by Lori Smith
My sister-in-law, who is wise and witty, tells me that women are supposed to have stomachs. Jane probably had a stomach and couldn't have cared. But then they were (and I think the British still are) much more satisfied with normal sorts of bodies than we are. I don't think Jane would have wanted to be the most beautiful person in the room. I imagine she was incredibly content with her own little blend of beauty and intelligence and wit.
She does not give her characters detailed physical descriptions. Our introduction to Lizzy is simply that “she is not half so handsome as Jane.”4 In the first sentence of Emma,we learn that she is “handsome, clever, and rich.”5 Enough to get an instant impression and all we need to know for the moment, but details of hair or face or clothes are clearly unimportant. More carefully drawn is Persuasions Anne Elliot, who “had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early.” In spite of her “delicate features and mild dark eyes,” she is “faded and thin.”6With just a few words we know what Anne was like. Jane tells us little but everything we need. She didn't labor over this. We get to know her characters mostly through what they say, their friendships, their place in society, the choices they make.
Characters actually—as in moral character, not fictional creations— are described with much more detail in Austen's writing than faces ever are. Long before we know of Elinor's “remarkably pretty figure”7 and that “there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness”8 in Marianne's eyes, we learn of Elinors “strength of understanding and coolness of judgment” and that Marianne is “everything but prudent.” She has resolved never to learn to govern her emotions and is “sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.”9
We can't fully know our own character. I think this is one of our greatest weaknesses—something Jane certainly understood. Like our physical appearances, some of us have no doubt of being handsome when in fact we are plain; some who are beautiful think they are ugly. I have no luck making myself out. I'm perversely prone to err on both sides—at once to think myself incredibly good and to be plunged into despair for never having a completely unselfish feeling, for not being genuinely loving, to have all my faults overwhelm me at once. We are human; we have blind spots. There are egregious flaws of which we are completely unaware. And mostly our friends and family are loathe to say anything about them. I wonder if we really even want them to. It's possible to live all our lives without understanding who we really are, what we are really like.
I am a strange mixture of incredible inner strength and great insecurity, of a desire to laugh and an intense and often overly serious view of the world, of occasional bravery and great, awkward shyness. As a child I learned to be sweet, which perhaps is good in a child, but it's something that developed into an act. I learned to appear nice, to say and do the right thing. I was too afraid of voicing my own opinion, of being real. I could analyze this in detail; multiple reasons and multiple and complex streams of thought and behavior converge here. But as Jane would say, it was affected behavior. As the apostle Paul would say, I have often been “a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1), worthless without genuine love.
What I am today I would guess is something like my physical appearance—a fat-little-skinny-girl kind of soul that looks more than acceptable in most lights, but doesn't tolerate minute inspection. (And if God were to pull back the covers to show me myself in the stark light of absolute Truth, I'm sure I would be overwhelmed with hopelessness. Praise God he does not let us see ourselves as we truly are, at least not all at once.) I hope that my friends and family—and gentle proddings from God—will move me in the right direction, that I will, in spite of my hopeless pride, be open to some kind of reproof, that I'll be able to discern which corrections to heed and what of my own self-condemnation is completely unnecessary. I'm tired of being human, with all the necessary imperfections that implies. If nothing else, I've learned to laugh at my own occasional ridiculousness, which gives me hope.
One of my favorite characters in Jane's life is her charming and favorite brother, Henry—tall, good-looking Henry, who loved everything he did and simultaneously always wanted to be doing something else, who spent time in the militia and contemplated importing wine from France and was part owner of a bank until it went bankrupt. He finally ended up, enthusiastic as always, in the church, disappointed that the bishop who ordained him had no desire to read the New Testament text in the original Greek.
You can't tell the story of Henry without talking about Eliza, the Austens’ beautiful, romantic French cousin, whom he eventually married. Eliza was actually born in India, where her mother had successfully gone in search of a husband. But she spent some of her growing-up years in France, married a French army officer who liked to be known as a count—but doesn't seem to have actually been a count10—and visited Versailles, where she adored the “Feathers, ribbon & diamonds” in Marie Antoinette's [May 16, 1780] hair and found her ungloved hands “without exception the whitest &C most beautiful I ever beheld.”11
You can imagine the stories she told when she came back to visit the Austens in their country rectory, speaking French like a native and being generally flirtatious. Unfortunately, the dear count (it's unclear how much Eliza really loved him) lost his life to the guillotine in the Revolution (February 1794).12 Eliza returned to England, and it took a great deal of persuasion for Henry, ten years her junior, to talk her out of the charms of being single and able to flirt with every man in the room.13 James had been interested as well, but Henry won, and James went on to Mary Lloyd, who could never really love Eliza knowing that James had wanted her once.
Eliza died young of what may have been breast cancer, and Henry, who did not have “a Mind for affliction’14 and was not of a disposition to wallow in grief, went back to being the charming man-about-town, even dancing at the royal ball at Burlington House in 1814 celebrating peace with France, where the Prince Regent, the Czar of Russia, and the King of Prussia were in attendance. “Oh! what a Henry,” Jane said.15
Henry was the one who couldn't bear for Jane's authorship to remain a secret. It seems that whenever the books were mentioned— and they were popular even then—he couldn't help but mention, against her wishes, that his sister was the author. He handled all of her business negotiations with publishers.
He lived here in Covent Garden for a while (he was always moving), but my hopes for the place have all been dashed. There's too much junk and higher-end chain stores. I sit in a wine bar with my backpack and notebook, drinking bubbly water, thinking one should probably never bring a backpack into a wine bar. A couple guys look my way, and as always, I can't determine if they're meditating on my beauty or my overall strangeness.
Henry reminds me of my own brother. When he walks into a roomful of people he doesn't know, he is sure to win them over. As a child, I thought his gregariousness was strength, my own shyness weakness. He told me a few years ago that this was just the particular way his own insecurities worked themselves out. But there's something there—an ease and self-assurance—that I've always wanted desperately, at least as soon as I realized they were missing. I'm sure Henry had them as well. I think that is so much of what makes someone good-looking to us—not physical beauty, but a confidence and force of personality that often has nothing to do with looks.
I went to a candlelight concert in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields—Bach and Handel with a chamber orchestra, gorgeous and comforting. Music like that fills me up and holds on to me, reassuring me.
And then I came home to Margaret and the news, which I cannot watch anymore. It is mostly about terrorism, but the last several nights they've been covering the famine in Niger, following one small boy. I don't know how old he is, maybe eighteen months, but he lies on the ground with a head that looks far too big for his tiny body. His stomach is distended; his face is crusty. There are flies. He's dying, and they are there to film it.
I am sick of seeing death and being unable to do anything about it. I
can't bear to just send my twenty dollars to some massive aid organization. I want to do something meaningful.
“They took turns in those days, you know,” Dom Nicholas had said. We were having coffee—Anselm, Susan, Nicholas, and I before Susan and I headed out to Chawton. He was talking about how people used to take care of one another in Austen's day, how they made soup for the poor. “Everyone knew when it was their turn, when it was their week. You see, they understood their responsibility. They took care of each other. And if you were going to skimp, you didn't put meat in the soup, but the Austens always used meat. They took their responsibility seriously.”
I know Jane made shirts for the poor, people she knew who lived in Steventon. I know she bought them things they needed—shifts and stockings and shawls. I feel both isolated from poverty—I do not know what my neighbors need or if they need anything—and surrounded by it because now we know about all the hunger and death in the world, and everyone is my neighbor.
I want to make soup.
Thirteen
An A Road in Kent
Is there a felicity in the world superior to this:
—MARIANNE, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Do you know the scene in the old movie It Happened One Night where a glamorous Claudette Colbert shows a little leg for the sake of stopping traffic since Clark Gable is having no luck hitchhiking? If you can imagine a situation almost entirely the opposite, you'll have a pretty good idea of my predicament this afternoon. I was standing on the narrow shoulder of an A road in Kent (whoever knew that A roads are the busiest roads in the countryside?), drenched from rain, my hair in strings around my face, any trace of makeup gone, my hiking shoes soaked, my pants wet four inches deep. Only I don't know how to hitchhike the cool way, so I looked like a soaked crazy woman having an incredibly bad hair day sticking out my thumb in the manner of a librarian and occasionally trying to wave cars down. No one stopped.
One of my most frequent prayers of late is that I will just not be an idiot. And I don't mean the socially awkward, always saying the wrong things at the wrong time kind of idiot, though perhaps I should pray for that more as I have some talent in that area. I mean the kind of proud, ridiculous idiot who thinks highest of herself and as a result whose life adds up to very little in the end. But this was idiocy of a whole other kind. I often question God's direct involvement in my life as a result of prayer, but I begged him with everything in me to please do something to get me off the side of that A road in Kent.
It's been an ugly day, both for me and the weather. I wore my green cropped sweatpants and dark red tank, which would have been okay, except that I had to wear my hiking shoes, which threw the whole outfit off, and then it was so cold that I had to put on my red fleece, which clashed with everything, and it was raining off and on, so I kept putting on and taking off my rain jacket, which clashed with the fleece. I had planned to try Winchester today, but they were doing work on the tracks in that direction this morning. Instead, Margaret drove me to the Bromley station, and I was able to get a train directly to Canterbury.
The town center is small, the streets narrow. The sky was gray and spitting wet. I found my way from the train station to the cathedral, just after the morning service had started. To me it felt oppressive and lifeless—maybe because it was so gray and cold—and the sermon, from the little attention I had for it, seemed to be rubbish, full of weak analogies with little strength and conviction.
By 1:00 I was choking on a dry ham omelet in a great little café above the tourist center, and at 1:25 I caught the train to Chilham from the West train station on the other side of town. The lady at the tourist center had never heard of Godmersham. Very bad beginning,I thought. Then when she did look up the bus schedule, she said the buses didn't run on Sunday, so I should take the train to Chilham and get a cab from there, which would be much cheaper.
I sat in the café drinking my watered-down instant decaf, feeling like an ugly, conspicuous, backpack-toting tourist. I felt like I couldn't do anything right and had far too many un-chic accoutrements. I wondered if I should even try to find Godmersham, what kind of challenges I would find, if it would even be worth the effort. So I made a conscious decision to choose adventure. And that is when the fun began.
Chilham is the smallest train station I have seen yet. There were no cabs, not even a shack, no phone numbers posted on a sign anywhere. Everyone who got off the train with me disappeared. I started to walk in what seemed like the direction of town. I passed a tea shop and thought perhaps I should stop there to call a cab, but just beyond it was a signpost that said Godmersham. I remembered that Chilham was mentioned in my walking guidebook, so I looked it up there at the side of the road and found it was only two or three miles, but the writer recommended a back way through fields, and I couldn't figure that out. Better to stick to the road. It had stopped raining, although it was spitting a little. There was even a marked walking path beside the road, so I set out. What's two or three miles on a walking path by a country road in spitting rain to reach a village no one has ever heard of? I could hear Marianne from the pages of Sense and Sensibility saying, “It's not going to rain.” And anyway, it's nothing I mind at all.
The walking trail quickly veered off to the left, and I decided to follow the road instead. It started to rain again, harder, until it was raining so hard it seemed to be coming straight through my Gore-Tex jacket, under which I was sweating from the exertion. I tried to keep my hood up to keep my head dry, but it cut off my vision and eventually just annoyed me, so I took it down and let my head get soaked. The shoulder was gradually disappearing.
Fifteen minutes in, I knew it was a mistake. But I thought, How much farther can it be? Fifteen more minutes and the shoulder was completely gone, so I was walking in the road and jumping up on the bank between trees when I heard cars coming. Every car that went by—and they were going very fast—splashed me with water. The road curved so much that I thought how easy it would be for a car to whip around a corner and hit me dead-on. I was officially terrified. But now I was thirty minutes into the walk, and I know I can easily walk a mile in fifteen minutes, so I thought it really couldn't be that much farther.
I slipped on the wet grass and landed on nettles of some kind. All I could think was, What if I had slipped into the road? I passed a simple, expensive-looking house with handcrafted bronze gates. Feeling incredibly foolish, I rang the intercom, but the phone on the other end just rang and rang and no one picked up.
So I made it to a little clearing and stuck out my thumb and prayed very, very hard. A cabby went by without stopping. Loads of people alone or with families, completely immune to my crazy, drenched, desperate hand waving. And then the best cabby, William, went by in one direction, saw my pitiful thumb, turned around, and came back. Cue the trumpet voluntary. God saved me from my own stupidity.
“You're awfully wet,” William said. He drove me to Godmersham, first to the church and then to the big house, turned off his meter and sat and waited for me for twenty minutes while I walked through the fields to see the house. He wasn't creepy at all, which a girl might worry about in this situation. He had short dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a solid build. Nothing about him was messy.
Godmersham was glorious. It had stopped raining, and I walked into the fields under a heavy gray sky. You can't get into the house (at least I couldn't find contact information for anyone), which is now a professional school of some kind. So I took the walking path through the sheep pasture, next to the cows, and up a hill into a cornfield to look down on everything. Its simple and grand, gorgeous red brick, classical lines with two rows of windows and two wings on either end and maybe more in the back. The house sits in the valley of the Stour, broad hills rising behind and in front of it. When Jane came to visit, they made a point of hiking (or walking as they called it) in the afternoons. I wish I had hours to explore.
Jane and Cassandra spent a great deal of time here, often separately, helping with household duties around th
e birth of the latest child. There were eleven children before Elizabeth died at thirty-five.1 Cassandra seems to have been Elizabeth's favorite. No doubt Cassandra was more compliant, Jane's wit more disconcerting. Jane's niece Anna said, “A little talent went a long way with the Goodneston Bridgeses [Elizabeth's family] of that period; & much must have gone a long way too far.”2And Jane, who loved to laugh at everyone, herself included, no doubt found material enough at Godmersham.
I got back in the cab and William said, “You're still awfully wet,” and drove me all the way back to Canterbury. We had a little bond going, William and I. When he found out about the Austen connection, he wanted to take me out to Goodnestone as well (which was the Bridges’ home, Edward's in-laws), but I couldn't afford another adventure. It felt wrong somehow though to just say good-bye to him there in the tourist district of Canterbury, feeling like he had saved my life.
At 5:09 p.m. in Faversham, on the train back, the sun came out. My feet were still soaked.
Margaret has made me promise never to hitchhike again. She laughed at me, of course (which I have no problem with because I am laughing at myself anyway), and has refused my help with dinner, sitting me on the couch with tea and biscuits while she makes quiche. I will miss her tomorrow when I leave. The view of Godmersham from the fields was worth everything. And I am full of quick-hearted joy, with a much more palpable sense of the hand of God in my life, which perhaps sounds ridiculous in light of the days events, but I'm thankful most of all that my own stupidity does not negate his goodness.