The end of the house of Alard — Inside the Classic

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In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Kaye-Smith, Sheila, 1887-1956 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2022 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Families -- England -- Fiction; Aristocracy (Social class) -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social conditions -- 20th century -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 125,849

Reading time 548 min

Text sections 19

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #68503

Sheila Kaye-Smith's novel traces the decline of the Alard family through the eyes of Jenny Alard, whose encounters with yeoman farmer Godfrey reveal a contrast between crumbling aristocratic tradition and the solidity of the land. The opening establishes deep historical roots in Winchelsea, while later excerpts show Jenny's internal conflict and her brother Peter's defense of class duty.

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File: pg68503

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days just after the Great Storm, when the sea swallowed up the first parish of St. Thomas à Becket, and King Edward laid out a new town on the hoke above Bukenie. The Alards then were powerful on the marsh, rivals of De Icklesham and fighters of the Abbot of Fécamps. They were ship-owners, too, and sent out to sea _St. Peter_, _Nostre Dame_ and _La Nave Dieu_. Stephen Alard held half a knight’s fee in the manors of Stonelink, Broomhill and Coghurst, while William Alard lost thirty sailors, thirty sergeants-at-arms, and anchors and ropes, in Gascony.

In the fifteenth century the family had begun to dwindle—its power was passing into the hands of the Oxenbridges, who, when the heiress of the main line married an Oxenbridge, adopted the Alard arms, the lion within a border charged with scallop shells. Thus the trunk ended, but a branch of the William Alards had settled early in the sixteenth century at Conster Manor, near the village of Leasan, about eight miles from Winchelsea. Their shield was argent, three bars gules, on a canton azure a leopard’s head or.

Peter Alard re-built Conster in Queen Elizabeth’s day, making it what it is now, a stone house with three hipped gables and a huge red sprawl of roof. It stands on the hill between Brede Eye and Horns Cross, looking down into the valley of the river Tillingham, with Doucegrove Farm, Glasseye Farm and Starvecrow Farm standing against the woods beyond.

The Alards became baronets under Charles the First, for the Stephen Alard of that day was a gentleman of the bedchamber, and melted down the Alard plate in the King’s lost cause. Cromwell deprived the family of their lands, but they came back at the Restoration, slightly Frenchified and intermarried with the Papist. They were nearly in trouble again when Dutch William was King, for Gervase Alard, a son in orders, became a non-juror and was expelled from the family living of Leasan, though a charge of sedition brought against him collapsed from lack of substance.

Hitherto, though ancient and honourable, the Alards had never been rich, but during the eighteenth century, successful dealings with the East India Company brought them wealth. It was then that they began to buy land. They were no longer content to look across the stream at Doucegrove, Glasseye and Starvecrow, in the hands of yeomen, but one by one these farms must needs become part of their estate. They also bought all the fine woodlands of the Furnace, the farms of Winterland and Ellenwhorne at the Ewhurst end of the Tillingham valley, and Barline, Float and Dinglesden on the marshes towards Rye. They were now big landowners, but their land-hunger was still unsatisfied—Sir William, the Victorian baronet, bought grazings as far away as Stonelink, so that when his son John succeeded him the Alards of Conster owned most of the land between Rye and Ewhurst, the Kent Ditch and the Brede river.

John Alard was about thirty years old when he began to reign. He had spent most of his grown-up life in London-the London of gas and crinolines, Disraeli and Nellie Farren, Tattersalls and Caves of Harmony. He had passed for a buck in Victorian society, with its corruption hidden under outward decorum, its romance smothered under ugly riches in stuffy drawing-rooms. But when the call came to him he valiantly settled down. In Grosvenor Square they spoke of him behind their fans as a young man who had sown his wild oats and was now an eligible husband for the innocent Lucy Kenyon with her sloping shoulders and vacant eyes. He married her as his duty and begat sons and daughters.

He also bought more land, and under him the Alard estates crept over the Brede River and up Snailham hill towards Guestling Thorn. But that was only at the beginning of his squireship. One or two investments turned out badly, and he was forced to a standstill. Then came the bad days of the landowners. Lower and lower dropped the price of land and the price of wheat, hop-substitutes became an electioneering cry in the Rye division of Sussex and the noble gardens by the river Tillingham went fallow. Then came Lloyd George’s Land Act—the rush to the market, the impossibility of sale. Finally the European war of 1914 swept away the little of the Alard substance that was left. They found themselves in possession of a huge ramshackle estate, heavily mortgaged, crushingly taxed.

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The novel begins not with a character but with a chronicle: the Alards are introduced through their tombs in Winchelsea church, their Crusader ancestor, and their gradual decline from maritime power to landed gentry. The first Gervase Alard, Admiral of the Cinque Ports, lies cross-legged; later Alards married into the Oxenbridges, and a branch settled at Conster Manor, rebuilt in Elizabeth's day. This opening establishes a layered sense of history—stone, heraldry, and the marsh landscape—that frames the family's present struggles.

When the narrative shifts to Jenny Alard, she is visiting Fourhouses Farm with her brother Peter. The farm's owner, Godfrey, is a yeoman farmer whose stock and solidity contrast with the Alards' crumbling estate. Jenny's immediate attraction to Godfrey is entangled with her perception of the farm as a refuge from her family's decay. The excerpts show her grappling with a choice between love and loyalty, while Peter voices the Squire's burden: 'We can't shelve our responsibilities.'

The Weight of Ancestry

The opening pages read like a manorial roll: names, dates, heraldic blazons, and land transactions. Kaye-Smith lists ships—St. Peter, Nostre Dame, La Nave Dieu—and records that William Alard lost thirty sailors in Gascony. This is not mere background; it establishes a family whose identity is inseparable from its feudal past. The prose itself is measured, almost genealogical, until the narrative narrows to Conster Manor, 'a stone house with three hipped gables and a huge red sprawl of roof.'

The effect is to make the reader aware that every present action carries the weight of centuries. When Peter later speaks of 'a tradition as old as theirs,' the opening has already given that tradition texture. The Alards are not simply a family; they are a historical artifact, and their end is felt as the close of a long chronicle.

Jenny's Divided Loyalties

Jenny Alard's perspective dominates the middle excerpts. At Fourhouses, she is struck by Godfrey's look—'her heart was violently turned to the man from his surroundings.' The farm's 'beauties and uglinesses' become dim; she sees only the man she must love. Yet her attraction is complicated by class consciousness. She reflects that the Godfreys' life is 'sound in fundamentals,' built on rock, while Alard is 'the house built on the sand, the sand of a crumbled and obsolete tradition.'

This metaphor recurs: the Alard house is both literal estate and symbolic structure. Jenny's internal debate is not merely romantic but existential. She envies the Godfreys' freedom from 'keeping up appearances,' yet Peter's appeal to duty checks her. The excerpts leave her decision unresolved, but the tension between personal desire and familial obligation is sharply drawn.

Peter's Defense of the Squirearchy

Peter Alard, Jenny's brother, speaks for the old order. Walking back from Fourhouses, he praises the yeoman farmer but insists that the Alards cannot 'shelve our responsibilities.' He acknowledges that the Godfreys may be happier, but argues that 'we can't ever be like them.' His language is pragmatic—he discusses taxation, labour costs, and the shift to livestock—but his core belief is in class duty.

Peter's voice is not nostalgic; it is anxious. He notes that 'Government supports' the farmer but 'won't do a thing for us.' The Squire is being squeezed by modernity. Yet he remains proud: 'Personally I'm proud of it.' This pride, however, is a burden. The excerpts suggest that Peter's commitment to tradition may be as much a trap as a virtue, and that the 'end of the house of Alard' is not merely economic but psychological.

Landscape as Character

The Sussex landscape is more than setting; it is a force that shapes the characters' lives. Conster Manor looks 'down into the valley of the river Tillingham,' with farms named Doucegrove, Glasseye, and Starvecrow standing 'against the woods beyond.' The marsh, the river, the hoke above Bukenie—these are not decorative details but markers of a world where land is identity.

Jenny's perception of Fourhouses merges the farm's physical details with her emotional turmoil: 'the outhouses and stables, tools and stock, were only a part of this bewildered turning of herself.' The land becomes an extension of her inner state. Similarly, Peter's discussion of drainage and cattle breeding is not mere agricultural talk; it is a measure of viability. The novel's title, The End of the House of Alard, is as much about the land as about the family—the house is rooted in the soil, and its end is a change in the landscape itself.

The excerpts offer a focused entry into the novel's central conflict: the collision between inherited duty and personal desire, set against a vividly realized Sussex landscape. Readers attentive to the opening's historical density will find that every later scene—Jenny's attraction to Godfrey, Peter's defense of class, the farm's solidity—echoes the weight of ancestry. The novel does not resolve these tensions quickly; instead, it invites the reader to watch a family's slow dissolution, one conversation, one glance, one acre at a time.

There’s something about watching a family lose its footing that stays with you, isn’t there? The Alards made me think of that feeling, how the ground shifts under old certainties. It reminded me, quietly, of another story about fortunes tied to what feels unshakable—this one: Caleb Conover, Railroader — Background and Themes. I keep turning it over, the way such tales linger long after the last page.