Jane and the Genius of the Place Read online

  Superb praise for

  Jane and the Genius of the Place

  “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 seems 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 in English history.”

  —Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

  Extraordinary praise for

  Jane and the Wandering Eye

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

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Barron’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 genteellyjolly 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.”

  —TheDrood 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 and 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 works 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.”

  —TheDrood Review of Mystery

  “A light-hearted 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 thehackney 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 Mystery

  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 StiUroom Maid:

  Being the Fifth 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

  Dedicated to the memory of Ruth Connor,

  whose genius lives on in the places

  and people she loved

  In laying out a garden,

  the first and chief thing to be considered

  is the genius of the place.

  — ALEXANDER POPE, 1728

  as quoted in

  Observations, Anecdotes and Characters of Books and Men,

  by Joseph Spence.

  Editor’s

  Foreword

  BRITISH NOVELIST JANE AUSTEN WAS BORN ON THE EVE of her country’s conflict with its American colonies, in 1775, and died only two years after Napoleon’s second abdication in 1815; yet the turmoil of England’s passage through more than four decades of revolution and warfare is barely evident in her novels. As a result, her fiction has too often been dismissed as superficial or as reflecting the purely “female” preoccupations of
domestic life. An Austen scholar might be quick to point out the naval influences in Persuasion, or argue that the subtle shifts in social practices and mores that Austen repeatedly chronicles could exist only in the broader context of political transformation—but in the main, her fiction mentions military figures most often as they appear at a ball, and politics not at all.

  Austen’s letters, however, reveal her to have been anything but ignorant of the affairs of her day. As Warren Roberts points out in his engrossing work, Jane Austen and the French Revolution (Macmillan, 1979), the novelist habitually read the London newspapers and commented on the political news reported in them. She followed the battles and engagements of the Royal Navy with avid interest, having two brothers serving in ships of the line, and she spent the entire summer of 1805 near the coastline of Kent—Napoleon’s ground zero for invasion.

  What a delight, therefore, to discover in this, the fourth of the long-lost Austen journals to be edited for publication, an account of Jane’s life during a period known to her contemporaries as the Great Terror. For over two years, from May 1803 until August 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte planned the invasion of England with a passion bordering on mania. He beggared his treasury to build a flotilla of over a thousand ships, massed an army of one hundred thousand troops in the ports of the Channel coast, and goaded his reluctant naval commanders into attempting to breach the remarkably effective British blockade of France. Never, since the Norman Conquest, had Britain faced so serious a threat of invasion from its neighbor; never again, until the Bat-tie of Britain in September 1940, would she confront so potent a military force, merely twenty miles from Dover.

  Jane Austen witnessed the denouement of Napoleon’s grand scheme from the idyllic vantage of her brother Edward Austen Knight’s principal estate, Godmersham Park in Kent. The compelling events of those days— which coincided with Canterbury’s Race Week—are here recounted for the first time.

  In editing this manuscript for publication, I found Alan Schom’s Trafalgar: Countdown to Battle, 1803-1805 (Oxford University Press, 1990) an invaluable guide to the period. But nothing can exceed the pleasure of my brief walk through the grounds of Godmersham itself, with its sheep-filled meadows roiling down to the Stour, on a hot afternoon in July.

  Stephanie Barron

  Evergreen, Colorado

  Monday,

  19 August 1805

  MISS JANE AUSTEN—LATE OF GREEN PARK BUILDINGS, Bath, but presently laying claim to nowhere in particular, given her esteemed father’s recent death, and the subsequent upheaval in domestic arrangements—might never be accused of dissipation. Not for Jane the delights of the ton, who may dance until dawn at the most select assemblies, or haunt the private gaming hells where hazard is played so scandalously high. At her time in life—and she is hard on the heels of thirty—there is something a little unseemly in a desire for modish dress, or a taste for fashionable watering-places, or a reckless disregard for social convention. Accustomed from birth as she has been to the modest lot of a clergyman’s daughter, Miss Austen may only witness the habits of her more materially-fortunate brethren with shocked dismay, and trust that her fervent prayers—sent Heavenward in all the humility of a woman mindful of her end—might serve as intercession between the Fallen and their Maker.

  Unless, I observed to myself with satisfaction on the present occasion, the more materially-fortunate brethren determine our Jane to be worthy of a little dissipation-on-loan. A visit to a race-meeting, perhaps, in all the glory of a barouche-landau excellently placed for viewing the horses, a picnic hamper overflowing with good things, and attendant footmen stifling in their livery. There can be few pursuits so conducive to the flutter of an ivory fan or the delicate flirtation of a muslin sunshade. And where but at the Canterbury Races, in the very midst of August Race Week, might one find all the excesses of human folly so conveniently placed to hand?

  Within the compass of my sight, I assure you, were any number of incipient scandals. The countenance of more than one gentleman was flushed with wine and the course’s promise, or perhaps the anxiety attendant upon heavy betting—for in the decision of a moment, fortunes might be made or lost, reputations sacrificed, and ruin visited upon more than merely the horse.

  From the vantage of their gay equipages, ladies young and old flirted with every passing swain, and offered raspberry cordial or spruce beer to such as were overcome by the heat. Our friends the Wildmans, from nearby Chilham Castle; the Edward Taylors, from Bifrons Park; and the Finch-Hattons, of Eastwell Park, in their elegant green barouche, all chattered gaily across the distance separating their parties. Footmen unpacked the heaviest of the hampers, and decanted the spirits from an hundred bottles, while stable lads walked the patient carriage horses under whatever shade might be found.

  One dark-haired young woman, tricked out in a very fetching habit of red bombazine, with a tricorn hat and feathers, held pride of place on the box of her own perch phaeton—a daring gesture in so public a gathering, and not for the faint of heart. It was a cunning little equipage, built for speed and grace, and possibly not unsuited to a lady’s use in St. James Park—but a rare sight, indeed, among the serviceable coaches of Kent. She drove a pair of matched greys, and led a snorting black gelding behind—or rather, her tyger did. He was a diminutive, crab-faced fellow with a bent back, stifling in gold braid and livery, who sat hunched at the phaeton’s rear, awaiting his mistress’s commands, and feeding an occasional bit of greenstuff to the snorting black.

  As I watched, the figure in scarlet drew a whip-point from her collar and tossed it to an admirer standing at the phaeton’s wheel. He caught it neatly and held it to his lips like a spoil of victory; she threw back her head and laughed. I might have enquired as to the lady’s name, but that I espied my brothers approaching the Austen carriage, and thus dismissed the Fair Unknown without regret. I must confess that even Jane will grow weary of fashionable absurdities, when treated to their display for so long as three months.

  In June, my sister Cassandra and I shook off the dust of Bath and descended upon Kent, and all the splendour of Godmersham, my brother Edward’s principal estate.1 The change in circumstance has been material, I assure you. My excellent father having passed from this life in the last days of January, the subsequent months were overshadowed by all the gloom of bereavement; and the black hours were hardly improved by my mother’s heartfelt wish of quitting Green Park Buildings, in the hope of an establishment more suited to her purse and widowed estate. February, and then March, and even April were allowed to pass away in pursuit of cheaper pastures; but the sensibilities of three women being so far divided on the question of what was vital to our comfort, we could none of us agree. And so we resigned the abominable duty at the first opportunity—my mother embarking upon a visit to Hampshire, and her daughters stepping thankfully into their brother’s chaise, sent expressly from Kent for the purpose.

  In the great house at Godmersham, no expense is too dear for the achievement of my comfort. All is effected with ease and style, for an elegant mode of living is the primary object of Elizabeth, my brother’s wife. There are not many uses for a baronet’s daughter, but the steady management of a gentleman’s household may safely be described as one of them; and in this, and in the rearing of a numerous progeny, Lizzy gives daily proof of her goodness. At Godmersham I may revel in the solitary possession of the Yellow Room (the bedchamber at the head of the stairs, set aside for my use whenever I am come into Kent), and while away a rainy afternoon with a good book and a better fire in the library’s shadowed peace. Here I may be above vulgar economy, and drink only claret with my dinner, despising the orange wine that usually falls to my lot. When Edward’s excellent equipages await my every whim, I need not rely upon the hack chaise for the conduct of my business; and if seized by the fever of composition, I have no cause to hide myself away, in constant apprehension of discovery. The grounds at Godmersham are very fine, and include in their compass at least one summerhouse and a cunning lit
de temple set on a hill, ideally suited to the visitation of the Muse.

  I find my condition in general so enviable, and so entirely suited to my taste, as to make me think with wonder on a certain event of nearly three years ago. Can I have been in full possession of my senses, indeed, to have refused Mr. Harris Bigg-Wither—a man of wealth and easy circumstances, despite his numerous imperfections—simply because I could not esteem him? Utter folly! The indulgence of a fanciful mind! And its bitter reward is orange wine and hired lodgings for the rest of my days.

  “Jane. “My brother Henry, two steps ahead of Edward in their assault upon our barouche, shattered my reverie at a word. “I fear we must desert you this very instant, or we shall never secure a position at the rail. It is the Commodore’s final heat, you know, and he is to meet a very telling litde filly, Josephine by name, who won her last quite handily. He is to carry four stone six.”2

  Edward—handsome, carefree, and debonair despite the fine beads of sweat starting out on his brow—leaned into the open carriage and kissed his wife. “You look a picture, my dear. Shall our defection make you desolate?”

  Picture was the very word for Lizzy, with her delicate parasol of Valenciennes lace inclined just so, above her dark head, and the famous Knight pearls shining dully on her bosom. “Not at all,” she murmured, with a languid look from her slanting green eyes, “for positioned as you are, Neddie, you quite destroy all our hopes of flirtation. Jane and I can manage quite well by ourselves—until dinnertime, at least, when we shall grow cross and hot and prove quite ready to declare ourselves of your party. Until then, sir, be off! For we want none of your careful ways.”

  My brother burst out laughing at this sally of his wife’s, and kissed her again, to the astonishment of the raven-haired little governess, Anne Sharpe; but all of Kent might observe the pair without contempt, for the Austens’ was always acknowledged a love-match. Indeed, Neddie is so amiable, so honesdy good—and Lizzy so perpetually elegant, without the least pretension to snobbery—that there can be few who must observe their happiness, without wishing them the heartiest good fortune in the world.

  “May not I accompany you, Papa?” My niece Fanny bounced impatiendy on the barouche seat opposite. She is Edward’s eldest child, and very nearly his favourite— a pretty litde thing of twelve, with all the advantage of birth, fortune, and connexion to recommend her. “I long to see the Commodore’s action!”