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

by Charlie Lovett

  Such thoughts, as any, were short-lived with little Anna in the house, for barely had Jane laid down the manuscript of Elinor and Marianne than Anna was expressing her eagerness for another tale. When Jane informed her little niece that her store of fiction was exhausted, Anna disappeared and returned a few minutes later, holding out a slim clothbound volume.

  “If you have no more stories, Aunt Jane,” said the little girl, “would you please read one of these?”

  “What book have you here, Anna?” said Jane.

  “I don’t know,” said Anna.

  Jane smiled at the expectant face of her niece. “Where did you get this book?” she asked gently.

  “From Grandpapa,” said Anna.

  “He gave it to you?”

  Anna looked down at the floor and did not answer.

  “Answer me honestly, now, Anna. I will not scold. Where did you get this book?”

  “From his study. It was on his desk.”

  Jane laughed and swept the child up in her arms. “I doubt that any book you find on Grandpapa’s desk will make for very good reading,” she said. “Let me see it. It’s most likely theology or science, which I am afraid you would find quite dull.”

  “But it says ‘stories’ on it,” said Anna. Cassandra had been teaching the child to read and she was a remarkably quick study.

  “Does it, now?” said Jane. She set Anna down and took the book from her. The words “Allegorical Stories” were embossed on the cover.

  “There’s another word, too,” said Anna. “But it’s a rather long one.”

  “Yes it is,” said Jane, “and a rather difficult one as well.” She opened the volume to the title page and her eyes widened. In another moment she burst into a fit of laughter.

  “What is it, Aunt?” said Anna, smiling with delight at Jane’s amusement. “Why do you laugh so?”

  Jane quickly composed herself and again picked up the child. “Come, Anna, I shall read you one of these stories and we shall discover if they are clever and exciting or dull and tedious.”

  “I hope for exciting!” cried Anna.

  “So do I,” said Jane. “So do I.”

  —

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, JANE wore her usual smile when Mr. Mansfield opened the door to the gatehouse, eager, he said, to hear the conclusion of Elinor and Marianne, which he had been promised. She breezed by him into the sitting room without offering a greeting or receiving an invitation to enter. When her host followed her she turned on him and spoke in a tone of measured censure.

  “Mr. Mansfield. I am shocked, sir, shocked to discover after all these weeks of intimacy that you have been withholding from me the one secret from your past which you well know would most influence my opinion of you.”

  “Miss Austen, I cannot think what you mean by this. Surely I have kept no great secrets from you.”

  “You, sir, are not what you seem.”

  “I assure you, Miss Austen, I am no more or less than an aging clergyman with a passion for literature.”

  “No less, that is certain, but you are more.”

  “Of what do you accuse me, Miss Austen?”

  “Quite simply of a crime which I only wish I had known about when first we met. You, sir, are an author.” Jane threw down on the table the volume Anna had brought to her the previous afternoon, and though Mr. Mansfield blushed deeply, he also smiled with relief.

  “It is, I am afraid, not worthy of your notice.”

  “You do yourself wrong, Mr. Mansfield,” said Jane. “I assure you that Anna, at least, thoroughly enjoyed it. It is not the quality of your writing but the content of the inscription that offends me.” She picked up the book, opened the front cover, and read, “‘To Rev. George Austen from the Author.’ Where, sir, is the copy inscribed to your student Miss Jane Austen?”

  Mr. Mansfield laughed and took the volume from Jane. “I only gave a copy to your father because, as a fellow clergyman, I thought he might find it useful. It is certainly not literature. It is only a collection of allegorical stories, intended to teach moral lessons, and perhaps a helpful aid for preaching. However, when next I return to Croft, I will bring you a copy.”

  “I must say,” said Jane, taking the book back from Mr. Mansfield, “from one who criticizes the title of my novel Elinor and Marianne as being too plain, I am a bit disappointed in the title of your little book of allegorical stories.” She held up the title page to his face. It read: A Little Book of Allegorical Stories.

  Mr. Mansfield laughed. “Perhaps I can do better in the second edition,” he said. “But tell me, did your father show you my book? For I expressly asked him not to do so.”

  “You needn’t think ill of him,” said Jane. “It was the curiosity of my little niece that brought your efforts to my attention. Having heard the ending of Elinor and Marianne, she entered his study in search of stories and discovered this lying on his desk.”

  “And you read it?”

  “Only the first story, and that only because Anna insisted. I thought it best, since I have read my work to you, to allow you to read yours to me.”

  “Tomorrow, perhaps, after you have read me the end of your novel.”

  “Indeed not, Mr. Mansfield. You must suffer some punishment for hiding your light under a bushel. Today you shall read me your allegories and tomorrow I shall conclude the adventures of the Dashwood sisters.”

  “Very well,” said Mr. Mansfield, and he settled himself in a chair by the fire, opened the book, and began to read.

  London, Present Day

  “SO, ANY LUCK FINDING my book?” said Winston as they settled into a table in the back of the Lamb and Flag. Sophie loved dark-paneled pubs—they felt almost like libraries—and was happy to discover this cozy example just a short walk from her new job.

  “Did you really expect me to find it on the first day?”

  “Not really,” said Winston. “But I thought maybe you’d try to impress me.”

  “The fact is,” said Sophie, blushing, “I did try to impress you, but I can’t find any sign of Mr. Mansfield or his little book of allegories anywhere. Even the British Library only has a first edition.”

  “But you’ll keep looking,” said Winston.

  “It’s in the ‘want’ file,” said Sophie, “so there’s always a chance. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  “You seem awfully young to know so much about the antiquarian book world,” said Winston.

  “I’m not that young,” she said—hoping, at least, that she was not too young for him to consider . . . well, she wasn’t quite sure what just yet; she just hoped she wasn’t too young.

  “Let me guess,” said Winston. “Fresh out of Cambridge, you read history and worked in the library and so you thought you’d work in a bookshop for a while.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” said Sophie. “I’m fresh out of Oxford; I read English literature and worked in the library.”

  “Can’t believe I was so far off the mark.”

  “But that’s not why I came to Boxhill’s,” said Sophie. “That was because of my uncle.”

  “Boxhill is your uncle?”

  “No, my uncle was named Bertram Collingwood,” she said, and by the time she had told Winston the whole story of how Bertram had helped her fall in love with books, she had finished her pint and it was time for Winston to order another round.

  “And his books are just gone?” asked Winston, when he had settled back in his chair.

  “Gone,” said Sophie. “I’ve found a few of them, but even if I could find them all, I certainly couldn’t afford to buy them back.” She did not mention her acquisition of the Principia.

  “So you’ll build your own library. What do you collect?”

  Uncle Bertram had asked her the same question earlier that summer when they were sitting together in Hyde
Park reading. She was deep into Jude the Obscure—one of the few Hardy novels she had not yet read, and he was reading a new translation of Pindar’s Odes, making pencil notes in the margin whenever he disagreed with the translator. Their peace had been disturbed by a sudden outburst from the ducks on the Serpentine, and Bertram had laid down his book and turned to Sophie.

  “What sort of books would you like to collect?”

  “You always told me to buy whatever appeals to me at the time,” said Sophie. “That’s what I’ve always done. That’s how you did it, isn’t it?”

  “True, but as much as I love my library, sometimes I wish I had started with a little more focus. What do you like to read?”

  “You know that,” said Sophie. “I like stories. I like characters and plots and intrigue and romance and not knowing what’s going to happen next. I seem to be less interested in nonfiction these days. If I want that, I can just go outside. And I like corsets and Empire waistlines and poorhouses and debtors’ prisons and the countryside. I could never get excited about novels written after the Great War. Except mysteries, of course.”

  “So you’ll collect novels,” said Uncle Bertram. “Victorian novels. Or perhaps I should say nineteenth-century, so you don’t miss out on Jane Austen.”

  “I suppose I already do collect novels,” said Sophie, thinking of her room in Oxford. “If you read English literature, you can’t really help it.”

  “But be honest, my dear,” said Uncle Bertram. “Are your books anything like the books of any other student of English literature?”

  “No,” said Sophie, who never settled for the cheap paperback editions at Blackwell’s. Whether it was Dickens, or Austen, or Hardy, she always managed to find a secondhand hardcover copy—the older the better, as far as she was concerned. One girl in her tutorial had complained of the moldy smell wafting off Sophie’s copy of Little Dorrit, and Sophie had retorted, “This is the first book edition. Without the mold it would have cost me twice as much.”

  “You’ve always been a collector,” said Uncle Bertram. “But now, beware, Mr. Dickens and Mr. Trollope and Miss Brontë and especially Miss Austen, for Sophie Collingwood is on your trail and she will not rest until she has caught you.” And Sophie had laughed and Uncle Bertram had joined her, and the ducks had flown up off the water, the sound had startled them so.

  It was the last day she had spent with her uncle.

  —

  “I COLLECT NOVELS,” SAID Sophie to Winston. “Nineteenth-century, mostly, but some later. Mysteries are my guilty pleasure. I always rather fancied myself a sleuth. But mostly English lit. You know, ‘The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.’”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Winston. “I prefer nonfiction myself, and I don’t think I’m intolerably stupid.”

  “It’s a quote,” said Sophie. “It’s from Northanger Abbey. You know—Jane Austen.”

  “Never read her,” said Winston.

  “You’ve never read Jane Austen?”

  “We didn’t do her at school. We did Dickens, though.”

  “I’d love to own a Dickens novel in the original monthly parts,” said Sophie, trying to ignore the fact he had never read any Jane Austen. “Can you imagine what that must have been like, to be reading David Copperfield and to have to wait a month for the next installment?”

  Winston nodded, taking a sip of beer. “Hey, I just found out this was Charles Dickens’s favorite pub,” he said. “There’s a sign behind the bar.”

  Sophie almost choked on her beer as she suddenly remembered accusing Eric of whisking women off to Charles Dickens’s favorite pub. She thought for a split second that Winston was using the same ploy—but something about his nonchalance told her that not only had he not known this was Dickens’s favorite pub; he didn’t care.

  “Dickens’s parts are a bit out of my price range,” said Sophie, regaining her composure, “but if I ever had a set I would read them. I never could understand collectors who lock up their books in glass cases and don’t read them.”

  “Me neither,” said Winston.

  “But listen to me, going on and on about my uncle and his books and my books and books I don’t even own yet and will probably never own. What about you? What do you collect? Why do you collect?”

  “Maybe that’s a question for the second date.”

  “So is this the first date, or is this just drinks?”

  “I was hoping this was the first date. I would ask you to dinner, but my father is up from the country house and he expects me to take him out.”

  “Oh, your father is up from the country house, is he?” said Sophie, affecting a posh accent.

  “Sorry, that sounded pompous. My father’s a solicitor in Gloucestershire, but he comes to London so often for business that he finally bought a little flat in St. John’s Wood. So now, I’m living in the flat and when Father’s in town I get to sleep on the sofa and take him out to dinner.”

  “And when Father’s not in town?”

  “I suppose it becomes my bachelor pad, though so far that’s mostly meant me home alone watching the footy.” Sophie doubted this very much. It couldn’t possibly be that difficult for a drop-dead gorgeous, charming, intelligent man like Winston to find women willing to visit his flat.

  “And since Father’s in town I have to take myself home?” she said.

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Winston. “I promise the next time we’ll have a proper date. Dinner and everything.” Sophie was afraid to ask what “everything” included.

  “And when do you propose we have this proper second date?” she said.

  “Well, today is Tuesday and if I call you tomorrow it will look like I’m overeager and desperate, so how about Thursday?”

  “I’ll have to check my engagement calendar,” said Sophie teasingly. “And if it’s a proper date, I’ll need to change out of work clothes and fix my hair and put on proper nighttime makeup.”

  “I think you look lovely,” said Winston, and Sophie blushed for the second time that day. She did not mind a bit.

  She reached into her handbag for a pen and wrote Uncle Bertram’s address on a napkin. She slid it across the table to Winston. “Pick me up at seven?”

  “I thought you had to check your engagement calendar.”

  “I’m sure I can squeeze you in,” she said. And she was just getting up and hoping this was the perfect exit line when Winston leaned over and picked something up off of the floor.

  “You dropped something,” he said, holding up the postcard of the Eiffel Tower. Sophie snatched it out of his hand before he could look at it.

  “A postcard from my sister,” she said quickly. “See you on Thursday.” It wasn’t quite the flirtatious exit she had hoped for, but she had at least avoided any awkward questions about Eric Hall.

  Hampshire, 1796

  HAVING READ FOUR of his allegorical stories, Mr. Mansfield expressed a wish to be allowed to hear the ending of Elinor and Marianne. Jane would not allow it.

  “Had you not kept your book a secret from me,” said Jane, “I would consider four stories an adequate compensation for the final four chapters of the adventures of the misses Dashwood, but because you hid your talents from the very friend who is best able to appreciate them, you shall not earn your reward until the book is finished.”

  “I count myself lucky that it is but a slim volume,” said Mr. Mansfield. “Were you to strike a similar bargain with the author of, say, Robinson Crusoe, that would be inhumane. But surely you understand, Miss Austen, it is because you are best able of all my acquaintances to judge my work that I have been hesitant to share it with you.”

  “Yet I allow you to judge my work every day, and I profit from the judgment. Might you not wish to do the same?”

  “It is an infuriating t
hing, Miss Austen,” said Mr. Mansfield with a smile, “to be taught wisdom by one a quarter of one’s age.”

  “You shall find a way to bear it, Mr. Mansfield. Now please continue.”

  Mr. Mansfield settled back in his chair and read on.

  GREGORY THE HERMIT

  A MORAL TALE

  Happiness is the wish of every individual. It is pursued by the wise and the foolish, the wealthy and the indigent; and, though the attempt is generally unsuccessful, it is continued with avidity till death closes the scene, and puts a period at once to our hopes and our labors. We should indeed be oftener successful did we search for Happiness where she may be found, in a mediocrity of the gifts of fortune, and in the smiling valley of Content. But, dazzled with the fascinating glare of riches, and the ostentatious parade of power, we seek her in places where she was ever a stranger, and at last, when it is too late to correct our error, we are convinced that we have been deluded by a phantom, and pursued a fleeting insubstantial shadow.

  The story went on to tell of the simple-living Gregory and the wealthy and ostentatious Alphonso. Gregory counseled Alphonso away from his worldly ways, saying, “The calm blessings of uninterrupted health, and the placid comforts of a mind at ease are not to be bartered for the noisy joys of riot and excess.” But Alphonso did not listen, and only accepted that “the paths of virtue only are the paths of peace” after his palace was destroyed by a volcanic eruption.