Dearest Cousin Jane (13 page)

May 1801

W
hat a fine view of Portman Square is offered by this drawing room window. I can sit here and await the arrival of dear cousin Cassandra. How I wish both sisters were to be here, but Jane seems so preoccupied with the move to Bath, which is to take place this week. Henry was cross with me for writing to Mary and James, but I felt I had to try to take Jane’s part. Without husbands or money of their own, those girls are so powerless. Jane is making the best of it, but I know she is unhappy and I long to receive up-to-date news of her spirits from Cassandra.

I have often reflected on my own good fortune in terms of money and preferment and never more than now, when I see Jane and Cassandra being forced, yes forced, there is no other way to put it, to adopt a life they have no wish for simply because they are totally dependent on their parents. To be fair, Cassandra has £1,000 left her by her dead fiancé, but that is not sufficient to support a household even if it were deemed proper for unmarried ladies to live alone. It is fortunate that Charles is home on leave so that he can escort Cassandra here, otherwise the duty may have fallen to James, and I would not have relished such a meeting after the recent falling out. Indeed, I doubt that Mary would have permitted it!

We shall have a fine celebration this evening. I have ordered a
splendid dinner—how good it is to have a French chef again after the efforts of those cooks in Surrey—and our two drawing rooms are so suitable for entertaining now that the new hangings are arrived and the plate and silver are all unpacked. Henry’s partners in the bank, Mr Maunde and Mr Tilson, are to join us, and I expect they will both invite Charles to visit their offices in Cleveland Court. While they do so I shall take Cassandra shopping. She is not as interested in her appearance as Jane, but I expect she could be prevailed upon to accept a present of something special to wear when we go to see Mrs Jordan at the Opera.

Oh, I think I see the post chaise on the other side of the square—yes, there is Charles waving from the window!

June 1801

Cassandra is to leave us tomorrow and I cannot tell whether she looks forward to going to Bath or not. At first the news received in Jane’s letters was tolerably cheerful. Having her own room at her aunt and uncle’s residence seemed welcome to her. But clearly seeking accommodation became a depressing task—how well I understand that, having done it so very frequently myself!—especially as they had constantly to confront their financial limitations. They looked at lodgings that were damp, that flooded, where the sun never reached or that were in entirely the wrong part of town.

‘When you arrive,’ she wrote to Cassandra, ‘we shall have the pleasure of examining some of these putrefying houses all over again. But for the moment I have nothing more to say on the subject of housing.’

Cassandra is worried, I know, even though they have now settled on Number 4 Sydney Place, which seems to meet their requirements
tolerably well. The rent is low, there is a lease for three years, and it is near both the Leigh-Perrots and the Pump Room for my aunt and uncle’s daily walk. Jane has made a sketch and sent it to her sister and it certainly looks most acceptable.

‘What is it, Cassy?’ I asked her this morning. ‘surely now that your have good lodgings and you and Jane can once again settle into your easy life together, you can look forward to Bath? Yet you seem unhappy and I beg to know the reason.’

Cassy, always reluctant to reveal her feelings, hesitated and then said: ‘I am a little anxious about poor Hastings, I confess.’

‘How kind you are—it is a source of great worry to his stepfather and to me. That seizure he had yesterday was one of the most violent and his doctor tells me we must expect more of them.’

‘Dr Baillie seems a very competent physician—is there nothing more he can do for the boy?’

‘He says not. As you know, it is my belief that the fits are due to epilepsy, but it defies all treatment. I can only hope that God will give me the strength to bear the worst if—‘

‘Oh surely you do not expect…’

‘I am afraid we must be prepared, my dear, and sometimes when I see him in those painful paroxysms I can only wish him peace.’

Her eyes filled with tears.

‘At least you have the devotion of my brother to help you through, although that cough of his…’

I needed no reminding of the worries Henry’s hacking cough caused me, though Dr Baillie had assured me he was
not
consumptive, so I sought to divert Cassandra’s attention.

‘Is that all my dear? I fear you have more worries about Jane that you have not yet confided.’

Reluctantly she drew from her pocket Jane’s last letter, received yesterday, and laid it upon the worktable that stood between us.

‘The last line,’ she said, pointing.

I read:

I read it and looked at her curiously.

‘I would not expect her to write again, as you return home so very soon.’

‘No, she does not mean letters, she means her real writing—her stories, her novels.’

‘Oh,’ I said, understanding at last. ‘But perhaps she just means she will be too busy in your new life.’

Cassandra spoke more sharply than I had ever heard her. ‘Allow me to know my sister better than anyone. Without her writing she will shrivel, she will die inside. You might as well tell her never to laugh again. On the last night we spent together at Steventon in our sweet blue room—the night before I came here—Jane looked all around, then clasped her little mahogany writing desk to her bosom, the one my father gave her for her nineteenth birthday and is her most treasured possession, and sobbed as if her heart would break. ‘I shall not be able to do it, Cass,’ she said. ‘Without this place I cannot do it. I must have a settled place—we shall be nomads. I shall no longer be able to compose.’

‘I tried to comfort her,’ Cassandra went on, the tears shining in her eyes, ‘but it was in vain.’

I was shocked by her vehemence and could think of no way to respond but to try to take her out of herself.

‘Come, Cass, let us change for the Opera. We are to meet Lord and Lady Acton. Put on your sweet gold muslin, which so well sets off the topaz cross dear Charles brought you from his last voyage.’

She smiled wanly.

‘Even those sweet crosses did not raise Jane’s spirits. “How foolish our brother is to spend his prize money on his sisters,” she said to me. “We shall be intolerably fine.”’

‘“Yet it is an incident you could use in a story, my dear, is it not? That is, er…”—I hesitated, as I am only too well aware of my own limits as to composition—“if you had a naval gentleman in your story.”’

‘“I shall never have another gentleman of any kind in a story” was her retort,’ and as she related this, Cassandra turned to go to her room.

In the face of her distress I could think of nothing comforting to say to her.

October 1801

For a short time after her departure I waited eagerly upon correspondence from Bath to hear how my dear cousins progressed in their new abode. But within a few weeks all such thoughts were driven from my mind by the anxieties I myself suffered. First, my husband did not enjoy a day, indeed scarcely an hour, of good health. His complaints of a cough, a pain in the side, and the loss of weight and energy were so clearly an indication of galloping consumption that I could not entirely believe Dr Baillie’s assurances, and I am sure all our acquaintance had the same fears. Knowing that Dr Baillie is one of the most respected physicians in London and even consulted by royalty prevented me from seeking another opinion—a wise decision as it turned out, because at length, one of the good doctor’s prescriptions proved to be efficacious and removed most of the symptoms. I am glad to say he is well again, and how I have had need of him these last terrible weeks as we have endured the loss of
my poor dear Hastings. His sufferings were dreadful, so dreadful, in fact, that the end came as something of a release, as I am writing at present in response to the letter of condolence from cousin Philly—how many touching letters I have received.

We buried him with his grandmother, which is also a comfort to me when I think of them together. The inscription reads:

Henry wishes us to go to stay at Godmersham Park with his brother and sister-in-law. They live in great style, as I have heard from many sources, so perhaps I might accept their invitation at last. I am mindful that it is near four years since they first asked us. Elizabeth is in the increasing way yet again, having produced her last only at the beginning of this year. She is bent on setting records I vow—perhaps His Majesty may reward his subjects who add most to the population! Still, I shall go and hope that Jane and Cassandra may also be visiting that I may have up-to-date news of them.

May 1802

S
ome thing is going on and I am not being told about it. I am only picking up hints from letters and it is most frustrating. I should have thought my intimacy with Eliza was sufficient for her to confide in me, and if she cannot confide the whole truth, why mention it at all?

I had thought that Henry and Eliza might pay a visit here on their way from Godmersham—after all, the distance to this part of the county is not that great from there—but no, they decided to go to Bath.

‘That I might have the great consolation of my dear uncle George in my bereavement,’ she wrote to me.

Well, she won’t get much consolation from Aunt Cassandra, who to my certain knowledge has never liked her and was delighted when she did not accept James—anyway, what a dreadful wife for a clergyman she would have made. Driving out in Elizabeth’s fine carriages is more her style, and they did a prodigious amount of that while at Godmersham, so I gather. Well, Eliza would not be content to sit inside while the men were hunting, sewing Edward’s shirts, as the women are usually expected to do there. Henry would go out with a gun, I daresay, while Elizabeth and Eliza drove about
calling on all those fine neighbours. Eliza wrote to me about how pleasantly they were received by this one and that one. At least it would have been a relief from being plagued by those endless children of whom she complains. She tells me that Lizzie is always undoing her ribbons and that Georgie pulls her hair whenever she comes near him.

She has written to me from Bath, where they have now been for a sennight at least. There are some intriguing passages in her letters about Jane and Cassandra—‘the girls,’ as uncle George calls them, which for my part I think a most unsuitable way of referring to two women who are almost middle-aged and who everyone now thinks are beyond hopes of marriage. At least that is what I thought, but Eliza hints that Jane has recently met someone of whom she is fond. I believe it was in Lyme, where she and Cassandra spent some weeks earlier this spring. I said at the time that it was not fitting for them to be there alone, even though Charles was able to escort them there. Sure enough, Jane, no doubt without the restraint of her mother, was able to run wild and flirt as she was wont to do in earlier years when everyone described her as ‘madly husband hunting.’ It is highly annoying to have no details, but Eliza hints that another meeting is planned because she and Henry have been asked to escort her back to Lyme later in the year. I wonder if he lives there? Eliza refers to him as ‘the reverend gentleman,’ so I wonder if his parish is nearby? If only I had a name I could look him up in
Crockford’s Directory of Clergy
and find out more. He must be a widower or he would have no interest in a woman of Jane’s age. But I am sure he must be childless, else he would have more sense than to pay court to Jane. Cassandra is much more suitable for such a position.

I cannot ask Eliza more and I am certain Cassandra would not answer any question—I am sure their mother and father are
ignorant of these developments. They are so taken up with their life in Bath—I hear they are to move again, though what was wrong with Sydney Place I do not know. Perhaps Green Park Buildings is nearer the Pump Room, where I believe they walk each day, and there is no doubt that Uncle George is growing frailer.

Eliza has told me about Jane only because she is planning to go to France and must fit the escorting of Jane in with this. The packet boat has begun to sail between Dover and Calais again.

It is of course another mad scheme. This ‘peace’ which our government has negotiated with the French will surely be short-lived and I cannot imagine how they will be able to recover her property, although she keeps hoping. Of course Henry will have an eye to more wealth as the life they lead in London must cost a pretty penny. They still keep that French servant—Madame Bigeon—on. I thought she was there to be nurse and governess to Hastings, but even now that the poor unfortunate is in his grave she still resides there and no doubt is in receipt of a handsome salary. They, too, are to move again. This time to Brompton, just outside London—though ‘near enough for Madame and myself to walk into the Town without the bother of a carriage,’ as E told me. She says she needs to be separated from the memories of the child, but I suspect she just wants a grander house.

It makes me feel very out of spirits—everyone moving and travelling about and now even Jane, whom I thought forever an unloved spinster, with perhaps the prospect of marriage. And if that took place Cassandra, whom I thought would be forever with their parents, would have the prospect of relocation as I daresay Jane would want her to live with them, whatever the opinion of this mysterious clergyman on the matter.

It does seem so unfair. There is no prospect for me with Mr
Whitaker, what with his commitment to his mother and mine to Mama, who since father passed away daily grows more confused. What have I done to deserve this as my lot? Mary Austen has no love either for Eliza or Jane—I wonder if I could find out more from her?