A Jane Austen Encounter (15 page)

It was all just possible—by a rather wild stretch of the imagination, he supposed. But surely there could be no even vaguely plausible explanation for Muriel shoving her friend off Box Hill and then claiming she had been pushed.

They drove on down a narrow country lane, high hedgerow on their right, an open green field on their left. A mile or so further on, Arthur turned sharply into an unpaved lane almost hidden between hedgerows and stopped. “I hope you won’t be too disappointed. You do know the old rectory was pulled down by Edward Knight after he built a new house for his son William, who succeeded Jane’s brother James to the living here, don’t you?”

“I had read that, yes,” Richard replied. “But of course, being here is really what makes it all come alive.”

“I’m afraid all there is to see of Jane’s birthplace is this field.” Arthur looked around. “There really isn’t any place for me to leave the car. You can get out and walk around if you want to, but I’ll need to stay here in case someone comes.”

“That’s fine.” Claire opened her door and hopped out. “Come on. I’ve been here lots of times.”

Richard and Elizabeth followed her up the lane. She stopped at a low spot in the hedge. “See those iron railings? That’s where the well was in the backyard of the rectory, so you can get a pretty good idea how it was situated.”

Richard held his hand out to Elizabeth to support her on the rough ground as they approached as close as they could to the hedge. The first thing that struck Richard was the intense green—the bright emerald field, the darker shade of hedges and bushes, the gigantic tree standing sentinel over it all.

“That’s an amazing tree.” Elizabeth voiced what Richard was thinking.

“Yes,” Claire said. “A lime. It was planted in 1813 by James, who had succeeded his father here when George Austen retired. It helps mark the site of the old rectory.”

Richard visualized the sketches he had seen of the simple white house with its perfectly balanced rows of windows, two on either side of the door on the ground floor, five directly above, and three dormers cut into the roof. He remembered reading that it was the bedrooms behind those dormers that allowed the Austens their comfortable lifestyle because they made it possible for George Austen to house three or four boys in his home and thereby run a profitable school.

“What is the fence for?” Elizabeth pointed to a wide circle of wooden poles linked with wire, keeping out the herd of black-and-white Holstein cows that wandered in the rest of the meadow.

“That must be where the archeological dig was,” Claire said. “I wanted to get down here when it was going on, but didn’t manage it.”

“Archeological dig?” Richard asked.

“Yes, very exciting, really. Luckily, the field has never been plowed, so everything is still there. They found bricks that confirmed the location of the foundation, thousands of nails that will tell them what kinds of beams were used, hundreds of shards of pottery, storage jars, wine glass stems, clay pipes dating from before the Austens’ time here. My favorite, though, are the bits of plates in the blue willow pattern. They date absolutely from Jane’s time and show that the Austens were following the fashion in china.

“Here.” Claire dug in her bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. “I printed this off for you from the computer in the library. I thought it might help you get a sense of the place.”

“Thank you.” Richard took the paper. “Oh, memories of the house from Jane’s niece Catherine.” His interest perked up. Ah, the niece who first completed
The Watsons
.

“Read it out,” Elizabeth said.

“Sure.” He held the paper up. “‘The parsonage consisted of three rooms in front on the ground floor, the best parlour, the common parlour, and the kitchen; behind, there were Mr. Austen’s study, the back kitchen, and the stairs; above them were seven bedrooms and three attics. The rooms were low pitched but not otherwise bad, and compared with the usual style of such buildings, it might be considered a very good house.’”

“Thank you.” Elizabeth said. “I can just see it now. Are they going to do more with the site?”

“All the finds are being studied and catalogued. I think they hope to display everything in a nearby museum, but it will take time,” Claire replied. “The whole idea is to help visitors visualize it all when they’re standing here. And then, you have to realize what an isolated village this was. The roads were impassable in winter. And yet Jane had a wide social life.” She turned back toward the car. “Are you ready to move on?”

Richard agreed, but he was thinking what an inexplicable thing genius was. The Austens were a brilliant, highly literate family who read and discussed widely, and many family members wrote. And yet Jane’s unique brilliance was as if lightning had struck this remote green meadow. Here, in this isolated spot, she had written all of her Juvenilia, and early versions of
Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility,
and
Pride and Prejudice.
He was still shaking his head as Arthur drove on up the narrow, hedged dirt lane that Jane and her family must have walked countless times to St. Nicholas Church.

At the top of the lane, they left the near tunnel created by the tall hedgerows and saw before them the simple church with its lime mortar peeling in places to reveal the flints underneath. “This is very much the church as Jane would have known it,” Claire said. “The Victorians put the steeple on the tower and added the stained-glass windows, but this is where Jane was baptized and worshiped for more than half of her life.”

“That must be modern.” Elizabeth pointed to the weathercock topping the spire. “A quill pen.”

“Very fitting,” Richard agreed.

Arthur parked in the wide gravel sweep in front of the church and they walked up the curving path. Richard reached to open the heavy dark oak door, then stepped back in surprise as it was pushed forward by a white-haired lady in a red-and-white striped apron and Wellington boots. “Oh, hullo. Didn’t mean to startle you. I just stopped by to do the flowers.” She held out her hand. “I’m Joyce.”

Richard returned her greeting and introduced the others.

“Oh, from the States, are you? Welcome. We do get a lot of visitors from your part of the world. Would you like me to show you around?”

“Thank you. That would be very kind, if we’re not interrupting your work.”

“No, not at all, Happy to. Shall we start with the Saxon cross over here?”

Joyce turned to lead the way, but Arthur hung back. “Um, I say,” he spoke to Richard in just above a whisper. “You seem to be in very good hands here. Would you mind terribly if Claire and I . . .” Arthur reddened.

“Ah.” A wide smile split Richard’s face. “Take a tea break?”

Arthur grinned. “Exactly.”

“Of course. No problem.” He looked at the numerous memorial plaques and artifacts in the small sanctuary. “Don’t hurry. There should be plenty to keep us busy here for a good hour or more.”

Arthur and Claire disappeared, and Richard walked on to the front of the church where Elizabeth was examining the stone pillar next to the pulpit. “. . . shaft of a Saxon cross thought to date from the ninth century,” Joyce was saying. “It’s believed to have stood on this site before the church was built.”

Elizabeth turned to study the intricate painting on the arched wall in front of the chancel. The lower part was covered in a delicate flower-and-leaf motif leading up to a mural of the risen Christ with angels just below the ceiling. “The painting is beautiful.”

Richard was just going to say that the scrolling leaves and tiny flowers looked like a William Morris design when Joyce explained, “The painting was done in Victorian times after repairs to the roof, but this bit of decoration here,” she indicated a section of a nearby pillar painted with red scrolling vines and small flowers, “is from the thirteenth century, although it’s unlikely Jane would have known it because it was probably covered over in her day.”

She turned to the side walls. “Now all the memorials in the church, bar one, are connected in some way with Jane.” Their guide pointed to two large marble slabs in the center aisle. “The Digweeds here, as you may know, were great friends of the Austens.”

“Yes.” Elizabeth pointed to the stone bearing the names of James Digweed and Mary Lyford, his wife. “Jane wrote to Cassandra that she danced with James and was sadly disappointed when he missed a dinner party she expected him to attend.”

“That’s right.” Joyce seemed duly impressed with Elizabeth’s knowledge. “And Jane teased Cassandra that James was in love with her. But Jane’s Perrot cousins thought that the haste of Mr. Austen’s decision to leave Steventon on his retirement was to prevent a growing attachment between Jane and one of the Digweed sons.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Doesn’t it seem more likely that would have been a reason
not
to move? After all, one of the reasons suggested for the move to Bath was to find husbands for Jane and Cassandra—a likely scenario, since that’s where Mr. And Mrs. Austen had met.”

While the two ladies discussed the endlessly fascinating possibilities of Jane’s theoretical romances, Richard stepped up into the chancel to read the memorial tablets there to various Austens, Knights and Leighs. He paused longest before the simple pedimented rectangle of white marble to

MARY

WIDOW OF THE REV JAMES AUSTEN

LATE RECTOR OF THIS PARISH

died 3rd AUGUST 1843

AGED 72,

AND WAS BURIED HERE, IN THE

ADJOINING CHURCHYARD

HER SON AND DAUGHTER WITH SORROW

INSCRIBE THIS STONE

TO THE HONOURED MEMORY OF

THEIR GOOD AND AFFECTIONATE MOTHER

WHOSE LOSS THEY WILL LONG LAMENT

“AS IN ADAM ALL DIE; EVEN SO IN

CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE”

Richard pulled the small notebook from his pocket and looked back. Yes, as he thought, Martha Lloyd—well, Austen as she was by then—had died in January of that same year, so there was time for Martha’s notes on Jane’s books, if there were any, to have passed to her sister Mary. And then from her? He considered. Surely to Mary’s son, James Edward, who wrote the first memoir of his aunt Jane. The trail must continue through the woman buried in the quiet green churchyard beyond these walls.

He rejoined the ladies in the sanctuary. Elizabeth was on her knees examining a tiny fireplace in the north wall. “We only uncovered that in 1988,” Joyce was saying. “It seemed like a fun place to display artifacts.”

Richard’s first thought was,
What a wonderful place to hide a small document like a letter
. Then he smiled at himself when he saw a pair of pattens like the Austen ladies would have worn walking to church on a muddy lane, a teacup, an ancient roofing tile . . . It was a showcase, not a hiding place. He shook his head. He was becoming more imaginative than Elizabeth.

“The protective screen was funded by a chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America.” Joyce led to the back of the church. “As was this lovely font cover. That was for the millennium. And our bells.” She pointed up toward the belfry. “We have three medieval bells. They were restored and rehung with the generous assistance of JASNA— which was founded by Joan Austen-Leigh, a direct descendant of James Edward Austen-Leigh living in Canada.” She smiled and moved through the tiny church porch back out into the warmth of the sun and the scent of fresh-mown grass.

Their guide pointed to an enormous dark green tree to the right. “That yew is thought to be a thousand years old. See the hole in its trunk? In Jane’s time, the church key was kept there—as it continued to be until recently. Unfortunately, the key was stolen. A replica has been made, but it’s no longer kept in the tree.”

She led on to the back of the churchyard and pointed out the various Austen and Knight graves. Richard moved to observe the large flat stone with patches of moss on it covering the grave of James and Mary Austen. He wished he could ask Mary what she did with her sister’s papers. If she ever had them. If they ever existed.

Had they been passed on through the family? Were they now residing in the care of the current descendants? Perhaps in Canada? Is that what Edith meant by having “found” a cache of papers—simply that a cousin had shown her their treasures?

Then Richard became aware of Elizabeth standing frozen before another marker: Mary Agnes, Cecilia, and Augusta, three young daughters of William and Mary Knight who all died in June of 1848.

Richard slipped his arm around Elizabeth, whose gaze moved on to the stone for another Knight daughter, Emily, died 1832, three days old. He knew she was thinking of their own miscarried infants and the little boy who had barely lived three hours. But there were no words.

“I’m so sorry.” Joyce approached them, holding out a small pamphlet. “I do hate to leave you before your friend returns, but I’m afraid I have another appointment. I popped back into the church and got this for you. You might like to read it while you wait.”

Richard took the booklet and thanked their hostess for her very gracious tour.

“It was my pleasure. I’m so sorry to have to leave you. Are you certain you’ll be all right? The church is open, if you want to wait in there.”

Richard assured her that they would be fine and thanked her again. “Do you want to go in?” he asked Elizabeth.

She shook her head. “No. I’m fine. I just . . . You know—” She paused. “Let’s sit in the shade of that marvelous tree and you can read to me.”

When they were seated, with Elizabeth leaning comfortably against the ancient trunk, Richard looked at the pamphlet. “Oh, it’s a cutting from the family record written by James Edward’s son William and grandson Richard Arthur. Their description of the church.”

“Good. Read.” Elizabeth closed her eyes.

Richard obeyed. “Steventon Church ‘might have appeared mean and uninteresting to an ordinary observer; but the adept in church architecture would have known that it must have beauty in the very narrow Early English windows, as well as in the general proportions of its little chancel; while its solitary position, far from the hum of the village . . . has in it something solemn and appropriate to the last resting-place of the silent dead.’”