First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

by Charlie Lovett

  “And you wouldn’t agree to sell all those books!” said Sophie gleefully.

  “Exactly. Your father thought he needed money and the easiest way to get it would be to sell the books. And since he didn’t care for books, especially old dusty books, that didn’t make him very pleased with me.”

  “But old dusty books are the best kind.”

  “I think so, and you think so, but your father doesn’t think so.”

  “So you bought all these books yourself?” said Sophie, waving her soup spoon to indicate the entire flat.

  “Almost all,” said Bertram. “Your father and I made a deal. I agreed to let him sell some paintings and things to raise the money he needed to fix up the house, and he agreed to let me have one book from the family library to take home each year.”

  “The Christmas book!” said Sophie.

  “Exactly, the Christmas book. So every year at Christmas I pick one book to keep for my own.” He took her by the hand and led her into a small bedroom at the end of the corridor. “Do you see this shelf right here next to my bed? Those are all the books I’ve picked over the years. It is my very special shelf.”

  “It must be exciting to go into a big library and get to pick any book you want.”

  “I’m glad you think so, Sophie. Because I want you to do the same thing. I want you to pick any book in my flat to take home with you and keep.”

  “Really?” she said, her face lighting up.

  “Really,” said Bertram. “After all, it’s almost Christmas.”

  “Any book?”

  “Any book. But choose carefully,” said Uncle Bertram. “A good book is like a good friend. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. When you first get to know it, it will give you excitement and adventure, and years later it will provide you with comfort and familiarity. And best of all, you can share it with your children or your grandchildren or anyone you love enough to let into its secrets.”

  —

  “AND WHAT BOOK DID you pick?” asked Eric as Sophie fell silent.

  “I can’t tell you that,” she said, turning to look at him for the first time since she had begun her story. “It’s personal.”

  “Wait a minute, let me get this straight,” he said. “You can tell me all the intimate details of your family and their finances and your relationship with your uncle, but what book you chose is personal?”

  “That’s right,” said Sophie. “What could be more personal than a book?”

  “It just seems like a strange place to draw the line when you’re talking to a perfect stranger.”

  “You’re not quite perfect,” she said, turning to walk back up the garden. Most of the “art enthusiasts” had moved on, leaving behind the occasional teacup on a low stone wall or a garden bench.

  “It was Pride and Prejudice, wasn’t it?” said Eric, running to catch up with her.

  “I was eight years old.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll bet you were a pretty brainy eight-year-old. If Jane Austen was reading Samuel Richardson when she was seven, I’m sure you were reading Jane Austen when you were eight.”

  “What makes you think Jane Austen was reading Richardson when she was seven?”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t I read that somewhere?”

  “I really don’t think so.”

  “Well, I still think you picked Pride and Prejudice.”

  Sophie, in fact, had not picked Pride and Prejudice. She had chosen an oversize copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales with dark, ghoulish illustrations by Arthur Rackham. She discovered years later that it was a signed limited edition, worth hundreds of pounds, but Uncle Bertram had placed it into the hands of his eight-year-old niece without hesitation. It still occupied a place of pride in her collection—the first in a row of sixteen volumes, each of which she had chosen as her annual Christmas gift from Uncle Bertram.

  After that first visit, Uncle Bertram had become Sophie’s special friend. He loved all his family, he told her, but Sophie knew their relationship was different. Her mother could see how much genuine joy Sophie derived from her visits to Uncle Bertram and would not let Mr. Collingwood’s resentment of his younger brother interfere with the relationship. As she spent more time with her uncle, Sophie felt less and less connected to her father—but she didn’t care. Uncle Bertram understood her in a way her father never could. It wasn’t just that they both loved books. It was that Sophie, as a little girl, had yearned for mystery and adventure—something beyond her ordinary life at Bayfield House. At home she had to settle for getting her mystery from books, but her visits with Bertram were filled with adventure.

  By the time she was ten, Uncle Bertram was fetching Sophie every other weekend for a London visit, a pattern that would continue until she entered university. During the long holidays at Easter and in the summer, she would often spend a week or two in town. She and Uncle Bertram walked the streets of London together, exploring any neighborhood or building with a literary connection. They visited museums and libraries that displayed rare books and attended plays and musicals based on books, but most of all they shopped—Sophie delighting in spending her carefully saved allowance on “dusty old books.” Uncle Bertram knew every bookshop in the city, every antique stall with a shelf of books tucked into the back, every street vendor in the markets of Portobello Road or Camden Passage who might have a book or two laid out on a blanket. And without fail, after a day of stalking the books of London, they would return to the flat in Maida Vale, curl up by the fire, and read. At first Uncle Bertram always read to Sophie, but soon enough she shared the task, and they would pass The Ingoldsby Legends or The Secret Garden or Robinson Crusoe back and forth at the end of each chapter.

  Sophie had a particular fondness for first lines—they were so laden with potential. Simple first lines were the best, she thought—“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do”; “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station shall be held by anybody else, these pages must show”; “In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.” And she had never forgotten that frozen winter’s day when she and her uncle had returned to the flat in the dark of early evening after an afternoon of book hunting and he had pulled down a volume from an upper shelf, settled in his chair with a cup of tea, and read a line that, even though she was only ten, seemed to Sophie so intriguing and mysterious that she could not wait to see where it would lead: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

  Hampshire, 1796

  “I AM AFRAID I am to leave Hampshire in a few days’ time, Mr. Mansfield,” said Jane as they stood beside the lake, which glistened in the August heat. “My brother and his wife have written from Kent and I am to go for a visit of some weeks.”

  “I confess, Miss Austen, that it will grieve me to be parted from you for such a time, but it may grieve me even more to be parted from the Dashwoods. Are you to leave me at such a delicate point in their story?”

  “It cannot be helped, sir. But perhaps you will write a letter of support to their creator so that you might see their story ended.”

  “Do I understand, Miss Austen, that you are holding the misses Dashwood hostage with a ransom of my correspondence?”

  “Indeed I am, sir,” said Jane with a laugh. “For how can I hope to write a word in such a place as Kent without your encouragement?”

  “I believe, Miss Austen, that you could write anywhere with no more encouragement than paper and ink, but you may depend upon me as a correspondent nonetheless.”

  As they climbed out of the valley and toward the gatehouse, Mr. Mansfield fell unusually silent. Jane thought at first it was due to the steepness of the hill and she worried that perhaps he was unwell, for just a few days earlier they had climbed the same path and he had interviewed
her the entire way about her progress with The Spectator.

  “Do you feel well, Mr. Mansfield?” she asked at last. “For I have not known you to eschew conversation with me for so long unless you have a book in your hand.”

  “You must forgive me, Miss Austen. I am only silent because I feel I must chose my words carefully so as not to give offense.”

  “Surely, Mr. Mansfield, you need never concern yourself with giving offense to me. Are you angry with me?”

  “Certainly not,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth; it is only that your imminent departure forces me to express an opinion which I hope you will take in the kind spirit with which it is intended.”

  “I could do nothing less with you, Mr. Mansfield. But you frighten me. Tell me what you have to say.”

  “I am concerned,” he began, but then he broke off.

  “Concerned?” said Jane. “What gives you concern? Certainly no improper words or actions on my part?”

  “On your part, no,” said Mr. Mansfield. “I am concerned about Mr. Willoughby.”

  Jane gave a little laugh. “Mr. Willoughby? Please, Mr. Mansfield, say what you will against him, for I confess I am relieved that it is he and not I who has earned your disapprobation, especially as he is fictional and therefore it is much easier to reform his ways than my own.”

  “I only feel that when Mr. Willoughby first comes into the lives of the Dashwoods, one already has the sense that he is a scoundrel. The shock of Miss Marianne’s rejection would be so much more powerful if we had no reason to suspect Willoughby of duplicity until his true character is revealed.”

  “So Willoughby should come onto the stage as more of a hero?”

  “Exactly. That is precisely how I should put it. I do hope you do not think me impertinent to say so.”

  “Mr. Mansfield, I have always expressed my sincere appreciation for your criticism, and I do not except this attack on Mr. Willoughby.” Lost in their conversation, Jane tripped on a root that lay across the path and stumbled forward. Mr. Mansfield caught her arm and steadied her, and the two walked on. “Perhaps it is that simple,” said Jane.

  “You have an idea, I can see,” said Mr. Mansfield, “but I confess I cannot detect its nature.”

  “Perhaps Marianne, walking alone and without a kind octogenarian to keep her upright, falls and twists her ankle and Willoughby rescues her. He could thus be a hero from the moment we meet him.”

  “I am relieved that you not only welcome my criticism,” said Mr. Mansfield, “but that you are so quickly able to solve the problem. I did not feel I could send you into Kent to write of a Willoughby who was less than he might be.”

  “And for that I am most grateful,” said Jane. They had reached the gatehouse, and Jane, who was to depart early the following morning, took her leave. “Do not forget that you have promised to write. Know that I will always be grateful for words from you—even when, or I may say especially when, they are critical of my creations.” Mr. Mansfield accompanied her through the gate of the estate and watched as she turned down the lane in the direction of Steventon. She turned back just before the opening in the hedgerow, where she would leave the road and set off across the fields, for a final glimpse of Mr. Mansfield, who stood by the gatehouse, waving.

  —

  AS IT HAPPENED, JANE’S stay in Kent was so filled with visits and balls and long conversations with her brother Edward and his charming wife, Elizabeth, that she had little time for writing beyond the mandatory letters to Cassandra. She had not the heart to write to Mr. Mansfield of the scant progress she had made in the adventures of the Dashwood family, and so to his letters of literary encouragement she replied only with brief notes of family news and an account of a ball. To this last, Mr. Mansfield replied:

  Dear Miss Austen,

  Busbury Park is a lonely spot without you. I find neither Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper, nor the swans on the lake are able to converse on literary topics, and as for the residents of the main house, their interests lie much more in the way of shooting than reading. While I do not begrudge your brother a visit with his sister, you must return soon if my mind is not to atrophy. And please bring the Dashwoods with you. They are missed, though not as much as their creator.

  Yours Most Affectionately,

  Rev. Richard Mansfield

  Laying this letter on her dressing table, Jane was surprised to find that a well of emptiness seemed to open in her heart. She had felt slightly odd during her visit, almost as if she were watching herself from a distance, and she had given that feeling no serious thought until this moment. Now she realized that she not only missed Mr. Mansfield, but she missed him terribly—in a way that she did not miss Cassandra or her parents. To be true, she felt their absence and looked forward to returning to the bosom of family, but this ache for Mr. Mansfield was something altogether different. It was not, she knew, the ache of a lover, for though she had not yet felt that ache herself, she knew enough of it from novels to know that the symptoms were entirely different. But she found that she could no longer think of him merely as a friend or companion.

  That night she lay awake considering her feelings toward Mr. Mansfield. Certainly she was grateful to him for his kindness and encouragement, his honest criticism and his insightful suggestions—but one might feel the same way toward a schoolmaster, she thought. No, there could be no doubt about the matter: Jane loved Mr. Mansfield—not with the love of a heroine for a hero, but with a love that was slower and gentler, more intellectual than passionate, more . . . the word avuncular occurred to her but, though she certainly loved her uncles, her relationship with them was nothing like that with Mr. Mansfield. With him there was a meeting of the minds that she supposed was rare, even between husbands and wives. It was as if a part of her mind dwelt in him and a part of his mind dwelt in her, and when she was separated from him a part of herself was missing. She wondered if it was this, more than her busy schedule, that had kept her from returning to Elinor and Marianne.

  That his letter arrived a few days before Jane’s departure for Hampshire only increased her desire to be home again, and the pain of parting from her brother and his family was eased, if not completely allayed, by the thought of returning not just to Cassandra and her parents, but especially to her frequent intercourse with Mr. Mansfield.

  Oxfordshire, Present Day

  “THE GARDEN CLOSES in a few minutes,” said Sophie to Eric, glancing at her watch. “It was nice of you to come.”

  “I love the way the English tell people to go away,” said Eric with a laugh. “‘It was nice of you to come’ sounds so much more civilized than ‘Get out.’ Anyhow, your mother’s invited me to stay for a late supper.”

  “I might have known.”

  “It’s remarkable what a young man can catch around here with no more bait than a clean-shaven face and an admiration of viburnum.”

  “I hate to tell you, but all it takes to wrangle an invitation from my mother is a Y chromosome and a pulse.”

  “If you want me to leave, I’ll leave,” said Eric, grabbing Sophie by the hand and pulling her to a stop before they approached the spot where Mrs. Collingwood was chatting with the last of the visitors.

  Sophie looked down at her hand held in his. It felt electric, and that both excited and frightened her.

  “No,” she said. “Don’t leave. If you’ve charmed my mother, then you should stay.”

  “I was hoping I might charm other members of the family.”

  “Well my sister has a boyfriend at the moment and I don’t think you’re going to like my father,” said Sophie with a laugh.

  “I gather you don’t like your father,” said Eric. “All conversational roads seem to lead back to that point.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like him,” she said, dropping his hand and starting toward the house. “I’ve nothing against hunting and Barbour j
ackets; that’s just not my cup of tea. My cup is served in a cracked mug decorated like an old Penguin paperback.”

  “Somehow I think there’s more to it than that,” said Eric, “but you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  They walked back toward the house in companionable silence until Eric said, “What is a late supper anyway? Is it different from dinner?”

  “Supper is in the kitchen instead of the dining room and it means Mother doesn’t fix her hair and nobody changes clothes.”

  “It’s a good thing I met you, Sophie Collingwood,” said Eric, following in her wake.

  “I’m reserving judgment,” she said.

  Sophie, Eric, Victoria, Mrs. Collingwood, and a few other guests had been sipping cocktails in the parlor for more than an hour when Sophie’s father finally appeared. He seemed determined that it be a very late supper indeed. By that time, Eric had charmed everyone, mostly with his American accent and his story of the “amazing coincidence” of having met Sophie on the Thames Path and then stopping by to view the sculpture only to discover the same “delightful young lady.”

  “You didn’t tell me you already knew Eric,” said Sophie’s mother, pulling her to the side of the room where her father stood.

  “You didn’t ask me,” said Sophie. “Besides, I wouldn’t say I know him.”

  “He seems a nice enough chap,” said Mr. Collingwood. “What does he do in America?” Sophie knew her father meant how did he earn a living. Mr. Collingwood was a great admirer of those landed gentry who had married off their eldest sons to American heiresses.

  “He’s a pig farmer, Father,” said Sophie. “He comes from a long line of pig farmers.”

  “And is there money in that?” asked her father, oblivious to her sarcasm.

  “I’m going to fix another drink,” she said.

  At first she thought the meal might not be so bad. Her mother seemed to have tempered her opinion of Eric, on the advice of her husband, who was suspicious of the swine in Eric’s past, and was not thrusting him upon her quite so shamelessly. Mr. Collingwood was deep in conversation with another guest about the foxhunting ban. Eric ate his salad quietly across the wide table from Sophie, separated from her by a massive centerpiece of flowers from the garden; but on the rare occasions when he caught her eye, she detected a mischievous twinkle. The main course passed peacefully enough, as Eric chatted with Victoria, who sat to his left, about games the Collingwood girls had played when growing up at Bayfield. Not until Sophie’s father was serving the trifle did things begin to deteriorate.