Jane the Authoress

Prologue

Jane Austen lived in the City of Bath during the period of her father’s retirement and slow decline in health.

When her father died on 21st January, 1805, he left Jane, her sister Cassandra and Mrs Austen, living on a very small income.

Jane’s writing had declined with her father’s health to the point that, when he died she had no urge to write at all.

She left Bath in July, 1806.

Amongst the possessions she would have packed as she prepared to leave the City, were the early drafts of Pride and Prejudice, then titled First Impressions (a draft that was different to the story we know today), and Sense and Sensibility, then titled Elinor and Marianne.

Northanger Abbey, then called Susan, was in the hands of the publisher, Benjamin Crosby. It had been accepted in 1803, and advertised, but never printed. Yet Mr Crosby continued to hold the rights for Susan, so Jane could do nothing more with the story her father had loved and sold on her behalf.

First Impressions had also been submitted to a publisher, in 1797, but had been rejected, so Jane’s hopes of being a published author had died, along with her inspiration to write.

It would have been a very painful loss to be unable to escape into a world of fiction, the place where she had previously found so many hours of happiness.

The people Jane meets in this story and the places she visits are part of a true event that followed Jane’s last days in the City of Bath, this period of her life created a tapestry of memories she drew on for inspiration for many years afterwards.

Chapter 1

2nd July, 1806, Grove House, Kensington, London.

The maid stepped back, opening the door wider. Madam has passed on, Mr Hill.

The only light in the room emanated from candles burning in holders either side of the Honourable Mary Leigh’s stately bed. The flames flickered in a draft. The wooden shutters had been closed to block out the remaining daylight, and the mirrors covered with black muslin so there would be no reflections. Yet he could feel the draft which swept at the candles from a window left open behind the shutters, probably to satisfy a maid’s superstition that Mary Leigh’s spirit needed the window open to leave the room.

Sir. Another maid, who stood on the far side of the room, bobbed a shallow, swift, curtsey.

He looked at the bed, at the deep pink satin counterpane which covered Mary Leigh’s slender body. She was hidden partially behind the long curtains surrounding the bed. In sunlight, the pink material was vibrant and bright, but in the darkened room it was dull and shadowed, like the moments before dusk. Mary Leigh had lain here and passed through her own period of dusk in the last few days. Now her sun had set entirely, falling beyond the horizon.

He walked forward so that he could see her in full. She was petite in height, as well as figure. The ornate bed engulfed her. It made her body appear no more than a child’s; like her brother had been when he had inherited the Stoneleigh estate.

Her face was pale and expressionless.

He sighed out his breath.

Despite the physical impression of frailty, she had never been frail in nature; she had been a disciplined and knowledgeable mistress. He had managed the estate’s legal affairs for two decades; he knew her ways. She had been his friend in some respects, strong-willed and quick-thinking. If she wished for something it was achieved. He admired her as he had admired no other woman, even his wife.

Joseph gripped the bed post, his fingers closing around the turned rosewood, and shut his eyes, silently wishing her peace in heaven. She deserved that, and to be reunited with her brother. The brother who had died far too young, and who had hopefully found rest from his insanity in the afterlife. The siblings would be reunited there and give comfort to one another, he hoped.

He took a breath, then opened his eyes.

For him, there was the future to think of. The vast Stoneleigh estate and the rest of Mary Leigh’s properties remained. There were items to be distributed and deeds of property to be passed over to the beneficiaries of her will, and Stoneleigh Abbey needed a master.

He was prepared. Mary Leigh’s illness had not been sudden and he had her will. Yet that would not make the issue simple. There was no direct heir. On his death, Lord Edward Leigh, the fifth Baron, had left the estate in the hands of his sister, on the understanding it would pass to her first born son.

She had never married. There was no son.

Joseph’s task now was to fetch the man he believed had the greatest claim, the cousin Mary Leigh had favoured in her will, and bring him to Stoneleigh Abbey before the battle for ownership began.

There were six male cousins who might make a case, only two of whom were mentioned in the will he had written out and watched her sign. Such battles over inheritance were often long and fraught with estrangement and accusations. He was not looking forward to it with any trace of relish. His part would be to walk a path through the middle of their bickering; his only wish was to preserve Stoneleigh Abbey in its current beauty and to see the estate thrive.

He hoped Reverend Thomas Leigh, the eldest of Mary Leigh’s eligible cousins, and therefore the most rightful heir and the one named in the will, would be neither a spendthrift nor a gambler.

Joseph bowed slightly, towards Mary Leigh’s prostrate figure, even though she would not know he had paid her this last deference, then turned away.

When he walked from the room, the things he must do ran through his head. There was the funeral to be arranged first. But when that was done, then he would travel with all haste to Aldestrop in Gloucestershire to fetch Reverend Leigh.

Chapter 2

2nd July 1806, Bath.

Jane had made a promise, along with her mother and sister, that they would not end up among the vagabonds in Trim St.

That promise had not been kept, but now it would be renewed, she promised it to herself once more, I will not come back.

Her gaze circulated around the grey, gloomy room as she turned. Apart from her most precious items, everything she wished to take was packed in trunks.

A quiet sigh slipped through her soul before it passed her lips.

She had endured enough removals for a life time. She never wished to see another packing case. Yet things were to change. Her brothers had realised their duty, at last; they were to provide her mother, Jane, and Cassandra with a home. Frank had gamely volunteered his, now that he was a married man. They were to travel to Southampton.

But before they reached Southampton her mother had planned a small tour, to visit long-unseen and rarely seen relatives.

A man’s voice rang out from the street below, seeping through the narrow window.

Jane turned and crossed the room.

Her fingertips rested on the strut of wood across the sash window as she looked out through the marks made by the drizzling summer rain on the glass. Her gaze fell from the grey sky to see if the cart had come for their belongings.

It had not.

From the moment their tour had been mentioned, the anticipated weeks of visiting had sparked memories of the days they had spent as a family in Cornwall before coming to Bath. Warm emotions stirred up a need for a past Jane mourned. Her father had planned that trip, and she had shared the most beautiful sights of the Cornish peninsular with him. Those moments were treasured recollections.

Y’u took it!

I did nay!

Jane’s eyes focused on two, rough grimy-looking men arguing in the street below her window.

The man who had shouted first swayed as though he was under the influence of gin. The second man gripped his collar, the grip a gesture of aggression, and yet he probably held the drunkard up.

Jane was about to turn when the second man thrust the first away, shouting louder.

The drunken man slipped on the damp uneven cobbles and landed on his backside in the dirt and horse dung.

A woman wearing a torn dress, with a low cut bodice, watched from the far side of the street, beneath the archway. Her eyes wide, she pulled her shawl tighter about her shoulders and over her head covering herself against the fine rain.

She must be soliciting, otherwise why had she not gone home to take refuge from the inclement weather? Why stand still and alone?

Jane’s heart raced into a swift beat. Her mother, Cassandra and she had fallen almost as far as it was possible to fall, living among the coarse lower-classes and prostitutes.

After their trip to Cornwall they had come to Bath and settled into a respectable residence which had taken months of choosing, and weeks of alteration; that was the reason they had travelled.

Those first months in Bath had been wonderful. Jane had grasped at the opportunity to know her father better, and spent hour after hour in his company. He had been too busy when they had lived in the rectory and he’d had a flock of parishioners to attend to. Many things had come before the interests of his daughters then.

But in Bath, he had read Susan, and then, full of fatherly pride, sent the novel off to the publisher, Mr Benjamin Crosby. Her father’s emotion on its acceptance had been nearly as strong as Jane’s. They had laughed, cried and hugged one another, jubilant. Jane had imagined Susan, her heroine, coming to life, breathing in others’ imaginations.

Then her father had died, and all happiness had gone. It had been running slowly away, like sand through an hourglass, throughout the period of his weakening health, and then the last grain had fallen, leaving her hourglass empty.

In contrast to the weeks Jane’s family had spent choosing their first property, their later changes of address had turned into a desperate scrabble to find a rent, and therefore a residence, they could afford. The final move a few weeks ago had brought them here.

It had taken this for her brothers to see that they were in need of help.

Their steady fall in circumstance had cast a cloud as grey as the one outside over the women in Jane’s family and yet they had pretended for weeks that they were not living beneath its shadow, mourning both her father and the life they had led in his keeping.

Her mother had an income from her father’s estate and Cassandra from her former fiancé’s. Jane was the only one without an income. All she had, came from her brothers.

If she had married; if she had continued in the engagement she had accepted some years before, she would not now be a burden on her family. But the past could not be changed.

Even her hope of publication as a means to earn an independent living had died long ago. Susan had not been printed. Jane’s characters had been left silent, waiting, in a folder in a drawer, or a cupboard, in the dark.

The thought sent a shiver through Jane. She had been shut away too. The candle that had burned with inspiration and imagination had been snuffed out. It no longer even smouldered. The wick had been pinched tight and the flame smothered.

It had not helped that her mother had denied their decline, refusing to believe they were living beyond their means. Cassandra had visited their brother James, and so Jane had been left to juggle bills to pay their rent.

It was Jane’s fault they had come to Trim St.

She had found this place, that on coming to Bath they had sworn themselves against.

She had become the villain.

She preferred to be a heroine.

Still, now her brothers had taken up the mantle of hero, her mother and Cassandra need not suffer, and perhaps, in the future, Jane would become a heroine once more, or at least be able to write one.

But as yet her brothers’ help had not lifted the weight from Jane’s shoulders, the weight that had stolen her power to write. Life’s hands pressed too heavily on her. The sadness inside her hung about her neck—a constantly wet cloak, which dampened her spirits, soaking into her soul like the drizzle outside must be seeping through that poor woman’s shawl.

Jane prayed the weight would lift when she left this dreadful house. She wished to feel happy.

That poor woman would probably never leave...

There were so many horrible sights and thoughts to be left here…

But Jane could not make all the world be as it should be. She would be glad, though, that she, her mother and Cassandra had escaped Trim St.

Jane turned once more and looked about the room. Words and emotions whispered within her imagination, yet their meaning was muffled, too far in the distance of her mind, beyond reach. Her gaze turned to some of her most precious items which she had not yet packed away.

Her children lay on the chest beside the bed.

She walked across the room. Her fingertips touched the top page of the neat pile of paper, scarred by crossings-out, additions and inkblots.

Lizzy and Darcy…

Hope breathed quietly. There were no black stains on her fingers from the ink seeping out of a quill. There ought to be.

When she had first written Lizzy’s and Darcy’s story Jane had never imagined a life like this, it would not have been in her power. She had lived, like Lizzy, in an ideal state in the country, surrounded by family and the sometimes queer but otherwise unremarkable events of country life.

Trim St…

Jane breathed out.

No. She refused to think of herself as having become poor. She was wealthy in love and friendship. Lucky. She had her mother and Cassandra, and her brothers—and Darcy and Lizzy, and Susan—one day the rotten publisher would release her. Then there were Elinor and Marianne, who rested on the chest beneath Lizzy and Darcy. They were her hope. Jane grasped hold of it. She may not be writing now, but she had written, she had created novels.

Her fingertips followed the lines of comforting words.

She had left her precious manuscripts to pack last. It seemed far too cruel to tuck her characters away. They needed to be in the light even though they had not walked outside, or sat here talking to her in months.

Jane! Are you ready? I wish to go! The carriage will be here soon! The call came from Cassandra, who shouted up from the hall downstairs.

Coming! Jane spun around, turning her back on her manuscripts.

She picked up her bonnet from where it lay on the bed, slipped it on and tied the pale blue ribbons beneath her chin in a bow, then she glanced at herself in the mirror. She smiled. She refused to be downhearted anymore. She would look forward with a bright smile, even if it was a façade, and hope that when she began the journey with her mother then the dark mist would clear and the weight hanging from her shoulders would lift, and then she would hear her characters speak again.

Jane hurried downstairs, her fingers holding the skirt of her dress to lift her hem away from her feet. She had agreed with Cassandra that they would spend some of the money Edward had sent for them on new lace and muslins while they were still in Bath, and near some of the most fashionable shops. Lace and ribbons had been a distant dream until her brothers had remembered their responsibility.

A whisper stirred in Jane’s head as she smiled at Cassandra who awaited her in the hall. Cassandra was also in her bonnet, and wore a cloak, ready to depart.

The whisper reminded Jane of Lizzy’s mother and her situation—five daughters. How would the Bennets have managed if Lizzy’s father had died? To whom would their house have gone? To whom would they have turned without a single brother to play rescuer, arriving on a sturdy steed, brandishing a sword, or rather the purse, of a hero?

Your cloak. It is still raining. Cassandra held it out.

Jane took it with a smile. She had hidden her misery in the months she had lived through this test of endurance. She had no wish to place her burdens on Cassandra. Cassandra had suffered far greater trials of fate. Jane wished her sister happy, even more than she wished that for herself. Yet Cassandra knew Jane had not been writing.

When Jane put on her cloak, as it swept behind her back and settled on her shoulders, an image appeared in her mind’s eyes. She looked at Cassandra when she secured the buttons. A character spoke.

Oh, Jane. Cassandra, touched Jane’s arm.

I just saw a woman, in a storm, and a man wrapping his cloak about her. I am not sure which story it should fit within, but perhaps it might be a story of its own. I shall see who speaks to me.

That is wonderful, and we are not even in the carriage. Cassandra smiled. She knew too, that Jane hoped for the return of inspiration during their travels, or if not then, in Southampton.

A light sensation flooded Jane when they stepped outside. Hope was growing from a small shoot and forming its first leaves. Her characters had not spoken for such a long time. They had used to constantly press in on her for a voice to tell their tales.

Jane looked across the street; the arguing men had moved on and taken their disagreement into John St, yet the woman remained, standing beneath the arch, her shawl clasped in her hands, holding it tight across her chest.

Jane looked away, pity in her heart. Perhaps, when she felt like writing again she ought to review the scenes describing Lydia’s elopement. Lydia would have run to a place like this. She would have hidden in the worst areas of London. Jane knew now what the worst areas would be like. Yet silly Lydia would be blind to them.

Her fingers embraced Cassandra’s arm tighter, perhaps clinging a little. But she was clinging not only to her sister’s arm, but to life. Cassandra was Jane’s stronghold, her reassurance. Cassandra’s friendship was the thing Jane had held tightest to throughout these last months of dark and even darker days.

The damp, dirt-smeared cobbles glistened with a metallic gloss in the rain, akin to rusty iron.

Bath had become a glum place. Jane thanked heaven for the carriage about to arrive and rescue her.

Jane’s character, Susan, thought Bath a paradise. She enthused and thrilled over every scrolled decorative carving and pale stone pilaster, and treasured the sophisticated friends she met. That had been Jane, when Jane had first come to Bath in the company of her mother; though she had been older and wiser than Susan.

Jane had also spent six weeks here with her brother, Edward, at the age of four and twenty, and then, too, Bath’s statuesque and dramatic structures and its vibrant style of life had held some enchantment.

Jane’s heels struck the uneven slippery cobbles as she walked across the street arm in arm with her sister. They turned the corner. On the right was a remnant of an ancient wall, and before them was the Mineral Water Hospital for the poor souls who came to take the waters, yet had no money for Bath’s high-priced doctors and surgeons.

Not that high-priced doctors had helped her father, or Edward. She had always thought Edward recovered despite the glasses of putrid smelling water that he’d drunk, and the fussing doctors who had hovered about him, with their good advice and hands held forth for payment of it. She had still left Bath then, though, with pleasurable memories of assemblies, walks and social engagements. This time she would leave with a heavy sense that Bath could only be remembered with misery.

Susan was suddenly with Jane, walking beside her. Her steps quick, not because of the rain, but from excitement and eagerness to reach the next moment of pleasure.

Jane’s father’s eyes, shining with excitement and tears of pride, when he’d come to tell her that Susan had been accepted for publishing, took over the images in Jane’s mind. Jane had felt the excitement that was intrinsically a part of Susan’s nature then. The memory of that emotion put the dull image of the street into shadow. Jane held on to the view of her father as she and Cassandra walked on, with Susan beside her, a living person waiting to be known by the world.

Jane must remember that those moments, Susan’s creation, and her father’s joy at the recognition of Jane’s work had occurred in Bath. It had not always been a place of sorrow.

A poor woman, with a twisted leg and a distorted, hunched spine sat on the floor near the steps of the grand Mineral Water Hospital, begging from passers-by. Cassandra stopped, her arm slipping from Jane’s as she delved into her purse. Without an income of her own Jane had no money to give. She was a beggar like this woman; Jane lived on charity, albeit that of her brothers. Guilt pierced through her heart. She would like to help as Cassandra did, but the lace and muslin she longed for called… Who knew when she would next have money for luxuries?

Cassandra pulled the drawstrings to close her reticule.

Jane glanced towards the corner leading into Milsom street. There were many well-dressed men about them, carrying canes, that swung with the pace of their strides, as their grip upon the handles revealed gold, ivory and silver. Like Darcy and Bingley, such men had the money to help this poor woman, though many of them would not.

Darcy would have given something, but he would wait until his friend walked on and subtly pass over a coin. He had a generous but private nature that was filled with charitable emotions. When Lizzy met him it was only empathy, a recognition of the real life those of lesser wealth lived and openness that he lacked, beneath those weaknesses he was a good man from the beginning to the end of Lizzy’s and Darcy’s story.

When the lover Jane had created for Lizzy had been rejected by the publishers, long before Susan’s acceptance, it had been a cutting blow to Jane’s career as an authoress. Jane was a little in love with Darcy and his over-proud bearing—because she knew the soft, vulnerable heart he hid beneath it. Of course Darcy had created himself in her head and written himself through her hand, so perhaps he had charmed her, just as Lizzy, with her intelligent eyes, easy smiles and quick, challenging wit, had charmed him.

As Lizzy had broken Darcy down with a harsh image of the man she saw, dressed in his prideful armour, the publishers had broken Jane’s confidence for a while, criticising her skill in creating characters, saying they lacked any depth, and the story was not rounded to any degree. The issue was, her characters wrote themselves, so