Jane Austen Stole My Boyfriend (33 page)

‘Now walk slowly and keep your head up. Jane, you put back the hood when she reaches the church. Do it carefully. Don’t dislodge the lace!’

When I reach the bottom of the stairs Thomas comes out from the parlour. I think he looks magnificent in his gold braid and navy-blue uniform. He has a sword by his side and so does Lieutenant
Price.

Mr Austen had wanted to hire a post-chaise for me, but I refused and said that I would prefer to walk like everyone else.

And now I am so pleased that I said that.

We are a true bridal procession. Thomas and I first, Jane and Cassandra next, then Mrs Austen with her eldest son, James, Henry and Frank side by side, followed by the Leigh-Perrots and Eliza,
with Charles racing between everyone. I hold Thomas’s arm with one hand and with the other I hold up the satin gown. The ground is still crisp and frosty, and it’s perfect for walking.
My swansdown cloak makes me glow with warmth.

And the snow is falling gently, slowly, drifting down in pretty crisp flakes, settling lightly on the bare black branches of the elm trees and crystallizing on the small green shoots of the
snowdrops.

Mr Austen, already dressed in his cassock and white surplice, meets us at the church porch door and he is the one that puts back my hood. He kisses me like a true father and then tells me to
wait for a moment while the others take their places.

Jane and I wait in the little porch with James. It has been arranged that James will give me away; for a moment I am saddened that Edward-John has not bothered to make the journey from Bristol
to Steventon, but I put it from me.

And then James opens the door to the church and I gasp.

Yesterday Jane and Cassandra had gone off to ‘do the flower vases’ in the church. Tom Fowle, Charles, Frank, Harry Digweed, Henry and even James had been with them when they came
back in a merry shouting crowd and I was sorry not to have joined them. However, Mrs Austen had kept me busy with some sewing and now I see why.

The small bare church is filled with light from about twenty tall candles. The ledges in front of the six pointed windows have been piled high with branches of yew, the red berries sparkling in
the candlelight. Trails of ivy decorate the pews, and here and there a small Christmas rose shows up wired against the smooth glossy green.

The altar table is like a tapestry of red, green and white. Every vase is filled with the mixture of the three colours: red-berried holly stands stiffly behind the delicate Christmas roses and
great scrolls of ivy are stitched carefully to a cloth covering the front of the altar.

And then there is a touch on my shoulder. I look around. Edward-John is there. Gently he takes my arm and James falls back.

‘You look beautiful,’ whispers Edward-John. ‘You are so like Mother.’

Slowly I pace the small aisle of the church, my hand on Edward-John’s arm, and Jane holds up the train of my dress although the tiles have been scrubbed as clean as Mrs Austen’s
dairy. Everywhere I look, I can see the care and the love the Austen family have shown me. The small fireplace in the north aisle is blazing with pine logs and the church is so warm that I know
Frank has been tending that fire since before dawn – he was chopping wood for most of yesterday and then bringing it to the church in wheelbarrow loads. Over the altar steps there is a large,
rather unsteady arch that I’ve seen Charles hammering together in the barn. It is made from nailed-together elm branches decorated with strands of ivy. Beneath it are two brand-new kneeling
cushions – I have had glimpses of Mrs Austen and Cassandra embroidering these over the last few days – and I recognize James’s handwriting on the decorative order of service that
Mr Austen handed me at the door. When we reach the chancel arch Jane nudges me and whispers in my ear, ‘Harry climbed up there yesterday.’

I look up, and hanging down from the high roof beams is a large bunch of mistletoe, dangling from a long red ribbon. Mr Austen glances up too, but he just smiles.

And then the service begins. Cassandra sobs, and I hear Mrs Austen whispering, ‘Control yourself, girl,’ but when I look sideways I can see tears sliding down my aunt’s
face.

The candles flicker, the fire crackles, words slide through my head and out from my lips...

‘I take thee . . . lawful husband ... for richer, for poorer... in health...’ And the awful solemnity of ‘...Till death do us part.’ And then Thomas slides the gold ring
on to my finger... And his lips meet mine and I stand encircled in his arms. And we are together and will never be parted.

Many readers of my first Jane book,
I Was Jane Austen’s Best Friend,
have written to say how much they enjoyed the notes at the back where I record which parts of
the novel are truly biographical, which parts I guessed from evidence and which parts I made up completely.

So now I want to do the same for the second book,
Jane Austen Stole My Boyfriend.

I think that my inspiration for this book and for its jokey title was a quote from Mary Russell Mitford about Jane as a teenager: ‘Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest,
most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers.’ I like that quote. I feel that it makes Jane stand out from the rather well-behaved genteel girls of the period and it was a
great help to me when creating her character and describing the fun the girls had in Bath.

As I said in my author’s note to Book 1, I have changed Jenny’s name from Jane Cooper (couldn’t have two Janes) and made her younger than she really was so that she could be
nearer in age to Jane Austen.

So what is true? Well, Jane and Jenny truly were great friends. Jane’s nephew and biographer, James’s eldest son, talks of this. Jenny (Jane) did fall in love with a Captain Thomas
Williams, he did propose marriage three weeks after they met and they did get married in Steventon church in the month of December.

Mr and Mrs Leigh-Perrot did have a West Indian man acting as a servant or butler in their house. In reality he was called Frank, but I renamed him Franklin to distinguish him from Jane’s
brother. Mrs Leigh-Perrot was accused of shoplifting, put on trial in Taunton and acquitted in rather the manner that I suggest. The records of her trial still exist and I read through them very
carefully.

I had a delightful visit to the beautifully preserved city of Bath before writing this book and I hope that I got the details right. You can visit the Assembly Rooms where Jane danced, look at
the chandeliers, see the Pump Room and the baths which feature in her novel
Northanger Abbey,
walk past the house in Queen’s Square where she stayed with her brother Edward (where I
have lodged Eliza in my novel) and see the Leigh-Perrots’ house in the Paragon.

Jane’s cousin Eliza is a great favourite of mine. I feel that I know her generous, fun-loving character very well from her letters which have been preserved. Many of these letters were to
her cousin Philadelphia Walter (Phylly). I’m afraid that I took a great dislike to Phylly from her letters (some of which have also been preserved). She was very rude about Jane when the poor
thing was only twelve years old, calling her ‘affected and prim’ and ‘not pretty’, but I think the worst was the letter that she wrote to her brother when poor Eliza’s
mother died. Eliza had nursed her mother, who died of breast cancer, devotedly for months and months, but at the news of the woman’s death Phylly seemed to gloat over the fact that Eliza
would be left ‘friendless and alone’ and that it served her right after the ‘gay and dissipated life’ she had led.

I think that the most important piece of research that I did for this book was the story of Harry Digweed.

As I describe in the book, Harry was the son of the Austens’ neighbour, literally the ‘boy next door’. Though I feel sure that Jane’s elder sister Cassandra burned the
majority of the letters where she mentions Harry Digweed, one – which is mainly about how her writing desk was put on to the wrong coach – was rather revealing, as Jane alludes to Harry
as ‘my dear Harry’. In the eighteenth century this was most unusual. Jane normally, once she was grown up, talks of Mr Lyford, Mr Chute, etc. I think her use of those words might imply
that Cassandra knew all about the love affair, but would not want to encourage Jane, as Harry had no money and Jane herself would be penniless.

I followed the career of Harry Digweed as best I could by looking up documents in the Hampshire Records Office and discovered that he rented two farms (from Jane’s rich brother Edward) in
Chawton and used them to grow hops. Hops were used in beer-making and were a very profitable crop at that time. It looks possible that Harry then went into the brewing business in Alton, a few
miles from Chawton. The main brewery there was owned by an elderly lady and the chances are strong that she would have needed a young man as a general manager. Harry rented a house in Alton at the
time.

However, even so, he would not have been considered a good match for Jane. And it looks as though her family conspired to part the two.

Fifty years later James’s eldest son wrote about a letter written by Mrs Leigh-Perrot which expresses the opinion that the Austens moved to Bath in order to ‘get Jane away from that
Digweed man’.

Anyone writing a biographical novel is always conscious that their airy work of fiction is resting on the shoulders of those who have gone before – those wonderful people
who spend years studying books, following up leads in archives, delving into dusty piles of handwritten letters, wandering through draughty graveyards, inspecting the sites of buildings that no
longer exist, and always checking that every word they write can be substantiated.

Chief among this heroic band to whom I owe so much must be Deirdre de la Faye. She not only edited the definitive edition of Jane Austen’s letters – tracking down every reference
with that infinite capacity for taking pains which certainly amounted to genius – she did the same thing with Eliza de Feuillade, Jane’s other first cousin, and allowed me to sense the
personality of this fun-loving, brave, endearing woman. Deirdre de la Faye has also produced a book,
The World of Jane Austen,
which sat by my bedside during the months when I was writing
these books and which proved of inestimable value to me.

The three great biographers Claire Tomalin, David Noakes and Park Honan have added to the picture that I had formed. Penelope Byrde and Sarah Anne Dowling wrote informative and delectable books
on fashion in the time of Jane Austen. Maggie Lane on Jane Austen’s Bath and her world was another essential book to have at hand.

Lastly, I must thank Hampshire Archives for their prompt replies and photocopying of the documents relating to Harry Digweed and his life as a farmer in Chawton. It was fascinating to see all
the details of the fields where he grew his hops and the rent that he paid for his two farms and to speculate on his possible career as a brewer.

Also by Cora Harrison

I Was Jane Austen’s Best Friend

First published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
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