Just Jane (32 page)

“Then write your letter and get your options set plain.”

So that is what I did.

*****

I hold a letter from Reverend Clarke in my hands.
“It is certainly not incumbent on you to make the dedication. But you certainly might, if you wish. By the by, would you ever be interested in writing a novel with a clergyman—like myself—as the hero?”

He proceeds to tell me too many details of his life that he thinks I would most certainly wish to include in a book. And if that is not incentive enough, might I be interested in writing a love story based on the House of Saxe-Coburg line of Prince Leopold?

“Am I incumbent to do this too? To write this man’s story as my own?”

“Did you agree in some way?” asks Henry.

“In no way.”

“Then it’s over. Nothing at all to think about.”

I hope so. For I know that no matter how much pressure I receive, I cannot write someone else’s story. I must write my own, in my own way. For to write otherwise is to be false to oneself.

And that is not an option.

And the story of Prince Leopold? I could no more write a historical romance than an epic poem. I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I’m sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.

And so
that
is that. The dedication I will do with reluctance. But the writing of other people’s stories?

I refuse with no reluctance whatsoever.

*****

Emma
is released with the following dedication:

To

H
IS
R
OYAL
H
IGHNESS

THE PRINCE REGENT

T
HIS WORK IS,

B
Y
H
IS
R
OYAL
H
IGHNESS’S
P
ERMISSION

M
OST
R
ESPECTFULLY

D
EDICATED,

B
Y
H
IS
R
OYAL
H
IGHNESS’S

D
UTIFUL

A
ND
O
BEDIENT

H
UMBLE
S
ERVANT,

THE AUTHOR

It’s not what I wanted. I was set on a short dedication:
Emma Dedicated by Permission to H.R.H. The Prince Regent
but was informed by Murray it was not flowery enough.

I snap the book shut. “Ridiculous,” I say.

“You had little choice,” Cassandra says.

“Which makes it all the more galling.”

“But think of the favour you have bestowed upon him—upon yourself for your obedient, humble service.” She smiles.

“The only good to come from this is that Murray sped up the printing process once he heard of the dedication.”

“See?” she says. “In such a way the Prince has rendered
you
service.”

“We are
not
even,” I say, but I’ve lowered my voice as if there are royal spies even in Chawton.

But somehow I doubt all-things-being-even is a royal concept.

*****

My dear niece Anna has given birth to her first child. It was a difficult pregnancy. In many ways.

For as the pregnancy ripened, Anna’s novel withered. I tried to encourage her—for she does have talent—but to no avail.

Today I’m in receipt of a letter that states what I’ve dreaded to hear. I read it aloud to Cassandra. “Anna says,

“I am sorry, Aunt Jane, but I must set aside the novel, for Ben says it is frivolous—if not even evil—in that it takes me away from him and the child that I have, with much effort, brought into the world. I believe he is right. For it was sure to come to nothing. And yet I thank you for your diligent interest and help.”

I snap the page against my palm. “She’s giving it up! After so much work—on both our parts—she is throwing it all away!”

“You tried, Jane.”

“She’s rejecting her talent.”

“She has a child now. She has a husband. There will be more children.”

I sigh with utter frustration. “Are there not enough babies in the Austen clan?”

“Jane . . . you’re being unfair. Anna has always wanted to marry and have children. That was her first goal. The writing came about because of your inspiration.”

“But what good was it? For her to work and learn, only to give it up?”

“She has made a choice, Jane. One
you
could have made. One that would have changed everything.”

She touches an old wound, yet one that is not as tender as it once was. “I never chose
not
to marry or have children. Those choices were thrust upon me. Life was thrust upon me.”

Cassandra shakes her head. “That’s not true. You could have married Harris and lived in a fine house. You could have had many babies and kept a household and been a part of all those noble female vocations.”

She is right. For one short night I was engaged, only to discover my own inability to embrace that fate.

I’m suddenly overcome with doubt and regret. “Is
mine
a noble vocation, Cassandra? Writing some flit and fluff stories only a few will read?”

To her merit, she does not hesitate. “It is.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

She comes to me by the fire, takes the offending letter from our niece, and tosses it into the flames.

“Why did you do that?”

“I’m ending all second thoughts. Anna has made her choice. It’s finished. Long ago, after my Tom died, I made
my
choice to remain unmarried. I’ve found peace in that. Now you, Jane. It’s time for you to make peace with your choice.”

I stare at the flames, as Anna’s lost dream turns to ash.

Cassandra takes my hand. “What do you love more than anything?”

“You,” I say without pause.

She kisses my cheek. “But what makes you arise every morning? What captures your thoughts throughout the day? What makes you feel most alive?”

“My writing.”

“It’s who you are, Jane. In the same way a wife is committed to a husband, body and soul, you are committed to your stories. They excite you; they ignite you; they complete you. Your books are your children, Jane. With every thought and word and prayer you nourish them and help them grow strong. You give them the romantic endings you yourself have not chosen.”

Tears start to flow. “You make it sound so . . . so . . .”

“Right?”

I nod.

“I believe with my entire heart that if you had married Tom or Harris or William or Edward, or any of the other men who could have become your beaus with little effort, you would not have written your books. As you said, life would have been thrust upon you. A good life, but a different life. The world would not have your books if you had married, Jane. I truly believe that to be true.”

It’s a sobering thought, that a decision
not
to marry might have led to something . . . better.

“God has a plan for each of us, Jane, a unique purpose. I’m content in what I’ve been asked to do. We will pray Anna is content in her choice. But now you need to find your own contentment in being just Jane.”

I look back to the flames and see that the letter is no more. Anna’s fate has been sealed.

As has mine?

Suddenly, another character steps front and center into my mind. Not a young ingénue in search of a husband. But an older woman, single, hurt by experience, yet seasoned in some good way by all that life has handed her. Her name could be Anne . . . and I would give her a second chance at happiness. I don’t know yet how it will end, and perhaps the end is not the essence of the story. Perhaps the journey is the key.

“You are plotting again,” says Cassandra. She smiles and points at my eyes. “I can see your mind working.”

“I am thinking of another story.”

Without another word Cassandra crosses the room to my writing table. She retrieves a blank piece of paper and pen and hands them to me. “Then write,” she says.

And so . . . I do that which I am meant to do.

• Jane finished writing
Persuasion
, which she originally called
The Elliots
, in August 1816.
Emma
was a success, even receiving accolades from Sir Walter Scott: “That young lady has a talent for describing the involvement of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with.” But Jane’s health was failing, and though she began another book—
Sanditon
—she could not finish it.

She died—probably of Addison’s disease—on July 18, 1817, at age forty-one, in the arms of her “dearest Cassandra.” In much pain, she welcomed death. Her last words, said just hours before her death, were “God grant me patience. Pray for me, oh, pray for me.”

Cassandra said this of her sister: “She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow. I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself.” Jane was buried in Winchester Cathedral, with an epitaph penned by her brother Henry. No mention was made of her writing:

In Memory of

JANE AUSTEN

youngest daughter of the late

Revd GEORGE AUSTEN,

Formerly Rector of Steventon in this County

she departed this life on the 18th July 1817,

aged 41, after a long illness supported with

the patience and the hopes of a Christian.

The benevolence of her heart,

the sweetness of her temper, and

the extraordinary endowments of her mind

obtained the regard of all who knew her and

the warmest love of her intimate connections.

Their grief is in proportion to their affection

they know their loss to be irreparable,

but in their deepest affliction they are consoled

by a firm though humble hope that her charity,

devotion, faith, and purity have rendered

her soul acceptable in the sight of her

   
REDEEMER

• Cassandra never married, lived in Chawton Cottage her entire life, and burned “the greater part” of Jane’s letters—presumably the ones that were most revealing—a few years before she died at age seventy-two, of a stroke, while visiting Frank.

• Jane’s mother, in spite of her hypochondria, lived in Chawton Cottage until the age of eighty-seven, alert to the end. “I sometimes think that God Almighty must have forgotten me; but I daresay He will come for me in His own good time.” She and Cassandra are buried in the St. Nicholas churchyard in Chawton.

• Frank’s wife Mary Gibson died in 1823 after giving birth to her eleventh child. Five years later, Frank married the old family friend Martha Lloyd, who was sixty-three. It was a comfortable arrangement, and she helped take care of his household and children—who did not approve of the marriage. Frank became Sir Francis Austen and finally an Admiral of the Fleet at age eighty-nine. He lived to be ninety-one. He carefully kept all of Jane’s letters, but having received no instructions regarding what to do with them when he died, his daughter destroyed them.

• Charles’s wife Fanny died after giving birth to her fourth child in 1814 (just two months before Anna Austen married Ben Lefroy). The baby also died. Fanny’s sister came to help the household, and under the haze of scandal, Charles married her in 1820 and had another family. His career stalled for decades, but eventually he was made Rear Admiral. He died of cholera in Burma at the age of seventy-three.

• Soon after his serious illness in 1815, Henry’s bank collapsed and he returned to his original desire to be a clergyman—the profession Eliza had so disdained. He remarried in 1820 but never had any children. He died in 1850 at age seventy-nine.

• Upon the death of his adoptive mother, Mrs. Knight, Edward officially took the Knight surname. He never remarried, depended greatly on his daughter Fanny, and lived to be eighty-five.

• Jane’s niece Fanny married at age twenty-seven to an elder Sir Edward Knatchbull, a widower with six children. She had nine more of her own, meaning she had cared for multiple children since her mother died when Fanny was twelve. One of her sons became Lord Brabourne and published many of Jane’s letters, but he later sold and scattered the originals.

• Niece Anna Austen Lefroy had six children and lived to be seventy-nine. There is no indication she ever did anything more with her novel
Who Is the Heroine?

• James’s health deteriorated soon after Jane died. When he died in 1819 at age fifty-four, his wife, Mary, and children Caroline and James Edward were forced to leave the Steventon rectory, which Henry and his new wife took over. Just as Mary and James had usurped the rectory when the elder Austens retired to Bath, so Henry now usurped their place.

• James Edward Austen-Leigh, James’s son, penned a book about his famous aunt,
Memoir of Jane Austen
, in 1869. Not always factual, it has led to many misconceptions about Jane’s life, including the fallacy that “Of events her life was singularly barren: few changes and no great crisis ever broke the smooth current of its course.” For the book a portrait was painted, based on the unfinished pencil drawing done by Cassandra years before. The portrait is said to have little likeness to Jane. Hence, there is no good picture of Jane for us to ponder.

• Tom Lefroy married four years after he left Ashe. He fathered seven children. He sat in Parliament for eleven years and in 1852 was appointed Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

• Harris Bigg-Wither married in 1804 and had ten children.

• Henry remained Jane’s literary champion and helped her buy back the rights to
Susan
from Crosby for ten pounds in 1816. By that time Jane’s books had earned her six hundred pounds, with
Emma
still due to be published. A fair living for the penniless Jane. After her death, Henry and Cassandra were instrumental in getting both
Susan
, which became
Northanger Abbey
, and
Persuasion
published in a combined volume. But sales were not brisk, and the last 282 copies remaindered in 1820. No other publisher was interested in reprinting her work for fifteen years. Yet during the 1800s various literary names such as George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, and Thomas Babington Macaulay praised Jane’s work, and during the 1850s people began visiting Jane’s grave (to the befuddlement of church workers).

Her popularity grew upon the 1869 publication of her nephew’s biography of her life. With his profits, James Edward paid for a brass tablet on the wall near her grave in Winchester Cathedral, which alludes to her work. Yet Jane’s popularity didn’t take off until the 1900s, when paperbacks of her works became available. In the 1940s, a Jane fan, Miss Dorothy Darnell, founded the Jane Austen Society, which now has chapters in North America, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Canada, and Europe. Most of these groups have annual conferences attended by avid Janeites, many in costume. Miss Darnell was also instrumental in purchasing Chawton Cottage where a museum opened in 1949.

• Today, Jane’s books have sold hundreds of millions of copies, and all of her books have been made into movies, many being nominated for Academy Awards. There are college courses dedicated to studying Jane and her work. There are Jane Austen calendars, posters, cookbooks, gardening books, dating guides, walking guides, quiz books, trivia books, and over seven thousand Web sites. There are books dedicated to her wit and wisdom, compilations of her letters, and novels that take up where her novels left off. Amazon has available over two hundred Austen titles. The woman who sold her first book for ten pounds, who never traveled beyond her own corner of England, who never married, never had children, whose life (according to brother Henry) “was not a life of events,” spanned the globe and the centuries by changing the literary world forever.