The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen

by Syrie James

  Mr. Ashford did not immediately reply. I could ascertain from his agonized expression that that very question had been tormenting him. “Sophia might still marry, even without a dowry,” said he at last, “and if not, I will provide for them, somehow.”

  “That is easier said than done, my love. I know what it is to lose your home, to be penniless. It is too high a price to pay. I cannot let you do it.”

  “Jane—”

  “Isabella’s fortune can save you all. There is no other recourse. You know that I am right. I must be strong for the both of us. You must—you must marry Isabella in a fortnight.”

  A look of intense melancholy and defeat settled on his countenance, and tears started in his eyes. His voice was suffused with anger and intense regret as he said softly, “And be miserable all the rest of my days.”

  We stood in wretched silence for a long moment, each of us wiping away tears. I silently removed the ruby ring from my finger and held it out to him. He shook his head, waving his hand emphatically. “Keep it.”

  “I could not.”

  “I want you to have it. It was my promise. I will not take a promise back.”

  I replaced the ring upon my hand.

  He sighed deeply, and said, “I saw the carriage being made ready for your journey. Where do you go, in such haste? Home to Chawton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you will immerse yourself in your writing, I suppose.”

  I shook my head. “I will never write again.”

  “Promise me you do not mean that.”

  “I would find no pleasure in writing of love and courtship now. Surely the readers of the world do not need yet another droll tale of a man and woman who meet and fall in love at first sight.”

  “Then give them the opposite. Give them a man and woman who loathe each other at first sight.”

  “Loathe each other?”

  “They meet and despise each other. Then, over time, as their true natures emerge, they grow to admire each other—”

  “—as they overcome their pride—”

  “—and prejudice.” He took my hands in his; his eyes met mine, with a knowing look. “It is already written, is it not? In that trunk of yours? First Impressions, I think you said you called it?”

  “I did compose such a story, many years past, but it needs alteration and contraction, and—I have not the heart for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I now know how it must end.”

  “Do not accept that end. Play God. Give us another witty, romantic novel by Jane Austen, with the ending you choose.”

  “Jane!” Cassandra called to us from the back door, apology in her tone. “The coachman is ready. It is late, we must start.”

  “I shall be there directly.”

  Cassandra vanished into the house. I turned back to Mr. Ashford. We looked deeply into each other’s eyes; then, at the same instant, rushed into each other’s arms.

  “Are we never to see each other again?” said he.

  I felt his tears wet against my cheek. “I shall see you in my mind. And in my dreams.”

  “I shall carry you in my heart, Jane. Every day, every hour, for the rest of my life.” He turned his face to mine and kissed me intensely.

  I never wanted the kiss to end. “Good-bye, my love,” said I.

  “Good-bye,” he whispered.

  I turned and ran, my heart so filled with pain I wondered how it could possibly continue beating.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I never saw Mr. Ashford again. I never returned to Derbyshire, or visited his neighbourhood in Mayfair when I went to town. I know only that he married. I assume that his family’s financial ruin was averted by that marriage, as news of that threat never became widely known.

  Henry, Cassandra and Eliza, the only family members privy to my relationship with Mr. Ashford, shared my view that it was best not to discuss that history with any one, but rather, to behave as if it had never occurred. Any mention of my involvement with him, we realised—particularly the reason for the termination of that involvement—could only serve to bring to light the circumstances regarding the Ashfords’ financial difficulties, which might cause embarrassment to him and his family.

  As for myself, I knew I should abhor the pitying looks and comments that would be certain to arise if the details of that affair were ever to be made public. A cursory telling might put one lover or the other in an unsavory light, and could never begin to reveal the emotional truth behind it. Better, I decided, to be thought a spinster with no history of love than a tragic, foolish figure who had dared to love above her station, and lost.

  Henry accepted the credit for securing the publishing house for Sense and Sensibility, and for financing its initial printing. Alethea, who knew only that I had been briefly acquainted with the Churchill family, enquired about them once a few years later, but the topic was soon forgotten.

  I received a brief note from Mr. Ashford upon the publication of Pride and Prejudice; his warm congratulations brought tears to my eyes and an ache to my heart. I burnt the letter, though now I wish I had not. All I have left of him now are memories, and my ruby ring.

  And so the history of Mr. Ashford—my Mr. Ashford—was made to disappear. It was for the best, I thought, both for the preservation of the character and reputation of all parties involved, and for the sake of the story itself, for what value is there in a tale of heartbreak? A love story, to be told, must end happily, must it not?

  That is how I felt at the time, and for some years since.

  But I feel differently now—now that I have watched my nieces and nephews grow up around me, through all the vicissitudes of life, into fine young women and men, many of them married; now that I have lost my own true love, yet found it in my work; now that I have seen four books, my dearest children, go forth into the world, and enjoyed a greater success than I had ever dreamt of; now, though there are days when I am not well enough to walk, yet I am still always well enough to hold a pen; now, I believe there is a kind of happiness to be found in every thing in life, in all that is good and pleasing, as well as in that which is sad or poignant.

  I no longer dread the revelation of failings in myself or others. I have come to believe, in the end, that there is no shame in truth, only freedom; and that, in time, every tale has a right to be told.

  Finis

  January 2, 1817

  Editor’s Afterword

  Sense and Sensibility appeared in print in October 1811, and was very well received by critics and the public. By July 1813, every copy of the first edition had been sold, not only covering its original expenses, but earning a profit of about £140 for its author, and it went into a second printing. Encouraged by her success, in 1812 Jane Austen offered her newly revised First Impressions, now famously re-titled Pride and Prejudice, for publication. Egerton, no doubt recognizing a potential best seller, paid £110 for it, and secured the copyright for himself.

  All four of Jane Austen’s novels which were published during her lifetime, the other two being Mansfield Park and Emma, were published anonymously.

  Jane Austen became unwell in the first months of 1816 from an unspecified illness, which seemed to come and go over the next year and a half. In early June of that year, Jane and Cassandra tried the waters at the spa town of Cheltenham, hoping for a cure, but the effects, if any, were not lasting. On the eighteenth of July, 1816, she finished writing Persuasion (which she apparently intended to call The Elliots). She spent three weeks rewriting the ending, and then set it aside. She did not write again, as far as was previously known, until January, 1817, when she began her final, unfinished work, the brilliant fragment Sanditon.

  In spite of her declining health, for a writer as energetic and productive as Jane Austen (who, after moving to Chawton, wrote or rewrote six books in seven years), the silence of the last five months of 1816 has been mysterious. Why didn’t she submit Persuasion for publication? What, if anything, was she worki
ng on?

  We now have the answer. From the final date inscribed herein, we may conclude that Jane was finishing this Memoir during that time, a work she had probably devoted much of her free time to in the previous couple of years. The fact that Jane Austen was reminiscing about her own unknown love affair while writing Persuasion helps to explain certain facets of that novel, for it is considered by most critics to be her most passionately rendered story. Perhaps this is why she kept Persuasion to herself. There is an overlying sense of romanticism in the character of Anne Elliot in Persuasion, which Austen had thoroughly rebuked in Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel. The final chapters of Persuasion are extremely emotional, tense and moving. When Captain Wentworth reveals his love for Anne, some of his phraseology is an eerie echo of Mr. Ashford’s romantic confession to Jane herself on that fateful night in Henry’s drawing-room on Sloane Street.

  Jane Austen’s illness progressed. She suffered from debilitating weakness, fever, discolouration of the skin, and pain in her back so severe that she agreed to be taken to Winchester in May, 1817, to be cared for by the surgeons connected to a hospital there, who were considered as good as any in London. Cassandra nursed her devotedly, but less than two months later, Jane Austen passed away.

  Based on Jane’s description of her symptoms in her letters, current medical opinion has theorized that she may have suffered from Addison’s Disease, a loss of function of the adrenal glands; the condition can be controlled by medication today, but it eventually proves fatal.

  In her last letter, when speaking of her illness, Jane Austen remarks, “On this subject I will only say further that my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe to her, and to the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray to God to bless them more and more.”46

  We are told by her brother Henry that “she supported, during two months, all the varying pain, irksomeness, and tedium,” attendant on her decline “with more than resignation, with a truly elastic cheerfulness…She retained her faculties, her memory, her fancy, her temper, and her affections, warm, clear, and unimpaired, to the last…She expired on Friday, the eighteenth of July, 1817 in the arms of her sister.”47 She was forty-one years old.

  On the twenty-fourth of that month, Jane Austen was buried in Winchester Cathedral in the north aisle of the nave. She was the third and last person to be buried in the cathedral that year. Henry must have arranged it, since he knew the bishop from his recent examination for ordination. The long, pious inscription on her fine black marble gravestone (probably written by her brothers, who also wrote memorial poems in her honour) names her father, Reverend George Austen, as the former Rector of Steventon, and refers to her patience in dealing with her illness, but gives no mention of her greatest claim to fame, merely saying,

  “The benevolence of her heart,

  the sweetness of her temper, and

  the extraordinary endowments of her mind

  obtained the regard of all who knew her and

  the warmest love of her intimate connections.”

  The loss of this sparkling talent has been keenly felt by the world. As new generations have discovered her books, they have lamented that, as had been previously thought, only six completed manuscripts had been left behind. The discovery of Jane Austen’s Memoirs should prove of great value to historians, in providing answers to many of the questions about her life and her work, which have been the centre of so much debate.

  There is one curious note, which I must add. Jane Austen clearly wrote this Memoir several years after the events depicted therein took place. Therefore, any small inconsistencies, if any, can be attributed to an imperfect memory on the part of the author. It will be gratifying to the reader to learn that, after a careful review, it has been established that nearly every detail covered here, as to date, time, person and place, is historically accurate, and corresponds with what is known of Jane Austen’s life and whereabouts at the time. There is, however, one notable exception. There is no record of a Mr. Frederick Ashford or a Sir Thomas Ashford residing in Derbyshire at the time of writing, and no record of an estate called Pembroke Hall in that county.

  Which raises several questions.

  Who, in fact, was Mr. Ashford? The most obvious theory, based on Jane Austen’s discreet nature, is that she deliberately changed the name of her lover and the name of his estate, to protect his privacy. Only in this way could she fulfill her burning need to tell the tale, while at the same time, preserve her lover’s dignity. She knew it was safe to keep the ruby ring he’d given her, which was later found in the chest with her memoirs, as it had not been inscribed with his name.

  But another theory, which cannot be ignored, can best be summed up in the words of her young nephew James-Edward, who so solemnly asked his aunt Jane, on that golden morning at Steventon, “Do you mean to say, that if I believe in your story as you have told it, then it is as good as if it were true?”

  Author’s Note

  Despite all efforts to convince you otherwise, this book is a work of fiction. However, the elements of fiction in the novel are all firmly embedded in the known facts of Jane Austen’s life. All the dates in the story, Jane’s whereabouts at the time, and the details about her books, her habits, her personal life, family members, close friends, and places of residence, are all accurately presented.

  Some of the more specific facts in this novel include:

  Jane Austen and her family did indeed reluctantly leave her beloved Steventon upon her father’s retirement and move to Bath, where he died in 1805, leaving the women in his family in the distressing financial situation as pictured. (A heart-wrenching account of his death in Jane’s own hand is included in her personal correspondence.) Jane disliked Bath and left with “happy feelings of escape” when she, her mother, her sister, and her friend Martha moved to Southampton to live at Castle Square with her brother Frank and his family.

  Mrs. Austen was a bit of a hypochondriac, which Jane often mentioned in her letters and parodied in her fiction. She was extremely close to her sister Cassandra, who was her best friend and confidante to the end of her life.

  After writing the first drafts of First Impressions, Sense and Sensibility and Susan from 1796 to 1799, Jane’s pen (with the exception of a few minor, unfinished works) went silent (as far as we know for ten years. We know that she began revising Sense and Sensibility in 1809, after she moved to Chawton Cottage, and submitted it for publication in the fall of 1810. The poetry is all Jane Austen’s (or Mrs. Austen’s), as is the letter she wrote to Crosby on April 5, 1809; that is his actual reply.

  The Harris Bigg-Wither proposal (including Jane’s acceptance and subsequent refusal, and her hurried and mortified departure from Manydown Park) is well-known to biographers and is based entirely on fact. Harris had a pronounced stammer, and he actually served an undrinkable wine punch to a group of guests, with that same startling announcement. Jane really did post those three fictitious marriage banns in her father’s parish register. Jane traveled to Lyme Regis several times with her family and was very fond of it. She mentioned in her correspondence several visits to the ruins at Netley Abbey, which is still open to the public today.

  Frank Austen was, in fact, an expert knotter of both sailor’s knots and curtain fringe. The Marchioness of Landsdowne did indeed keep an outlandish equipage of eight little ponies of varying sizes and shades to draw her carriage. A chaplain (who happened to be the Prince Regent’s librarian, both of whom were great admirers of her work) really did write to Jane Austen, asking her to write his life story, as Mr. Morton does here; she politely declined by post.

  The information in the Editor’s Notes, Foreword and Afterword is all true, with the exception of the discovery of that trunk in the attic.

  Which brings us to the fiction:

  Mrs. Jenkins, Mr. Morton, and Charles, Maria and Isabella Churchill are invented, and in
spired by various characters in Jane Austen’s novels. We cannot be certain that Jane ever visited Derbyshire, with or without Alethea Bigg and the Squire Bigg-Wither, or if she ever had her palm read.

  Although a few lines here and there are taken from Jane’s letters or novels, all of her inner thoughts, feelings and emotions are, of course, invented, as is her relationship with Mr. Ashford.

  As far as we know, Jane Austen never actually met Sir Walter Scott; however, they were each fans of the others’ work.

  There are no early drafts of Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice, so there is no way to know how much was rewritten, or when.

  It has always been surmised that Jane’s brother Henry secured the publisher for Sense and Sensibility, but no one really knows. She apparently paid for the first publication herself, with money borrowed from Henry.

  Mary I. Jesse, PhD, Oxford University, does not exist, nor is there a Jane Austen Literary Foundation. Mary I. Jesse is an anagram of my name.

  About the Author

  SYRIE JAMES is a Jane Austen scholar and a long-time admirer of Miss Austen’s work. A member of the Writer’s Guild of America, Syrie is a screenwriter and playwright; this is her first work of historical fiction. She, her husband, and their two sons live in Los Angeles. Syrie welcomes visitors and messages at her website at www.syriejames.com.

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  By Syrie James

  THE LOST MEMOIRS OF JANE AUSTEN

  Credits

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.