ABSTRACT
A shortcut to the structural development of the English novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries might be provided were the reader to explore the corners of those 'houses' that dot the fictional landscape: Mansfield Park; Waverley; Wuthering Heights; Bleak House; Bladesover; even Howard's End. Naturally, the question of legacy and inheritance loom large, as if not only the future of England, but the very future of the novel as a 'house of fiction' were at stake. The prospect from some window overlooking a decaying garden, the scurry of maids whose new-found surliness could only be attributed to the shadows of the Reform Bill; the dogs beside the fireplace; the endless moving and resettling of dusty furniture; and the distant whistle of the locomotive that threatens to disrupt some ritual fete of springtime-all appear as part of the rite du passage by which the Victorian manor house became a museum of the mind. Crossways is surely no exception:
There stood the house. Absolutely empty! thought Red worth. The sound of the gate-bell he rang was like an echo to him. The gate was unlocked. He felt a return of his queer churchyard sensation when walking up the garden-path, in the shadow of the house. Here she was born: here her father had died: and this was the station of her dreams, as a girl at school near London and in Paris. Her heart was here. He
looked at the windows facing the Downs with dead eyes. The vivid idea of her was a phantom presence, and cold, assuring him that the bodily Diana was absent. (viii, 84).
