Jane Austen (15 page)

Gooseberry Pye and Gooseberry pudding very much. Is that the

same Chaffinch's nest we saw before we went away? And pray will

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you send me another printed letter when you write to Aunt Jane again, if you like it."

In the meantime, the object for which they had come to Bath was not achieved. Edward remained very unwell, and they could only hope that he would begin to feel the benefit of the cure after he had got home. He became infected with the family's shopping fervor and bought a pair of black carriage horses for sixty guineas. Jane had enjoyed Bath immensely, but as the time drew near which had been fixed for their all going back to Steventon, she became anxious to get home again. They had been to a firework display in Sydney

Gardens, and it had been most effective and delighful, and they were going to the play on Saturday, but that she hoped would be the last of their engagements, as she did not want their return to be

postponed. She said: "It is rather impertinent to suggest any household care to a housekeeper, but I just venture to say that the coffee-mill will be wanted every day while Edward is at Steventon, as he always drinks coffee for breakfast."

And so on June 27th the party set out for Steventon once more. They had said goodbye to the Leigh Perrots, and as the carriages drew past Paragon, that somber and sunless dwelling, the spot least dear to Jane from situation and association of any that she knew in Bath, she had not an idea in her head of how she was next to hear of its inmates.

Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Perrot were not strikingly agreeable to the world in general, and perhaps the pleasantest part of their character was their great devotion to each other. So great was it that, reserved as they were, it was very generally known. The other circumstance affecting them that was public property was that Mr. Leigh Perrot was a man of considerable wealth.

In the beautiful colonnade at the junction of Bath Street

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and Stall Street was a milliner's shop which had once been the property of William and Mary Smith, and which, on their becoming bankrupt, was now in the hands of Mrs. Smith's sister, Miss

Elizabeth Gregory. Part of the profits were drawn by Miss Gregory, and part were paid over to the trustees of the creditors, one of whom, William Gye, was ostensibly a printer, but who was suspected to have less reputable means of adding to his income.

Mrs. Leigh Perrot on the early afternoon of August 8th bought some black lace at the shop, and was walking past the shop a little later, accompanied by her husband and with the parcel still under her arm, when one of the assistants ran out and charged her with having a card of stolen lace in the parcel as well as what she had paid for.

Mrs. Leigh Perrot replied that if she had another card, the shopman had wrapped it up by mistake. The parcel was undone there and then, and sure enough disclosed a second card of lace. The shopman now appeared, and he and his assistant loudly charged Mrs. Leigh Perrot with theft. Mr. Leigh Perrot took his wife away, saying that if anyone wished to speak to him, it was known where he was to be found; two days later it appeared that the shopman had lodged a formal accusation with the magistrates, and the magistrates, who knew the Leigh Perrots personally, had no course open to them but to commit Mrs. Leigh Perrot for trial at the next Assizes. These would be held at Taunton in March, and in the meantime she was lodged in Ilchester Gaol.

The situation today would be sufficiently startling, but in 1799 it was a hundred times worse. None of her friends remotely supposed her to be guilty; but were she judged so, the value of the alleged theft being above five shillings, she might legally be condemned to death. Sir F.

D. Mackinnon ( Grand Larceny) says: "I do not think there was any serious

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danger of her being hanged; for I do not believe that Sir Soulden Lawrence would have 'left her for execution." But there was a very real danger that, after being reprieved by him, she might have been transported to Botany Bay for fourteen years." That Mr. Leigh Perrot understood this is shown by his making tentative negotiations for the realizing of his property, so that if his wife were transported, he could go with her. In the meantime, to await one's trial in the eighteenth century, unless one were a state prisoner in the Tower of London, was frequently an ordeal considerably worse than penal servitude today. John Howard's
State of Prisons in England and
Wales
, published in 1777, disclosed a condition among jails which at its best was deplorable, and at its worst unspeakably dreadful. The state of the prisoners naturally varied very much from town to town, according to whether the jail were a modern building, or an antique one with waterlogged cells below the ground, or with its walls overlooking an open sewer; even more difference was made by the conduct of the jailers, whether they were honest and humane, or of the type represented in Hogarth's picture where the naked prisoner is appealing on his knees to the committee of inquiry.

Judged by the standard of what might have happened to her, Mrs.

Leigh Perrot was, on the whole, very fortunate, though she could scarcely be expected to think so. By 1800 Howard's exposition had begun to take some little effect; and had Mrs. Leigh Perrot been actually lodged in the prison, her plight would not have been, in the eighteenthcentury view, desperate; there were no offensive sewers near Ilchester Gaol and the cells were white-washed twice a year. As it was, however, her husband's money procured her special

treatment, and they were both lodged in the house of the prison-keeper, Mr. Scadding.

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Scadding had the reputation of a humane man, and he and his wife were sorry for the Leigh Perrots and certainly did their best to oblige them and make them comfortable; but for a person of Mrs. Leigh Perrot's nurture to be confined for eight months in a small and sordid lodging, with no privacy and only one smoky fire to which, although it was supposed to be for her use, the rest of the household naturally resorted, and waited upon by Mrs. Scadding, who licked her knife to clean it from fried onions, before she helped Mrs. Leigh Perrot to butter, entailed considerable suffering. Her plight was made much worse by compassion for her husband; Mr. Leigh Perrot was

personally fastidious almost to a fault, but he bore with Scadding's children putting pieces of greasy toast on his knee, and upsetting table beer down his coat, with perfect fortitude; until presently he had an attack of gout so severe that he could not move without agony, and his wife, distracted as she was, dared not call in the only doctor in Ilchester, because, apothecary, surgeon, coal-dealer, brick and tile maker in one, he would, she felt, be likely to do more harm than good.

She had perhaps never showed herself in so good a light as now. Her situation made her family passionately anxious to do everything they could for her, but she absolutely refused to let others undergo what she endured herself. She wrote to a friend: "My dear, affectionate sister Austen, though in a state of health not equal to trials of any kind, has been with the greatest difficulty kept from me." James had been exceedingly anxious to come to her; he had been throughout, she said, "a perfect Son" to her in affection; but unfortunately he had had a fall from his horse and was laid up with a broken leg, which meant that neither he nor Mary could be with her at the Assizes, as they had meant to be. Mrs. Austen therefore suggested that

Cassandra and Jane

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should come to stay with her in the Scaddings' house and sit by her through the trial, if their presence would give her any comfort and relief. When one considers what an exquisite consolation it would have been to have Cassandra's company and Jane's in the Scadding household; how they would have waited on Mrs. Leigh Perrot, talked to her and soothed her; how they would have nursed Mr. Leigh

Perrot, and gently diverted the children's toast and beer, one cannot but very much admire the austere unselfishness of Mrs. Leigh Perrot in refusing to accept the offer. But she said she could not allow

"those Elegant young Women" to come to such a scene as she was undergoing; and as for having them beside her at the trial--"to have two young creatures gazed at in a public court, would," she said, "cut me to the very heart."

The trial, which opened on the 29th of March, began at 8:30 in the morning and the court was densely crowded with spectators. The jury found no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the prisoner was not guilty, and they returned a verdict to that effect after a consultation of less than fifteen minutes.

The scenes on Mrs. Leigh Perrot's release and her return to Bath were of uninterrupted joy and congratulation; she wrote to one of her friends apologizing for not having done so before, but her time had been almost entirely taken up with crying and kissing! The business had cost Mr. Leigh Perrot something nearer two thousand pounds than one; Mrs. Leigh Perrot said that from the point of view of their expenses it was a good thing they had no children, and as for

themselves, she added, "Lace is not necessary to my happiness!"

A residence in the Scaddings' house would have been a severe tax on Jane Austen's nerves and health, and though

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her virtue and common sense would have borne her up, she would not, in all probability, have come out of the eight months'

confinement as well as her aunt. She was lively, and she was

healthy, but she was not robust, and in the light of what happened some sixteen years later when she nursed her brother Henry, there is much to be thankful for in the self-denying decency of Mrs. Leigh Perrot.

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IN OCTOBER, Cassandra was at Godmersham again. Edward and

the younger Edward had been spending a little time at Steventon, and the latter had picked up some very fine chestnuts which he meant to take home and plant, and had also made a drawing for

young George; unfortunately, he had left them both behind him, and his Aunt Jane said: "The former will therefore be deposited in the soil of Hampshire instead of Kent; the latter I have already

consigned to another element."

The letter of the last week in October merely contained news of country visiting, and an account of some improvements that were being made in the garden--the bank under the Elm Walk was going to planted with thorn and lilacbushes--but the next letter was full of an important piece of news; a letter had come for Cassandra from Frank Austen, who was on his ship Peterel off the coast of

Alexandria. The previous year, Frank had come into touch with his hero. When, in 1799, Admiral Brieux escaped through the blockade of Brest harbor and set sail for the Mediterranean, Lord St. Vincent sent word of the calamity to Nelson, who was then at Palermo. This urgent dispatch was given to the captain of the Hyena, but when the Hyena came alongside

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the Peterel, the latter being the faster sailing ship of the two, the Hyena's captain made over the dispatch to Captain Austen. The log of the Peterel contains the entries in Frank Austen's handwriting, which mark his putting on shore the first lieutenant with dispatches for Lord Nelson.

In March of 1800, the month of Mrs. Leigh Perrot's ordeal, Frank, cruising off the coast of Marseilles, fell in with La Ligurienne, and captured her without a single man of his own being killed or

wounded and with the loss of only two killed and two wounded to the French. This capture was considered of such importance by the Admiralty that Frank was elevated to the rank of post-captain; but as he was still cruising in the Mediterranean, his family heard the news of his promotion long before he did, and he was still unaware of it when he wrote to Cassandra in October.

Cassandra had been to London from Godmersham and had had her

turn of shopping for the family: pink shoes, a comb and a cloak for Jane; a locket and a mangle for Mary; a looking-glass and some wine glasses for the Rectory. She appeared to feel that some of the things might not be quite what was wanted, but Jane said: "We find no fault with your manner of performing any of our commissions, but if you like to think yourself remiss in any of them, pray do." There had been another ball at Basingstoke: "Did you think of our ball on Thursday evening, and did you suppose me at it? You might very safely, for there I was." She had had three offers of hospitality for the night, one from Mary, one from Mrs. Bramston of Oakley Hall and one from Mrs. Lefroy; "and therefore with three methods of going, I must have been more at the ball than anybody else." She said: "I wore your favorite gown, a bit of muslin of the same round my head and one little comb."

"The Debaries," she said, "persist in being afflicted at the

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death of their uncle, of whom they now say they saw a great deal in London."

The next letter acknowledged the arrival of another of Cassandra's commissions. "The Tables are come and give general contentment; .

. . The two ends put together form our constant table for everything and the centerpiece stands exceedingly well under the glass. . . .

They are both covered with green baize and send their best love."

One of the great houses in the vicinity of Steventon, Ashe Park, was rented by a Mr. Holder who had made his fortune in the East Indies; Jane had been over there with Mary for dinner and a quiet evening.

"I believe Mary found it dull," said Jane, "but I thought it very pleasant. To sit in idleness over a good fire in a well proportioned room is a luxurious sensation. I said two or three amusing things and Mr. Holder made a few infamous puns."

The winter storms were blowing up, and on Sunday evening, Jane, sitting in the dining room, heard an odd kind of crash. "In a moment afterwards it was repeated. I then went to the window, which I reached just in time to see the last of our two highly valued elms descend into the Sweep! ! ! ! ! The other, which had fallen I suppose in the first crash, and which was the nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sunk among our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce fir, beating off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall."