Time to Be in Earnest

by P. D. James

  With it I have been re-reading The Duke’s Children, prompted by Dinah’s excellent preface to the Penguin edition. I agree with her assessment of Frank Tregear, an admirable young man, no doubt, but one definitely on the make, whose head always rules his heart. We feel none of the sympathy for him that we do for poor Burgo Fitzgerald. I love the Barchester saga and these are books I invariably take with me on long journeys but, for me, The Duke’s Children is the least successful. Of the young people only Lady Mabel Grex engages my sympathy. Lady Mary Palliser is obstinate and charmless, Lord Silverbridge and his brother no more than amiable nonentities. I found the pert prettiness of the egregiously popular and beautiful American heiress Isabel Boncassen more irritating than appealing. It is obvious that the author was in love with his creation. If Lord Silverbridge had had any sense he would have married Mabel Grex, but the young men in Trollope, seldom worthy of the women who love them, can only be happy with wives who are content to treat them as lords and masters and regard them as young gods. Even the Duke, one of Trollope’s most successful and remarkable characters, loses my sympathy when he treats Mrs. Finn with ungentlemanly callousness and injustice.

  I had planned today to go to Hatfield to have lunch with Clare and visit Lady Salisbury’s garden, which is only open on Mondays. However, I had a telephone call from Kay Harper at Swavesey to say that Doris was dying and would like to see me. I caught the 10:15 train from King’s Cross, which should have taken just over fifty minutes, but was delayed and diverted because of a defective rail. Doris was semi-conscious but was able to recognize me and when I bent over to kiss her and say “God bless you,” she was able to whisper “And you too.” She was on one of those merciful continual morphine lines into a vein and was in no pain, although the constant hoarse gurgling in her throat was distressing to hear. But she is fortunate in being nursed to the end at home with Kay’s loving care and with nurses and other helpers whom she knows coming in regularly instead of a continual change of agency staff which so many hospital patients have to face. Despite the growth of the hospice movement, which has led the way in the care of the dying, there are still far too many patients who endure unnecessary suffering at the end, or who die among strangers. Doris is dying among those who love her, without pain and, I think, without fear. This is the most any of us can hope for.

  TUESDAY, 14TH JULY

  I went to the Royal Garden Party, arriving at the Hyde Park Corner gate. This meant I avoided the queues and had a quiet, enjoyable walk through the gardens. The lawn seemed more crowded this year than ever and, being reluctant to join the scrum, I didn’t set eyes on any Royal from beginning to end. The Garden Party is wonderful for people-watching, which is its main attraction. I did manage to procure some iced coffee and sandwiches before leaving early. I know that protocol decrees that no one leaves before royalty on occasions when they are present, but I think this can hardly apply to the annual Garden Parties.

  Then to the Conservative ward party, held in the Cardinal Vaughan School because of the uncertain weather, where I discovered that I was billed as guest of honour and was expected to make a short speech. This I did and returned home in time to see the first instalment of ITV’s A Certain Justice. The adaptation is skilful and most of the acting admirable, particularly Penny Downie, who plays Venetia Aldridge. It was possible not only to hear what the actors were saying, but to know who the characters were. Admittedly, as author of the book, I had a head start in this, but I get increasingly tired of TV series when one has to wait twenty minutes to sort out the characters and their relationships to each other. If tonight’s standard is maintained, this should be a successful adaptation.

  Today is Jane’s birthday. We don’t celebrate birthdays with much enthusiasm in the family except those which mark rites of passage, but I expect she will have the usual quiet and enjoyable dinner with her family. I shall hand over my gift when I am next in Oxford.

  Inevitably the anniversary brings back its memories. Before she was born I was living with Clare at White Hall in Chigwell Row, Essex. In June, near the expected birth date, Clare was collected by my parents-in-law and taken to Barry, South Wales, where my father-in-law was stationed, and I went to stay with Dr. Lindsey Batten and his family at Lyndhurst Road in Hampstead. Richard Batten had been a contemporary of Connor at Cambridge and at medical school. I had booked in at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in Goldhawk Road, a decision which, given the distance from Essex, now seems to me somewhat perverse.

  While I was at Lyndhurst Road, the V-1 bombardment began. I can remember gazing with incredulity at my first sight of a flying bomb, which looked more like an aeronautical aberration than a weapon of war. It was shaped like a plump fish, with two stubby wings like fins, and carried at the tail a superstructure from which spurted great tongues of fire. It flew low and the noise was incredibly loud, something between a rattle and a drone. The V-1 was the first unmanned terror weapon to hit Britain and was much dreaded, partly because there was a depersonalized malice about those pilotless rockets, but chiefly because they were totally indiscriminate. Worst of all was the moment when the engine cut out. The silence then seemed absolute. It felt as if the whole of London was holding its breath. And then, after a few seconds, would come the explosion. I greeted it always with a mixture of relief and shame: relief that it hadn’t fallen on me, and shame that, in a sense, I had benefited from someone else’s tragedy.

  Then labour began, and as I went into Queen Charlotte’s the bombardment was almost continuous. Looking back, the morale in the eight-bedded ward was remarkably high. Windows were kept wide open to prevent flying glass. We had our babies in cots by the side of the bed, and when the bombardment began, were instructed to place one of our pillows over the head of the cot. There was, I remember, a shortage of linen and the ward sister seemed as concerned about this as she was about the constant sound of falling bombs and the cacophony above. She would raid the linen cupboard and then secrete fresh sheets and pillowcases in our beds. From time to time a sister from a neighbouring ward would descend on us, turning over pillows and rummaging beneath the blankets before bearing off her trophies in triumph.

  Night time was the most difficult to endure with equanimity. All the babies were moved to the basement and our beds were wheeled out into a corridor and placed against the walls. It was felt that this would give us the best chance of survival if the hospital received a direct hit. I can remember lying there silently weeping with that unfocused misery which occasionally follows childbirth and which is made worse by the feeling that one ought to be experiencing great happiness and maternal fulfilment, not this debilitating and uncontrollable sadness. My great fear was that the hospital would indeed receive a direct hit and that in the confusion and carnage I would be unable to find my baby. Where exactly had they put the babies? What if the stairs to the basement were blocked? How in the darkness and choked with dust would I find the right cot? What if I were injured and couldn’t get to the basement? I can remember praying: “O Lord, if you will let me out of here alive with my baby I’ll never complain again.” It is a prayer which, with uncomfortable persistence, has returned throughout the years to haunt me.

  After I was discharged, I went with Jane to join my parents-in-law in Barry. I can remember with what joyous exultation I saw the sea for the first time in years. I stayed for long enough to get strong and then returned to White Hall. Unfortunately this coincided with the bombardment by V-2 rockets. I found them far less frightening than the V-1s, partly because there was no warning. The explosive power was much greater, as was the noise of the explosion, but the fact that I could hear it meant that I had survived. There was a system whereby the siren announced an imminent danger warning, but this, although useful with the V-1s, was ineffective with the V-2S. There seemed no point in trying to take any preventative measures and we all stayed in our beds until the night when a rocket fell at the edge of Hainault Forest. By then we were all so used to the sound of explosives that we woke momentarily and th
en turned again to sleep. When daylight broke, I felt an unaccustomed coolness in the room and discovered that the windows had been blown out and that Jane was lying in her cot surrounded by shards of glass, any of which could have killed her. Gathering her up and going to the bathroom, I looked up through the nonexistent ceiling to the sky. Repairs were carried out with remarkable speed during air raids, but after that night we all moved to the cellar.

  The authoritarian and largely misguided baby-rearing doctrines of Dr. Truby King were still in vogue, and there were dire warnings about the deplorable results if babies were not fed strictly at four-hourly intervals. But I could hardly let Jane cry at night when the cellar was occupied by the humped bodies of three overworked doctors, the elderly cook, the unmarried housemaid with her small daughter, and Clare. Accordingly Jane had only to whimper to be latched on to a not particularly productive breast, where at least she got comfort if not much sustenance. The cellar door was left ajar for Mrs. Price-Watt’s elegant pedigree cat who, blessed with an unpronounceable name, was called Poo-Poo. She would hunt at night, bringing her prey to eat on our mattresses so that periods of wakefulness would coincide with the crunching of seemingly innumerable bones and Mrs. Price-Watts’s plaintive protests.

  And then came the morning when Mrs. Price-Watts rushed into my part of the house to announce with a mixture of excitement and awe that the invasion of Europe had started. Her eldest son was serving in the RAMC with the airborne forces, so that it was a time of anxiety as well as of huge relief and of expectation. And as the invading armies advanced, so the launch sites of the V-1s and V-2S were overrun and this most disagreeable of bombardments gradually ceased. The children have asked me why I didn’t leave Essex and sometimes I wonder myself. But it wouldn’t have been easy. Accommodation in safe areas was difficult to find. But I think the main reason was that after four years of war, those of us living in or near London had got used to staying put.

  Over twenty years later, when Clare and her husband were in Huntsville, Alabama, I met and walked in the woods with Germans who had been sending off the V-1 rockets and who had been recruited by the Americans at the end of the war. Even more ironic was to see a V-2 on display at the local museum, and bearing the label: “The first intercontinental rocket of the free world.” British visitors at least managed to get the wording changed.

  SATURDAY, 18TH JULY

  Today I gave the address at the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society, which was held, as it usually is, in the grounds of Chawton House. I was met at Alton station by Louise Ross and her husband Charles, who kindly drove me to the venue. I had previously met Louise when I spoke at Dartington and it was she who found me my treasured first edition of Emma.

  The Jane Austen Society, which was founded in 1940 by Dorothy Darnell, then with the prime object of preserving Chawton Cottage, is one of the liveliest of literary societies. The grounds of nearby Chawton House are an appropriate place for the Annual General Meeting since the house was the property of Edward Austen, who was adopted by his wealthy kinsmen, the Knights, and who inherited Chawton with other properties in 1812. Until recently it was still owned by a member of the family but had fallen into disrepair and there was considerable anxiety, locally and among Austen devotees, about its future. At one time it was thought the grounds might become a golf course. The house has now been bought by a wealthy American lady who is restoring it and proposes to use it to house her library of the books of pre-Austen female novelists. It will thus become a study and conference centre and I hope will occasionally also be opened to the general public.

  Accompanied by the architect working on the restoration, I was able to see round the house before I gave my talk. Like most Elizabethan manors it strikes one as very dark, with low ceilings, leaded windows and wood-lined walls. The date, 1588, on one of the immense fireplaces identifies the age of the original building. The work of restoration is proving fascinating since the panellings are of different dates and some of the most recent work, once removed, reveals original sixteenth-century wallpaper. Even when restored the house will still be dark and it is hard to imagine these tortuous corridors echoing to the laughter of Jane Austen’s numerous nephews and nieces, including the children of Edward Knight, whose wife Mary died at his main property, Godmersham, after giving birth to their eleventh child. I wonder if Jane Austen, hearing the news, remembered the tart sentence in a letter she wrote to her niece Fanny after hearing that a neighbour had given birth to her eighteenth child: “I would recommend to her and Mr. Dee the simple regimen of separate rooms.”

  Mary wasn’t the only one of Jane Austen’s sisters-in-law to die in childbirth and I have no doubt that it was her fear of—indeed repulsion at—the idea of possible yearly pregnancies and the risk of early death which played a part in her refusal of the proposal of Harris Bigg-Wither, which she at first accepted and then rejected next day. I don’t think she would have been deterred by the lack of romantic love. If the match were sensible and advantageous and she felt a genuine liking and respect, that would probably have been enough. Perhaps the liking and respect were not sufficiently strong or, more likely, she knew the marriage would be fatal to her art. She seldom wrote or spoke of pregnant women without sympathy, and sometimes a note of disgust. Her books were her children and they were sufficient.

  We were fortunate in the weather. A very large marquee had been erected to accommodate about 700 people, some of them from the North American society. I am told the Society always has a sunny summer day for its AGM, but this year hovering dark clouds made it look as if the record was to be broken. There was, in fact, a brief shower at the beginning of my speech, but it was no more than a slight inconvenience. The talk—included here as the Appendix (this page)—was well received, largely, I think, because this audience could catch all the allusions and no doubt could themselves add to the number of clues I had discovered.

  After the talk I had a very busy signing session and then went with Louise to join the congregation for Evensong at St. Nicholas, Chawton. It was so crowded that we had to stand. The service, largely traditional Prayer Book, included part of a prayer composed by Jane Austen and the hymn “Oh, for a Closer Walk with God” by her favourite poet, Cowper. Afterwards we visited the two restored gravestones of Jane Austen’s mother and her sister Cassandra. I know we should be grateful to Cassandra, who did much while they lived together with their mother at Chawton Cottage to ensure her sister’s privacy, to relieve her of some household duties and to give her time for writing, but it is hard to be sympathetic to someone who obviously settled into somewhat forbidding spinsterhood at an early age and who destroyed so many of her sister’s letters. I suppose she would argue that the eyes of posterity had no right to see them, but it is still a regret. It’s possible that some of them dealt with matters of family money, nearly always controversial, but on which a family like the Austens would particularly wish to be reticent. It was fortunate for Jane Austen that her brother Edward was given away for adoption and subsequently became rich, since it enabled him to provide a home at Chawton Cottage for his sisters and mother, but I suspect he could have provided one earlier and endowed it more generously.

  I first read Jane Austen when I was eight or nine years old and attended the Sunday school attached to Ludford church. There was a small cupboard in the hall with a number of books which we children could borrow. Some, like The Wide, Wide World, A Peep Behind the Scenes and Jessica’s First Prayer were of depressing piety, but I also discovered there Little Women and Pride and Prejudice. It seems curious now that the latter should appeal to a child so young, but I was hungry for books and this was one I could both read and to an extent understand, although the irony must have eluded me. Jane Austen has remained my favourite author.

  It seems extraordinary, if indeed it is true, that she was once seen as a gently born, pure-minded spinster, dutiful daughter, compliant sister, affectionate aunt. We don’t need the letters to show us a different Jane. There is passion in t
he novels, even if it is too subtle to be recognized by Charlotte Brontë. And there was passion, too, in her life, if only the passion of what the critic D.W. Harding described as “regulated hatred.” To me it is far more like controlled resentment. We have to resist the temptation to foist on to her a twentieth-century sensibility; she was hardly deprived by domesticity of a university education or a profession, but she must have known that, however brilliant or successful her brothers, it was she who had genius. And yet, until she could earn from her novels, she was totally without power to control her own life. If her father decided to move to Bath, then Jane moved, neither consulted nor considered. Every penny she had to spend came from her father or a brother. Even Cassandra had the income from the £1,000 left to her by her fiancé. Jane had nothing. No wonder she said, once the money started coming in, that it was the pewter as well as the fame which she relished.

  We drove past the cottage on our way to Alton Station. It looked spruce, as if it had been recently repointed, and the little village was full of cars. When I first visited Chawton there was a great quietness about the place and it was possible to believe that it looked much as it had in Jane Austen’s time. With the bypass the road is certainly quiet and outwardly the changes are small, but I suspect that the television series have led to a large increase in visitors (there were nearly 50,000 last year) so that the cottage will begin to acquire that carefully preserved look of all monuments.