Jane and the Stillroom Maid Read online

  Outstanding praise for

  Jane and the Stillroom Maid

  “Details of early 19th-century country life of all cases ring true, while the story line is clear, yet full of surprises.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Very appealing … As in Austen’s novels, the relationships are complex and full of suppressed passion.”

  —Booklist

  “Barron writes with greater assurance than ever, and her heroine’s sleuthing is more confident and accomplished.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This work bears all the wonderful trademarks of the earlier titles, including period detail, measured but often sardonic wit, and authenticity.”

  —Library Journal

  “Stephanie Barron does an excellent job of creating Jane Austen’s world. … A chilling mystery with a solution that will leave you spellbound.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Jane and the Stillroom Maid has a marvelous cast of characters. The dialogue is lively and sharp and … Ms. Barron beautifully depicts the English estates and countryside.”

  —Rendezvous

  Superb praise for

  Jane and the Genius of the Place

  “This is perhaps the best ‘Jane’ yet. The plot moves smoothly and quickly to its denouement. Barron’s mysteries also educate the reader, in a painless fashion, about the political, social, and cultural concerns of Austen’s time. Jane [is] a subtle but determined sleuth.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Barron artfully replicates Austen’s voice, sketches several delightful portraits … and dazzles her audience with period details.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Barron has succeeded in emulating the writing style of Austen’s period without mocking it.”

  —The Indianapolis Star

  “A gem of a novel.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Barron tells the tale in Jane’s leisurely voice, skillfully recreating the tone and temper of the time without a hint of an anachronism.”

  —The Plain Dealer

  “Cleverly blends scholarship with mystery and wit, weaving Jane Austen’s correspondence and works of literature into a tale of death and deceit.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Faithfully and eloquently recreates a time and place as well as the diary voice of one of the most accomplished women of the early 19th century.”

  —The Purloined Letter

  “The skill and expertise with which Stephanie Barron creates her series featuring Jane Austen seem to get better and better with each succeeding entry. The author has attained new heights in her portrayal, with Miss Austen as observer, of a fascinating period of English history.”

  —Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

  Extraordinary praise far

  Jane and the Wandering Eye

  “Barron seamlessly weaves … a delightful and lively tale. … Period details bring immediacy to a neatly choreographed dance through Bath society.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Barren’s high level of invention testifies to an easy acquaintance with upper-class life and culture in Regency England and a fine grasp of Jane Austen’s own literary style—not to mention a mischievous sense of fun.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “For this diverting mystery of manners, the third entry in a genteelly jolly series by Stephanie Barron, the game heroine goes to elegant parties, frequents the theater and visits fashionable gathering spots—all in the discreet service of solving a murder.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Charming period authenticity.”

  —Library Journal

  “Stylish … This one will … prove diverting for hard-core Austen fans.”

  —Booklist

  “No betrayal of our interest here: Jane and the Wandering Eye is an erudite diversion.”

  —The Drood Review of Mystery

  “A lively plot accented with fascinating history …Barron’s voice grows better and better.”

  —Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

  “A pleasant romp … [Barron] maintains her ability to mimic Austen’s style effectively if not so closely as to ruin the fun.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Stephanie Barron continues her uncanny recreation of the ‘real’ Jane Austen. … Barron seamlessly unites historical details of Austen’s life with fictional mysteries, all in a close approximation of Austen’s own lively, gossipy style.”

  —Feminist Bookstore News

  Lavish praise for

  Jane and the Man of the Cloth

  “Nearly as wry as Jane Austen herself, Barron delivers pleasure and amusement in her second delicious Jane Austen mystery. … Worthy of its origins, this book is a delight.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “If Jane Austen really did have the ‘nameless and dateless’ romance with a clergyman that some scholars claim, she couldn’t have met her swain under more heartthrobbing circumstances than those described by Stephanie Barron.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Prettily narrated, in true Austen style … a boon for Austen lovers.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Historical fiction at its best.”

  —Library Journal

  “The words, characters and references are so real that it is a shock to find that the author is not Austen herself.”

  —The Arizona Republic

  “Stephanie Barron’s second Jane Austen mystery … is even better than her first. … A classic period mystery.”

  —The News & Observer, Raleigh, NC

  “Delightful… captures the style and wit of Austen.”

  —San Francisco Examiner

  “Loaded with charm, these books will appeal whether you are a fan of Jane Austen or not.”

  —Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

  The highest praise for

  Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

  “Splendid fun!”

  —Star Tribune, Minneapolis

  “Happily succeeds on all levels: a robust tale of manners and mayhem that faithfully reproduces the Austen style—and engrosses to the finish.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Jane is unmistakably here with us through the work of Stephanie Barron—sleuthing, entertaining, and making us want to devour the next Austen adventure as soon as possible!”

  —Diane Mott Davidson

  “Well-conceived, stylishly written, plotted with a nice twist… and brought off with a voice that works both for its time and our own.”

  —Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

  “People who lament Jane Austen’s minimal lifetime output… now have cause to rejoice.”

  —The Drood Review of Mystery

  “A lighthearted mystery …The most fun is that ‘Jane Austen’ is in the middle of it, witty and logical, a foil to some of the ladies who primp, faint and swoon.”

  —The Denver Post

  “A fascinating ride through the England of the hackney carriage … a definite occasion for pride rather than prejudice.”

  —Edward Marston

  “A thoroughly enjoyable tale. Fans of the much darker Anne Perry … should relish this somewhat lighter look at the society of fifty years earlier.”

  —Mostly Murder

  “Jane sorts it all out with the wit and intelligence Jane Austen would display. (four if you really love Jane Austen).”

  —Detroit Free Press

  ALSO BY STEPHANIE BARRON

  Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor: Being the First Jane Austen Mystery

  Jane and the Man of the Cloth: Being the Second Jane Austen M
ystery

  Jane and the Wandering Eye: Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery

  Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery

  Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House: Being the Sixth Jane Austen Mystery

  Jane and the Ghosts of Netley: Being the Seventh Jane Austen Mystery

  AND COMING SOON IN HARDCOVER FROM BANTAM BOOKS:

  Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy

  Dedicated to Carol Bauer Bowron, friend and writer, who carries a certain Pemberley in her heart

  Editor’s Foreword

  THIS IS THE FIFTH OF THE AUSTEN MANUSCRIPTS I have been privileged to edit for publication since their discovery, in 1992, in the cellar of a Georgian manor house outside of Baltimore. I may say that I find it by far the most exciting, for it sheds light on Jane Austen’s life and travels in 1806 that helps to confirm events only suspected before.

  One of the most vividly described and memorable locations in all of Austen’s novels must be the county of Derbyshire, where Fitzwilliam Darcy, the reticent hero of Pride and Prejudice, makes his home. Here Elizabeth Bennet is privileged to travel in the company of her relations, the Gardiners. The party tours Matlock and Dovedale before visiting Darcy’s estate of Pemberley, where they unaccountably stumble across the owner. Elizabeth, in conversation with Darcy, refers to the inn at Bakewell, where she has been staying with the Gardiners—and to this day there is a tradition in Bakewell that Jane Austen was once a guest at the town’s principal Georgian inn, The Rutland Arms. She must have been to Bakewell, the local inhabitants reason; her description of the landscape surrounding Pemberley accords so closely to the town’s physical reality. Furthermore, she imputes to Elizabeth Bennet an enthusiasm for the beauties of the Peaks that sounds entirely genuine.

  Austen scholars, however, have contested for years The Rutland Arms’ claim that Jane was a guest during the summer of 1811; for in 1811, as all good Austen scholars know, she was far from the Midlands and the Peaks.

  A few voices, however, have lately suggested that Jane might have visited Derbyshire during the summer of 1806, while staying with her cousin Edward Cooper in neighboring Staffordshire. During the seven weeks she spent in a rectory in Hamstall Ridware, Staffordshire, Austen would have been but forty miles from the sites she later describes in Pride and Prejudice. George Holbert Tucker, author of Jane Austen the Woman, is inclined to support fellow academic Donald Greene, who argues that Darcy’s fictitious home corresponds in its broad outlines to Chatsworth, the great estate of the dukes of Devonshire. Certainly it is true that the entire Cooper family succumbed to whooping cough during the Austens’ visit—and for this reason, as well as from a possible desire to tour the Peak District, Edward Cooper may have carried the Austen ladies into Derbyshire. No letter has survived in Jane’s hand, dated late August 1806 from the town of Bakewell, but that should hardly be surprising. She was, after all, traveling with her chief correspondent, her sister Cassandra—and any number of Austen’s letters have been destroyed over the years.

  Jane and the Stillroom Maid thus comes as a revelation. Here is the complete story of that singular week in 1806, when Austen saw the original of the great house she would use as one of her models for Pemberley. She was writing sporadically, if at all, during this period, having abandoned The Watsons—a decision most Austen scholars ascribe to persistent grief for her late father and the unsettled nature of the Austen ladies’ domestic arrangements. Some part of Jane’s Derbyshire experiences must have lingered powerfully in memory, however. When she once more took up her pen, the outlines of Bakewell and Derbyshire would be traced in the landscape of Pemberley House, and a bit of Charles Danforth in the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy. Is it too great a leap of the imagination to claim, indeed, that but for this 1806 trip to Derbyshire we might never have seen a revision of First Impressions—the novel we now know as Pride and Prejudice?

  STEPHANIE BARRON

  GOLDEN, COLORADO

  SEPTEMBER 1999

  Chapter 1

  The Butterfly on the Stone

  Tuesday

  26 August 1806

  The Rutland Arms, Bakewell, Derbyshire

  ∼

  MR. EDWARD COOPER—RECTOR OF HAMSTALL RIDWARE, Staffordshire, Fellow of All Souls, devoted supplicant before his noble patron, Sir George Mumps, and my first cousin—is possessed of a taste for hymns. He sings without the slightest encouragement or provocation, in a key entirely of his own choosing. Were he content to sing alone, in a subdued undertone befitting one of his dignity and station, all might be well. But Mr. Cooper has achieved a modest sort of fame as the composer of sacred music; and like the ardent shepherd of many a flock, must needs have company in his rejoicing. There are those who profess to admire my cousin’s wistful baritone and remarkable lyrics—Sir George Mumps himself is said to have presented the Staffordshire living on the strength of his esteem—but Jane Austen is not among them. Were Mr. Cooper to sing airs in the Italian, before an audience of five hundred, I should still blush for his execution and taste. My cousin is a very good sort of man, his compassion and understanding quite equal to the duties of his parish; but his strains are not for the enduring, of an early hour of the morning.

  I was blushing now, as I rolled towards Miller’s Dale in the heart of Derbyshire behind the horse of Mr. Cooper’s excellent friend, Mr. George Hemming; and I foresaw a morning’s-worth of mortification in store, did my cousin continue to sing as he had begun. I had borne with Mr. Cooper’s hymns through his dawn ablutions; I had borne with a determined humming over our morning coffee. And as the pony trap rolled west through a remarkable spread of country, I now reflected that I had borne with a stream of liturgical ditty for nearly a fortnight. To say that I possessed an entire hymnal of Mr. Cooper’s work writ large upon my brain was the merest understatement. I heard his powerful strains in my sleep.

  “Is it not a beautiful morning, Jane? Does not the heart leap in the human breast for the greater glorification of God?” Mr. Cooper cried. “Pray sing with me, Cousin, that the Lord might hear us and be glad!”

  Poor Mr. Hemming cast a troubled glance my way. He was but an instant from a similar application, and I read his distress in his looks. My cousin’s talent, we may suspect, had progressed unnoticed by his friend during the long years that interceded between their first acquaintance, and this latest renewal; had Mr. Hemming known of the recital we were to receive during our journey to Miller’s Dale, he might well have retracted his invitation. I had long ago learned the surest remedy for Mr. Cooper, however, and I now hastened to employ it. Even the least worldly of men may be prey to vanity.

  “Do not destroy all my pleasure in hearing you, Cousin, by requiring me to sing myself!” I cried. “My voice should never be joined with yours; it is not equal to the demands of the performance. Nor, I am certain, is Mr. Hemming’s. Pray let us rest a little in your art, and be satisfied.”

  Mr. Cooper beamed, and commenced a tedious five verses of “The Breath That Breathed O’er Eden.”

  I endured it in silence; for I owed Mr. Cooper every measure of gratitude and respect. But for my cousin, I should never have set foot in Derbyshire at all. And Derbyshire—with all its wild beauty and untamed peaks—had long been the dearest object of my travels. What was a little singing, however off-key, to the grandeur of lakes and mountains?

  Mr. Cooper had long despaired of my mother’s ever paying a visit to Staffordshire and her dearest nephew’s rectory. It was many years, now, since he had first urged the scheme; his family had annually increased, his honours as a vicar and homilist multiplied; Mr. Cooper himself was approaching a complaisant middle-age—and still the Austen ladies remained insensibly at home.

  But so lately as June my mother determined to quit the environs of Bath—the town in which we have lived more than three years—it being entirely unsuitable now that my beloved father is laid to rest. Being three women of modest means, and having endeavoured to live respectably on a pittance in the
midst of a most expensive town, we at last declared defeat and determined to exchange Bath for anywhere else in England. An interval of rest and refreshment, in the form of an extended tour among our relations, was deemed suitable for the summer months; October should find us in Southampton, where we were to set up housekeeping with my dearest brother, Captain Francis Austen. We should serve as company for his new bride, Mary, when duty called Frank to sea.

  And so it was decided—we shook off the dust of Bath on the second of July, with what happy feelings of Escape!—and bent all our energies to a summer of idleness.

  We travelled first to Clifton, and from thence to Adlestrop and my mother’s cousin, the clergyman Mr. Thomas Leigh. We had not been settled in that gentleman’s home five days, when the sudden death of a distant relation sent Mr. Leigh flying to Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, with the intent of laying claim to a disputed inheritance. After a highly diverting week in the company of Mr. Leigh’s solicitor, Mr. Hill, and the absurd Lady Saye and Sele, we parted from the intimates of Stoneleigh and turned our carriage north, towards Staffordshire.1

  Hamstall Ridware is a prosperous little village lost in a depth of hedgerows, with a very fine Rectory and a finer church spire. Our cousin Mr. Cooper and his dutiful wife, Caroline, possess no less than eight children, the eldest of whom is but twelve and the youngest barely a year. Some little difficulty in the matter of bedchambers was apparent from the moment of our arrival. Cassandra and I were forced to shift together; my mother claimed a bed in the next room. The little boys were grouped in pallets on the nursery floor, and it was likewise with the little girls, while the baby was taken up in its parents’ chamber. And so we contrived to be comfortable; and so we should have been, despite the heat of August and the closeness of such a populous house, had not the whooping cough presently put in an appearance. After three days of Christian endurance, of instruction from the apothecary and draughts that did little good, Mr. Cooper proposed a journey into Derbyshire, with the intent of touring Chatsworth and the principal beauties of the region.

  My mother acceded thankfully to the scheme. The harassed Caroline Cooper, beset with ailing children on every side, was relieved of the burden of guests, and the Austens of the fear of contagion. Having set out from the Rectory steps on the Saturday previous, we achieved Bakewell yesterday in the forenoon, very well satisfied with our progress north. But for one aspect of the journey—my cousin’s unsuspected ardour for the sport of angling, which has entirely determined our course through Derbyshire—we should have found nothing in our prospects but delight.