A Walk with Jane Austen

by Lori Smith

  I didn't want to push, so all those things were left under the surface. I heard him asking for time; I backed off.

  I told myself, He doesn't owe me anything. I dont want to add stress to his life. I want him to call me when he feels like calling mey get together if he feels like getting together. And part of me still knew it would all work out. This was just a little delay.

  I trusted him to tell me if he was still dating the North Carolina girl. He'd been so open about her before that I didn't think he had reason to hide anything. So we left and he said something like, “I'll be in touch.” And I believed him. I went home and began waiting—waiting for him to get his life figured out, waiting for him to find paying work, waiting for him to make time for me.

  All of my nice, reassuring, mature internal dialogue quickly devolved into Why havent I heard from him?

  A month was enough to break my heart, or to place me squarely in limbo, which is officially worse than a broken heart. I could give you all the lurid details (not that any of them are actually lurid): the waiting for e-mails, the horrible not knowing, the hating him and loving him and being patient with him and finally giving up.

  I moved on and started going out with other guys almost immediately—lots of other guys, actually, by my standards. I didn't really want to just sit around and wait for Jack and didn't particularly want to be readily available when he suddenly decided that he'd made a mistake and couldn't afford to let me go. Getting your heart to move on is another matter though. I was sad to have lost his friendship, to feel like I had made this great friend and lost him just as quickly, sad that we never explored what might have been. And no one else I met was very captivating.

  We met for coffee in October at my favorite place. I wore my brown T-shirt and long jeans with my three-inch spiked boots and plum corduroy jacket. I was running a low-grade fever, as I had been for weeks; the half of my face that was getting blasted by the heater flushed a bright red.

  When we met, everything was stilted, with none of the familiarity we'd shared in Oxford. Eventually, staring at the floor, the table, and his tea, Jack said, “So I wanted to let you know, I, uh, have continued to keep in contact with that person in North Carolina.”

  I froze. I didn't want to be angry, but I was. I wanted to ask, “Does she know you call her ‘that person in North Carolina ?” But I was afraid of what I might blurt out, so I didn't say anything.

  There were other meetings, more intense, and very honest conversations—things that got my heart riled up at various points over the following months. But, and maybe this could have been predicted, Jack never pursued me.

  Eventually, with time, his change of heart became to everyone's satisfaction, including my own. I confess to crafting a little speech à la Elizabeth Bennet so that, when he came back, I could tell him precisely why I wasn't interested. But he didn't come back, and as much as I'd like to characterize him as one of those Christian guys—the kind who just don't commit, who are still growing up at forty—I could only really conclude that he wasn't interested enough.

  As Mr. Collins would attest, those we love necessarily begin to lose their value in our eyes when they don't return our affection, and such was the case with Jack. The more I thought about what happened, if I held it in my mind a certain way, I could see weaknesses and incompatibilities, at least enough to make me content.

  So the adoration went away, and the anger went away too.

  My life returned to stasis, but with a new understanding of the kind of companionship that's possible and with a hope of finding someone who wants that kind of dear friendship, to the kind you don't, wont,just throw away.

  In the meantime, something else was happening in my life of greater significance.

  By October, a couple months after getting back, I could no longer pretend to be healthy. My body plummeted into another round of debilitating exhaustion. I was tired all the time. I couldn't sleep well— couldn't rest—and could only work for four hours or so, and this was on the good days.

  By November, I'd resigned myself to another round of doctor visits. My family doctor said my face looked a little funny, asked if I had ever had Bell's palsy, and then said, “It will probably always be a mystery why you feel bad.”

  So when the infectious-disease specialist also could find nothing wrong, I cried and went to see a chronic-fatigue specialist, beginning to resign myself to the fate of a strange illness no one understood.

  To my great relief, in March I was diagnosed.

  Lyme disease.

  All the exhaustion, all the fatigue, all the brain fog and struggling to keep up with life for the last six years suddenly had a name; it had all been due to a tiny deer tick that infected me with the Borrelia burgdor-feri bacteria when I was backpacking or in the country picking berries with a friend. For years it thrived, wreaking havoc with my life, even throwing off my autonomie nervous functions, my heart rate, and my breathing. It turned out that most people never know they've been bitten by a tick, and I was one of them. I'd had a small ring on my leg that I thought was a spider bite. So I slipped through the cracks. For years.

  The intervening six months are slightly fuzzy. But I remember going to church in tears, overwhelmed at the grace of just having a name for this illness—a name that wasn't laziness or lack of motivation—and to think there was a bacteria alive inside my body, something we could fight and hopefully kill, to think that maybe I could be healthy again. This idea was like seeing the heavens open and having God offer me back my life, a gift I'd given up hoping for. The truth is I'd given up praying for actual healing. I'd only been praying for a doctor who would be able to help me manage whatever this illness was. So I went to the altar, and a man named Joe prayed with me and anointed me with oil, and I cried.

  And then I plunged into a darkness I never expected, brought on by the antibiotics fighting the bacteria in my body.

  My days became very, very small. For weeks all I could do was lie on the couch and rest or mindlessly watch TV and then go to bed at night, in my very quiet house, in my empty bed, where I still couldn't sleep. I felt like someone was holding my head under water, and I could do nothing about it. I felt like I was living in the shadow of death.

  In fact, death began to look attractive again.

  I developed strong feelings for my butcher knife—I wanted to have it close to me and lie down with it against my cheek on the kitchen floor and keep it under my pillow at night. Once I woke up around 3:00 a.m., rocking and sobbing on my bed with exhaustion and the strongest desire to destroy everything I could touch. I wanted to cut off my hair and cut up my clothes and my sheets and curtains and shower curtain.

  I talked myself out of it with a great deal of effort because I thought if my mother found me with ragged hair, holding scissors, sitting in a pile of scraps that used to be my clothes, she would take me to the hospital; I didn't really think isolation in a psych ward would be much fun.

  I began to read Job, and finally I understood why the first thing he did in the midst of despair was to shave his head and tear his clothes.

  Here, gently, carefully, I was brought face-to-face with the grace of God in ways I never expected and, without this experience, could never have understood. I have sometimes been surprised to meet grace here, though perhaps I shouldn't be. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” the psalmist says, “for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4, Kjv).

  I should tell you though that I don't say this as a particularly cheerful Christian. I understand now that living through lamentation is part of life's process and should not be run from or avoided, so I have no desire to stuff all these things away and try to make them artificially bright…because there have been weeks when I felt so incredibly alone that I wondered if God was with me anymore. Once, when it was particularly bad, after the waking in the middle of the night and wanting to destroy my life thing, my friend Leigh held my hands and looked me in the
eye and said, “You are not forsaken, Lori. You are not forsaken.” Then she prayed over me loudly and cried for me.

  And she was right.

  I wasn't and am not forsaken. And this is where my walk with Jane comes in again, because Jane taught me something about the value of an ordinary life—things I'm not sure I could understand before I was stripped of being able to do even the ordinary. She did not want to be famous. She wanted to love her family and her friends, to live her faith rather than talk about it, to do good work and tell good stories.

  She enjoyed making money with her writing and even developed a little jealousy, like any good writer. She felt that Sir Walter Scott should have been content enough with his success in poetry without venturing into fiction. “Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones,” she joked. “It is not fair.—He has Fame & Profit enough as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths.”1 I don't think she ever knew that he owned several well-worn copies of her books.2

  And while Jane was—is—big, she never believed that being big was important.

  These are the things I want for myself, the things that became more important after my own dark night where I learned that there's no end to the grace of God—where it was big enough for every single day that I got up and could do nothing. It didn't matter if I could never write again, if I could never work again. God does not love me because of anything I can do; this still astonishes me. He simply loves me. Me, me, me. Sitting on the couch or sobbing or staring vegetatively at the TV.

  All my life I've been taught to rely on the grace of God, and yet in practice I've tried to earn his love, and my own significance, by running and doing. So it has been a measure of grace to not be able to run any longer, to simply be forced to…be.

  And this is the paradox, because this life—this loving your family and friends and doing good work and telling good stories life—may feel small, but it is far from ordinary.

  It is the best life, the extraordinary life.

  It was Jane's, and I hope it will be mine.

  Austen told her family even more about the way her stories ended, what happened to her characters over time. She told them that Pride and Prejudices Mary Bennet did eventually marry (one of her uncle Phillips's clerks), that Emma and Mr. Knightley lived at Hartfield only for a couple years before Mr. Woodhouse's health failed; that Persuasions silly Miss Steele never did manage to catch her dear doctor.

  As for my own story, who can tell?

  My days are still small. But the light is beginning to return. Just a couple weeks ago I started being able to laugh at the world again, and that felt very good—soul-healing laughter. I want more of it, to enjoy life, to love the people around me.

  I feel incredibly blessed to be in such a family, with dear friends, with the prospect of work that I love, living a small life surrounded by small goodnesses with this tremendous grace.

  I hope I will be healthy again.

  I believe I will go back to England, to visit or maybe to study.

  Margaret said when I was there, “Why couldn't you meet a nice English boy?”

  And perhaps I will. Maybe I will have the good fortune to find something like a poor, earnest country curate, a modern-day Mr. Collins in the flesh.

  Like Lizzy—or more to the point, like Jane—I'm determined to marry only for love, so perhaps I will end an old maid and teach my nieces to play the piano very ill.

  In the future I'll put more weight in someone's words than in the look in his eyes. I know now that I could have been stronger with Jack. I should have asked him to be clearer. I see how looks cannot always be trusted, however Darcy-ish they may be.

  On the other hand, I have no regrets. I felt something for Jack and stepped out of my fear and just went with it.

  I am proud of that. I tried.

  And I think I will try again.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was written during a year I would not have survived without the endless care of my parents, the support of my dear friends Catherine Claire and Kristine Steakley, and the prayers and kindness of so many others. I am so grateful for all their love.

  I want to thank those who helped me on this trip: Gill and Mark Kalbskopf, who helped me plan; Margaret Noel, who welcomed me into her home; Christine and David Blower; Phil and Sue Howe of Hidden Britain Tours, who found me at Deane and enabled me to get into St. Nicholas in Steventon; “Susan” for driving me all around Hampshire; the monks at Alton Abbey; Rod and Jo Spenseley at the Devonshire Arms in Pilsley; the staff at the Chawton House Library, who allowed me to spend a wonderful day there doing decidedly non-scholarly research; and especially “William” the cabby, who rescued me from the shoulder of an A road in Kent.

  I also want to thank my wonderful agent, Beth Jusino, and my editor, Jeanette Thomason, who has a Jane Austen action figure on her desk and championed this project from the very beginning.

  The Works of Jane Austen

  Sense and Sensibility(1811)

  Pride and Prejudice(1813)

  Mansfield Park(1814)

  Emma(1815)

  Northanger Abbey(1817)

  Persuasion(1817)

  Sanditon(written in 1817, but unfinished)

  Bibliography

  Austen, Jane. Catharine and Other Writings. Edited by Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

  ______Emma. New York: Signet Classic, 1980.

  ______Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2003.

  ______Mansfield Park. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

  ______Northanger Abbey. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

  ______Persuasion. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.

  ______Pride and Prejudice. New York: Signet Classic, 1980.

  ______Sense and Sensibility. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.

  Austen-Leigh, J. E., A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections. Edited by Kathryn Sutherland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

  Cowper, William. Selected Poems. New York: Routledge, 2003.

  Edward's, Anne-Marie, In the Steps of Jane Austen: Walking Tours of Austens England. Madison, WI: Jones Books, 2003.

  Le Faye, Deirdre. A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

  ______Jane Austen: A Family Record. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

  ______Jane Austen: The World of Her NoveL. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

  ______ed. Jane Austens Letters. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. All excerpts from Jane Austens Letters,collected and edited by Deirdre Le Faye, reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press.

  ______Jane Austens Outkndish Cousin: The Life and Letters of Eliza de Feuil- lide. London: The British Library, 2002.

  Leapman, Michael, main contributor. Eyewitness Travel Guides Great Britain. New York: DK Publishing, 2005.

  Lewis, C. S., Selected Literary Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

  Moorman, John R. H. A History of the Church in England. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1980.

  Ray, Joan Klingel. Jane Austen for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006. Shields, Carol. Jane Austen. New York: Viking Penguin, 2001. Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

  Notes

  A Note on the Text

  The epigraph is drawn from Austen, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon,166.

  Introduction: Loving Austen

  The epigraph is drawn from Austen, Northanger Abbey,40.

  1. Le Faye, Family Record,xix.

  2. Le Faye, Family Record,12.

  3. Le Faye, Family Record,13.

  4. Tomalin, A Life,7.

  5. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir,141.

  6. Austen-Leigh, 29.

  Chapter 1: Crossing Oceans

  The epigraph is drawn from Le Faye, Letters,29.

  1. Le Faye, Family Record,11.

  2. Le Faye, Family R
ecord,4.

  3. Le Faye, Family Record,12.

  4. Le Faye, Family Record,3-4.

  5. Le Faye, Family Record,272.

  6. C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays,185.

  7. Austen, Love and Freindship[sic], (London: Chatto & Windus, 1922), xiv-xv.

  8. Austen-Leigh, 70. Tomalin, 181.

  Chapter 2: Oxford: Dirt and Dreaming

  The epigraph is drawn from Austen, Pride and Prejudice,186.

  1. Le Faye, Family Record, 47.

  2. Austen-Leigh, 160.

  3. Le Faye, Family Record,7.

  Chapter 3: Christ Church: Good Company

  The epigraph is drawn from Austen, Sense and Sensibility,14.

  1. Austen-Leigh, 79-80.

  2. Austen-Leigh, 160.

  3. Austen, Persuasion,243.

  4. Austen, Emma,294.

  5. Austen, Pride and Prejudice,310.

  6. Austen, Sense and Sensibility,331.

  7. Austen, Pride and Prejudice,261.

  8. C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays,(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 185.

  9. Austen, Catharine and Other Writings,247.

  10. Austen, Persuasion,148.

  11. Austen, Pride and Prejudice,14.

  Chapter 4: Austenian Faith and Love

  The epigraph is drawn from Cowper, Selected Poems,36. Cowper was Jane's favorite poet.

  1. Le Faye, Letters,322.

  2. Le Faye, Letters,148.

  3. Le Faye, Family Record,233.

  4. 4. Le Faye, Letters,280.

  Chapter 5: Alarms (Fire and Otherwise)

  The epigraph is drawn from Austen, Northanger Abbey,106.