A Jane Austen Encounter

by Crow, Donna Fletcher

  “This is lovely,” Elizabeth said. “Gerri must see it. This will be a real contribution to her study of Jane’s spirituality. Jane must have worshiped here often.”

  “Well, yes, but not really in this church.” Elizabeth and Richard both jumped at Geraldine’s voice.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. Afraid I was following you. Muriel preempted Arthur for something she wanted him to look out for her, so I escaped.” She held out a leaflet. “Picked this up on the table at the back. There was a disastrous fire in 1871. They saved the memorial plaques, and most of the area around the altar is original. The rest of the building dates from 1872.”

  Richard, looking over her shoulder, read, “‘The communion rail is eighteenth century. It must have survived the fire, and Jane Austen will have knelt at it many times.’ Ah, that’s something for your thesis.” He walked down the center aisle between the oak pews. That was very moving. He could picture Jane kneeling there in a fine muslin gown and her best bonnet, her cupped hands extended, the priest reciting in best Prayer Book fashion, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.”

  But Gerri had not entered into the moment with him. Instead, she was pointing to the memorial tablets on either side of the wall into the chancel. “How lucky these were saved from the fire.” On the right was a marble tablet inscribed:

  In Memory of

  Cassandra Austen

  daughter of the late

  Reverend Thomas Leigh

  Rector of Harpsden Oxfordshire

  and relict of the Late

  Reverend George Austen

  Rector of Steventon Hants

  It went on to list her surviving children. On the other side of the Gothic arch was the memorial to Jane’s sister:

  In Memory of

  Cassandra Elizabeth

  Austen

  Being justified by faith we

  Have peace with God

  Through our Lord Jesus Christ

  If not Jane’s spirituality, certainly an expression of her family’s. Richard turned to suggest his thought to Gerri, but she was leading the way down the aisle. “Both Cassandras are buried in the churchyard. Shall we go see if we can find them?” Richard noted that without Muriel to cow her, Geraldine was a perfectly competent young woman.

  They found the graves standing together in a sheltered corner beside the south wall of the church under a leafy tree:

  In

  Memory of

  Cassandra Austen

  Who died the 18th Day

  of January 1827

  Aged 87 years

  And beside it:

  In

  Memory of

  Cassandra Elizabeth

  Austen

  Who died the 22nd Day

  Of March 1845

  Aged 72 Years

  “It doesn’t seem fair, does it?” Elizabeth mused. “They were such a long-lived family. Why should Jane have been the one to die so young?”

  It was unanswerable.

  Chapter 10

  THE NEXT MORNING, ELIZABETH was determined. Chawton Cottage was at the top of her agenda, no matter what Muriel Greystone might decree or anyone else might choose to do. She said as much when she and Richard sat down to breakfast in their tiny kitchen alcove. He looked up from his bowl of muesli and smiled. “I entirely agree. But I don’t think they open until 10:00. We have plenty of time for another cup of tea and toast with some of that excellent-looking marmalade I spotted in the cupboard.”

  “Oh, good.” Elizabeth got up to put the bread in the toaster. “I was afraid you’d be anxious to get right into your research.”

  “Surely seeing the home where Jane’s genius flowered counts as research. Besides,” he refilled her teacup and then his own, “I made a good start last night.” He stirred sugar in his tea with a meditative air. “I decided to go back and reread Jane’s fragment before I set about reading any completions, no matter how anxious I am to get into Edith’s version.”

  “Yes, I haven’t read the fragment for years. I did a seminar once on the Juvenilia, but never got around to teaching the unfinished works. Did you enjoy it?”

  “Hugely. I definitely don’t agree with the idea that Jane abandoned the manuscript because she found she had ‘set her characters too low.’ She does say they are poor, but they keep at least two servants and a ‘chair’ or cart, if not a fine carriage. Theirs isn’t some mean cottage, even if they do keep embarrassingly early hours for their dinner. One son is an attorney and one a surgeon, and Mr. Watson is close friends with the decidedly middle-class Mr. Edwards. This is hardly Fanny Price’s family.”

  “And who do you fancy for hero? I vaguely remember there was an eligible lord.”

  “Yes, Osborne. He’s a good candidate for hero. Emma has already declared ‘he would be handsome even though he were not a lord.’ And when he called the next day, he discovered ‘he wished to please her—a new sensation for him.’

  “Good qualities for a hero,” Elizabeth agreed. “But didn’t he have a close friend who was something of a rogue?”

  “Tom Musgrove definitely isn’t to be trusted.” Richard nodded.

  Elizabeth thought, trying to recall the characters. “I remember liking Mr. Howard, the clergyman.”

  “Ah, yes, an excellent fellow, but the problem is, Emma likes him. The story lacks conflict.”

  “Perhaps her sensible older sister—Elizabeth, was it?—can have him. I think I recall that their father liked his preaching.”

  “Yes.” Richard reached for his laptop and opened it. “I made some notes that I thought Gerri might find useful, since Mr. Watson’s thoughts are surely Jane’s sentiments.”

  “That was nice of you. But it seems you’re doing most of Gerri’s research for her.”

  Richard shrugged as he opened the file. “I’m happy to give her a hand. She does seem rather at a loss as how to approach her subject.

  “Ah, here we are ‘He reads extremely well, with great propriety, and in a very impressive manner, and at the same time without any theatrical grimace or violence. I own I do not like much action in the pulpit; I do not like the studied air and artificial inflections of voice which your very popular and most admired preachers generally have. A simple delivery is much better calculated to inspire devotion, and shows a much better taste. Mr. Howard read like a scholar and a gentleman.’”

  “I couldn’t agree more. I dislike flamboyance in the pulpit.” Elizabeth took a sip of tea. “Mmm, I quite like Mr. Howard myself. Oh, I do wish Jane had finished the book herself.”

  “Yes, I’ll admit it whets my appetite to look for Edith’s papers.”

  Elizabeth’s mind was still on Edith’s “find” as she and Richard walked up the gravel lane leading toward the Old Winchester road. She had read somewhere that at the time Jane lived here, Chawton had enough families to offer something of a social life for the Austen ladies. Had it been perhaps fifty families? By the time Edith was here—did she live here or was she just here for research? Anyway—a hundred years later, how much bigger would it have been? And which of the houses might she have stayed in? If any box of papers were to be found moldering in some garret, how could one possible set out to decide which garret even in so small a village as Chawton?

  At least it appeared that a great number of the original houses were still here. As they drew into the center of the village, the road was lined with charming cottages, most of them thatched. As much as Elizabeth liked thatch, she hoped none of these had been Edith’s abode. Thatch was notorious for being damp. Anything stored under a thatched roof was unlikely to have survived a further hundred years since Edith’s time. But then—depressing thought—it wouldn’t still be there, would it? After all, Edith would have taken her papers off to study them. Could there still be anything to look for?

  She wa
s about to comment on this to Richard when she became aware of a careful footstep behind her. A footstep that she suddenly realized had been following for most of their walk. Had she heard it on the gravel way leaving Chawton House? Had it been with them as they walked along the narrow path beside the rail fence, or only since they reached the pavement by the low flint and brick wall? If Muriel was coming after them to drag Richard back to some project of hers, Elizabeth was determined to stand up to her.

  She whirled, her mouth set in a firm line, sharp words forming in her mind. But no words came out. There was no one there. Hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  “Richard, did you hear anything?”

  “What? Cars? Cows? Children?” He swept his arm around a landscape full of gentle country sounds.

  “No, I mean behind us. I was sure we were being followed. I thought it was Muriel, but there’s no one there.”

  Richard smiled and pointed to a curious sheep in the wide green field just on the other side of the wall and looked at her quizzically. She shook her head. “Maybe him?” He indicated a young man walking in the opposite direction. The sun glinted off his auburn hair as he strode along.

  Elizabeth considered. Could he have ducked behind a bush when she turned around, then reversed direction? “Possibly. Where did he come from? We didn’t meet him.”

  “From across the field? From one of the cottages?” Richard nodded toward the redbrick cottage surrounded by a garden across the street from them. “Or from behind that hedge?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “I get your point. I’m being silly again.” She looked toward Jane Austen’s House Museum just up the street from them where visitors were gathering. The wonder was that there weren’t more people behind them. “Besides, why would anybody want to follow us?” She forced a smile. It was just that the footsteps had such a stealthy sound, at least as she pulled them back in her memory. But why? This was a public path, leading to a museum that drew people from all over the world. Hardly any need for stealth.

  Richard purchased their tickets and they began in the drawing room. Elizabeth admired the small spinet piano in the corner where Jane was said to practice almost every morning before she fixed her family’s breakfast. Elizabeth went on imagining Jane’s day as she turned to the small pedestal table by the window, now holding only a quill pen in a tiny ink well. She smiled at the tact of the museum curators who had placed a small posy of lavender tied with a satin ribbon on the cane-bottomed chair. Much nicer than a sign saying Do not sit. But who would? It was much to better to stand back and picture Jane sitting here after breakfast while her mother gardened and Cassandra and their friend Martha Lloyd saw to the housekeeping duties.

  Elizabeth longed to run her hand over the table. With a sense of standing on holy ground, she imagined Jane revising the books the world now knew as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and then, buoyed by their publication, going on to write Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion all on the little squares of paper she could tuck under a blotter should she be taken unawares. Although Jane’s famous reference to her “little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour” was a reference to her delicate subject matter, Elizabeth smiled as she thought of the author sitting there writing on small pieces of paper like etching tiny squares of ivory.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Imagine,” she said to Richard. “Writing all that by hand at this tiny table, working just in the mornings, since they spent the afternoons entertaining visitors and the evenings reading aloud after dinner.”

  “Yes,” Richard agreed. “It’s an amazing output for the brief eight years she had left to her. She must have had it all stored in her mind, and when the peace of a settled life gave her opportunity, it just poured out.”

  Elizabeth gazed out the elegant Regency window Edward Knight had installed so his mother and sisters could look out over their garden. She started to comment on the beauty of the scene and how much Jane must have enjoyed the peaceful view, but she drew back with a sharp intake of breath. “Richard! It’s him. That man who was walking away from us on the path.”

  “Are you sure it’s the same person? How can you tell?”

  Elizabeth considered. How could she tell? How many sturdy young men must there be in the area wearing a blue shirt and jeans? And yet, surely the sun glinted the same red-gold highlight from his rather long hair as he moved on to examine another flower bed. “How did he get here, when he was going in the other direction?”

  Richard shrugged. “He forgot something he had to turn back for? He was meeting someone?”

  “He seems to be alone now,” Elizabeth said half under her breath, then moved on to the dining parlour. Here was the fireplace where Jane prepared the family tea and toast each morning and a square mahogany table like the one where they sat to eat. A sign by the door gave a calculation of Jane’s earnings from her writing: £40,000 in today’s terms. “That would be more than $60,000. I’m so pleased she saw that much return. It must have been enormously gratifying to her, after not having so much as a farthing of her own before. Such a shame she couldn’t have enjoyed it longer.”

  But Richard had moved on into the vestibule. “Elizabeth, come see,” He indicted an open drawer in a small chest. Elizabeth peered in.

  “Oh, my amber cross!” She fingered the one at her neck. She had worn it almost every day since Richard gave it to her their first evening in Bath. “And Cassandra’s. How lovely. The very ones Charles sent his sisters ‘from the prize money he was awarded for the capture of a French vessel during the Napoleonic Wars,’” she read from the accompanying sign.

  Richard stopped to peruse the letters in the display case. “Look,” he said. “Original letters. In Jane’s own hand.”

  Elizabeth looked at the small, neat handwriting, but didn’t wait to make out the words. She would rather see the bedrooms above. She was almost at the top of the wooden stairs when a creak on a step below made her turn. Did a figure pull back around the corner? It was hard to tell because two ladies were ascending just behind her. No reason to suppose one of them hadn’t stepped on a loose tread.

  Elizabeth was admiring the bowed canopy bed like the one Jane and Cassandra would have shared, imagining how cozy it would have been with the ivory draperies closed like a tent, when Richard joined her. “I longed for a bed like this when I was a child,” she said. The wide, bare floorboards, however, were less appealing. “But I would want a fuzzy rug when I got out of bed on a cold morning with bare feet.”

  “And think how cold it would have been washing on a winter morning.” Richard indicated the adjoining closet furnished with a bowl and pitcher for the ladies’ ablutions.

  Elizabeth was about to move on when she paused at the framed letter by the door. This one she did take time to read, with a lump in her throat. Cassandra’s letter to her niece Fanny, written two days after Jane’s death:

  Winchester Sunday

  My dearest Fanny,—Doubly dear to me now for her dear sake whom we have lost . . .

  Jane seemed so close to her here, almost as if she might come in at any moment, perhaps returned from one of the shopping trips to nearby Alton which she enjoyed so much.

  They finished the upstairs and went back down to admire the kitchen with its fine inglenook fireplace. From there, they stepped out to what would have been the kitchen garden, with Mrs. Austen’s vegetables and the potatoes she was so fond of. Elizabeth turned to go straight across the courtyard to the bakehouse and well, but Richard turned to the right. “I think I’ll just look in at the learning centre first.”

  Elizabeth went on, pausing at the well to read that it was dug deep into the chalk, so it would have provided pure, cold water. Jane’s donkey carriage was housed in the bakehouse beside the large brick oven. The donkey cart, which Jane drove herself, must have been the smart car of its day—economical transportation for two people. Elizabeth could just picture Jane driving down the leafy country la
ne to Alton with Cassandra beside her. What a charming picture the Austen sisters must have made.

  Elizabeth turned at the sound of a footstep on the brick floor behind her, expecting to see Richard. She took a sharp step backwards when she saw the red-haired man she had noticed earlier staring at her. Elizabeth’s instinct was to look around for a weapon to defend herself. One of the pans from the oven? Then she glimpsed several visitors milling around the courtyard and recalled what a public place this was. Far better a direct approach.

  She advanced toward him in two strides. “May I help you with something? You’ve been following us all morning. What do you want?”

  Elizabeth almost laughed when he blushed. “S—sorry. I’m not following you.” He paused. “Well, that is, I am, but I mean . . .”

  “What do you want?” Elizabeth repeated.

  “Um, an interview.”

  “An interview?” Elizabeth almost choked with surprise. “Why? What about?”

  “I’m a reporter. Well, freelance, really. But I heard—um, at the library—that you and your husband are researchers. From America.” For a moment, he seemed to warm to his topic. “I wanted to do an article about your research.” He paused. “But I didn’t want to disturb you . . .” He ground to a halt.

  Elizabeth’s reaction was to laugh, but the poor fellow already seemed uneasy enough. “Oh, I suppose you want to know about that letter Richard found in Bath? Well, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong person. You want my husband—he’s the researcher. I’m on holiday.”

  “Oh.” He looked around as if expecting Richard to appear.

  “He’ll be along in a minute. I don’t suppose he’ll mind talking to you. What’s your name?”

  “Brian. Brian Woodhouse.” He looked uncertain as to whether or not he should offer to shake hands.

  Elizabeth didn’t offer hers. Instead, she commented, “Woodhouse. Like Emma.” She laughed. “No relation, I suppose?”

  “Um, no, I don’t think so.”

  Elizabeth was trying to figure out why anyone who knew that little about Jane Austen would be interested in doing an article on a subject related to her, but didn’t have time to inquire as Richard entered the bakehouse.