by Jane Austen
He took the pieces of paper as he spoke - and having looked them over, added - 'I believe I can explain it sir. - Your mistake is in the place. - There are two Willingdens in this country - and your advertisement refers to the other - which is Great Willingden, or Willingden Abbots, and lies seven miles off, on the other side of Battle - quite down in the Weald. And we sir' - (speaking rather proudly) 'are not in the Weald.'3
'Not down in the Weald I am sure sir,' replied the traveller, pleasantly. 'It took us half an hour to climb your bill. - Well sir - I dare say it is as you say, and I have made an abominably stupid blunder. - All done in a moment; - the advertisements did not catch my eye till the last half hour of our being in town; - when everything was in the hurry and confusion which always attend a short stay there - One is never able to complete anything in the way of business you know till the carriage is at the door - and accordingly satisfying myself with a brief enquiry, and finding we were actually to pass within a mile or two of a Willingden, I sought no farther... My dear - '(to his wife) 'I am very sorry to have brought you into this scrape.4 But do not be alarmed about my leg. It gives me no pain while I am quiet, - and as soon as these good people have succeeded in setting the carriage to rights and turning the horses round, the best thing we can do will be to measure back our steps into the turnpike road5 and proceed to Hailsham, and so home, without attempting anything farther. - Two hours take us home, from Hailsham - And when once at home, we have our remedy at hand you know. - A little of our own bracing sea air will soon set me on my feet again. - Depend upon it my dear, it is exactly a case for the sea. Saline air and immersion will be the very thing. - My sensations tell me so already'.
In a most friendly manner Mr Heywood here interposed, entreating them not think of proceeding till the ankle had been examined, and some refreshment taken, and very cordially pressing them to make use of his house for both purposes.
'We are always well stocked' said he, 'with all the common remedies for sprains and bruises - and I will answer for the pleasure it will give my wife and daughters to be of service to you and this lady in every way in their power'.
A twinge or two, in trying to move his foot disposed the traveller to think rather more as he had done at first of the benefit of immediate assistance - and consulting his wife in the few words of 'Well my dear, I believe it will be better for us.' - turned again to Mr Heywood - and said - 'Before we accept your hospitality sir, - and in order to do away with any unfavourable impression which the sort of wild goose-chase you find me in, may have given rise to - allow me to tell you who we are. My name is Parker. - Mr Parker of Sanditon; this lady, my wife Mrs Parker. - We are on our road home from London; - My name perhaps - though I am by no means the first of my family, holding landed property in the parish of Sanditon, may be unknown at this distance from the coast - but Sanditon itself - everybody has heard of Sanditon, - the favourite - for a young and rising bathing-place, certainly the favourite spot of all that are to be found along the coast of Sussex; - the most favoured by nature, and promising to be the most chosen by man.'
'Yes - I have heard of Sanditon,' replied Mr Heywood. - 'Every five years, one hears of some new place or other starting up by the sea, and growing the fashion. - How they can half of them be filled, is the wonder! Where people can be found with money or time to go to them! - Bad things for a country; - sure to raise the price of provisions and make the poor good for nothing - as I dare say you find, sir.'
'Not at all sir, not at all' - cried Mr Parker eagerly. 'Quite the contrary I assure you. - A common idea - but a mistaken one. It may apply to your large, overgrown places, like Brighton, or Worthing, or Eastbourne - but not to a small village like Sanditon, precluded by its size from experiencing any of the evils of civilization, while the growth of the place, the buildings, the nursery grounds,6 the demand for everything, and the sure resort of the very best company, whose regular, steady, private families of thorough gentility and character, who are a blessing everywhere, excited the industry of the poor and diffuse comfort and improvement among them of every sort. - No sir, I assure you, Sanditon is not a place -'
'I do not mean to take exceptions to any place in particular sir,' answered Mr Heywood. - 'I only think our coast is too full of them altogether - But had we not better try to get you' -
'Our coast too full' - repeated Mr Parker. - 'On that point perhaps we may not totally disagree; - at least there are enough. Our coast is abundant enough; it demands no more. - Everybody's taste and everybody's finances may be suited - And those good people who are trying to add to the number, are in my opinion excessively absurd, and must soon find themselves the dupes of their own fallacious calculations. - Such a place as Sanditon sir, I may say was wanted, was called for. - Nature had marked it out - had spoken in most intelligible characters - The finest, purest sea breeze on the coast - acknowledged to be so - excellent bathing - fine hard sand - deep water ten yards from the shore - no mud - no weeds - no slimey rocks - Never was there a place more palpably designed by nature for the resort of the invalid - the very spot which thousands seemed in need of. - The most desirable distance from London! One complete, measured mile nearer than Eastbourne. Only conceive sir, the advantage of saving a whole mile, in a long journey. But Brinshore sir, which I dare say you have in your eye - the attempts of two or three speculating people about Brinshore, this last year, to raise that paltry hamlet, lying, as it does between a stagnant marsh, a bleak moor and the constant effluvia of a ridge of putrifying sea weed, can end in nothing but their own disappointment. What in the name of common sense is to recommend Brinshore? - A most insalubrious air - roads proverbially detestable - water brackish beyond example, impossible to get a good dish of tea within three miles of the place - and as for the soil - it is so cold and ungrateful that it can hardly be made to yield a cabbage. - Depend upon it sir, that this is a faithful description of Brinshore - not in the smallest degree exaggerated - and if you have heard it differently spoke of - '
'Sir, I never heard it spoken of in my life before,' said Mr Heywood. 'I did not know there was such a place in the world.'
'You did not! - There my dear -' (turning with exultation to his wife) - 'you see how it is. So much for the celebrity of Brinshore! - This gentleman did not know there was such a place in the world. - Why, in truth sir, I fancy we may apply to Brinshore, that line of the poet Cowper in his description of the religious cottager, as opposed to Voltaire - "She, never heard of half a mile from home.".'7
'With all my heart sir - Apply any verses you like to it - But I want to see something applied to your leg - and I am sure by your lady's countenance that she is quite of my opinion and thinks it a pity to lose any more time - And here come my girls to speak for themselves and their mother.' (Two or three genteel looking young women followed by as many maid servants, were now seen issuing from the house) - 'I began to wonder the bustle should not have reached them. - A thing of this kind soon makes a stir in a lonely place like ours. - Now sir, let us see how you can be best conveyed into the house.'
The young ladies approached and said everything that was proper to recommend their father's offers; and in an unaffected manner calculated to make the strangers easy - And as Mrs Parker was exceedingly anxious for relief - and her husband by this time, not much less disposed for it - a very few civil scruples were enough - especially as the carriage being now set up, was discovered to have received such injury on the fallen side as to be unfit for present use. - Mr Parker was therefore carried into the house, and his carriage wheeled off to a vacant barn.
CHAPTER 2
The acquaintance, thus oddly begun, was neither short nor unimportant For a whole fortnight the travellers were fixed at Willingden; Mr Parker's sprain proving too serious for him to move sooner. - He had fallen into very good hands. The Heywoods were a thoroughly respectable family, and every possible attention was paid in the kindest and most unpretending manner, to both husband and wife. He was waited on and nursed, and she cheered and comfor
ted with unremitting kindness - and as every office of hospitality and friendliness was received as it ought - as there was not more good will on one side than gratitude on the other - nor any deficiency of generally pleasant manners on either, they grew to like each other in the course of that fortnight, exceedingly well.
Mr Parker's character and history were soon unfolded. All that he understood of himself, he readily told, for he was very open-hearted; - and where he might be himself in the dark, his conversation was still giving information, to such of the Heywoods as could observe. - By such he was perceived to be an enthusiast; - on the subject of Sanditon, a complete enthusiast. - Sanditon, - the success of Sanditon as a small, fashionable bathing place was the object, for which he seemed to live. A very few years ago, and it had been a quiet village of no pretensions;8 but some natural advantages in its position and some accidental circumstances having suggested to himself, and the other principal landholder, the probability of its becoming a profitable speculation, they had engaged in it, and planned and built, and praised and puffed, and raised it to a something of young renown - and Mr Parker could now think of very little besides.
The facts, which in more direct communication, he laid before them were that he was about five and thirty - had been married, - very happily married seven years - and had four sweet children at home; - that he was of a respectable family, and easy though not large fortune; no profession - succeeding as eldest son to the property which two or three generations had been holding and accumulating before him; - that he had two brothers and two sisters - all single and all independent - the eldest of the two former indeed, by collateral inheritance, quite as well provided for as himself.
His object in quitting the high road, to hunt for an advertising surgeon, was also plainly stated; - it had not proceeded from any intention of spraining his ankle or doing himself any other injury for the good of such surgeon - nor (as Mr Heywood had been apt to suppose) from any design of entering into partnership with him - it was merely in consequence of a wish to establish some medical man at Sanditon, which the nature of the advertisement induced him to expect to accomplish in Willingden. - He was convinced that the advantage of a medical man at hand would very materially promote the rise and prosperity of the place - would in fact tend to bring a prodigious influx; - nothing else was wanting. He had strong reason to believe that one family had been deterred last year from trying Sanditon on that account - and probably very many more - and his own sisters who were sad invalids, and whom he was very anxious to get to Sanditon this summer, could hardly be expected to hazard themselves in a place where they could not have immediate medical advice.
Upon the whole Mr Parker was evidently an amiable, family-man, fond of wife, children, brothers and sisters - and generally kind-hearted; - liberal, gentlemanlike, easy to please; - of a sanguine turn of mind, with more imagination than judgement. And Mrs Parker was as evidently a gentle, amiable, sweet-tempered woman, the properest wife in the world for a man of strong understanding, but not of capacity to supply the cooler reflection which her own husband sometimes needed, and so entirely waiting to be guided on every occasion, that whether he were risking his fortune or spraining his ankle, she remained equally useless.
Sanditon was a second wife and four children to him - hardly less dear - and certainly more engrossing. - He could talk of it for ever. - It had indeed the highest claims; - not only those of birthplace, property, and home, - it was his mine, his lottery, his speculation and his hobby horse; his occupation his hope and his futurity. - He was extremely desirous of drawing his good friends at Willingden thither; and his endeavours in the cause, were as grateful and disinterested, as they were warm.
He wanted to secure the promise of a visit - to get as many of the family as his own house would contain, to follow him to Sanditon as soon as possible - and healthy as they all undeniably were - foresaw that every one of them would be benefited by the sea. - He held it indeed as certain, that no person could be really well, no person (however upheld for the present by fortuitous aids of exercise and spirits in a semblance of health) could be really in a state of secure and permanent health without spending at least six weeks by the sea every year. - The sea air and sea bathing together were nearly infallible, one or the other of them being a match for every disorder, of the stomach, the lungs or the blood; they were anti-spasmodic, anti-pulmonary, anti-sceptic, anti-bilious and anti-rheumatic. Nobody could catch cold by the sea, nobody wanted appetite by the sea, nobody wanted spirits, nobody wanted strength.9 They were healing, softening, relaxing - fortifying and bracing - seemingly just as was wanted - sometimes one, sometimes the other. - If the sea breeze failed, the sea-bath was the certain corrective; - and where bathing disagreed, the sea breeze alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure.
His eloquence however could not prevail. Mr and Mrs Heywood never left home. Marrying early and having a very numerous family, their movements had long been limited to one small circle; and they were older in habits than in age. - Excepting two journeys to London in the year, to receive his dividends, Mr Heywood went no farther than his feet or his well-tried old horse could carry him, and Mrs Heywood's adventurings were only now and then to visit her neighbours, in the old coach which had been new when they were married and fresh lined on their eldest son's coming of age ten years ago. - They had a very pretty property - enough, had their family been of reasonable limits to have allowed them a very gentlemanlike share of luxuries and change - enough for them to have indulged in a new carriage and better roads, an occasional month at Tunbridge Wells, and symptoms of the gout and a winter at Bath; - but the maintenance, education and fitting out of fourteen children demanded a very quiet, settled, careful course of life - and obliged them to be stationary and healthy at Willingden.
What prudence had at first enjoined, was now rendered pleasant by habit. They never left home, and they had a gratification in saying so. - But very far from wishing their children to do the same, they were glad to promote their getting out into the world, as much as possible. They staid at home, that their children might get out; - and while making that home extremely comfortable, welcomed every change from it which could give useful connections or respectable acquaintance to sons or daughters. When Mr and Mrs Parker therefore ceased from soliciting a family-visit, and bounded their views to carrying back one daughter with them, no difficulties were started. It was general pleasure and consent.
Their invitation was to Miss Charlotte Heywood, a very pleasing young woman of two and twenty, the eldest of the daughters at home, and the one, who under her mother's directions had been particularly useful and obliging to them; who had attended them most, and knew them best. - Charlotte was to go, - with excellent health, to bathe and be better if she could - to receive every possible pleasure which Sanditon could be made to supply by the gratitude of those she went with - and to buy new parasols, new gloves, and new brooches, for her sisters and herself at the library, which Mr Parker was anxiously wishing to support.10
All that Mr Heywood himself could be persuaded to promise was, that he would send everyone to Sanditon, who asked his advice, and that nothing should ever induce him (as far as the future could be answered for) to spend even five shillings at Brinshore.11
CHAPTER 3
Every neighbourhood should have a great lady. - The great lady of Sanditon, was Lady Denham; and in their journey from Willingden to the coast, Mr Parker gave Charlotte a more detailed account of her, than had been called for before. - She had been necessarily often mentioned at Willingden, - for being his colleague in speculation, Sanditon itself could not be talked of long, without the introduction of Lady Denham and that she was a very rich old lady, who had buried two husbands, who knew the value of money, was very much looked up to and had a poor cousin living with her, were facts already well known, but some further particulars of her history and her character served to lighten the tediousness of a long hill, or a heavy bit of road, and to give the visiting young lady a suitab
le knowledge of the person with whom she might now expect to be daily associating.
Lady Denham had been a rich Miss Brereton, born to wealth but not to education. Her first husband had been a Mr Hollis, a man of considerable property in the country, of which a large share of the parish of Sanditon, with manor and mansion house made a part He had been an elderly man when she married him; - her own age about thirty. - Her motives for such a match could be little understood at the distance of forty years, but she had so well nursed and pleased Mr Hollis, that at his death he left her everything - all his estates, and all at her disposal After a widowhood of some years, she had been induced to marry again. The late Sir Harry Denham, of Denham Park in the neighbourhood of Sanditon had succeeded in removing her and her large income to his own domains, but he could not succeed in the views of permanently enriching his family, which were attributed to him. She had been too wary to put anything out of her own power - and when on Sir Harry's decease she returned again to her own house at Sanditon, she was said to have made this boast to a friend 'that though she had got nothing but her title from the family, still she had given nothing for it.'
For the title, it was to be supposed that she had married - and Mr Parker acknowledged there being just such a degree of value for it apparent now, as to give her conduct that natural explanation. 'There is at times' said he - 'a little self-importance - but it is not offensive; - and there are moments, there are points, when her love of money is carried greatly too far. But she is a goodnatured woman, a very goodnatured woman, - a very obliging, friendly neighbour; a cheerful, independent, valuable character. - and her faults may be entirely imputed to her want of education. She has good natural sense, but quite uncultivated. - She has a fine active mind, as well as a fine healthy frame for a woman of seventy, and enters into the improvement of Sanditon with a spirit truly admirable - though now and then, a littleness will appear. She cannot look forward quite as I would have her - and takes alarm at a trifling present expense, without considering what returns it will make her in a year or two. That is - we think differently, we now and then, see things differently, Miss Heywood. - Those who tell their own story you know must be listened to with caution. - When you see us in contact, you will judge for yourself.'
