Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (22 page)

I look up into his face. I shiver. He pulls off his coat and puts it around my shoulders, rubbing my back. I put my arms around his neck and hold him close, find his lips with my own and we kiss again, long and deeply. I am so light that I’m part of the air, the boundaries of my body so gossamer-thin that they dissolve into his; there is no separation between him and me. No separation between me and Jane. No Jane. No Courtney. Only complete and absolute surrender. And in one kaleidoscopic moment all the bits and pieces and memories and identities and self-images and projections and pasted-on images of who I am and who I think I am and who she is and who I think she is peel off me and fly away in a whirlwind of thousands and millions of sheafs and sheets of flat, vivid, two-dimensional images. And in that explosion of color I am everything they are and were and will be. There is no thought, no struggle, no doubt. Only surrender and an eternal laugh of unfettered joy.

And in that moment I am home.

From the Diary of Mrs. Charles Edgeworth, 7 July, 1814

M y happiness is so great, this moment so complete that I must find a way to preserve it, if only with ink on paper. I know I will return to these pages when I am old and my memory begins to fail, and I will be glad that I once took the time from my day to enshrine this miracle of happiness so that an old woman might savor it and remember better days.

If any one had suggested not one year ago that I would now sign my name as Mrs. Charles Edgeworth; any one but my mother, that is, I would have laughed in pity for that poor creature’s understanding. Yet here we are, recently returned from my dear Mary’s wedding to her most excellent Mr.

Stevens, and I glow with the thought of him, the sight of him, the thrill of writing his name and calling it my own. How could I have been so blind to his perfections?

This change of heart is not the only change, which is why I must soon put aside my pen till tomorrow.

For this, too, I wish to remember when I am old: I am become my Charles’s Scheherazade. Every night he entreats me to tell him more of the tale of the woman who is not who she seems to be, the woman who lives in a faraway city in another land, hundreds of years hence, and finds herself living the life of an Englishwoman not unlike myself.

When he first made this strange request, I could not understand what he wanted. He insisted, however, that I had told him such stories before, and I decided to humor him by saying the first thing that came into my head. But nothing came out at first, and then all at once I remembered, or thought I remembered, something. I saw myself with him one night on our wedding journey, saying the words, “I must tell you something, Charles. I must tell you something very strange.” I remembered having said those words to him, and I remembered the urgency and fear with which I first began to tell him the story of the woman. It was almost as if at first I believed the story to be real. It was like a secret I had been carrying with me, and I needed to unburden my soul to my husband. I wanted no more secrets between us, no more misunderstandings. We had had enough of those, and I wanted our marriage to be founded on honesty and trust.

But as I began telling the story, it lost its urgency within me, and I no longer felt it was a burden, or that it had happened to me, and I knew it was only a story, or at most, a dream I was just remembering at that moment. As I told it, a sense of lightness came over me. I felt free, of what I know not, but the telling of it gives me as much pleasure as it does my dear Charles.

I have not stopped telling this story since, though I have no idea whence it comes. It is like one of those memories in dreams, when you remember a whole history that has nothing to do with your waking life but which makes perfect sense in the context of the dream, a connection you discover that makes the illogical logic of the dream click into some sort of order that you couldn’t possibly articulate when awake. And you wake up and know that this dream has more meaning, more depth than the usual dreams. It stays with you as a feeling, an impression, but then it fades, and try as you might to recapture it, to remember that history, it slips away and nags at the back of your mind, wanting to be remembered but elusive nevertheless. It is like a butterfly whose wings are too fragile to be touched. When you try to put words to that feeling, they sound like nonsense, but in the dream it somehow made all the sense in the world.

I never knew I had the gift of the storyteller before, but it makes my Charles so happy that I hope this gift will be with me always. And, I must allow, it pleases me as well. I feel as if I know the heroine of my stories. I feel her whispering to me at odd times and telling me her tales. I hear her voice softly speaking as I drift off to sleep. I feel her presence when I walk in the garden.

I cannot clearly state how any of this came to be, not the stories of the woman, not the love I have for my husband. Perhaps, as my favorite heroine in my favorite novel said, It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. I certainly owe no thanks for my present happiness to my mother, whose mercenary intentions nearly worked against my seeing Charles’s true worth, at least at first. But who knows? Perhaps if I were to be absolutely honest with myself, I would say, I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley. How I laugh every time I read those words.

I only know that once I surrendered to his love, I could hardly remember ever having disliked him. Of course, it is not that I claim to have forgotten the past. It is, however, as if I stand outside myself while I peruse those recollections. It is as if I am watching someone else, but not myself.

As my favorite heroine put it, Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now. But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable.

Acknowledgments

I humbly thank my beloved teacher and dearest friend, Aurelia Haslboeck, who saw me through every step of the way, critiquing draft after draft, sharing her priceless knowledge of storytelling and character, even meeting me in England and turning my research trip into a magical experience. Aurelia, I am blessed by your generosity, patience, and love. You instilled your faith in me and made me believe it was possible. Without you, this book would not exist.

I am filled with love and gratitude for my husband, Thomas Rigler, my very own Mr. Darcy, who gave me that most elusive gift: time. Thank you for your unfailing faith in me, your vision, your patience, your insightful story notes, and for even learning how to do English country dance so that you could take me to a Regency ball.

I am tremendously grateful to Marly Rusoff, a dream of an agent whose kindness, grace, and vast knowledge of all things publishing imbue everything she does with a vision that is irresistible. I owe many thanks to Marly’s fellow agent Michael (Mihai) Radulescu, an infinitely patient man who is responsible for making the foreign-language versions of this book a reality. I am also grateful to their reader Julie Mosow, who, along with Marly, put me on the road to perfecting the book.

Just when I thought I couldn’t be more fortunate, I landed in the hands of Trena Keating, editor in chief at Dutton. Thank you, Trena, for your collaborative spirit, wise story notes, and generous nurturing of this book through every step of the process. I am also grateful to Susan Peterson Kennedy, Kathryn Court, Brian Tart, Lisa Johnson, Rachel Ekstrom, Amanda Tobier, and Lily Kosner.

I owe many thanks to a host of others. High on that list are the members of JASNA, the Jane Austen Society of North America, for giving me a warm and welcoming community of fellow Austen addicts with whom I can celebrate all things Jane. I am particularly grateful to Margery Rich, who vetted the historical details of this book and told me a thing or two about dangling modifiers. Many thanks to my fellow board members of JASNA-Southwest: Claire Bellanti, Mimi Dudley, Carla Washburn, Alice Marie White, Pat Cross, Diana Birchall, Carol Krause, Diane Erickson, Nancy Gallagher, and Jaye Scholl Bohlen for their support; and to the Pasadena Area Jane Austen Reading Group. Thanks to Keiko Parker and Pam Ottridge, co-coordinators of the Vancouver AGM; Barb Millett and Jan Fahey for their support; and Susan Forgue for sharing her database of facts about the period.

Many thanks to my early readers: Melitta Fitzer, Laura Graham, Randolf Hillebrand, Susan Lesser, Sara Levine, Cary Puma, Gabrielle Raumberger, Uta Rigler, and Deb Zeitman, whose enjoyment of the book was a boost. Included in that group is Roxanne Rogers, who taught me a valuable lesson about my very first chapter; and Felice Levine, whose belief in me is so matter-of-fact that I started to see myself in the same way. I am also grateful to Anita Artukovich, who gave me a much-needed kick in the pants; Roman Jakobi, who took my photos; Bruno Rigler, who gave Mr. Mansfield his talent for painting; Steve Solodoff, who gave me a joke; the delightful Paula Breen; and the inimitable Bill Haxworth of the Mayor’s Corps of Honourary Guides, whose walking tour of Georgian Bath I will never forget.

Table of Contents

One W hy

Two A k

Three W

Four B u

Five G r

Six I r

Seven I

Eight A

Nine W h

Ten I t

Eleven A

Twelve I

Thirteen I

Fourteen A

Fifteen “B

Sixteen T

Seventeen I

Eighteen I

Nineteen I

Twenty A

Twenty-one E

Twenty-two A

Twenty-three I

Twenty-four I

Twenty-five O

Twenty-six A

Twenty-seven A

Twenty-eight E

Twenty-nine N

Thirty A

Thirty-one M

Thirty-two “So happy you could come to

Thirty-three W

Thirty-four “C

Thirty-five W

Thirty-six A