Stephanie Barron: Jane and His Lordship's Legacy

The Bereaved might be all that is selfish in their parade of unhappiness. Whereas I was continually chafing under the daily proofs of inconsideration, imperviousness, high animal spirits, and insensibility that surrounded me, when every hope of happiness for myself was at an end. When the Rogue expired of a knife wound on the fifth of November, some ten months ago, it was as though a black pit yawned at my feet and I trembled on the brink of it for days together without being conscious of what I said or did. I know from others that his body was fetched back to London in the Duke of Wilborough’s carriage; that Wilborough House, so lately draped in black for the passing of the Rogue’s mother, remained in crepe for this second son; that nearly five hundred men followed the cortège first to the Abbey church at Westminster and then, on horseback, to the interment in the Wilborough tomb. It was said that no less than seven ladies of Fashion fainted dead away at the awful news of his demise, and three fell into a decline. All this my mother read aloud from the London papers, offering comment and opinion of her own.

Murdered by his manservant, so they say, Jane, a foreigner his lordship took up with on the Peninsula. I’ll wager that fellow knew a thing or two of Lord Harold’s unsavoury affairs! It is a nasty end, Jane, but no more than he deserved. I always said he was a most unsuitable tendre for a young lady such as yourself, and quite elderly into the bar- gain; but nobody listens to me, I am always overruled. Still, it is a pity you did not get him when you could — you might have been the Relict of a lord! And now all his riches will go to Wilborough’s son — who will find no very good use for them, I’ll wager. The Marquis is a rakehell and a gamester, so they say. Kinsfell has taken a page from his uncle’s book, and will undoubtedly prove as disreputable a character. We must impute it to the Dowager Duchess’s French blood, and habits of parading onstage.

Four days after the murder I took up my pen to compose a few paragraphs of explanation and regret that ought to have been despatched without delay to his lordship’s niece, Desdemona, Countess of Swithin. That lady, despite her lofty position in Society and the cares attendant upon her duties as a mother, has been narrowly concerned — as much as a woman could be — in Lord Harold’s affairs, and loved him more dearly, I suspect, than she did her own father. It seemed imperative to me that the Countess be in full possession of the facts of his lordship’s death — of the bravery with which he embraced it, and his determination not to submit to a form of treachery that might imperil His Majesty’s government — so that no scandalous falsehood put about by his enemies among the ton should shake her faith in his worth. From what I knew of Desdemona, I doubted that anything could.

Her answer was brief, correct, and exceedingly cold. I knew not whether she regarded my letter of commiseration in the light of an impertinence; or whether she charged me with having precipitated her uncle’s death. Perhaps she merely judged his attentions to a woman so clearly beneath his touch as deplorable. I cannot say. But her ladyship’s brevity cut me to the quick. I have had nothing from her since.

Only Martha Lloyd, who in Cassandra’s absence has become as dear as a sister to me, understood a little of the pain I suffered. Tho’ Martha referred to my grief as a chronic indisposition, she was quick to order me to bed, and leave me in silence with a pot of tea during the long grey winter afternoons. My brother Frank, who had witnessed the Rogue’s death in company with myself, was a considerable comfort. Tho’ he no longer shared our lodgings, his occasional visits afforded the opportunity to unbend — to speak openly of what we both knew and mourned in his lordship’s passing. Even in Frank’s silence I felt sympathy, and in his accounts of his naval activities — he oversaw the landing in January of the remnant of General Sir John Moore’s Peninsular army, a tattered band of harried soldiers deprived too soon of the leadership of that excellent man — I felt some connexion to the greater world Lord Harold had known and ruled. We are forced to go on living, however little we relish the interminable days.

In April, Frank quitted home waters for the China Station and we devoted ourselves to the activity of household removal. My mother’s querulous demands and persistent anxieties regarding the packing provided diversion enough; so, too, did the necessary farewells to naval acquaintance, the last visits to the little theatre in French Street, and a final Assembly endured at the Dolphin Inn. I even danced on that occasion with a blackeyed foreign gentleman too shy to enquire my name. But I had no joy in any of these things. The coming of spring mocked me with a promise of life I no longer shared. At the moment of our descent upon Edward’s house in Kent, I had determined I should never feel hopeful again.

There is no remedy for the loss inflicted by death except remembrance. And so I tried to recollect what his lordship’s dying words had been. Promise me. you will write. What is writing compared to life, my lord?

All we have. Jane.

He was wont to speak the truth, no matter how harsh its effect. It was one of the qualities for which I esteemed him: his unblinking gaze at the brutality of existence. But I could not keep my promise. What are words and paragraphs in comparison of what might have been? A cold solace when love is forever denied. I had written nothing in the long months that followed Lord Harold’s headlong flight from this world but stilted letters to Cassandra, remarkable for their brittleness of tone and the forced lightness of their jokes. Before quitting Castle Square, however, I had gone so far as to enquire of Messrs. Crosby and Co., of Stationers Hall Court, London, whether they ever intended to publish the manuscript entitled Susan, which I had sold to them for the sum of ten pounds six years previous; but their answer was not encouraging. I was impudently informed by Mr. Crosby himself that he did not chuse to publish my work; that if I attempted to place it elsewhere, he should most vigourously prevent its appearance; and in conclusion, that I might have the manuscript returned for the same figure he had laid out for it. Being hard pressed to command so considerable a sum as ten pounds, I was forced to let the matter drop; and was dissatisfied enough with the scant consideration offered prospective Authoresses, as to ignore the burden of Lord Harold’s dying breath.

Now, as I stood in the dusky heat of a Hampshire July, lark song rising about me, I felt the first faint stirrings of life. Feeble, yes — and a hairsbreadth from guttering out; but stirrings all the same. I unknotted my bonnet strings and bared my head to the sun. Lord Harold’s gaze — that earnest, steadfast look — wavered before my mind’s eye; I blinked it away. Perhaps here, I thought, as I opened the door of the cottage and stepped inside its whitewashed walls, perhaps here I might begin again.

4 July 1809, cont.

It was airless and dim inside the cottage, as though the windows had been too long shut up, and I recollected that although the workmen had been busy about the house some weeks, Mrs. Seward had quitted the place full four months previous. I hesitated in the entry hall, my gaze taking in the uneven floorboards, and was reminded inevitably of my childhood home at Steventon Parsonage, where my brother James now lived. Just so had the spare rooms been whitewashed, the low ceilings crossed with beams.

The passageway divided on the right hand at the dining parlour and on the left at the sitting room. In the latter, Edward had caused the broad front window — so necessary to a publican’s commerce, but injurious to our privacy — to be bricked up, and had ordered a bow thrown out overlooking the garden. This was all the main floor of the house for domestic use; an ell at the rear housed the kitchen; and a staircase from the entry led upwards to six bedchambers, none of them large. My mother was to have one, Martha Lloyd another, and I must share a third with Cassandra in a few days’ time when Edward escorted her from Kent in his carriage. A fourth was set aside for Edward’s use, should he care to visit — Chawton Great House, my brother’s Tudor pile at the opposite end of the village, being let at present to a gentleman by the name of Middleton. One glimpse of these modest arrangements, however, and I suspected that Edward should repair for comfort to the George Inn at Alton, where my mother and I had lately been staying. Alton is the principal market town in this part of Hampshire, and Edward the absentee owner of the George; Mr. Barlow, his publican, has been our especial servant in all the bustle of this removal. It was Barlow’s man, Joseph, who drove us to Chawton today in the George’s pony trap, and we have tarried under Mr. Barlow’s roof on several occasions during the past twelvemonth — probably, in the poor man’s estimation, frequently outstaying our welcome.

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