The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen

by Syrie James

  6 July, 1801. Mr. and Mrs. George Austen, and daughters.

  “George Austen was Jane’s father!” I exclaimed with amazement.

  Anthony uttered an expletive of shocked disbelief. “Oh my God. You were right. You were right!” Then he frowned. “Wait, I thought the letter said she lost the manuscript in 1802.”

  We stared at each other. I flipped ahead to the summer of 1802. There was another entry.

  15 July, 1802. Mr. and Mrs. George Austen, and daughters C & J.

  Score!

  Anthony eagerly insisted that we check further, to see if there were any more Austen entries. But although we went back to the beginning and studied every page through 1817, the year Jane Austen died, we only found those two.

  “She was here twice,” I said excitedly. The entry didn’t mention how long they’d stayed, but, I explained to Anthony, travel at that time was so difficult, time-consuming, and costly, that visitors generally came for at least a couple of weeks, often much longer.

  “I wonder how they knew Lawrence Whitaker,” he mused.

  “He wasn’t a relative. Maybe he was a friend of her father’s. George Austen knew all kinds of interesting people.”

  “This is incredible. Truly. I can hardly believe it. One of my ancestors actually knew Jane Austen. She slept in my family’s house!” He grinned. “And now we have the thrill of the hunt.”

  “The thrill of the hunt?”

  “Yes. Now that we know she was here, we move on to the larger question: where’s that missing manuscript? What did Jane say? Let me see that letter again.”

  I took out the copy of the letter, and we studied it together.

  “‘Do you recall my theory as to how it came to be lost? I still maintain that it was all vanity, nonsense, and wounded pride,’” he read aloud. “What does she mean?”

  “I don’t know.” I continued reading: “‘I should never have read it out to you that night during our stay but kept it safe with all the others.’ Maybe,” I theorized, “in taking it out to read to Cassandra, she somehow misplaced it, and blames herself.”

  “If that’s true, wouldn’t she have asked Lawrence Whitaker to help her find it?”

  “Not necessarily. She says to Cassandra, ‘You did persuade me to tell no one about it while I was writing it.’ As if for some reason, she wanted to keep that manuscript a secret.”

  “Why, I wonder? And more to the point, after she left, wouldn’t you think that somebody would have found it? And if so, knowing it was a work by Austen, why didn’t they sell it?”

  “They wouldn’t have known it was hers. It wouldn’t have had her name on it. This was 1802. Jane Austen didn’t publish her first book until 1811, and even then, all her books were published anonymously. When she came here with her family, she was nobody—just the unmarried, twenty-six-year-old daughter of a retired clergyman. The manuscript, if someone found it, wouldn’t have had any monetary value at the time.”

  “So…if someone in this house—one of the servants, a maid or a footman, or even Lawrence Whitaker himself—came upon an anonymous manuscript that wasn’t worth anything, what would they do with it?”

  “I suppose they’d read it—if they could read. They’d keep it if they liked it, or burn it if they didn’t.”

  He grimaced. “Let’s hope it’s not the last option.” After a paused, he added, “What would a Jane Austen manuscript look like?”

  “From the few manuscripts we have as evidence, mostly of unfinished works, it seems, in Jane’s mind, that they had to look like a book. She used to write on ordinary sheets of writing paper that she folded in half and hand-stitched along the spine. So it’d be a series of small paper booklets, each about eight pages in length.”

  “Do you think—presuming said person did keep the manuscript—there’s even the remotest chance that it might still be stashed somewhere in this house?”

  My heart leapt at the thought. “It’s possible. But we’re talking two hundred years. It could have been found, later, by someone who had no idea what it was, and moved any number of times.” I glanced around the vast room we were sitting in. “How many rooms does this house have?”

  “You don’t want to know.” We both sat lost in thought for a moment. “Where do people usually stash things?” he said.

  “In the bottom of a dresser, or locked in a desk drawer, or in a box at the back of a closet. If it’s valuable, in a safe.”

  He sighed. “There is a safe, in my father’s old study, but it only contained his important papers and my mother’s jewels. And if there was anything secret in a drawer or a closet, I would have found it decades ago.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “I loved reading mystery novels growing up, and solving puzzles—things like the Rubik’s cube—and I used to play detective in just about every room but this one. Looking for hiding places was my raison d’etre. I crawled under furniture and into wardrobes, I investigated every nook and cranny of this house. I found all sorts of things to spark a young boy’s interest—but nothing remotely resembling a stack of old, handwritten manuscript booklets.”

  “Did you look in the attic or the cellar?”

  He stared at me. “Now there’s an idea. The attic and cellar are both huge. I didn’t like going into either one when I was young and haven’t seen them in ages.” He stood abruptly. “Let’s go take a look. I’m going to have to clear them out anyway at some point. I’ll find some torches.”

  He returned a few minutes later with two flashlights. Anthony had to duck through the doorway as we climbed down the narrow, ancient staircase to the cellar. Adrenaline rushed through my veins. We were halfway down when I said, “I can’t believe I’m here, and we’re actually doing this—looking for a missing manuscript by one of the most beloved writers in history.”

  He stopped and turned, his eyes serious. “Samantha. Before we go any further, I should probably make sure we’re clear about one thing.”

  “What?”

  “We both know how unlikely it is that we’ll come across anything. But if we do—you realize that whatever we might find would belong to me, right?”

  The question took me by surprise. “Of course,” I said, a bit offended that he’d even felt the need to ask.

  He nodded, then moved on down the stairs. I followed him, frowning, wondering for a moment if Anthony’s sudden interest in Jane Austen sprang not from excitement about the possibility of a newly discovered work, but instead from the money that it might bring. Because, undoubtedly, such a manuscript would be worth a great deal.

  I shook off the thought, determined not to let it infect my mood. Whatever Anthony’s motivation might be, at least he was on board—and he seemed to find the pursuit as exhilarating as I did. For the next two and a half hours, as we went through the cellar (cold, dark, creepy, and more or less empty) and the attic (warm, dark, musty, and very cluttered), I concentrated on the “thrill of the hunt,” as he’d put it—filled with anticipation about what we might uncover.

  There were electric lights throughout, but we used our flashlights to look in the dark corners. Anthony came upon all sorts of mementos from his childhood that unexpectedly stirred up fond memories. We found old furniture, family photos, boxes of toys, children’s books, dusty Christmas decorations, discarded appliances, obsolete electronics, ancient camera equipment, an old telescope, bolts of fabric, and trunks of lovely vintage clothing and hats…but no bricked-up hiding places, and nothing resembling a manuscript.

  “Bollocks,” Anthony said at last, sitting down on one of the trunks.

  “It was always a long shot,” I admitted, “but I enjoyed looking. You have a wealth of wonderful family history here.”

  “I had no idea.”

  As we traipsed back downstairs, he looked at his watch. “It’s two o’clock. No wonder I’m starving. Let’s have lunch. I dashed out early this morning and picked up some groceries—I’m sure I can whip up a couple of fairly edible sandwiches.”
r />   I figured it was time to call it quits. “Thanks, but you don’t have to feed me again—I’ve already taken up most of your day. Don’t you need to get back to London tonight?”

  “No, I’ve taken tomorrow off. I have a lot to do around here before I go home—but to tell you the truth, I’ve lost interest in it. How long were you planning to stay in the area?”

  “I need to go back to London tomorrow, too.”

  “Well then, we’re on the same timetable. We have to eat—we might as well do so together. And I think a ham sandwich on a bakery bun is the least I can do for the woman who proved that a world-famous authoress once spent the night at my childhood home.”

  I laughed. “All right, a ham sandwich it is.”

  We retreated to the kitchen, which was large, serviceable, and relatively clean although outmoded. “As you can see, it hasn’t been updated in sixty years,” Anthony said, as if in apology, “but everything still works.”

  I loved the look of the old cabinets, stove, and other appliances, and told him so. “I think it’s quaint, and fits with the mood of the house. I’d hate to see it modernized.”

  “Well, that’s the first thing the new owners will do, I’m sure—rip all this out and start over.”

  “Do you already have an offer?”

  “No, but I listed it for sale yesterday, and I have my fingers crossed that something will come through soon.”

  The thought of his selling Greenbriar depressed me, so I changed the subject. We made lunch together, and sitting at the kitchen table, we chatted about this and that, comparing notes on our various travels, and on movies we liked. He loved the same mysteries, thrillers, and action films that I did, as well as many of the historical dramas and romantic comedies that I had watched many times. Yet somehow, he’d never seen a Jane Austen film—he admitted that he’d intentionally avoided them—and I told him he was really missing out.

  Eventually, the conversation circled back to the quest at hand.

  “I still can’t get over the fact that we found Jane Austen’s name in the family guest ledger,” Anthony said as he sipped his Coke.

  “If you let it be known, that little tidbit of information will be added to every Austen biography—and I wouldn’t be surprised if the house is added to all those bus tours from London and Hampshire.”

  He grinned. “You’re right—I hadn’t thought of that. But the ledger isn’t the finish line. I’m not done searching for the manuscript.”

  “You’re not?” I said, surprised.

  “I’m determined to find the thing. Aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes. But—”

  “Can you imagine if I sold the house, and the new owner was to come upon the manuscript someday? I’d want to shoot myself.”

  I laughed. “You know I’m game. But where else should we look? We don’t have a thing to go on.”

  “True. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  We both lapsed into thought as we finished eating. All at once, an idea occurred to me. “If the manuscript’s in this house, I think I might know where it is.”

  “Where?”

  “In the library.”

  “Why?”

  “You said you used to play detective in every room in the house except that one.”

  “So?”

  “So—it’s unexplored territory.”

  “We spent three hours this morning looking through the library.”

  “We just looked at the books—and not all of them, not even close. It’s a huge room. I can’t explain it, but I have a feeling the manuscript is somewhere in that room. It’s like when I bought that book of poetry the other day—something about it called out to me. I just knew I was supposed to buy it.”

  “Well, it’s as good an idea as any I’ve come up with.”

  We cleaned up from lunch and returned to the library. My eyes were drawn to the series of cabinets with carved-oak doors that were built in beneath many of the bookcases.

  “What’s in those cupboards?” I asked.

  Anthony admitted that he’d never looked inside them in his life.

  We opened the first set of doors and found a cabinetful of old maps, covering not just Devon and the British Isles, but many countries in Europe and places farther afield including Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Many of them dated back to the 1800s and were truly remarkable, with fine engraving, beautiful hand coloring, and decorative floral or ivy borders. Recognizing their value, we carefully set them aside.

  “Is it okay to be touching these?” Anthony asked. “I read somewhere that you’re supposed to wear latex gloves when reviewing old documents.”

  “I never wear gloves to handle old books and paper—none of the conservators that I know do, either. We sometimes use cotton gloves when handling metal or photographs, to avoid leaving fingerprints—but they don’t fit well, and they’re clumsy. As long as your hands are clean, and you work gently, the oils on your fingers don’t do all that much damage to paper. You’d do far more mechanical damage by fumbling with latex gloves.”

  The second and third cupboards contained ancient film canisters from what we guessed to be home movies, and more old photograph albums. One of the albums was from Anthony’s childhood. We glanced through it, smiling at his baby pictures and shots of his parents and himself as a boy. These seemed to stir up memories, both good and bad. At the back of the album, he came upon a handful of letters and dozens of colorful greeting cards he said he’d handmade as a child.

  “All the birthday and Father’s Day cards I made for him over the years,” Anthony murmured in quiet surprise. “And my letters…I had no idea he kept them.” Frowning, he put them back in the album and moved on.

  The fourth cabinet was stuffed with old file folders full of documents. It was the closest thing we’d seen to a manuscript, and our hopes rose.

  “Some of these go back a long time,” Anthony said, awestruck, as we started looking through them. “Look, here’s one that’s a hundred years old.”

  We spent half an hour sitting on the floor, carefully sifting through the old documents, and separating out the ones that looked the most valuable. They included hunting licenses, deeds, old letters, and even ancient, architectural records for the house—but no manuscripts.

  “These are fascinating,” I said. “Many are worthy of being in a museum.”

  Anthony agreed. “Still—they’re hardly what we were looking for.”

  We sat in disappointed silence for a moment. Just then, my cell phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket. There was a text message from Stephen. We had the following brief text conversation:

  How’s it going?

  Found proof! Austen was here!

  U serious?

  Yes!! Guest ledger shows she visited twice.

  Wow! Amazing.

  Sadly…no ms.

  Oh. Sorry. Will I C U tomorrow?

  Yes.

  Ok. Later. Bye.

  Bye.

  I texted a similar, brief update to Laurel Ann, then put my phone away.

  From our seats on the floor, Anthony glanced at the portraits of Lawrence and Alice Whitaker, the first master and mistress of Greenbriar. “If only paintings could speak. I’d swear they know something.”

  The couple gazed down at us as if in possession of some great secret. “Wait,” I said. “Didn’t you say Lawrence Whitaker built this library in his wife’s memory?”

  “So I was told.”

  “If he loved her that much, he must have kept some precious mementos to remember her by. Do you have anything like that? Her jewels, or maybe love letters?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Maybe he hid them for safekeeping behind a secret panel.”

  “A secret panel?” He sounded both amused and skeptical.

  “Why not?” I returned lightly. “Doesn’t every old English manor house have a secret panel?”

  “In all my searching as a child, I never discovered one.” Anthony paused,
his eyes widening with sudden interest. “But then, I never searched this room, did I?”

  We leapt to our feet. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases were all made of oak, there were large wooden pillars at each corner of the room, and practically every surface that wasn’t a window was paneled.

  “You start at that end,” he said, “and I’ll begin here.”

  As I moved through the room, looking for any sign of a line or crack that might indicate a hidden door, pressing here, there, and everywhere to see if a panel might reveal itself and spring open, I felt a bit ridiculous—but at the same time, I couldn’t help smiling. It truly felt like a treasure hunt, and I knew the prize, if there was one, would be beyond our imaginings.

  We studied every pillar, post, and panel. We checked out every inch of the mantelpiece. We looked behind all the pictures on the walls. Nothing.

  I sighed and moved to the couch, where I sank down wearily.

  Anthony dropped into a chair, equally discouraged. “If Jane Austen really did lose or misplace a manuscript here, either someone found it and took it to God knows where, or they tossed it ages ago, having no idea what it was.”

  “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “It wasn’t a complete waste. It was fun.” He smiled at me, a look that openly revealed how much he’d enjoyed these moments of camaraderie we’d shared.

  I couldn’t deny that I returned the sentiment in kind. The expression on his face was so captivating, it made my heart beat a little faster. It was like we were coconspirators in a quest for a precious Austen relic. “It has been fun. It was lovely to think, for a little while at least, that we might actually find something.”

  “And in the process, look how many interesting things we’ve come across.” He gestured toward the piles of stuff we’d emptied from the cupboards, most of which were still strewn across the floor.

  I stared at the empty cupboards. A sudden prickle ran up my spine. “Anthony: did you check the back of any of those cabinets?”

  “The back?”

  “Yes. The back.”

  We exchanged a look. In unison, we darted to the last cupboard we’d searched through—the one that had held all the old documents—and fell to our knees. I half crawled inside, then felt all along the smooth wooden surface of the rear wall to see if there was evidence of an embedded door. I couldn’t find any.