I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend

by Cora Harrison

  I had to tell him that I didn’t know how to play. My brother, Edward-John, regards cards as an instrument of the devil. I couldn’t help laughing when I imagined his face and Augusta’s if they saw me sitting up in bed, my nightcap thrown on the floor, not just playing cards but playing for money!

  Neither Jane nor I had any money, but Frank lent us some pennies to bet on our cards. It was nice of him, but he won it all back from us bit by bit. I felt almost well again; it was such fun pretending to have good cards, laying our bets, shouting for another card to be twisted and groaning in agony when we got to more than twenty-one. Jane even got down on her knees and held up her hands in prayer for a nice small card — I wonder what Edward-John would have said to that! He would have thought it blasphemy. And then she screamed in agony so loudly when a ten of clubs turned up that Mrs Austen came in and said it was time for me to go to sleep.

  But Frank charmed her until she borrowed some pennies from him and had a game where she had such lucky cards and ended up laying them all out, one by one, in a five-card trick.

  And then she refused to give Frank back his money and told him it served him right for playing cards on a Sunday.

  ‘Dear madam,’ said Jane sweetly, ‘why did you not remind us if you remembered that it was Sunday? La, I do declare that the day had slipped my memory. Perhaps you should give those ill-gotten gains back to Frank, since they were won on a sacred day like today.’

  ‘Take care that you are not so sharp that you will cut yourself, Miss Jane! Men don’t like girls that are too witty. You don’t want to be an old maid, do you? Now off you go, Frank. These two girls need to go to sleep.’ Mrs Austen’s good humour had vanished. As usual, Jane had rubbed her up the wrong way. From what I have seen, Charles and Frank seem to get on well with their mother, and so does Cassandra, but Jane and she are always arguing, and I have to admit that some of it is Jane’s fault.

  Monday, 7 March 1791

  Up to now I had been having all my meals upstairs so that I didn’t get cold in the draughty corridors and stairway, but today Mrs Austen said I could come down to join everyone for dinner. The dining parlour was full when Jane and I came in.

  I must write down what it looked like, though I hardly saw it in the first few minutes, as I was too embarrassed to look around.

  It was a big room, with no carpet, not even rugs: just a wooden floor, marked by the boys’ boots. Augusta would have thought it very meanly furnished. A large table made from scratched and battered oak, rather than the modern mahogany, occupied most of the space. Instead of pieces of light, delicate Sheraton furniture tastefully arranged against modern striped wallpaper, as in my brother’s house, here there was just a vast, old-fashioned oaken sideboard, with its shelves, cubbyholes and drawers, covering one of the panelled walls.

  At the top of the table was Mr Austen, busily slicing meat. Beside him Mrs Austen was putting the meat on plates and adding vegetables and gravy. As she filled each plate, Cassandra carried them, one by one, to the boys, who were sitting on the far side. I hadn’t met any of the pupils yet, except Charles, Jane’s brother, but they all smiled kindly at me. It looked like a lot of boys and I felt my cheeks becoming quite hot.

  ‘Sit between me and Tom Fowle, Jenny.’ Mr Austen gave me a kind smile as I sat down. I noticed that Cassandra gave me a rather sour look. I remembered Jane telling me that her sister was in love with this Tom Fowle, so perhaps Cassandra didn’t like me taking the place beside him. Perhaps she normally sat there between her father and her beloved. When she had finished handing out the plates, she went down to the bottom of the table beside Charles, her eleven-year-old brother. She looked annoyed and I felt rather awkward.

  ‘Are you hungry, Jenny?’ asked Mr Austen, and I told him that I was starving. Both Mr and Mrs Austen were very pleased at that and Mr Austen insisted on putting an extra slice of boiled mutton and roly-poly pudding on my plate to fatten me up.

  It was while I was trying to munch my way through all of this that Cassandra, from the bottom of the table, suddenly said, ‘Jenny, how did you get the letter to Mama about Jane’s illness? Mrs Cawley couldn’t understand how she had heard. Indeed, she said that she had forbidden you to write.’

  I choked on a piece of mutton and spent the next few minutes coughing while Jane thumped me on the back and Frank brought me a glass of water from the carafe on the sideboard. I kept the coughing up a bit longer than I needed to; I was hoping that everyone would forget about Cassandra’s question, but when I took my final sip of water I looked around the table and everyone, even the schoolboys, seemed to be waiting for my answer. I realized that the subject had been discussed before — probably while I was ill — and now they wanted an answer. I couldn’t say that Becky had done it; that might get her into trouble. What could I say? My mind was a blank.

  ‘She tossed it out of the window to a charitable lady who was passing by,’ said Jane quickly. She patted me on the back like a solicitous mother and said in a worried way, ‘Don’t try to talk, Jenny. You’ll bring on the coughing fit again and that won’t be good for you in your condition.’

  All the boys began to laugh then and Mrs Austen scolded them for bad manners at table, and Gilbert East, who is a baronet’s son and a great favourite with Mrs Austen, said something cheeky and she rapped his knuckles with a spoon. And then one of the boys proposed that everyone should find a word to rhyme with the word ‘rose’. Various suggestions were made and then Mrs Austen, on the spot, made up a long poem beginning with the lines:

  This morning I woke from a quiet repose,

  I first rubb’d my eyes, and I next blew my nose;

  With my stockings and shoes I then covered my toes,

  All the boys were proposing various words, like ‘froze’ and ‘clothes’, and there was such noise and confusion that everyone forgot about me.

  * * *

  ‘By the way, Jenny, how did you get that letter to Mama on the night that I was so ill? Charles told me that it had been sent by the midnight mail; he was the one that collected the letters that day.’ Jane hardly waited for the door to be closed behind us when we went up to our room after dinner before she started to cross-question me.

  My heart was hammering. I stared at Jane. I had almost forgotten about that night and the danger I had been in, but now it had all come flooding back into my mind.

  ‘Go on; tell me. I won’t tell a soul. I promise you.’

  I looked at Jane doubtfully, but then nodded. Surely I could trust her.

  And so I told her the whole story of that night, about the sailors and about the man with the sword and about Captain Thomas Williams.

  Jane listened to me with her mouth open and she didn’t say a word until I finished.

  ‘That is the most romantic thing I ever heard,’ she said. ‘It’s as good as anything that Mrs Charlotte Smith wrote; it’s even as good as Ethelinde, the Recluse of the Lake. What did he look like?’

  I told her all about how handsome he was, about his black hair and brown eyes and his lovely smile and high cheekbones and broad shoulders, and then I showed her the picture that I had drawn.

  Jane was very interested in this and she said that she was going to turn the story of me and Captain Williams into a wonderful romance when she had finished writing Love and Friendship. She says that when I talk about Captain Thomas Williams my voice sounds like Cassandra’s when she talks about Tom Fowle, which can’t possibly be true.

  I asked her how many stories she has written and she said, ‘A few,’ then pulled out the bottom drawer of her chest and I saw that it was absolutely stuffed with pieces of paper that were filled up with Jane’s fine handwriting.

  ‘What about this?’ she asked, tossing me half a sheet. ‘I never finished that but I could write something like it for you. I could just change ‘Sir Williams’ to ‘Captain Williams’. You can stick that in your journal if you like — I’ve already copied it into my notebook and left a blank page so that I can finish it some time.’<
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  After staying at the Village for a few days longer, Sir Williams went to stay in a freind’s house in Surry. Mr Brudenell had a beautiful neice with whom Sir Williams soon fell in love. But Miss Arundel was cruel; she preferred a Mr Stanhope. Sir Williams shot Mr Stanhope. The lady then had no further reason to refuse him and they were to be married on the 27th of October. However …

  * * *

  I read it with Jane reading over my shoulder, but she didn’t seem too pleased with it when she had finished.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind — throw it away; I wrote that when I was only about thirteen,’ she said disdainfully. ‘I’d make a much better story of it now.’

  ‘No, I’d like to have it,’ I said. I thought I would prefer to have that than to have a story about myself and Captain Williams. Deep down, I suppose I was feeling that I’d prefer to make up my own stories about him.

  And then Jane copied some more of her present story into her notebook and I wrote a letter to Edward-John and Augusta. I had just finished it when Jane suddenly said, ‘You’ll have to marry this Captain Williams, Jenny. That would be just so romantic.’

  I laughed at that. ‘Jane,’ I said to her, ‘it would be best if Captain Williams and I never saw each other again. He could ruin my reputation forever with one incautious word.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jane, ‘I don’t suppose we’ll go to Southampton again so you should be safe.’

  Tuesday, 8 March 1791

  I had such fun today. I’ve just said this to Jane and she said I should write it all down quickly before I forget it. That is what she does. When she thinks of an idea for a story — even if it is the middle of the night — she flies over to her desk and scribbles it down on a piece of paper. Afterwards she reads through it again and if she likes it she copies it into her notebook.

  This morning Frank came in just after I had had my breakfast but before I had dressed. I got a bit of a shock when he just banged on the door and then came flying in. The curtains were drawn back from the bed so all I could do was pull up the blankets very close to my chin and try not to blush. I can’t get used to being in a house where boys are running around all the time. Soon there will be even more because Henry and James, who are at Oxford University, are expected for the weekend, and Edward, Jane’s brother who was adopted by rich relations in Kent, will be coming back from his visit to Europe.

  Frank is very nice and most amusing. He and Jane and I were playing cards again yesterday evening, using buttons for money this time. It was great fun as Frank kept trying to cheat and Jane kept tut-tutting and saying things like: ‘He is but sixteen years old, but already he has embarked upon a life of crime. His parents brought him up from an early age to have no principles. I fear that he will end by being transported to Australia as a convict.’

  Frank looks a bit like Jane, with his dark curly hair and dark eyes — and even at the end of the winter he is very suntanned. He has Jane’s rosy cheeks also, and now they were glowing with excitement. He came right up and sat on my bed.

  ‘The hunt’s meeting at Deane Gate Inn this morning, Jenny. Do you want to come and see us off? Jane is coming.’

  I hesitated and told him I wasn’t sure. Though I had been getting up each day after breakfast, my legs were still a little weak. ‘How far away is it?’

  ‘Not far and it’s a lovely day.’ Frank jerked the blind so suddenly that it flew up and the knob on the end of the cord pinged sharply against the window.

  It was a lovely day. The poplar tree outside my window had some tiny green buds on it and the sun lit the branches so that they shone gold. There was a flock of starlings whirling merrily around under a pale blue sky. Suddenly I felt a lot better and I thought I would love to go out and see the hunt set off. Frank looked very pleased when I told him.

  ‘Good! Get up quickly.’ He still hung around, looking out of the window at the woods beyond, as if he thought I would just slip out of bed and dress while he had his back turned. I coughed. I felt very embarrassed.

  ‘Oh, I’ll get out of your way so that you can dress.’

  Once he was gone, the door slamming behind him and his feet drumming on the wooden staircase, I got out of bed. The water in the pitcher was cold, but I poured some into the basin on the washstand and had a quick wash, drying myself in front of the fire. I put on two petticoats, a flannel one over my chemise and then my linen one, and I pulled on a pair of new woollen stockings, which went right up to my knees and made me feel nice and cosy. Then I got out my blue muslin gown from the clothes press. It had been washed and ironed, I think, because it was quite clean around the hem. The last time that I had worn it was in Southampton on that terrible night and I remembered noticing a streak of mud on the bottom of the skirt when I hung it up.

  Jane and Charles were just coming in the front door when I got to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Oh, Jenny, you’re coming to see the hunt — that’s good.’

  ‘Mama, Jenny is coming to see the hunt go off.’ Charles had a high voice that penetrated the whole house.

  Mrs Austen popped out from the preserves room, where she and Cassandra were labelling jars of pickled spring onions.

  ‘It’s too far,’ she said decidedly. ‘You’re not strong enough yet, Jenny. That hill is steep.’

  ‘She could go on Frank’s old pony,’ said Jane.

  I felt terrified at the idea because I can’t ride, and I said as much.

  Frank had joined us by then. ‘Anyone can ride,’ he said confidently. ‘We’ll put you on old Squirrel’s back — she was my first pony. I’ll lead it. Don’t worry, Jenny, you’ll be fine.’

  I asked him why the pony was called Squirrel. To be honest, I was just trying to delay. In one way it was rather fun to go out with all the boys and to have Frank, who was quite handsome, lead me on the pony’s back. On the other hand, I was terrified that I might fall off or do something silly.

  ‘I was the one that called the pony “Squirrel’s Pony” because Frank used to look like a squirrel on its back — it was far too big for him. He did look funny, perched up there,’ said Mrs Austen over her shoulder as she turned to replace the stopper in the big jar of vinegar. ‘He saved up all the money that he could earn scaring crows. Then he got a nice tip from a rich cousin and he went straight out and bought the pony when he was only seven years old. I made his first hunting coat out of my red wool wedding dress.’ Mrs Austen was smiling good-humouredly at the memory. It’s funny how much fonder of the boys she is than of Jane, I thought. She always seemed to be a bit irritated by Jane.

  I made a little curtsy to Mrs Austen and said that I would go, if she allowed me. Suddenly I really did want to try to ride, even if Frank was going to lead me. Surely I could manage to sit on a pony’s back and be led.

  ‘What happens if she feels faint?’ Mr Austen had appeared from his study, following out the older boys, and he looked worried.

  ‘She’ll be all right.’ Mrs Austen was tired of the subject; she wanted us all to go and allow her to get on with preserving her onions.

  ‘I feel faint; it’s the fumes of this vinegar. I wish I could get out in the fresh air for a half-hour.’ Cassandra was pouting, standing there with a big apron over her oldest gown and looking as if she wished that she could go too. Her eyes went to Tom Fowle and then she looked away. He was looking at her and both of their faces turned slightly pink. I saw Mrs Austen’s eyes go irritably from Cassandra to Tom. But then Jane jumped in between her mother and her sister, her hands clasped and an imploring expression on her face.

  ‘Oh, Cassandra, don’t faint whatever you do!’ Jane was pretending to sound alarmed. ‘Beware of fainting fits; in my story Love and Friendship, Sophia dies after a fainting fit. Her dying words were to her friend, saying, “Dearest Laura, beware of swoons. Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint.” ’

  Even Mrs Austen chuckled at that, and Mr Austen threw back his head and laughed. He rubbed his hand over Jane’s dark curls. ‘What a little geni
us this girl is,’ he said fondly. ‘I love her stories. They are so clever, so humorous. It’s a pity she’s a girl. What do you think, Frank? Do you think that your sister could beat you at Latin if she were a boy?’

  ‘I don’t like Latin,’ said Frank. He didn’t look a bit worried or jealous of Jane, he just sounded impatient. ‘Mathematics is the only subject that is useful to me at sea. That’s what they study at the naval college. Come on, Jenny, let’s go.’

  What fun I am having at Steventon, I was thinking as we all went up the hill together. There was Jane on Frank’s pony, teasing Tom Fowle about Cassandra, and Gilbert, with Charles sitting in front of him, pretending that his horse would fall down on the road from Charles’s weight. The other students were splashing mud from the puddles over each other. I thought of Bristol and of myself and Augusta sitting in the parlour sewing, or she reading aloud while I was drawing, and it all seemed very dull. And now I was going to see a hunt! And I was riding a pony. I’ve drawn a picture of darling little Squirrel here.

  We were almost late by the time we arrived at Deane and the space in front of the inn was crowded by red-coated riders and dozens of tail-wagging dogs, yelping with excitement.

  ‘Quick, give me my pony!’ In his hurry Frank let go of the reins of my pony while he grabbed his own from Jane and they both went over to talk to a boy who was sitting on a grey pony. I got a fright to find myself on my own, but nothing happened.

  I just sat there and the pony stood as still as a rock. After a minute I began to feel quite brave and rather pleased with myself. I would learn to ride, I planned. Perhaps Frank would teach me, although of course Squirrel was far too small for me; my feet almost touched the ground. Still, it would be fun, I thought, and then I saw one of the red-coated gentlemen smiling at me. I smiled back before thinking and then I blushed. The gentleman didn’t look away. I heard him say to the man next to him, ‘Who’s that pretty girl?’ Then I did look away quickly and I didn’t hear the reply, but when I looked back I saw that he was still looking at me. He smiled even more, and then took off his hat and half raised his whip in a salute to me. It was lucky that my sister-in-law wasn’t there. She would have considered it all very unladylike. The man had a very handsome horse though, a big black stallion, and he had a hunting horn in his hand so he must have been someone important in the hunt. I wish my picture showed quite how splendid he looked — I’m never satisfied with my drawings. I showed it to Jane, who is writing away at her desk, and she liked it, but I don’t think I’ve made him handsome enough.