretty, but making up for it in punctuality and the desire to please. Burgess was young, and this was his first serious employment, which meant that he had developed no bad or slovenly habits. He could be trained as both houseboy and valet without being made to feel that the duties of the former might be less dignified or worthy of his attention than those of the latter.
Henry had spoken to the boy’s mother, who went to great lengths to explain how willing he was and clean and well spoken and mature for fourteen and how sad she would be to part with him. When the boy was finally produced, the discrepancy between his scamp-like face and frame and the boundless eagerness of his gaze made Henry immediately warm to him. He gave no sign of this, however, merely explaining to the mother, as the boy listened, that Burgess Noakes would be employed for a brief period so that his suitability could be tested, and after that period they could discuss the terms of his employment, as appropriate.
Henry enjoyed being known in Rye. As he walked the streets, he took pleasure in greeting all whom he recognized with courtesy and courtliness. He was often accompanied by his dog Maximilian, or by the Scot, who had found lodgings in Rye and become an assiduous walker and cyclist, or by whatever guests were staying at Lamb House. The idea of residing in a small and traditional English community belonged to his dreams; he found himself, especially in the presence of American guests, deeply proud of his acceptance in Rye and his knowledge of its denizens, its topography and history.
When visitors came by train, as they generally did, Henry met them personally at the station. Burgess accompanied him, skilfully pushing a wheelbarrow which served to ferry the guest’s luggage up the hill to Lamb House. Henry marvelled at some of Burgess’s social instincts on these occasions. He stood apart with the wheelbarrow in readiness when the train stopped at Rye station. He did not intrude for one moment as Henry and his guest indulged in greetings and preliminary observations, but negotiated effectively with the train’s porter, establishing which luggage belonged to Mr James’s guest without having to consult its owner. He made sure, however, that the traveller saw the luggage as it rested on the wheelbarrow. Then he moved easily behind Henry and his visitor as they made their way up the hill.
The house was, in its own small way, perfect and beautiful, even to those who only knew it from the outside. Its secret, however, was its garden, which was private, secluded, rich with ancient plantings and cultivated with care and taste.
As soon as he leased the house, Henry had retained George Gammon, a local gardener, part-time. Every day he had some discussion with him about changes which might be made, new plantings and seasonal adjustments, but mainly they spoke about what was blooming now, or likely to bloom soon, how different this year was to last year, and how much work could be soon completed. Both of them then took in the walled space in its detail and its totality. He enjoyed how George Gammon let the silence linger, adding nothing further, and waited until Henry decided it was time to go back to his work before moving away himself.
The Smiths did not take to Rye. During the ten years they worked for him in Kensington, living in servants’ quarters in his apartment, they dealt with the same merchants each day and frequented the same establishments. They knew many other servants in the immediate environs. For them, a few streets of Kensington represented a village in which they were fully at home. Each morning, Mrs Smith, her expression respectful, but trying also, in a pained and shy way, to be alert and intelligent, took her day’s orders from the novelist. When he was working, these orders were for plain, well-cooked food served with silent discretion by Mr Smith. Sometimes, when there was company, he gave the Smiths several days’ notice and discussed the dishes at some length with the wife. When he was away he did not know what the Smiths did, but he presumed that they took as full a possession of his apartment as they dared and developed many bad habits.