Jane and the Man of the Cloth Page 5

  A bell tinkled prettily as I thrust open Harding’s bottle-green door and stepped inside. The interior was pervaded with a peculiar mixture of scents, of the sneeze-inducing variety—part camphor, part dried roses, part good new cloth. I glanced quickly about, and found my eye drawn to a sprigged muslin exactly the colour of clotted cream, a shade I may pass off with a fair measure of success; but turned away with some regret, mindful of my errand.

  A group of three very fine ladies was gathered at the counter, desirous of service—or perhaps of conversation; for I perceived the very Milsop, waspishly thin, and resplendent in a sky-blue tailcoat, striped breeches, and stiff white cravat, one elegant hand at rest upon the counter’s edge, and the other holding high a quizzing glass,2 the better to study his fair audience—with the occasional glint of sunlight, in catching the glass unawares, completing the dazzling effect.

  And thus we have the caricature of our age—a gendeman of weak understanding, who apes the form of gentility in an effort to supply his want of substance. But I was not to be afforded further moments for contemplation, or assays of philosophy; the bell had drawn notice; I was seen and—to my great surprise—remembered. The paragon stiffened; the quizzing glass dropped on its silken cord; and condescension gave way to beatific pleasure.

  “Can it ba Is heaven so benevolent? Do I see before me the very Miss Austen—Miss Jane Austen—who brightened the tedious hours of an endless September past; whose delicate step, and dulcet voice, could lift my heart with her every visit—whose taste remains so far above Lyme, that I wonder at her repairing once more to these sadly dismal shores; whose understanding, penetration, and cunning ways with hat-trimming are not to be equalled? Or should I say,”—with a sudden recollection of the aforementioned audience—’ ‘equalled only by the ladies who stand before me now? And by her own sister as well, the lovely Miss Austen—but can it be?”

  To stem a further efflorescence of this kind, I hastened forward, the embodiment of womanly virtue, and extended a gloved hand to Mr. Milsop. It was decidedly spotted, and a delicate frown twitched about the draper’s eyes as he bowed gallantly low.

  “I am come, as you see, Mr. Milsop,” I began, with a nod to the ladies, whose company had parted coolly for my admittance, ‘under the direst necessity of a new pair of gloves. I was incommoded by a dreadful storm Monday last; and my things were all quite ruined with rain and mud. But I trust you shall have something that will answer.”

  “Answer? Answer? I have gloves that are ravishing, Miss Austen, gloves whose charms could never be denied. Silk gloves, in lilac and peach blossom; doeskin gloves, in day and evening lengths; knitted silk, or knitted cotton— Ah!” he cried, bending low over a counter and pulling open the glass, “these, perhaps? Or would silk serve better?”

  Held out for my inspection were a delicately-netted pair, of the finest cotton lace. “Valenciennes,” Mr. Milsop said, with the profoundest satisfaction; “and very dear.”

  “Then I fear they shall not do, for a seaside resort, where one is much exposed to the elements,” I replied, with regret. “Such dust and sand, as fly about these streets, should have them soiled in a moment” I scanned the counter’s array, and selected a pair of simple cotton gloves, undoubtedly the cheapest on offer in the establishment, and very like the ones I presendy wore. Mr. Milsop’s face fell; but he rallied, as was his wont, and found a virtue in simplicity.

  “Such retiring taste—such a repugnance of show! Not for Miss Jane Austen the vulgarities of Spanish lace; she is the very soul of delicacy! I quite agree. Indeed, I applaud your choice. With consideration, one sees that no other glove in the world could be so suited to your hand. That will be four shillings.”

  There was a murmuring behind me, while the little show of exchanging coins occurred; and with a pricking of my ears, I knew the three ladies whose privilege I had displaced, were discussing the very incident of which I wished to learn more.

  “His face was quite ghastly,” said the eldest—a bold, queer-looking woman in her middle thirties, with the accent of an Englishwoman raised in Ireland. That accounted for the boldness, and perhaps the queerness as well—which must be said to have begun with her height, which was considerable, and her dress, a vivid green and white drapery in the Greek style, which swooped low across bosom and back, and was held at the shoulders by polished-steel clips in the form of heraldic arms. Quite unsuitable for day, unless I am hopelessly behindhand in my fashions; but her independence of attire was exceeded only by that of her slanting dark eyes, which roved everywhere, and drew back from no one.

  “You cannot mean to say you saw it, Mrs. Barnewall!” ejaculated one of her companions—a sharp-featured girl of perhaps four-and-twenty, with ginger hair and an incompatible taste for pink.

  “Saw it—alas, I had not the pleasure. I had the news of my tyger,3 who ran up to the gibbet when he should have been holding the horses.”

  “The violence of the lower orders is not to be credited,” the ginger-haired girl observed. “Why, only last week, Father ordered a tenant of ours be hanged; for you know that Father is a justice, and the man had poached one of our deer. Only imagine! So brazen! But it was an example, for the fellow had seven children, and his widow is turned out; so that now I fancy our deer shall run unmolested in the park.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Letty,” the youngest of the three rejoined faindy, “do not talk so about the odious Cog-ginses. It quite turns my stomach; and you know I have not been at all well today. I think I shall have some of that yellow muslin, with the scattered border; I am sure it should improve my spirits immeasurably.”

  “You have spent your purse already, and Father shall have my head for it,” ginger-haired Letty replied; and tucking her sister’s arm beneath her own, she exited the shop in all the complacency native to the possessor of a deer-park, however many unfortunates might be hanged to ensure its continuance.

  “Mr. Milsop,” the bold Irishwoman said, with an eye my way, “you have not been very kind. In fact, I must quite accuse you of cruelty. You have extolled the virtues of this lady to everyone who might listen; and yet, you deny us the felicity of an introduction. I am sure you mean to keep her acquaintance all to yourself, for fear that she shall like others better, and desert you.”

  “My dear Mrs. Barnewall!” the counter fop cried. “It would be an ecstasy to make hvo such examples of womanly excellence, known the one to the other” And before I could demur, he had turned to his office with alacrity.

  “Miss Austen, may I introduce to your acquaintance Mrs. Mathew Barnewall, of Kingsland. Mrs. Barnewall, Miss Austen—of Bath, was it not?”

  “Your faculty for placing your patrons is indeed remarkable, Mr. Milsop,” I replied, and shook Mrs. Barnewall’s hand.

  “Bath! How delightful! You are a native of the place?” that lady enquired.

  “I am not,” I replied, “and, in truth, I cannot think of anyone who is. But that is to be expected, when one makes a pleasure-place a home.”

  “Indeed. You trade one pleasure-place for another, I see, in visiting Lyme.”

  “Ah! But the two are so different! The one merely called a pleasure-place, from convention and long familiarity; and the other, so infinitely capable of inspiring real happiness!”

  I could not keep the admiration from my accent. Lyme is a town that has become dear to me, for reasons I cannot fully explain; unless it be that the smallness of such a place, particularly after its season has closed, offers a peace and solitary beauty I cannot find in Bath or London—a peace denied me since my removal from dear Steventon.

  “You think such a village charming, then?” Mrs. Barnewall said, with obvious disbelief.

  “Certainly there is little to admire in the buildings themselves,” I conceded; “but the remarkable situation of the town! The principal street, almost hurrying into the water! The pleasant manner in which the Cobb skirts the bay, and the beautiful line of cliffs stretching to the east!—These are what a stranger’s eye will seek
, and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs, to make her wish to know Lyme better!”4

  “But the people are so coarse, in general; one rarely encounters good society, beyond the doors of the Assembly Rooms. At this time of year, the town is overrun with common labourers and fisherfolk; and the degradations to which one is subjected! You have heard, I suppose, of the hanged man.”

  “Only a little,” I said coolly. “But men may be hanged anywhere, I believe. I had understood it to be quite a common thing in Ireland.”

  “But in such a manner!” my new acquaintance cried. “The placement of the gibbet! The placard hung about his neck! The binding of his hands and feet! The mutilation of his features!”

  “Of all these, 1 had not heard,” I said, with greater interest. “There was a placard, you say?”

  “Assuredly, my dear girl.” Mrs. Barnewall advanced rather too rapidly to terms of intimacy for my taste, but in search of further particulars, I ignored her familiarity. “My tyger told me all of it. ‘Done for as he did,’ the words read, in ragged letters; and it was hung about his neck with a bit of fishing twine, of the sort such folk use for their nets.”

  “How very odd!” I said thoughtfully. “One supposes such violence to be the result of a bitter feud among the fishermen.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Mrs. Barnewall replied, and loosed her parasol. “I trust, Miss Austen, I shall see you tonight at the Assembly. Not that it is worth the trouble of attending; neither so very good company, as to be called select, nor so very bad, that one might fancy it dangerously exciting . But when in Lyme, it may be termed a delight, for want of competition/’ And with a nod for Mr. Milsop, she took her leave.

  “What a very singular lady,” I said.

  The draper stiffened and surveyed me narrowly with his quizzing glass. “The Honourable Mathew Barnewall is to be a viscount. He is heir to extensive estates in Ireland.”

  “And yet, even that does not explain his wife, my dear sir.” I drew on my new gloves with a smile, and left the spotted pair on Milsop’s counter.

  IT WAS AS I APPROACHED WlNGS COTTAGE THAT A PROCESSION FROM the Cobb neared where I stood, and I pressed hard against a neighbouring building so that they might more easily pass. A glimpse only of their sad burden did I have; but it was enough to nearly overpower me. Do not think, however, that it was the corpse’s starting eyes, or its lolling tongue, or what Mrs. Barnewall had airily termed a “mutilation”—in this instance, a knife slash that opened one cheek—all these, I could have withstood. But the source of my faintness upon viewing the hanged man was entirely of another order. For I had seen these features and this fellow before—and only the previous afternoon, as he lounged in the doorway opposite, hurling what I believed to be drunken insults at the angelic Seraphine. The man had appeared to earn Geoffrey Sidmouth’s contempt on that occasion, and possibly his rage. But as the body slowly passed, I wondered with a chill in my heart whether his impertinence had cost him even dearer—whether it had won him, in fact, the brutal manner of his death.

  1 Austen probably refers here to the beach that fronted Lyme’s harbor, which is also called the Cobb, though not to be confused with the jetty of the same name. —Editor’s note.

  2 This was a long-handled lorgnette, with a single magnifying lens, that hung about fashionable necks. —Editor’s note.

  3 A tyger was a small boy arrayed in livery, almost as a mascot, whom the fashionable set employed to ride on the exterior of their carriages. —Editor’s note.

  4 These words, slightly modified and expanded, make up Austen’s principal description of Lyme Regis in her final novel, Persuasion. —Editor’s note.

  7 September 1804

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  THE LYME ASSEMBLY ROOMS SIT ON BROAD STREET, AT BELL CUFF and Cobb Gate, and their windows so o’erlook the sea, that when one is twirling in the midst of the floor (and well supplied with negus),1 one might almost believe oneself aboard ship, and borne on the crest of a wave. Or so Captain Fielding observed; and as he is a Naval man, albeit lame in one leg and now retired, I must take his observations as more generally apt than most

  But I run ahead to the middle of the play, and neglect to draw open the curtain and set the scene; and so I give you the Reverend George Austen, attired in a shabby if respectable black tailcoat of uncertain vintage, his younger daughter by his side in her borrowed pink feathers, entering upon the Assembly at the stroke of eight o’clock. Henry and Eliza intended joining us later, believing the hour far too early for fashion; but I rejoiced to find the majority of Lyme society less nice in their distinctions, and the rooms already quite full, and of a happy mixture of ladies and gentlemen—the former being generally of that middle age that assures them either married or safely beyond susceptibility, and the latter retired Naval officers. Lyme has proved so attractive to the seafaring set, in fact, that a coterie of Naval families has setded in the cottages lining the streets of town; and their society seems at once so self-sufficient, and so cheerfully good, that one quite longs to marry a daring commander of the Red or White,2 if only with a view to settling in Lyme some twenty years hence.

  But perhaps Captain Fielding has influenced my views.

  “What a fearful crowd, my dear Jane,” my father remarked, in his vaguest tone, as though only just emerging from the leaves of his book. “Had not we better return to Wings cottage, and the society of your mother? For the crush is heavy, and we know no one/’ And he would have turned for the door, had I not seized his arm, and urged him firmly into the room.

  “There are not above four-and-twenty couples, Father, and you know that in Bath we are commonly burdened with thrice that number. We cannot know anyone, unless we meet someone; and for that, you know, there is nothing like an Assembly.”

  “I wish your mother might have come, Jane. I wish I had insisted.”

  My mother remained at home, administering spoonfuls of medicine from Mr. Dagliesh’s green bottle to a suffering, though improving, Cassandra.

  “I think, sir, that you will like the card room. I am sure that whist is to be played there. Shall I conduct you thither, and claim a chair?”

  “But what of yourself? You will be all unchaperoned!”

  I stifled my impatience—and stilled my foot, which would tap in time to the music, the orchestra having just struck up the first dance; and considered the Reverend’s delicacy. Despite having almost nine-andrtwenty years, I remain for my father a chit of a girl, and shall claim such attentions as long as he is able to give them. But on a sudden thought, I searched the gay throng for the one woman whose acquaintance I might claim in Lyme, the better to still my father’s fears. I had only to look for the peevish young ladies met with that very morning at the linendraper’s—and there I very soon found her, standing a head above her companions and arrayed in a cloth-of-gold costume cut along Egyptian lines, with a circlet of rubies in her black hair. She had a gentleman on either arm—one of whom must surely be her husband.

  “There, Father!” I cried, turning him in the proper direction. “I see my acquaintance, Mrs. Barnewall. She is the wife of the Honourable Mathew Barnewall, of Ireland, whom I understand is to have the viscountcy of Kingsland.”3

  “Barnewall, do you say?” my father replied doubtfully. “She looks rather like an actress.”

  “My dear Miss Austen,” Mrs. Barnewall cried, swooping down upon me from her considerable height, and bearing with her several of her party, “how lovely you look. As fresh as a rose from an English hedgerow. Does not she look lovely, Captain Fielding? I am sure you admire her. So much loveliness cannot be resisted, even by le Chevalier.”

  The man to whom she spoke was neither in that first youth, as to be called callow, nor so advanced in years, as to appear beyond the temptation of so daring a woman as Mrs. Barnewall; but he had the grace to look discomfited by the lady’s effusions, which could not help but recommend his character to me. He bowed low, and offered a smile, and asked if he might beg a
n introduction. At which point, I found myself indebted to the bold Mrs. Barnewall for the chief of my pleasure that evening.

  She looked first to the ladies in her train. “The Miss Schuylers, of Shropshire, I believe you have seen already, Miss Austen,” she said, “but may I have the honour of presenting Miss Letitia, Miss Susan, and Miss Constance Schuyler to your acquaintance.”

  The first and second were familiar; the third, their youngest sister—left behind, it would seem, on the morning’s visit to Mr. Milsop.

  I nodded; the other three bowed; and there our mutual interest ended.

  “They are also privileged, in being able to call Percy— Captain Fielding—our cavalier.”

  At my expression of enquiry, Captain Fielding looked diffident, and would have turned away, the better to avoid explanation, but Mrs. Barnewall intervened.

  “There!” she cried. “Was ever a man so perverse in accepting praise! I assure you, Miss Austen, that Captain Fielding comes by the name through nothing dishonourable, as his countenance would suggest. But I shall leave you to tease him about the story, and so give you grounds for conversation; for one must talk in the dance, and I am sure he means to ask you.”

  Captain Percival Fielding is of good height and very well-made, with fair hair, a quick blue eye, a sudden smile, and the ruddy countenance of a man accustomed to being and doing in all weathers. That he is possessed of a wooden leg joined just below the knee detracts not at all from his charm; if anything, it adds a certain dash to his otherwise commonplace appearance. His impediment certainly impedes him very little, as I was to learn in the course of the evening; for tho’ he forewent this first dance in order to make my acquaintance, to enquire as to my engagement for the next, required but a moment; and for my acceptance of his offer, only another.