Dryden House

By Robert Seamer

A human, often humorous story of 150 years of adventure, romance, human weakness and strength, war and peace worldwide and five generations of the Dryden family. Events within a still today standing Dryden House bind it into a credible narrative, beginning with an original Henry Rayfield Dryden- Dryden at Waterloo in 1815 and the French girl he married in 1816. It follows with the unhappy life of his wayward daughter Clara, her illegitimate son and her suicide... Charles, his elder son rejects the family but comes to regret it.... The other son Rayfield and his wife Fanny (whom Charles had hoped to marry) have two quarreling children, Henry and Sophia. There is tragedy at sea. Australia during the gold rush.... The Eureka Stockade, the events leading up to and following it.... Coach travel in nineteenth century America.... Southern state slavery and the American Civil War.... The battles at Fort Sumter, Bull Run and Gettysburg. After the Civil War the story leads on to the growth of the small but thriving English DRYDEN Company into DRYDENWORLDWIDE INC and its resurrection of the American cotton industry. Family love problems in England, America and South Africa.... Thomas Dryden's sexual adventure and the amusing details of his enlistment in the army.... His involvement in the tragic battle at Spion Kop during the Boer War and what followed it.... His post Boer War search for purpose in South Africa. The tragic loss of his fiancee. It ends back at Dryden House in England with the last of the Drydens - no marriage and no issue - and the strange, occult vision of Sophia, the lady on the stairs, and the secret of six golden sovereigns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: May 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781742844114

Book preview

Book one

One day in 1914 I went to Dryden House where my grandfather, Henry Thomas Dryden-Dryden¹

was dying. I was with my father, Thomas Henri Dryden who for reasons unknown had dropped the second ‘Dryden’ from his name. I opened the white five-barred gate, closed it quietly as if I were afraid of being seen by those inside the house and followed my father along the gravel path to the black and white tiled porch. Along the path we passed the wooden butt they used for watering the garden. There was no hose. Instead there was a bucket which I dipped into the butt and watched the water swirl in.

It’s very cold, I said. And I still remember the delightful shiver when I plunged my arms into the water.

Inside on the landing where a stained glass window faced the turn, my father took my hand. He was edgy. You’ve got to hold Grandpa’s hand and say goodbye, he said. But wait till I tell you.

Then I was sitting beside a bed where lay this old man wearing a white nightshirt with a bit of a frill around the neck. I remember he smelt of stale bedclothes and urine. My father helped him sit up, swung his legs off the bed and held a chamberpot between his knees, supporting him by holding onto one shoulder. Suddenly the old man stopped peeing, looked over his shoulder and said, Where’s Sophia?

It was the last time I saw my grandfather.

The next thing I remember about Dryden House was a day or so later when I was sitting at the long polished dining table nibbling at a currant bun I’d been given to keep me occupied whilst an elderly lady dressed in black talked to my father. She was my grandmother, Heloise Dryden-Dryden. She was crying. I expect it was for my grandfather.

Whilst eating my bun, wriggling my tongue around the corners of my mouth to get at the sticky crumbs and wiping my lips with the back of my hand, I looked at a faded photograph in a silver frame standing on a lace doily beside the glass dome of the Italian clock on what I may later have called a rococo eighteenth century mahogany sideboard. The photo was of a lady in old-fashioned clothing and strangely I felt that whilst I was looking at her she was looking at me.

There seemed to be a warm feeling of understanding passing between us, as if someone, something or sometime I had once loved had been lost forever. My eyes were tearful. Later as my father and I passed the bottom of the stairs I looked up at the landing and maybe saw her again, a shadow, an outline perhaps, with the light from the stained glass window behind her. My father asked me why I was crying. I said I didn’t know. Then I said, I think the lady is very sad.

Grandma will get over it, he said, as he unlatched the door.

No. I don’t mean Grandma. I mean the lady on the stairs.

*

Chapter

I was born in 1906 in Bergville in Natal, South Africa, where my father, Thomas Henri Dryden after recovering from a Boer War wound had intended to marry Hetty Davies, the daughter of a South African ex-patriot English farmer and horse breeder. Unfortunately the marriage had not taken place because the lady had been fatally injured in a horse-riding accident before the event could take place. Miraculously and with no one to help her she had survived long enough to deliver me alive, kicking and still attached. Ten minutes later I was found by my father brought to the scene by my howling.

The correspondence between my father and my grandparents in England following her death had been heated because it left them with what was called in those days an illegitimate grandson. It had settled down when my grandfather was told that this grandson - me - had been christened with the name of my great great grandfather, the man who built the second Dryden House on the site of the original when he returned from Waterloo in December 1816. His name had been Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden and although my father dropped the second ‘Dryden’ from his name, apparently to appease my grandparents I had become Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden the second. Or maybe the third. It depends on the name of the original builder.

Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden wasn’t the only problem I’d been inflicted with for as I was to discover I was born with an unusual depth of vision which caused me to see things that weren’t there. The lady on the stairs was one of them.

*

In 1906 after my mother had died her accidental death and I was born, my father Thomas Henri Dryden decided to return to England. I was too young to know why our two year stay at Dryden House which followed came to an end but believe it was because my grandfather taunted my father as being a runaway son who had failed, hadn’t repaid money he’d borrowed and came back home with his tail between his legs.

The fact is that he and I then lived with a part-time housekeeper named Mrs Something or other and a maid, Elsie, in a small villa, he wifeless and me motherless. Needless to say, whenever we visited Dryden House where my father was born its grandness overawed me.

The first Dryden House was built about 1780. As I say, it was rebuilt when my great, great grandfather returned from Waterloo in 1816 with his wife Claudia - nee Levoisier. The story is that he had been wounded in the battle and was found by this young French girl who looked after him. He had called to her for help as she was giving water to a wounded French soldier.

Attendez donc, anglais! she had replied. Je reviendrai par la bientot, cochon! Apres cet pauvre garcon ici. Il est grievement blesse et il est francais. Attendezvous, English pig!

But she had swept up the edge of her skirt from the muddy quagmire in which the battle had been decided, come to him and given him water. She had ripped off a strip from the hem of her skirt and made a sling for his arm.

It is only an arm, she’d said contemptuously, "and you must stand up by yourself. I am going to take this poor boy to my farm and if you are not too proud you can climb into my cart with him. Or if that’s not good enough, English pig, you can hang onto the backboard. Alors - let me help you...."

And Corporal Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden - the first? the second? - had found himself squatting by a badly wounded French soldier helping him drink government issue pinard from his gonne.

Henry had not known then that it would be many months before his arm would be well enough for him to go home or that this contemptuous but kindly French girl was named Claudia Levoisier or that she would take him to where she lived near Wavre in what was to become Belgium, look after him on her parents’ farm and later become his wife. Or that she would live in England and give him three children, a girl and two boys - Clara in 1819, Charles in 1822, or that in 1824 she would die giving birth to another boy - Rayfield. Or that ninety years later there would be a great great grandson also named Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden. Me, in other words.

*

The first Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden had been a musician, a maker of pianos, musical instruments and clocks that chimed and played tunes. He died in 1852.

One of the tales he left behind him and which came to me from my father, was that when he rebuilt Dryden House in 1816 he inserted three golden sovereigns behind a brick somewhere in the house. One was in memory of the builder of the first Dryden House, one for himself the rebuilder and the third for his wife Claudia who was to die in 1824 giving birth to their younger son, Rayfield. As his children were born he had inserted another sovereign. No one had known about this and when he revealed the secret on his deathbed he forgot to tell anyone which brick hid the treasure. It remained a legend.

Book two

Chapter

Clara, born in 1819, like her father was obstinate and self-willed. She went her own way. Early in 1840 at the age of twentyone she had involved herself with a local rake, George Withers. George was leader of a local socializing group of comfortably well off young people bored with the comforts of established family life and defiant against the rules set by the experience of their forefathers.

There had been an energetic day spent in the company of half a dozen exciting young people who, as the magic of the twilight enclosed them in its nocturnal mystery, slowly paired off. That evening Clara and George wandered hand in hand, body close to body along the river bank. George stopped, gently wriggled his hands and arms about Clara’s waist, pressed her to him tummy to tummy and then holding onto one of her hands lowered himself to the grass beneath the tumbling leaves of the willow tree which hid them. It was as though he had been there before.

Clara had stood behind him, the hem of her cotton dress fluttering in the barely perceptible breeze rising from the water flapping against the bank. He patted the grass inviting her to sit beside him. With nervous fingers she clutched daintily at a pinch of the voluminous dress and knelt, tucking her knees under her. She breathed more quickly.

She was twentyone when she found herself pregnant. They were in one another’s arms when, not anticipating a rejection, she giggled and whispered in his ear, George, I’m going to have a baby.

There was a brief moment of silence and then carelessly he withdrew his arms and pushed her aside.

Well, I can’t help that, my dear, can I. Why tell me?

Clara, suddenly fearful, pulled away from him, scarcely believing.

George! You know as well as I do. We will have to talk about marriage and I want that to happen before our child is born. I’ve got to tell my family and God only knows what they will say. But I know, like it or not, they will insist on - well - on us marrying. George, please....

I’m sorry, my dear. I suppose it could be something to do with me. But I don’t know, do I?

George! There’s never been anyone else. I told you....

Well, whatever.... Actually, I don’t give a damn what your family says, anyway. They’re a stick-in- the-mud gang of left behinds. Life goes on. Sorry - no marriage. I can’t anyway. I’ve already tried it once and I’m still stuck with it.

The revelation shocked Clara. Do you mean....?

Yes. I have a wife - wish I hadn’t - it costs me money.

"Who.... where is she? Do I know her? George, how can you? How can you....?"

Oh, you wouldn’t know her. Anyway, I don’t know where she is now. Our solicitor knows. He handles the money side of it.

His cool insolence, his utter self-ness and lack of concern for her shocked Clara and confronted with the helplessness and frustration of her situation she clawed at his face leaving deep red scratches as he tried to brush her off.

You beast.... You beast....

Concerned only for himself as the victim of her attack he dabbed resentfully at his bloody cheek and glared at her over his handkerchief.

Now look what you’ve done, you stupid bitch....

The next time she saw George Withers his face had changed but it was not from scratches alone. It was as though he’d been taught a lesson which had disfigured him and which he would remember all his life.

And late that year Clara was to bear her son - Samuel. Discreetly he became known as Samuel Dryden.

*

A shocked and now elderly Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden glared at his eldest son Charles across the dining room table. He was furious with anger.

"Charles, I want that fellow Withers smashed! Damn it all, man, it’s up to you. You’re eighteen years old, getting on for nineteen, six foot two and weigh twelve stone and your brother Ray’s coming on damn near as big. The pair of you go out and thrash that swine. My daughter and a guttersnipe like that? She’s your sister, isn’t she? Do your duty by her! Go out and smash his smirking face in."

Father, I did warn her. She must have known Withers’ reputation.

That’s beside the point! What she knew and what she didn’t know! What the hell! Surely you must have seen what was going on? My daughter? That worthless guttersnipe? You get out there and smash the swine!

Father, I told you - we did warn her. But you know what Clara’s like. You can’t tell her anything. She just won’t listen and anyway she’s nearly three years older than me. How could I -

The father arose from his chair. He was shaking uncontrollably and slammed a clenched fist down on the nearby sideboard. The glass dome enclosing the Italian clock rattled.

I want him thrashed! You hear me? Smash him!

And one evening two young gentlemen cornered Withers as he left the hotel. They urged the protesting lout along the pavement into the dark shadows of the arched coach entrance. One of them trembling with excitement stayed in the shadows keeping watch. And the bigger of them smashed Withers.

It was well and truly done. Finally Charles, the big man, standing over the weeping reptile stamped on his nose and ground the heel of his boot into the bleeding mouth.

And later that night Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden, secure in the knowledge that as a magistrate, a master mason and a pillar of local society his word would not be questioned, reminded his two sons that they had never left Dryden House that evening.

Chapter

Charles like his sister was of a strong and independent nature. In 1845 at the age of twentythree he fell out with his father and younger brother Rayfield - with the father because that musically inclined gentleman considered him to be both intolerant of music in any form and reckless in business; and with Rayfield, then twentyone years old, because he and Charles had fallen in love with the same girl. The girl was Fanny. She was twenty one years old like Rayfield and the daughter of an old friend of the father.

I can’t trust you, Charles, my boy, the father had said. I wish I could. You’re a gambler - courageous perhaps but too much so. Your brother may be a bit dull but he is safe. As far as young Fanny goes I should be proud to have her as a daughter-in-law. I like her. I have known her all her life. I feel for her and I want things to go right for her. I know you and Rayfield have quarrelled about her and, well, you’ve got her unsettled. It’s unfair. She’s not sure of herself. But in the end I think she will look for safety and that is what I want for her.

But it was not what Charles wanted. What he wanted was just Fanny.

Fanny and I - what we do is our own affair, Father. I love her. I always have. I know about Ray and it’s him who’s unsettling her. I think he should keep out of it. I have asked Fanny to marry me.

I know. She told me. Has she agreed?

No, not yet. She says she wants to wait. It’s Ray. I told him to leave Fanny alone.

I think she is just being wise. If she married Rayfield she would feel safe. She, Rayfield and I, have discussed it.

Charles clenched a fist, slammed it down on the sideboard and the Italian clock in its glass dome rattled once more.

Damn it all, Father, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s our business, Fanny’s and mine. You and Ray butt out. Leave Fanny alone.

The father’s eyes hardened. Nothing to do with me, Charles? I remind you that the future of the business, of Dryden House and the stability of the Dryden family are all very much to do with me. I will do what I think best and I hope Fanny will do the same. And if you raise your fist or voice to me again like that, you will regret it!

They were hasty, irrecoverable words uttered in blinding anger and unhappily it was both the father and Charles his eldest son, who in time would come to regret them.

In that year, 1845, Fanny chose Rayfield and Charles followed his independent inclinations, discussed them briefly with Matthews the family solicitor, and disappeared into the harsher world which was to shape his life. To his own later regret and that of his father he was never to see Dryden House again.

*

Late in 1845 Fanny’s first child, Sophia, was born and in the following year her son, Henry Thomas.

The arrival of Fanny into the Dryden household had angered Clara and she and Samuel had moved into one of the Dryden cottages thus estranging she and her son from the family. It was not until her father lay on his deathbed in 1852 that Clara made a belated effort to reconcile herself with him and took her then twelve year old son to see his grandfather. As always conscious of the estrangement, they approached the bedside warily, she with little shoves pushing Samuel towards him.

"Father - dear Papa - my son...." she had begun....

He had rolled his head and eyes towards them. His saliver sticky lips opened and the tip of his tongue flicked out as almost inaudibly he spluttered, "Claudia - my dear.... Where’s - where’s Ray and Fanny and - and Sophia and that little bugger Henry? And finally he splashed out, Clara and her lad - what’sis name? Silly bitch should have known better."

The effort was too much and with his mouth revoltingly open, his coated tongue flickering between blue lips, his head fell back onto the pillow. Barely mumbled as they were, the cruel words were understood by Samuel, arousing in him again the ever-present sense of inferiority towards cousins he had always known but rarely mixed with. Clara left the bedroom with a stoney face and grimly tight lips.

I think he’s on the verge, she said to the family assembled below. He’s weak but keeps on about his family. You’d all better go up and see him before it’s too late. He thinks I’m Mother and called me Claudia.

Lined up beside the bed alongside his Uncle Rayfield, his Aunt Fanny and cousins Sophia and Henry and told to touch hands with his dying grandfather, Samuel did as he was told reluctantly. He felt nothing but revulsion for this old man and deep inside him there was humiliation, a tight pain and he was crying.

The last act in the first Henry Rayfield Dryden-Dryden’s life was the struggle when he attempted to raise himself on his elbows to splutter, "Where’s that damn boy Charles got to? I want to see him."

It was the last thing he ever said and he was to die disappointed for when Charles had disappeared in 1845 a new life had taken him from Dryden House into the wider world and even Edward Matthews the solicitor he had spoken to did not know where he had gone.

Chapter

In 1845 the passage to Hobsons Bay was to take 2000 ton ‘Nelson’ nearly seven months. It began with the boarding of rain-sodden migrants at a London clock in blinding sleet and bitter December weather. Tears, regrets, anxiety and resentment were mixed with excitement as they climbed clumsily up the gangway to confront the discomforts, dangers and uncertainty of the months ahead.

The following day saw ‘Nelson’ venturing round into the Channel. Adverse winter weather prevented progress and the ship hovered off Plymouth for a week.

Urged by the insistence of a worried and hopelessly out of his depth ship’s doctor, Mikhail Simonov, son of a Russian immigrant to England and barely out of medical school, a sick family perhaps with relief, was sent ashore.

It was a wearying time for the migrants who unused to sea travel and the uncertainty of the future, suffered from crowded sleeping spaces, poor food, sea sickness and fear of infection from those who had died. Unknown at first to migrants and a matter of concern to the Captain throughout the voyage, there was trouble between the crew and six marines escorting a party of convicts bound for Van Diemansland and confined below decks.

After five weeks during which migrants endured the discomforts of an angry winter sea in the wild Bay of Biscay and an erratic mid-Atlantic, there was an eventual ten day call at Port o’Spain when water barrels were replenished and fresh green vegetables, potatoes, fruit and twelve live sheep were taken on board.

The Trinidads behind them, ‘Nelson’ headed south-east across the Equator into the immense wastes of the South Atlantic where after two weeks of fair weather she became becalmed in the virtually windless doldrums.

One man unnerved by the weather cut his wrists and completed his demise by jumping overboard. Another mentally unstable man went mad and was put in irons by order of the Captain and confined in a cell below decks where the other passengers could not hear him and where after desperate and barely heard pleadings he was left to scream and beat his head against an unyielding metal bulkhead. After a day and night of brutal neglect the screaming stopped and that night his canvas wrapped body was, with a short prayer by the Second Mate, slid overboard.

Two of the marines were lost, whilst having a jolly time in the clear blue water astern. Unfortunately for them, although ‘Nelson’ was becalmed she was under full sail to catch every breath of wind, was drifting and the two men were left behind. A boat was lowered to recover them but no trace was found.

Maybe sharks took them. Plenty of them about. Who’s to know? Confounded idiots. Some people never learn, dispassionately commented Captain Lewis as he made an entry in the log.

*

Unlike most of the migrants Charles Dryden was one of two cabin passengers, one of whom disembarked at Port o’Spain. As such, Charles sometimes joined Captain Lewis for dinner. Such privileges helped the Captain forget his bottled up loneliness and were welcomed by Charles as was the attendance of a seaman - a Welshman like Captain Lewis himself - who was brought aft to sing. On one of these occasions the Captain, after a belching bellyful of mutton and brandy and an emotional finale of Men of Harlech sung in Welsh, took advantage of his guest by unburdening himself of his worries.

I don’t like these trips down here south of the Equator, Mr Dryden. Too damn long. Migrant ships are alright when you’ve only got a month or so nipping across the Atlantic to Halifax or St Johns and back - never mind the weather and ice all over the ship and your helmsman’s fingers stuck on the wheel like frozen turds and seas like the Swiss Alps.

All the same, I like the Med, too. Ports of call every few days if you understand me, like Gib, Marseille, Valetta, Alex, Port Said - all interesting places with different sorts of people doing different things. But down here south of the Equator in a dead calm like this lot and we just drift for days and there’s no weather at all, you might say, you might as well be on the moon.

And when you’re out of the garden pond you’re up against southeast trades that want to send you northwest when you want to go east. So you dodge ‘em by going deep south and round the Cape where sure enough you hit the westerlies that’ll take you slap into the roaring forties. So you reef your topsails right across the Indian Ocean to the Bight.

And you’re loaded with a hundred and fifty migrants who don’t know their arses from their elbows. On top of that we’ve got a Russian doctor still learning to speak English and a crowd of stinking convicts who only get a wash when you herd ‘em up on deck and hose ‘em down. Poor sods. Then there’s what’s left of their grizzling escorts who’d rather be boozing themselves up in their canteen ashore. No, Mr Dryden, I don’t like it.

He sipped another brandy.

More than thirty years I’ve been at sea, Mr Dryden. Before the mast to start with like all proper sailors. Swabbing decks in bare feet and bare knees and scrubbing ‘em with holystone. Climbing rigging in eighty knot winds; hauling ropes and pulling oars with hands rough, raw and bleeding. Sleeping four hours at a time if you can get it in a f’csle stinking with sweaty bodies and foul breath. Reefing sails ninety feet up and twenty feet out on a yard arm and doing what you’re told and getting flogged if you don’t. I’ve double-reefed my sails in hurricanes, turned my backside to the wind and run like a frightened rabbit before seas you’d never believe unless you saw them.

I’ve been a ship’s commander for fifteen years. Extra Masters Certificate. North and northwest Atlantic and the Med mostly except twice to the south like this lot, and one exploring expedition to Greenland and the Arctic where I was in command of the ship but had to do what some bloody university professor told me. This is my third command down here. And it’s the first time I’ve seen my passengers jump overboard for a swim and drift away to kingdom come.

Chapter

In early Melbourne Elizabeth Street was unsurfaced, wide, muddy, cluttered and busy. Tree stumps still stuck up out of the middle of the street and were dodged by horsemen, wagons and bullock-drawn drays. Shops were protected by canvas covered fronts and the only pavements were occasional boardwalks where traders had bothered to lay planks to keep their customers’ feet out of the dirt. Women in suffocating clothing carried their shopping, pushed their prams and pushchairs and hauled their helpless children behind them, trusting to good luck they’d get across the road without losing parcel or person, lifting the dragging hems of their skirts with clutching fingers to keep them out of the mud.

Men and boys with shoulder yokes sold buckets of water they’d hauled from the Yarra at the Falls. Bullock-ohs in wideawakes and blue and red flannel shirtblouses punched slothful beasts to keep them moving.

And along the western end of Elizabeth Street families trailed behind determined men who forged ahead with one-horse, two-horse and bullock-drawn wagons; men with laden backs and wheelbarrows carrying tents to live in, stores to live on, spades, picks, tin basins and trowels to get at the gold rumoured to be lying there at Buninyong waiting to be picked up and shovelled into handmade cradles to wash away the dirt.

This was Elizabeth Street where bullock teams ten animals strong trundled laboriously through the mud, hauling their creaking wagons yard by yard towards the northwest and the bush plain which was to become fabulous Ballarat.

Men who had left their wives and children; bakers, butchers, grocers, lawyers, lords, teachers, doctors, policemen.... Tradesmen who regretted having sunk their money into shops. Their counter jumpers. Sailors who had deserted their ships. Churchmen who had deserted their flocks. Women with children who wouldn’t let themselves be left behind.... They were all there in this nineteenth century exodus and grab for rumoured fortunes in gold.

It was an exodus which was to leave newborn Melbourne - the sandy patch on the Yarra which John Batman had once declared to be suitable for a village - with a scarcity of men. There were ships without crews and shops without staff; churches without congregations; families without fathers. And in the midst of the exodus was an adventurous and now gold-hungry Charles Dryden.

He was with the ships doctor, Mikhail Simonov, who like many of Nelson’s crew had deserted the ship as tales of fortunes in gold at Buninyong greeted them at Queens Wharf. They were driving a newly purchased one-horse dray with a pulling horse at the shafts and two saddle horses hitched behind. Buninyong was their goal and gold beyond dreams - among other things beyond dreams if they’d only known it - was to be their prize.

Near Bacchus Marsh they descended into soggy ground where the water was sometimes four feet deep. Here they were bogged down, their horses in difficulties as they tried to pull around a bullock-drawn dray floundering in the morass in front of them. Angry bullock-ohs, wading up to their waists were slashing the struggling animals with merciless whips.

Charles tried to back his wagon to the shallows but the shaft horse could not free its hooves from the mud. The more it struggled the deeper it sank. Wagons and horsemen on the track behind were held up. There was foul-mouthed confusion and intolerance amongst the men whose one thought was to get to the gold ahead and who understood the effectiveness of wholehearted blasphemy and swearing. It took several hours to get ropes around the struggling beasts and to haul heavily loaded vehicles out of the swamp.

Charles and Mikhail returned to their own dray and cautiously looking for shallows made a few