A Walk with Jane Austen

by Lori Smith

  I'm still trying to get my head around what it means to trust God. For some reason I fear that God would just as soon (or even rather) rake me over the coals than give me something that feels genuinely good, something I really want. As though now that I've seen that side of God, I can't allow him to be good in the way we define goodness. I'm not sure why I feel this so strongly; it's not like I am Job, with a list of grievances. I keep thinking about Jane's prayer: “We feel that we have been blessed far beyond any thing that we have deserved; and though we cannot but pray for a continuance of all these mercies, we acknowledge our unworthiness of them and implore thee to pardon the presumption of our desires.”14 Seen from the right angle, there's a desperation in that, a feeling that perhaps you are dealing with a God who may be capricious at times, whose favor may not last. He cares for you. I'm trying to believe that.

  And somehow now I feel him caring for me. There have been so many instances of grace and goodness on this trip. I want to pray, / dont deserve this, but please give me more.

  I was dying for someone to welcome me at church, but that is not really the English way. But they sang one of my favorite songs at the end, and when I left to do some shopping, I was smiling scandalously at people on the street.

  The theater was nice last night—smaller than any back home, but elegant and red. It was Much Ado About Nothing. I sat in the dress circle—of course, no one was wearing dresses—with an empty seat beside me and could barely get comfortable because my legs ached. It was a bit cruel to have to listen to Benedick, with his, “When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”15

  Against my will it made me think of Jack and wonder if he has quite determined not to marry. It is as though Elinor and Marianne are at war inside me—the one determined not to think about him (I have no real reason to after all) and the other all smiles and hopes. I am leaving all thoughts of him in Bath and determined they will not follow me. Derbyshire sounds terribly romantic I think. If only I felt like going anywhere. I'm staying at a pub and it will probably smell.

  Eighteen

  Pilsley and Pemberley (Or What Makes Darcy Great)

  But there certainly are not so many men

  of large fortune in the world,

  as there are pretty women to deserve them.

  —MANSFIELD PARK

  The village of Pilsley is tiny and I adore it. I sat on my sloping canopy bed looking out the window on two or three streets, all the cottages of stone, every one with a garden, and all the doors and trim painted the loveliest shade of teal blue—even the little schoolhouse at the end of the street. It's very clean and everything a pub should be— red carpet and thick beams, comfortable clutter everywhere. So as a result, all is better than right with the world. There are even two sweet brown English Labs.

  I called home and talked to my parents and each of my nieces— the twins are three, and Grace is getting close to five—and they want to know when I am going to come see them, which makes me miss them even more. They manage at the same time to be both terrors and the sweetest children in the world. They are very loud, which I love, and regularly get into very bad trouble. As my sister says, it's a good thing they're cute.

  Being an aunt has been one of the best surprises of my life. I cannot make up fairy stories like Jane did for her nieces and nephews, but I read stories to them and buy them things and let them eat whatever they want, and this seems to make up for any other deficiencies in their minds. Grace is terribly put upon having two younger sisters. She said her first sentence when she was about sixteen months and Linda was in the hospital with the twins: “Dog poop side,” like she was finally beginning to understand the world, and this was so interesting to her, seeing the dog pooping in the backyard.

  Alison has a little smoker's voice. We don't know where she got it. I want to always remember her singing her grace before dinner (“God our Father, God our Father, we thank you…”) sounding like she'd just finished a pack of Marlboros. Once I took Eleanor to Frying Pan Park, a little farm by my house, and before we even pulled up she started to laugh in her car seat—she was two and a half I think—like I've never heard a little child laugh, continuous, genuine joy. Once she got over the great wonder of finding thousands of small rocks in the parking lot (she was collecting them then), she continued her laughing spree all around the barnyard, interspersed with animal noises (“Heheheheh, pig! pig! oink, oink, oink, heheheheheh, cow! moooooo”).

  Ellie and Ali, the twins, are sort of miracle babies. They are identical and there was only one sac, which is rare and dangerous. Linda was in the hospital for ten weeks before they were born. Had the timing for the separation of the egg been only slightly different, they would have been conjoined. So they were born early, tiny and with acid reflux so bad that Jon and Linda had to shove feeding tubes down their noses and pump them with formula. They screamed for the first five months of their lives, louder than any babies I've ever heard. It's still their first reaction to anything unpleasant—real or imagined.

  Anyway, it's all great fun for me because I just get to hear the stories and give them things and love them. And they adore me, which is pretty much the best deal in the world.

  I've always wanted to have children. I hope I will. Every year I cower at the doctor's office (not any doctor but that doctor, you know), wrapped in something that looks like a big paper towel with armholes and a huge rip down the front, trying to keep my intricate parts covered. The walls are pinned with pictures of delivery-room moms, smiling and sweaty, holding prizeling prune-faced babies, surrounded by three or four or five stairstep kids. The women glow, as if they've just fulfilled their earthly mission. They've gotten these bits and pieces of intricate wiring and odd-shaped containers to actually produce something valuable— something human. How could you ever ask anything of them again? They've done their life's best work. I would like one or two or three little prizeling babies of my own. And if not, I think perhaps I'll adopt one, a girl, maybe with brown skin and curly hair, or maybe very shy.

  I was worried about how I would get here, to the pub. I took the train to Matlock, which is about fifteen minutes away, and walked to the bus station, but the schedules were very hard to read, and it was nearly deserted except for one rather shady character. A cab just happened to pull up with the sweetest driver. He was thin, Pakistani, and barely spoke English, probably late thirties. He couldn't pronounce the name Pilsley or even spell it, but he was so enthusiastic to take me here and managed to follow the signs without any problem and pointed out the great Chatsworth estate along the way. It seems that his parents live here in England, too, and that he and his wife have no children, which is a shame because I'm sure he would shower them with great and demonstrative affection.

  My wonderful dumpy bed is once again achingly empty. My bed is always empty. It is one of the things about my life that seems ridiculous in the twenty-first century that would not have seemed so to Jane.

  It's not that I don t want to have sex; it's not even that all the desires are repressed and buttoned up. They are just there, and I bide them. I wait with them. I endure them. At the risk of sounding cheesy or ridiculously holy, I give them to God. Sometimes I do not want to give them to God. Sometimes I just weep them at him or with him, try to make sure he is hearing me struggle at least. Biblically, of course, he is with me in the struggle, but his presence is not as palpable as I'd like. He can be a thin sort of thing when I need a physical presence. Half the time it seems crazy, even to me, and I'm afraid that if the right guy came along—someone charming and funny, who adored me—I could just forget it all. I'm afraid ofthat.

  Tonight I want Jack to be here. I'm not supposed to be thinking about him, but I can't stop.

  I don't regret pursuing chastity. I'm not sorry that this is how I've lived my life. But in the present and future, it's harder to be certain. I believe this is the right decision and the healthiest decision, the intention of God's creation and the best way to fulfill it
(if one can talk about being fulfilled not having sex) and all that. It's just that it doesn't always make sense.

  More than anything else, this one aspect of my life throws into stark relief the fact that I am not living for myself It is the central tenet of Christianity—your life is not your own; it is not solely about your pleasure but about serving and obeying God. I've never thought that anyone outside the church had any reason to attempt this lifestyle—I mean, there are other reasons, but making people who dont profess Christianity feel guilty about their life choices is not my thing. Not that they aren't good general principles, but the moral strictures of the faith are for those within the faith, not those outside. Sometimes I think, like the apostle Paul said, if we are wrong in the end, we will have been crazy indeed. This is when I doubt my faith the most. Sometimes the desire to be normal—and not be alone—overcomes almost everything else.

  My innocent Christian college friend Kari has given up. She was visiting for a couple of weeks and met a guy and just didn't come home. I wouldn't even have known if she hadn't told me. She said he had a talent for caustic sarcasm and didn't like his family much and had a master's degree in Italian literature and that she adored him. For a while she slunk away, dodging shame when she saw me, and then whatever shame was there seemed replaced by loud happiness. She's attempted to hold on to both her strict faith and her adoring boyfriend, and I have to believe she's uncomfortable with the tension. I have to believe there is tension.

  I could so easily do the same thing. Actually, I think sometimes that had the opportunity been reversed, she would have been the one counseling me about the soul-bruising effects of sin. But mostly I'm afraid for her, afraid that this particular means of happiness will fail her, maybe spectacularly.

  The prospect of possibly not being alone forever—this impossible lonely marathon being nearly over—has me giddy tonight in this slouchy bed.

  I just paid ten pence (7? as they're called) for a vile toilet at the Disley train station, but it was worth every P My goal is Lyme Park—Colin Firth's Pemberley—but I have one mile to walk, and since today has been a comedy of errors already, I am beginning to fear that it will be as illusory as Godmersham. I have visions of disappearing sidewalks and having to flag a car down in the rain.

  I adore that movie, the BBC version of P&P,perhaps in a manner that borders on being excessive and slightly irrational. I want to see the approach to the house, which is one of the best moments, when Elizabeth and the Gardiners come through the trees and see it for the first time across the lake.

  It's taken me more than three hours to get here, most of the last hour trying to talk myself out of having to pee so badly. I only realized after getting on the bus for Disley that I had to go to the bathroom very bad. I wonder, does anything bad happen if you wait to pee longer than you should? I heard a story once in high school about a girl who waited so long to go that she couldn't go any more at all.

  I hurried out of the pub this morning to catch a bus to Bakewell, to catch another bus to Buxton, to get a train to Disley. I had no idea it would be this hard. The bus should have come at 9:43, but it wasn't there by 9:45, then 9:47, then 9:52, and 10:12. Finally at 10:34 a bus arrived to find me first verging on panic and then incredibly relieved. The driver said the first one “musta broke down or something.” On getting to Bakewell and after some difficulty finding the proper stand, I discovered another bus that would take me through Buxton and all the way here. It was a lovely ride, green hills, spectacular views, the occasional quarry—me wondering how many tiny villages the bus had to stop in and trying to convince myself that I could absolutely survive one hour. This is considered the Peak District, but I don't actually see any real peaks, though everything is bigger and grander here.

  Lyme Park is actually right where it is supposed to be, with a wide sidewalk the entire way and a shuttle from the gate to the house. I had a picnic lunch and wandered through the gardens for a little over an hour. There's a long path around the lake, manicured flower gardens, an orangery. Close to the house is a sunken geometric Dutch garden with a detailed pattern of flowers and plants, but you can only look down on it and not actually walk through it. It's all lovely and understated, if not quite so grand as I imagined it to be—just kind of quietly gorgeous.

  There used to be a little tour here showing significant spots in the movie, but when I asked about it in the information office, they said, “As it was filmed ten years ago, all ofthat has been taken down.” You don't seem to be able to get to the spot where Darcy dives into the lake. It's back in a meadow beyond the official walking trails. The approach to the house is just as beautiful in real life. It's actually a view of the back of the house; it would be impossible to drive a carriage up that way.

  At the risk of betraying the depth of my obsession with the film, I looked for the steps Darcy runs down on his way to meet the Gar-diners and Elizabeth and the spot in the drive behind the house where their conversation was shot.

  What exactly is it that makes Darcy so darn attractive? I think there's more going on here than just proud rich man falls in love with poor, spirited girl. For me so much of it is about his character—that he cares about it, for one thing, that he's concerned about being proud. That he not only takes Elizabeth's correction to heart but loves her for it.

  I love the quote from Darcy's housekeeper, that he was “the best landlord and the best master.…that ever lived. Not like the wild young men nowadays who think of nothing but themselves.”1 And Emma's dear Mr. Knightley knew what it meant to invest in the social welfare of those beneath him. One of my favorite quotes from Jane is from a letter to her niece, Fanny, who was just at the stage of deciding about suitors. Jane writes, “There are such beings in the World, perhaps, one in a Thousand, as the Creature You & I should think perfection, where Grace & Spirit are united to Worth, where the Manners are equal to the Heart & Understanding, but such a person may not come in your way.”2 That is just how I feel, and I'm afraid these men may be rarer today than they were then.

  We don't value character much anymore. Being a gentleman is a lost art—and I suppose we don't really reward anyone for that. If they make us laugh or dress well or are good in bed, those are the things we've come to prize. But I think most women I know would take Darcy any day (of the Firth or Macfadyen variety), although they probably can't put into words what Darcy has that they're missing.

  I find myself wondering about my deep connection to Austen's heroines as well—women who couldn't have professions, who were dependent on marriage or inheritance for their value in life, and who were basically forbidden from expressing their emotions to the men they loved. Yet hundreds of years beyond Austen, whether or not a woman marries and how successful that marriage is is still the defining characteristic of her life.

  I used to think that there was a particular brand of Austenian marriage angst that was limited to the evangelical Christian community. Living in the evangelical culture, in which marriage and motherhood are still the prized roles for women, in which sex is put on hold until after the marriage vows, and in which men are still largely expected to take the lead in relationships, can give one a sense of kinship with Austen's early-nineteenth-century heroines, however different our situations in life.

  Relationship discussions with my girlfriends center on trying to navigate a world in which we have little control, the rules are uncertain, and we are at times desperate. There are endless questions: If I call him before he calls me, will he think Im trying to take the lead and will that ruin everything? If we've been dating for years and he's unsure about marriage, is he a noncommittal loser or just waiting for God's direction? And if he seems to have led me on, is he weak-charactered or simply confused?

  I used to think these particular machinations were our own, that somehow the girls out there who were wearing Manolos and having sex and moving in with guys were too sophisticated to care about analyzing e-mails for signs of commitment-phobia. And then I watched Sex and the City. And th
ere were Carrie and Miranda and Charlotte and Samantha—the girls who were going to try to have sex like guys, without feeling anything—analyzing conversations to try to figure out if Mr. Bigs “I miss you, babe” was some sort of coded mea culpa and hoping (oh God, please) for something more substantial and long term than a brief, albeit incredibly good, one-night stand. Significantly, the producers chose to end the series with all of the characters in long-term relationships.

  In many ways, we women live in our own world, a world where we analyze men and try to figure out how to get what we want from them and how to live with what we get from them. It makes me think of Eve's “your desire shall be for your husband”3 curse. As Carrie would say, “I am someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love.” Only I am afraid that Mr. Big was no Mr. Darcy, and I wonder how much progress we've really made.

  When I get home to the pub after another three hours on various buses, James, Rod and Jo's neighbor, tells me it would have taken only forty-five minutes in a car to get to Lyme Park. I think James comes here every night for a pint because this is his “local,” as they say. I enjoy peering in on their world. Why ever don't we have pubs in America? Or cozy little villages? When I think of England, these are the things I think of. And tea shops. When I think of America, I think of oversized strip malls and chain restaurants. It's all very depressing.

  I'm lying on my back on the lawn behind Chatsworth watching the Emperor Fountain (close to where Matthew Macfadyen snogs Keira Knightley in the latest version of P&P). The sky is brilliant blue with only the occasional cloud, and after weeks of wrapping up I'm warm again, in my orange T-shirt and jean shorts. I'm probably getting sunburned, and it feels very good. A pair of squabbling ducks are creating a general commotion, and there's a couple just down from me who are so easy with each other, her head on his stomach, now and then sitting up and talking about what they should do for dinner, that for just a minute I wish I had company. But why be unhappy in a garden like this? Especially when there's ice cream.