Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (25 page)

In December of 1804, on Jane Austen's twenty-ninth birthday, her great friend Madame Lefroy was killed when she fell from
her horse while riding. A month later, Jane's father died at the age of seventy-four. His death flung his widow and spinster daughters into true poverty.

The Austen brothers promised to do as much for their mother and sisters as they could, and indeed they offered some financial support. What they did not provide for the three dependent women was a home of their own. From the time Jane was twenty-nine until she was thirty-four, her itinerant household either stayed with relatives or occasionally took cheap rented lodgings in Bath or a seaside town.

Jane and Cassandra, the maiden aunts, found themselves much in demand by their brothers' families. Their presence must have been desired for affectionate reasons, but there were functional ones as well. Their brother Edward Austen Knight and his wife had eleven children and were always in need of an extra pair of hands. James, their oldest brother, was widowed and left with a three-year-old daughter, whom Cassandra and Jane doted on.

Mrs. Austen, Cassandra, and Jane remained rootless until the summer of 1809, when they at last arrived in the village of Chawton, Hampshire, not many miles from Steventon and the rectory where Jane had grown up. The cottage was part of an estate inherited by Jane's brother Edward, who had been adopted by wealthy relatives.

As the taxi made its way from Alton to Chawton, I could see why, if nothing else, the bucolic countryside might have proved
some inducement to Austen to take up her pen again. Even now, with growth and modernization, it had retained its charm.

The taxi driver let me out in front of the solid, rectangular, red-brick cottage in the middle of the village. The house sat almost on top of the road at a place where the blacktop divided--heading in one direction for Chawton Great House, Edward's home, and in the other for Winchester and points farther west.

I had arrived in the late morning on a weekday, but already the tourists and literary pilgrims had made their presence known at Jane Austen's house. The entrance was tucked on the side, adjacent to a beautiful garden that was separated from the road by a hedge, a sidewalk, and a strategically placed bench. I joined the small queue of people ducking through the low doorway into the museum.

Jane Austen's House Museum was staffed by volunteers. A small vestibule gave way to the sitting room, which still looked much as it would have appeared in Austen's day--except for the large table in the center that displayed some of the gift items available for purchase. I approached the woman seated behind the cash register in the corner, paid my entrance fee, and began to look around.

The last envelope from Mrs. Parrot had included the instruction
Open This
on the back, and I had done so in the privacy of my room in Hampstead. Her instructions had been simple, but still I had balked. This task, in some ways, would be
the most difficult of the six, but I was still determined to persuade her to give me access to the letters, so I persevered.

I squared my shoulders and slowly walked the perimeter of the sitting room, pausing to admire the pianoforte as well as the Regency costumes on dressmakers' dummies near the fireplace. I couldn't maintain my feigned interest for long, though. I stepped through the open doorway on the opposite side of the room, bypassed the small alcove that had at one time been the main entrance to the cottage, and passed through to the dining room.

A large window occupied the street side of the room, its numerous panes allowing for an expansive view. The size of the opening meant that not only did the room's occupants enjoy a great deal of light with their meals, but they would also have been among the first to see the mail coach whiz by.

A sturdy dining table and chairs took precedence in the center, and the far wall held a fireplace flanked by cabinets. But it was the window that held my interest. That, and the small table and lone chair that were drawn up next to it. These two objects were roped off, and as I stepped closer, I could see a small sign on the table.

Do not touch
.

I turned and pretended to admire the china on the dining table with its gold lozenge pattern, as well as the pleasant proportions of the room. Two elderly women entered behind me, and I loitered until they moved on, through the other side and
into the area that had once been the kitchen but was now the gift shop.

I stepped toward the table, only to stop in my tracks when I heard someone else enter the room behind me. Again, I circled the room, pretending to study its contents. More china. The wallpaper, even. Who would have thought that the little cottage would have been so popular?

Finally, a good fifteen minutes later, I had the room to myself. Quickly, I stepped toward the window and looked down.

It was just a plain little occasional table that looked like something you would pick up at a yard sale. I thought of her writing desk in the British Library and could envision the wooden box fitting perfectly on top of the table. Heart in my throat, I glanced over my shoulder. No one was coming. With one quick swipe, I reached over and ran my finger across the very edge of the wood.

I expected alarm bells to go off or some stern-faced volunteer to materialize and haul me off by the collar, but nothing of the kind happened. Instead, I felt a warm glow spread across my skin, like a life force I'd captured with my clandestine act. Gentle tears, softened by the sorrow and struggle of the past few months, slid down my cheeks. After reading the letter at Lyme, I had thought that coming to Chawton would depress me further, but there was a kind of peace here. A sense of rightness and of rest, as if a bit of Austen still lingered.

Here, at this table, Jane Austen had risen from the ruins of
her life like a phoenix from the ashes. She'd written or rewritten almost all of her novels on this tiny bit of wood, at this wonderful window overlooking a busy village street. In the room behind her, family members and servants had traipsed back and forth. No splendid isolation or idyllic solitude for her.

In spite of all the distractions, she'd created her masterpieces with nothing more than paper, pen, and ink. Virginia Woolf was famous for saying that any woman who wanted to be a writer needed to have five hundred pounds a year and a room of her own. Austen had possessed neither of those things, and yet somehow she had outshone authors with far more worldly advantages.

"Miss?" A volunteer's voice tore me from my thoughts. I quickly wiped away my tears with the back of my hand.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry. But we're closing early today."

"Early?"

She glanced at her watch. "I'm afraid so." And then she smiled kindly. "You're not the only one, you know. Happens quite often, in fact," she said, gesturing toward my tear-stained cheeks.

I returned her smile with a watery one of my own. "Thank you. That helps."

You would have thought that the near-mystical experience of the writing table would have made me rethink the course I had
set for myself on the beach at Lyme, but you would have been wrong. Jane Austen of all people would have understood that a woman had to do what a woman had to do, even if it didn't always worked out as she'd planned.

I slipped out of the cottage into the well-tended garden and spied a bench in the far corner. The grass was springy beneath my feet, the air thick with pollen and the perfume of the flowers. I fell onto the bench with a grateful sigh. I hadn't been in England that long, but at that moment, it felt like a lifetime since I'd arrived.

My hands no longer trembled when I unfolded one of the letters. Her handwriting, more familiar now, was easier to decipher. The contents, though, continued to amaze and thrill me. This time, the tone of the letter was reflective. It had been written in 1817, near the end of Austen's life, and was addressed to her sister, Cassandra, who'd been in London visiting their brother Henry.

My breath caught in my throat, the words an echo of what Mrs. Parrot had recited to me at our first meeting. What could be plainer than that? Cassandra had acted under her sister's direct request. The letters that had been made public were carefully chosen not to detract from Austen's novels. The other letters, especially the ones that had been replete with Jack this and Jack that, had disappeared from memory.

Judging from the very few I had read, no one who encountered them could ever doubt the state of Jane's heart. The Tom Lefroy letters, I realized, the ones Cassandra had made public, were a ruse, a masterful misdirection worthy of the best illusionist. And the work of the Formidables had been formidable indeed, so well had they kept their secret.

I looked up at the entrance to Chawton Cottage, at the stream of departing visitors who still lingered despite the volunteers' best efforts to disgorge them from the house. If Cassandra Austen hadn't done her sister's bidding, would Jane Austen's admirers have flocked to this remote location? Or would she have been dismissed as a thwarted spinster who continually tried to re-create her own lost love?

The truth was that a woman's romantic life could always be
used to discount her professional one. In this case, Austen must have known that her failed romance would have been used to poison the response to her novels. Circumstances, not inclination, had prevented her from marrying. She had loved and lost, and then she had chosen not to take that risk again. Instead, she had taken it on the page, which in its way, required far more courage.

I thought of her last novel,
Persuasion
, the tale of a young woman who refuses the proposal of an equally young sea captain. She is persuaded by others that she cannot be so imprudent as to overlook his lack of fortune. Eight years later, he reappears in her life, rich now from the spoils of the war but clearly still bearing a grudge from her refusal. In the course of the novel, the heroine learns to stand on her own two feet and to make her own decisions. The hero learns to forgive her for her rebuff. And, in the end, they are reunited and can build a life together.

I knew, from this last letter, that Austen came to terms with the choice she had made. She found her way in the world, and though her life had not been what her more youthful self would have dreamed, it had been unmistakably, irrevocably hers. When it came to her choices, some had been rewarded, while others had thwarted her hopes and dreams. She followed her own path to the best of her ability, and in that, she was no different from any other woman who had ever lived, or ever would.

"You've been sitting here quite a while." The familiar voice startled me. Suddenly Barry was there next to me on the bench.

"Where did you come from?" I glanced around. "How did you know I was here?"

He shrugged. "Great minds think alike, I guess. Sophie wanted to visit the Jane Austen house before we left for the Continent."

I didn't believe him. Hadn't he told me he was only in London for a few days?

"Who are you?" I scooted away from him as far as the small bench would allow. "Why are you following me?" If I'd ever thought him attractive, now I just found him creepy.

"Emma--"

"This has all been a setup, hasn't it? What were you, like, stalking me in Hampstead that first time?"

"I wouldn't say stalking. More like ... anticipating."

I stood up. "Do not follow me," I ground out between clenched teeth, but my instructions didn't do any good. He leaped up and fell into step beside me.

I walked toward the street and then stopped. It was not a good idea to leave a populated area when you were trying to ditch a crazy man.

"I can explain," Barry said, but at least he had enough sense not to grab my arm to try and stop me. "Give me three minutes."

I glanced at my watch. "I'll give you one. And it starts now."

He ran a hand through his floppy surfer-dude hair and made it stand on end. Somehow, that rooster comb made me feel instantly better. It was hard for a man to appear menacing when his hair was sticking straight up to the sky.

"I'm aware of your ... endeavor," he said at length.

"You have forty seconds left," I replied.

"I can help you." He crossed his arms over his chest. "And you can help me. I thought we could come to a mutually agreeable ... well, agreement."

"Very erudite. Especially for a Hemingway scholar," I snapped.