Jane Austen (14 page)

and on the morning of the 8th Jane was telling her what she meant to wear that evening at the ball given by Lord Dorchester at Kempshott House. This was one of the biggest private balls in the

neighborhood, and by a stroke of good luck, Jane was to make a most fashionable appearance at it. The Battle of the Nile in the previous year had inaugurated a craze for things Egyptian among that portion of society called by
La Belle Assemblée
"the first-rates"; and the first-rates were now exhibiting patriotism and ton by wearing such tokens as the Nelson rose feather, green morocco slippers laced with crocodile-colored ribbon, Mameluke capes of red cloth, and Mameluke caps, modelled on the shape of the Egyptian fez. One of the Fowles had sent Mary a Mameluke cap, and Mary lent it to Jane for this occasion; the cap added distinction to her toilet of a white frock and green shoes, and the sister of Commander Francis Austen and Lieutenant Charles Austen put it on with particular delight.

Unfortunately by the time Jane wrote her next letter she had caught a cold in one eye, so she said she should leave her mother to describe the ball, as Mrs. Austen was also writing. She did say, however, that she had taken her white fan, and referring to an escapade of little George's,

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she added: "I am very glad he never threw it into the river." A charming picture of George is gained, standing by Cassandra and choosing out the wafer with which she was to seal the letter to Aunt Jane. "My sweet little George! I am delighted to hear that he has such an inventive genius as to face making. I admired his yellow wafer very much, and hope he will choose the wafer for your next letter."

Mary had recovered from the birth of her baby, Edward, and she and James meant now to enter more into the society of the neighborhood.

On January 17th she went in Jane's party to the public ball at Basingstoke. Poor Mary had not the health and buoyancy of her

young sister-in-law; still, Jane was pleased with her; she said Mary behaved very well and was not fidgety, and added the further praise that she had now become "rather more reasonable" about her child's beauty; she did not now think him
really
handsome. The ball was not a particularly brilliant one, but Jane enjoyed it because, she said: "I do not think it worthwhile to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it."

Charles, "our own little brother," was now on shore leave. The marriage of Jane Cooper with Captain Williams had been of great use to her young cousin, for he had thus been on board Captain Williams' frigate
Unicorn
when she captured
La Tribune
after a chase of two hundred and ten miles. Captain Williams was knighted for the exploit, and many of the crew received promotion. Charles was now second lieutenant on the Scorpion. His homecomings were always occasions of happy pride and loving delight. He took Jane about, and was much admired in the neighborhood; some people

thought him even handsomer than Henry. He had gone away with his hair tied at the nape of the neck and powdered, but he had come back with it in the newly fashionable crop. It seemed an eminently

sensible fashion for a

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young man who spent most of his time on board, but Edward, in the stately retirement of Godmersham, was inclined not to think well of it. Edward had not been well for some time; in December, Jane had written: "Poor Edward! It is very hard that he, who has everything else in the world that he can wish for, should not have good health too." Now she said: "I thought Edward would not approve of Charles' being a crop, and rather wished you to conceal it from him, lest it might fall on his spirits and retard his recovery." Charles had brought with him a large piece of Irish linen which someone had told him he ought to buy, and Jane warned Cassandra that as soon as she came back her help would be demanded in making it up into shirts for him.

In spite of all her distractions, she was growing very weary of her sister's absence. She had, in letter-writing, a favorite device of understatement, and she used it here. "What time in March may we expect your return in? I begin to be very tired of answering people's questions on that subject, and independent of that I shall be very glad to see you at home again." She hoped that they would be able to secure Martha for a visit on Cassandra's return, and then she said:

"Who will be so happy as we?"

But the happy, busy, domestic life enjoyed, but never enjoyed in perfection unless Cassandra were there, did not remain uninterrupted for long. Edward's health grew worse, and a visit to Bath was

decided upon, and this time it was Jane who left home to accompany him. The party was a large one; in May, Jane and Mrs. Austen, with Edward, Elizabeth and their two eldest children, Fanny, aged six, and Edward, five, set off from Steventon in two carriages, and arriving in Bath, took lodgings at No. 13 Queen's Square. The day after their arrival Jane gave Cassandra an account of their

proceedings. They had spent the night at Devizes, where they

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had had good accommodation, and where the children had made "so delightful a supper" off lobster, asparagus and cheese-cakes, "as to endear the town of Devizes to them for a long time." It was raining when they entered Bath. Their road to Queen's Square in the lower part of the city led them past Paragon, and here they stopped to inquire after Mr. Leigh Perrot; it was so wet and dirty they did not get out, but were merely told at the carriage door that he was "very indifferent" though he had had a rather better night than usual.

The house in Queen's Square proved most agreeable. The rooms

were large and good; there was a stout landlady in mourning and a little black kitten playing about the stairs. They arranged the rooms so as to let Mrs. Austen and Jane have a bedroom each at the top of the house. Elizabeth had wanted Mrs. Austen to have a room on the first floor opening out of the drawing room, but it would have meant moving a bed into it, and as Mrs. Austen felt strong enough not to mind the stairs, she said she would prefer to be above with Jane.

They had all stood the journey quite well; since their arrival, Elizabeth had had a letter from her nurse Sackree giving "a very good account of the three little boys" left at Godmersham: George, aged four, Henry, two, and the baby, William; so she was quite at ease, and though Edward had seemed "rather fagged" on his arrival, and was not very brisk this morning, Jane hoped that his spirits would be improved by his going out personally to order the tea, coffee and sugar, and to taste a cheese for himself. The weather was clearing; when they had come, umbrellas were up everywhere, but now, she said, "the pavements are getting very white again."

It was delightful to be in Bath--and not in Paragon. The north side of Queen's Square had been built in the middle

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of the century by the great Wood, at the time of his laying out the Royal Crescent, the Circus and the Assembly Rooms. It has a

massive stone front, adorned with columns and pediments on a grand scale; Wood had meant the other sides of the square to correspond, but he had never completed his design, and the west wing and the south wing, of which No. 13 forms the corner, had been built some years later in a graceful domestic style, with ample sash windows and good doorways suggestive of space and comfort within. The

green plot in the middle of the square is dignified by an immense monolith and made pleasant by some trees and shrubs. Jane said: "I like our situation very much; it is far more cheerful than Paragon, and the prospect from which I write is rather picturesque as it commands a perspective view of the left side of Brock Street, broken by three Lombardy poplars in the garden of the last house in Queen's Parade."

Brock Street leads from the Circus to the Royal Crescent, and thus connects Wood's two greatest achievements. The outside of a

Georgian house, whether native or classical, is lovely, stimulating, satisfying; but Wood took the ordinary classical house front of the time, repeating and repeating it in perfect uniformity until he closed the whole in a giant circle, pierced by the roads leading out of it; thus imposing the majestic beauty of the circular formation on the small perfection of the component parts. The delicate Bath stone in which he embodied his inspiration is extremely susceptible to

atmosphere, and dampness blackens it almost to the extent of smoke; the pillars and classical friezes, the doors and window frames of many of these houses are painted black, and their façades appear to have suffered unusually from the darkening influence of the weather, with the result that the whole circle has a Plutonian air, hardly relieved by

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the freshness of its trees and grass. Wonderful as it is, it is not until one passes through Brock Street and gains the paved walk before the Royal Crescent that one realizes the full splendor of Wood's genius.

The first view of the Royal Crescent affects the mind like a great burst of music. The Crescent contains as much of a semi-circle as is described by the crescent of a new moon. The vast curve of the façade is striped wtih pairs of stone columns, between which the windows, enormous as they are on a nearer view, appear in a very reasonable proportion. The material of this structure has escaped the darkening of the circle behind it; the porous stone seems filled with light as a honeycomb with honey; massive yet airy, gracious in line and hue but dazzling in its rigid uniformity, it is a unique example of classical domestic architecture, a visible manifestation of that spirit of the age from which people in the next century recoiled, ran into holes and corners and covered themselves up with ornaments and plush.

The Royal Crescent occupies a site a little less than halfway between the lowest point of the city where the Avon lies like a strip of looking-glass, and the highest line of buildings near the hilltop. On the higher levels Wood's successors erected further crescents: Camden Crescent of rich, wheatcolored stone, whose promenade is supported on a row of arches jutting out of the hillside, and

commands an unrivalled prospect of the opposite side of the valley and the city at its feet; and higher still, Lansdowne Crescent, less majestic but perhaps the loveliest of all, a tall and gentle sweep of pearl-grey stone, the gracious curve of its parapet supporting urns that stand up boldly against the sky. Its retired elegance and lofty grace are as different in character from the warm-toned, open

Camden Crescent as from the powerful triumph of the Royal

Crescent; but they bear to

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each other something of the relation of the movements of a concerto by Mozart.

The more mundane quarters of the city do not suggest themselves in terms of poetry or music; they contain rows and groups of plain and elegant houses adorned with a wide variety of fairy-like porticos and fanlights, and shop fronts ennobled with fluted pillars and rich cornices: sometimes in spacious, excellent thoroughfares, sometimes hedging in streets so narrow that modern traffic finds difficulty in getting through them. The most famous thoroughfare is Milsom

Street, with shop windows on its ground level and apartments of great spaciousness and dignity above. The most expensive shops were to be found in Milsom Street and in Stall Street, where there is a beautiful cream-colored colonnade of shops, in the form of a semi-circle.

One could not come from a village to so noted a shopping center without being charged with commissions by those who remained

behind, and Jane had many to execute. Mary had asked her to get some stockings for little Anna, now six years old, and Jane said she should hope to get some such as Anna would approve of. Martha

wanted some shoes, but Jane did not promise to get these; she said:

"I am not fond of ordering shoes." She had had a cloak made for herself edged with lace, and was to procure one for Cassandra just like it; she made a little drawing of the lace, and said if Cassandra would like hers to be wider, she could buy some at an extra

threepence a yard and yet not go beyond two guineas for the whole cloak. She was also to buy Cassandra an ornamental sprig for the hair, and she and Elizabeth were both interested to see what could be bought in that line. They discovered that though flowers were worn a great deal, artificial fruit was even more fashionable. Elizabeth bought herself a bunch of strawberries, but they were so expensive that

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Jane hesitated. Mrs. Leigh Perrot told her that she could probably get something cheaper in a shop near Walcot Church, beyond Paragon, but when they went to the shop, it had no fruit after all, only flowers.

Jane began to think that Cassandra might be better pleased with flowers; for one thing, she could buy four or five very pretty sprigs for the cost of one Orleans plum: "besides," she said, "I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit. What do you think on that subject?" Meanwhile, she bought a black lace veil for Mary as a joint present from Cassandra and herself. It cost sixteen shillings, and she said: "I hope the half of that sum will not greatly exceed what you had intended to offer upon the altar of sister-in-law affection."

The children made her put messages from them into her letters to Cassandra, sending love to Grandpapa, Uncle James, Aunt James, and little Edward, and hoping that the turkeys and ducks and

chickens and guinea-fowl were all well, and asking for a printed letter each. Cassandra complied with this request; to save Jane the postage on the letters she enclosed them in one to her, and Jane sealed them up before delivering them, to make them look as if they had come through the post in their own right. "The children were delighted with your letters," she said, "as I fancy they will tell you themselves before this is concluded. Fanny expressed some surprise at the wetness of the wafers, but it did not lead to any suspicion of the truth." Sure enough, at the end of the letter came the notes dictated by Fanny and Edward. The latter said: "My dear Aunt Cassandra, I hope you are very well. Grandmama hopes the white Turkey lays an that you have eat up the black one. We like