Melody asked these “gotcha” questions as she called them only when Mary was actively representing Jane and usually at the most inopportune moments. She said Jane and Mary had to be prepared to deal with rude questions, but Mary sometimes wondered whether Melody secretly wanted the answers and was using their training as an excuse to ask.
Therefore it didn’t surprise Mary when Melody asked, “So Jane, did you and Tom Lefroy ever do it?”
Mary was prepared to use one of their stock responses, perhaps: “Does impertinence pass for cleverness in this day and age?” And so she was amused when Jane directed her to say, “Yes we did, regularly and with gusto. We often did it in the library while reading Tom Jones.”3
The look on Melody’s face was priceless, and Mary had the further joy that she was behaving as Melody had asked, conveying Jane’s words exactly.
Melody was trying to respond when they heard a commotion from the hallway and then Mr Britten returned followed by a stream of people
“Apparently we had quite a few waiting outside,” he told them. “And some were shopping, so we made an announcement in the store. Sorry about the confusion.”
Melody accepted his apology with ill humour but Mary again responded graciously for Jane.
“Please do not concern yourself, Mr Britten, especially as you have supplied a multitude.”
That might have been a slight exaggeration, but there were now about twenty people in the lecture room and the noise level rose considerably. The people who’d been waiting outside were especially vocal, as they’d already formed friendships from waiting.
“Excuse me, Miss Austen, Ms Kramer?” a woman asked. Melody and Mary turned to see an additional group of five women and one man enter the room. The man, and the woman immediately next to him, was dressed in Regency costume and all were wearing JASNA badges or pins or some other device that identified them as Janeites.
Melody put on her professional smile and addressed the tall black woman who had spoken. “Ms Hawkins, I’m so glad you could make it.”
“So sorry we’re late. We met up at a restaurant before coming and the service was abysmal and … you know how it is.”
While she was talking to Melody, her eyes were of course on Mary, who was conspicuous for her youth, beauty and her dress, which suggested a Regency costume. It was actually Melody’s idea to give Mary a high-waisted wrap around muslin skirt that she could wear over her mid-length empire waist dress. This allowed Mary to travel to an event somewhat inconspicuously and by adding the wrap around skirt she suddenly became Jane Austen.
Melody could see the women wished to address Mary, but were clearly reluctant to put themselves forward.
“Ms Hawkins, ladies, sir,” Melody said with the sudden inspiration that formality seemed advisable, “may I introduce you to Miss Jane Austen.”
Almost as one the ladies half curtseyed4 (or bowed or nodded) and the gentleman gave a bow. Mary responded with a wide smile and a curtsey and then said, “I am very glad to meet you, Ms Hawkins.” And then with an inspiration of her own, Mary advanced to each member of the group and offered her hand, but not with the thumb up. Instead with the women she took the extended hand and clasped it in her own and to the gentlemen she offered her hand, which he took and offered another slight bow. Mary thought of a politician working a rope line and wondered if this would be a template for future introductions.
Jane limited herself to following Mary as the introductions were made. She thought perhaps she should offer suggestions to Mary but quickly realized that her avatar did fine without her.
During the introductions, more and more people arrived and soon Jane saw the chairs were fast disappearing. Mr Britten approached them and caught Melody’s attention.
“Are these the ladies from JASNA you were expecting?” he asked?
“Yes, Ms Hawkins …” Melody began.
“Please call me Sarah,” she interjected.
“Sarah,” Melody continued, “has offered to introduce Jane, after your own opening comments, of course.”
Melody introduced them and the store manager and the JASNA member walked off to confer. Melody then led Mary away from the other JASNA members.
“OK, now it’s my turn to break protocol. I just wanted to wish you luck, Mary. I’m sure you’ll be great. And Jane, try not to wander off. I know you won’t have much to do during the reading, so don’t start surfing the web because we’ll need you for the Q&A.”
Jane was indignant that her agent would so chide her, but then she had to admit she was eager to update her blog and might have been tempted to do so. After all, Mary would largely be reciting the script Jane had written for the talk and they’d rehearsed it so many times it was now boringly familiar.
Mary, however, was happy for Melody’s praise and warning.
“Don’t worry, I won’t let either of you down,” Mary said.
Mr Britten now tapped the microphone at the lectern to get the audience’s attention.
“Excuse me, if we could all take our seats now? Thank you, and welcome to the Strand and to this very exciting sneak peek into the latest book by none other than Jane Austen.”
The audience’s applause almost drowned out his pronunciation of Jane’s name. Mr Britten was pleased and obviously surprised at the intensity of the applause, especially after the audience stood and turned to look to Mary.
Mary felt the gaze of the audience lock onto her and felt such a rush of warmth as she’d never felt before. She knew a flush was colouring her face and had no idea what to do. Jane was also nonplussed and also desperately wanting again to hear. She had never lived for adulation from a crowd, but how cruel that now, when that adulation was freely offered, she could not hear it. Jane did, however, have the presence of mind to suggest to Mary, “A regal nod would not be amiss.”
Mary did as bid, but the applause continued. Finally she thought to motion that they should resume their seats and once settled, she looked to Mr Britten and offered him a nod as well, which he took as a sign to continue.
“Obviously you know who she is,” he said, deadpan, which occasioned a round of laughter. “But if by some miracle you don’t, here is …”—he paused to look at the note he held in his hand—“Sarah Hawkins with the local chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America to introduce her.”
He stepped back and the JASNA member approached the lectern to her own quick round of applause.
“I think a lot of us hoped this day might come, but I don’t think any of us thought it would happen, to actually meet our Jane, who gave us Elizabeth and Darcy, Elinor and Marianne … uh … Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, Emma and Knightley, uh … Catherine and Henry and … and … who did I forget?”
Several people shouted out, “Fanny and Edmund!”5
“Oh, how could I forget Fanny and Edmund?”
The audience laughed at this, of course, although it caused Ms Hawkins some embarrassment.
“Thank you. Anyway, I’m guessing quite a few of you here can say that ‘Jane Austen changed my life’ and I’m sure that number will rise exponentially with the release of Sanditon, her finally released novel. I’ve been fortunate enough to have an advance reading copy and I can tell you it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever read and … oh enough of me talking, I am honoured to introduce Miss Jane Austen, author of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park and now Sanditon.”
Mary walked to the lectern as the audience again stood and applauded, but she carefully stood slightly to one side and then turned and joined the audience to applaud the empty space. She and Melody had planned this tribute without telling Jane. Unfortunately the effect was somewhat lessened because Jane was not actually in that spot, but she quickly slid into place.
The audience also took a beat before realizing what Mary was doing, but then the applause got louder. Finally Mary turned and took her place behind the lectern.
“Thank you, thank you. I
am very happy for the first time in almost two centuries to acknowledge those of you who have been kind enough to read my stories. It is a sobering experience. In my lifetime, I did not seek fame—in fact I fled from it, but I would be lying if I did not admit that at this moment, I am quite enjoying it.
“Now I had planned to make some extemporaneous remarks, but my agent, Melody Kramer, whom you may notice standing there shaking her head, has reminded me of the folly of extemporaneous remarks, and so I will instead simply proceed to the reading of an excerpt from Sanditon.
“This excerpt will require some explanation, of course. It is a dark and stormy night and the rain is, in fact, falling in torrents onto Trafalgar House, Mr Parker’s new home in Sanditon. Miss Charlotte Heywood is there, with Mr and Mrs Parker, Mr Sidney Parker and Miss Diana and Susan Parker. Charlotte has only just met Sidney and as with all my heroines, she already has a decided opinion of him.”
1 Oscar Wilde wrote his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol after his incarceration at that jail. Wilde had been convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years hard labour.
2 Austen parodied Radcliffe’s gothic story in Northanger Abbey. Radcliffe was a contemporary, although The Mysteries of Udolpho was published in 1794, long before Austen’s novel.
3 In a letter to her sister, Austen wrote of Tom Lefroy: “He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded.” The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, is a novel by Henry Fielding published in 1749. The novel’s tales of sexual promiscuity and Jones’s status as a bastard made it scandalous.
4 An informal or half curtsey in Austen’s time was little more than putting the right foot immediately behind the left foot and bending the knees, timed with a nod of the head.
5 Edmund Bertram is the cousin of Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park. Fanny loved Edmund since the time they were children, but Edmund only realizes he loves Fanny after he understands the true nature of Mary Crawford.
Excerpt I
A dark and stormy night
Charlotte sat close with Mrs Parker, their arms locked together and with each howl of wind and each rattle of a shutter, their hands would squeeze tightly. Across from her she could see Miss Parker and Miss Susan also sitting closely together, any complaints of their ailments forgotten in the violence of the storm.
“It is only the wind, my dear,” Mr Parker said to his wife. “And think how much more fearsome it must be in the valley.”
At these words, however, the lashing of the rain on the roof grew louder and now came a shriek, as some part of the house broke loose.
Mrs Parker gasped and would rise, but Charlotte’s grip was firm. She would be strong for her hostess, although in truth she was quite frightened. She was used to the wind in Willingden, of course, for it would crest the top of their hill and moan, and yet it compared nothing to the storm this night. Her last image before the shutters were closed seemed to show the sea just outside the house instead of its quarter mile distance. She composed herself before answering: “Mr Parker is quite right, it is only the wind and cannot hurt us. What do you say, Mr Sidney?”
“Yes,” he said, with a smile, and his smile seemed to give no hint of anxiety. “It is full of sound and fury but it signifies nothing. In fact, I think it is already spent.”
A flash of lightning that shone through the cracks of the shutters and an almost simultaneous boom of thunder gave lie to his observation.
“Or nearly spent,” he amended. Charlotte gave him a faint smile, which she begrudged immediately. She still felt the sting of his inadvertent slight, despite his earnest apologies. It was clear his belief in the “bumpkin nature of our country cousins” coloured his opinion of her. And how could it not be so? He had knowledge of so much of the world, moving from place to place whenever he had found “so much to bore oneself with the same people, the same buildings and the same pervading sense of ordinariness.”
He must have sensed something change in her manner, which he perceived as renewed agitation about the storm.
“Perhaps we should play a game,” he said. “Do you know Ghost, Miss Heywood?”
“What, Ghost in the Graveyard?” Mrs Parker asked. Charlotte felt her partner’s grip relax and also saw Mr Parker nod approvingly. He knew his wife’s fondness for games.
“No, I hardly think we can play that,” Mr Sidney Parker said, although he smiled at the thought of the childhood game and at the thought of Mrs Parker chasing them about her drawing-room and shouting “You’re the ghost!”
“No, sister,” Miss Parker said. “Sidney would have us play Ghost where we start a word with a letter and each player supplies another letter and the player who completes a word loses that round. We played this game when children. Sidney always won.”
“Oh yes,” Mrs Parker said, although Charlotte thought with less than enthusiasm. She suspected her hostess would prefer some simpler game like Bullet Pudding or perhaps cards. But Charlotte approved of his suggestion for the mental occupation of Ghost should prove a superior divertissement. She thought, however, of an improvement.
“Perhaps we might play Ghost Magna,” she said, and was pleased when she saw his eyebrow rise.
“And how is that played?” he asked.
“Almost exactly the same, but the player can add a letter both after and before.”
“That does sound fun and may give us an advantage over Sidney,” Mr Parker said. “His mind does move from one thing to the next and never back.”
“Then Miss Heywood should start, for it is her suggestion,” Mr Sidney Parker said.
She nodded and said, “Very well. I begin with ‘O.’ Shall we go counter-clockwise?”
She made that suggestion because then Mrs Parker would be next, making it an easy round for her.
Mrs Parker supplied the letter “G,” obviously relieved that she would not be challenged.
“Is that before or after?” Miss Parker asked.
“Oh, I don’t … after. ‘O-G.’”
Miss Susan Parker supplied “O-G-Y,” and Miss Parker supplied “L-O-G-Y.”
Mr Parker predictably prefixed another “O” and then Mr Sidney Parker said, “My apology, Miss Heywood, if you will accept it. ‘P-O-L-O-G-Y.’”
“I do not accept it, sir, for I can preface it with another ‘O.’” She smiled broadly at this and thought if she were still with long curls and he were her brother she would stick out her tongue at him.
Mrs Parker thought for a second, and then another, before she said brightly, “‘R-O-P-L’ … no, that is not right. ‘R-O-P-O-L-O-G-Y!’”
Miss Susan Parker made it “H-R-O-P-O-L-O-G-Y” and attempted to pronounce it, much to her own amusement. Miss Parker made it “T-H-R-O-P-O-L-O-G-Y.” Mr Parker supplied the “N” and Mr Sidney Parker sighed with mock tragedy and completed the word as “A-N-T-H-R-O-P-O-L-O-G-Y.”
“I appear to be the ghost,” he said ruefully.
“That is the ‘G’ for you, Mr Sidney,” Charlotte said, unnecessarily confirming what he’d already said.
“But in Ghost Magna, one must collect ten letters before one is out,” he said, betraying his knowledge of the variant.
“Oh Lord, is that true?” Mr Parker asked with laughter. “We’ll be here all night.”
To which they all laughed and their laughter made them ignore the wind and the rain and the lightning and the thunder.
Persuasion
Somewhere there must be cats
“Yes, I would love another cookie,” Courtney said, wondering how he would choke down another indigestible digestive biscuit.1
“No dear, it’s a biscuit,” Mrs Westerby said for the third time, charmed by her American visitor. He had already eaten four biscuits and she hoped he might have another, which would finish the bag. After all, it had been opened some time ago and what with the damp, the biscuits had lost some of their crisp.
Courtney sipped his weak tea
to help wash down the biscuit, and hoped he could get the old woman back on track.
“So your mother got the letter from who?”
“From whom, dear. Let’s see, that was Major Gorrell-Barmes. That’s with an ‘M,’” she specified for Courtney who was trying to write this on a notepad while balancing his cup of tea.
“And it’s been in the frame for how long?”
“Oh, as far as I can remember, and mother says … well said, it had been in the frame since forever.”
Courtney looked at the letter in its frame, sitting on the low table with the tea things Mrs Westerby had laid out.
“And your mother was Amelia Corwain?”
“After she married my father, of course, but she was born Amelia Cavendish.”
“And this Gorrell-Barnes …”
“No, Barmes, dear, with an ‘M.’”
“Gorrell-Barmes was a friend of your mother?”
“Oh more than that, they were engaged, but he died very tragically.”
“In the war?”
“Oh no, he was killed by a lorry. It’s still tragic.”
“Yes, I guess it was to your mother,” Courtney admitted. “And do you know where he got it from?”
“Mother might have known, I suppose, and maybe she told me, but I’ve forgotten. It’s been sitting on the wall all these years, you see and I’ve not given it much mind. I’m more partial to the Brontës. Austen’s a bit of a bore, but mother adored her.”
“May I take another look at it?”
“Please do,” she said pleasantly. She had few enough visitors and still felt the loss of her mother, although she did enjoy her independence again, now that she was relieved of the drudgery of caring for the bed-ridden old woman. So she welcomed the well-dressed American, especially if he knew the worth of the letter.
Courtney set down his teacup and took up the frame. It wasn’t much bigger than five by eight inches and the letter had been folded to fit in the frame. It showed the name of the intended recipient, Harris Bigg-Wither at Manydown Park, but it didn’t seem to be either franked or postmarked. The handwriting seemed to be Jane’s, but it was difficult to make out. He looked up at the wall where the frame had hung, and although it was overcast now, he knew that on many days it would have been exposed to sunlight. Sunlight and the ink of the day would account for a lot of the fading. It was also difficult to make out because writing from the backside of the paper showed through.
Jane, Actually Page 17
