CASSANDRA SAT IN HER ARMCHAIR and thought for a while. Her purpose in coming to Kintbury had been to remove all that might reflect badly upon Jane or the legacy: That was the brief she had given herself. But the letters about Tom and Mr. Hobday were incriminating to neither, merely deeply intrusive upon herself. Was that justification enough to remove them, too?
She pictured her sister-in-law Mary reading them, spreading the contents, passing them on. She imagined the next generation examining her own traces as if she were a South Dorset fossil. They would wonder, even laugh, at the idea that their desiccated old aunt might have known such romance. They would know that she had not, after all, been so very faithful to the memory of dear, good Tom Fowle.
Worse yet was the fear that these letters might somehow fall into the hands of a stranger. Cassandra could never surrender the hope that there would one day be a greater appetite for Jane’s novels; that this could bring a new interest in the life of their author had long been a matter of dread. Now, in that moment, she felt the dawning awareness of a whole other danger. For was there not a chance—remote and, yes, possibly ridiculous—that even her own life might then be trespassed upon? After all, Jane’s story and her own could not be separated: They were bound tight together to form one complete history. On the fortunes of the other, each life had turned. A chill ran down her stiff spine.
She had but one choice: As soon as she was back home in the privacy of Chawton, alone and unwatched, she would burn them. Lowering herself to her knees, Cassandra pulled out the trunk from its place under her bed, opened it, and secreted away all the letters she had so far found troublesome.
And now for the crux of the matter: the difficult, second act of the drama: the unmentionable business. This would be painful to read about, hard to revisit, but the job must be done. And for it to be done properly, Cassandra now needed her own letters to Eliza. She knew full well how much she had once shared, and she knew she must censor it. Their retrieval was imperative. She would soon leave the vicarage. There could be no more delay.
Determined, she hurried downstairs to the door that led through to the domestic offices. Sounds of spirited conversation came from within. The voices were Dinah’s and that of a man which Cassandra did not immediately recognize. She stood for a while, summoning the courage to enter. Then the door opened on her.
“Can I help you, m’m?” Dinah asked.
“Ah, Dinah.”
Cassandra caught a glimpse of the table, upon which sat a slab of pork pie with an egg in the middle.
“I wondered”—Cassandra withdrew into the hall, so that Dinah might follow her—“if I might have a word?”
Dinah came out and stood before her, with that particular air of respectful impudence that she had made quite her own.
“I had, as I believe you were aware, some private papers in my chamber.”
“Is that right, m’m?”
“And while I was ill, they were somehow … mislaid.”
“Sorry to hear it, m’m. A body interfering in another body’s business? I don’t hold with that, m’m. Meddling, I call it.” She tutted. “That would never do.”
Cassandra pressed on, regardless. “I wondered if you might know of their whereabouts?”
“Me, Miss Austen? You think I’m one for meddling?”
It was now perfectly clear that Dinah was the culprit and that she, Cassandra, was being punished for some reason.
“Heavens, no! Not at all, Dinah. But perhaps you have some idea of why they might have been removed?”
“Can’t say as I do, m’m.” Dinah looked her full in the eyes. “Unless…”
“Yes?”
“Well, unless there was someone who thought that you, m’m, was going in for a bit of interfering yourself … Oh, of course, I would never think such a thing … Just, you know, other people … Nasty thoughts, some of ’em.”
The woman was an outrage. There were no “other people,” and Cassandra was interfering in nobody’s business but her own.
She decided to play her trump card. “Of course, I would very much like to be free to leave you all in peace at the earliest possible opportunity. I am well aware that this is a difficult time. But I have come to say that I cannot possibly consider my departure until the letters are returned.” She turned on her heels and withdrew.
DINNER THAT EVENING WAS PLEASANT, for her niece Caroline was come to join them, but short. Dinah was absent, so Fred served them a quick meal that held no ambition beyond the continued conjoinment of body and soul. Cassandra, thinking with some longing of that pork pie out in the pantry, picked at her plate, while discussion ranged over the lives of various Fowle relatives. She took no part in it; her interest was limited. This was a failing of hers in old age, but she would not correct it. Members of her own family, all of them without exception, seemed so much more interesting, their stories more engrossing, their characters elevated and distinguished. Those other mortals, whose poor veins must somehow pulse with no Austen blood in them, always appeared to her comparatively pale.
Once in the drawing room, she pulled out her patchwork and sat silently sewing while the two younger cousins talked together on the sofa, until Isabella, tiring of their subject, leaned across.
“Your patchwork looks most impressive, Cassandra. When first you arrived, I thought you were doing nothing more than stitching together odd bits of stuff. But I see now there is more to it, is there not?”
“Oh, a good patchwork always starts with odd bits of stuff. Therein lies the glory of the process.” Cassandra was sewing a sprigged square to a blue one. “With sharp vision and no little imagination, those random elements become a thing that is quite other, and with its own intricate, inherent beauty. This will have one hundred and forty points of symmetry by the time I am done—if I live long enough, that is.”
“Goodness. I cannot imagine! Do you work with a pattern?”
“No, not at all. I do not need one.” She tapped the side of her head with a thimble finger. “All is in here. I shall not actually see it until I am finished. It will be too large to spread out in Chawton. I have not the space in the house. In the summer I shall take it in the garden, put it out on the lawn, and enjoy how it looks then.”
“So you have all that complexity in your mind’s eye? You can look upon those small pieces and somehow see the whole?”
“Well, not at first perhaps, but as it evolves I can see my way through.”
“Oh, you are clever, Cassandra.”
She was too old to be bashful and would not deny it. She was clever, and had been fortunate enough to grow up in a house in which cleverness in its daughters was valued, and no apology was made for it.
“Is your aunt not clever, Caroline?”
Caroline did not enthuse, but merely replied, “All Austens are clever.”
Cassandra smiled: That girl was turning into her mother.
“My own dear papa”—Caroline spoke with complacence—“had the most formidable intellect, as does my brother James-Edward.”
“And my sister, of course.” Cassandra licked at her thumb. In the annoyance of the moment, her needle had slipped. “And what is cleverness when put beside brilliance? We are all in the shade of those who shine brightest. As I have always been—and quite contentedly so—in the shade of your dear aunt Jane.”
“Oh, yes,” Caroline conceded. “And Aunt Jane.”
“We are halfway through Persuasion now, Caroline,” Isabella put in. “I must say I wonder at it. I had no idea a novel could engross me so. It is a thing of genius, or it seems such to me. I now find myself wishing I had taken more notice of your aunt while she was still with us. I have vague memories of her visits, but no clear recollection. Tell me, what was she like? For genius often comes, does it not, with a difficulty of temperament?” She shrugged. “Or so my father used often to say.”
Cassandra put down her sewing and shifted in her armchair, preparing to answer. There was no subject on this earth in which she could find the same pleasure, or on which she was most qualified to speak, though of course she must choose her words carefully. “Well—”
But she was interrupted by Caroline. “Oh, Aunt Jane was the very best of aunts. Quite my favorite of all and, I am lucky to say”—now she was blushing—“I myself was a particular favorite of hers. We shared an uncommon bond, I remember, even from my earliest years.”
Cassandra was dumb with astonishment. Jane was fond of all her nieces and nephews, and certainly did have her favorites: Anna, of course, and Edward’s daughter, dear Fanny. But she used to worry that Caroline might show traces of her mother—and, clearly, she had been prescient on that, as she was prescient on most things.
“I would send her my own stories, and she would take them so seriously, as if I were her natural heir.” Caroline smiled. “I must look them out. James-Edward might be interested in them as family documents.”
I would not do that, Cassandra thought to herself. You might see their true merit and suspect that they were received with no more than a patient indulgence.
“And her temperament?” Isabella nudged.
“Oh, her temperament!” Caroline clapped her hands. “On that your dear father was quite wrong. Yes, she was a genius, and yet a stranger to mood, other than cheerful good humor. I always so looked forward to my visits to Chawton, when Aunt Jane was still there. One would know, with certainty, that there would be such fun and games. It is not the same anymore. I do miss those days, I confess. Nowadays, every time I approach Chawton, I do so with sadness, a sense of dread, almost. As do my cousins. It is hard to be reminded of the joy that cottage once held.”
Isabella, horrified, looked over at Cassandra. Cassandra, Chawton’s one remaining and apparently joyless inhabitant—the object of dread for a whole generation—was trying not to laugh. Of course their cottage had been a place of great joy when they had lived there together. But that joyfulness was Jane’s natural and dominant emotion was far from the truth. Oh, the power upon reputation brought by an untimely death and a modicum of fame and success! Still, she thought as she gathered her things, she would not contest that legend, if that was what they chose to send out to posterity. The moodless Jane Austen. What a splendid image. She rose from her chair. Now it only remained to destroy all evidence to the contrary. She did hope those letters had been returned.
“I must leave you, my dears. I trust Caroline to give you a full picture, Isabella. Your interest is safe in her hands. I shall turn in now.”
“Oh, but I was hoping we might read more of Persuasion,” Isabella protested. “We have just got to Lyme.”
“And you will enjoy it enormously,” Cassandra said smoothly. “Do read on with your cousin. I know it too well.”
She opened the door, strode into the hall, and into violent collision with the crouching form of a human.
“Oh!” Cassandra gasped, then: “It is you! What on earth—?”
Dinah drew herself up but made no excuses.
“Yet more dusting?” Cassandra smiled. “Please do not overdo it. Good night.”
ON THE LONG, STEEP RETURN UP the stairs, Cassandra pondered the value of duty. She had given years in service to Caroline and her family, as she had given years to all Austens. That it counted for so little came as no surprise, and provoked no self-pity or rancor. She had never acted in the pursuit of fame or appreciation, but only in the interests of her own conscience. Cassandra was dutiful, had possibly been born dutiful, certainly could only be dutiful: She knew of no other way. In her own—for want of a better word—virtue, she had found an endless reward.
She was not unique in this. The world, she well knew, was full of good women like her, who dedicated their time, their bodies, their thoughts, and their hearts to the service of others. And if they, and she, were rendered invisible: Well then, what of it? Let us just pity those who had not eyes to see.
Back in her room, she put down her valise and looked about her: Nothing was altered. She shut the door and, with a quiet confidence, lifted the corner of the mattress. What a surprise! The letters were there. Now for her service to the one whom she loved above all other people, who had loved her in return and never failed to acknowledge her worth. She settled down, determined to make quick, sharp work of it.
It was not an uncomplicated process. They spent eight years without an address of any real permanence—or, as Jane would refer to it, “out in the wilderness”—but they were not all unhappiness. Far from it, indeed. Cassandra leafed through the papers, caught passages detailing short, happy stays in Manydown and Kintbury, long weeks of luxury in Kent with dear Edward. She revisited the great news of April 1803, when Jane sold her novel, Susan, for a princely ten pounds—Oh! The excitement of that! She stumbled across references to Jane’s high spirits, remembered, and smiled. That those spirits were, sometimes, perhaps too high; that the happiness had an almost hysterical edge to it; that this tended to happen when they were in the comfort of the stable, established homes of their family and friends: These were not observations that Cassandra had shared with Eliza. She had chosen to keep them to herself.
But the other extreme of Jane’s temperament, the seemingly endless days in the darkness: These she had written of, for she had to tell someone. Cassandra licked a finger and flicked through, searching for the letters of danger. There. January 1805. That was when it all began. She pulled out several, put down the rest of the pile, and began.
Green Park Buildings, Bath
24 January 1805
My dear Eliza,
Your expressions of sympathy and respect were all that we might have hoped for from you, and brought us much comfort. Yes, we have lost an excellent father and are still almost numb with the shock of it. But, though his sudden death has been hard on those who loved him so dearly, it was at least peaceful for himself. He did not suffer unduly, he did not linger in pain, he was not given the time to reflect upon those he was leaving, and for that mercy we give thanks to God.
Of course, it is with some trepidation that we all now must embark on a life without him, his wisdom, his tenderness, and his humor. You ask after my mother, and she bears it bravely, though these are early days and the future can only be hard. The burial is on Saturday, in—such awful symmetry!—the same Walcot church in which they took their vows forty years ago. Forty years! They were blessed with such a happy and fruitful union as is not often witnessed, and she has known hardly a day without him by her side.
All my energies at the moment are directed in support of her, as well as the many practicalities that a sudden death must entail—it is quite all-consuming. Yet there is another aspect which, I must confide, also preys on my mind when I have a moment for it and it is this: my sister shows signs of taking it all very badly. At first, I charged her with writing the letters announcing the news to the family, which she did beautifully, of course, and their composition seemed to give her some sort of comfort. But now that is done, it is as though she is sinking away from us. She was devoted to her father, as you know, and is quite overcome with the grief of it. More than that, I fear that our new insecurity is affecting her adversely. That there will be a change in our circumstances is sadly inevitable. Yes, we shall be moving again soon, but then—just three ladies—we should not need or expect much to accommodate us. Jane knows that, understands it, but cannot yet make peace with it … I shall not write too much now in the hope that time does its healing but will say that I am more than concerned by the depth of her distress.
Yours as ever,
Cass. Austen.