Stephanie Barron: Jane and the Stillroom Maid

Mr. Cooper had long despaired of my mother’s ever paying a visit to Staffordshire and her dearest nephew’s rectory. It was many years, now, since he had first urged the scheme; his family had annually increased, his honours as a vicar and homilist multiplied; Mr. Cooper himself was approaching a complaisant middle-age — and still the Austen ladies remained insensibly at home.

But so lately as June my mother determined to quit the environs of Bath — the town in which we have lived more than three years — it being entirely unsuitable now that my beloved father is laid to rest. Being three women of modest means, and having endeavoured to live respectably on a pittance in the midst of a most expensive town, we at last declared defeat and determined to exchange Bath for anywhere else in England. An interval of rest and refreshment, in the form of an extended tour among our relations, was deemed suitable for the summer months; October should find us in Southampton, where we were to set up housekeeping with my dearest brother, Captain Francis Austen. We should serve as company for his new bride, Mary, when duty called Frank to sea.

And so it was decided — we shook off the dust of Bath on the second of July, with what happy feelings of Escape! — and bent all our energies to a summer of idleness.

We travelled first to Clifton, and from thence to Adlestrop and my mother’s cousin, the clergyman Mr. Thomas Leigh. We had not been settled in that gentleman’s home five days, when the sudden death of a distant relation sent Mr. Leigh flying to Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, with the intent of laying claim to a disputed inheritance. After a highly diverting week in the company of Mr. Leigh’s solicitor, Mr. Hill, and the absurd Lady Saye and Sele, we parted from the intimates of Stoneleigh and turned our carriage north, towards Staffordshire. [1] Jane’s adventures while with the Reverend Thomas Leigh in Warwickshire may be found in “Jane and the Spoils of Stoneleigh,” in Malice Domestic 7, Avon Books, 1998. — Editor’s note .

Hamstall Ridware is a prosperous little village lost in a depth of hedgerows, with a very fine Rectory and a finer church spire. Our cousin Mr. Cooper and his dutiful wife, Caroline, possess no less than eight children, the eldest of whom is but twelve and the youngest barely a year. Some little difficulty in the matter of bedchambers was apparent from the moment of our arrival. Cassandra and I were forced to shift together; my mother claimed a bed in the next room. The little boys were grouped in pallets on the nursery floor, and it was likewise with the little girls, while the baby was taken up in its parents’ chamber. And so we contrived to be comfortable; and so we should have been, despite the heat of August and the closeness of such a populous house, had not the whooping cough presently put in an appearance. After three days of Christian endurance, of instruction from the apothecary and draughts that did little good, Mr. Cooper proposed a journey into Derbyshire, with the intent of touring Chatsworth and the principal beauties of the region.

My mother acceded thankfully to the scheme. The harassed Caroline Cooper, beset with ailing children on every side, was relieved of the burden of guests, and the Austens of the fear of contagion. Having set out from the Rectory steps on the Saturday previous, we achieved Bakewell yesterday in the forenoon, very well satisfied with our progress north. But for one aspect of the journey — my cousin’s unsuspected ardour for the sport of angling, which has entirely determined our course through Derbyshire — we should have found nothing in our prospects but delight.

Bakewell is a bustling, if modest, collection of stone buildings and paved streets, of ancient bridges spanning the Wye and sheep-pens ranged along the banks of the river. The town is remarkable for enjoying the patronage of no less than two ducal houses — that of the Duke of Rutland, who is a great landowner hereabouts, and of the Duke of Devonshire, whose principal seat of Chatsworth is but three miles to the east. A brush with nobility and Fashion has lent the town an air of importance unusual in this wild, high country. A few hours sufficed to reveal its charms, however; by dinner I was surfeited with commerce and linen-draping; I yearned for a landscape of disorder, for a riot of water and stone. Too little activity, and too great a period in the confines of a carriage, had conspired to render me peevish and melancholy. When Mr. George Hemming proffered his invitation to Miller’s Dale over our evening tea, I accepted with alacrity. My mother could not be persuaded; and upon ascertaining that the intended equipage was a pony trap, Cassandra, too, declined. I should be left to all the luxury of solitude, once my cousin and his friend were established over their rods.

Mr. Hemming is a solicitor in Bakewell: a prosperous and congenial gentleman, whose quiet manners must always make him amiable, though he should never be called handsome. He is confirmed in middle-age, being nearly twenty years my cousin’s senior. He possesses no family, his wife having died in childbed a decade ago. Having found occasion to perform some little service for the Duke of Devonshire, he may claim an intimacy with so august an institution as Chatsworth; and this alone would ensure that he is regarded in Bakewell as a person of some respectability. To my cousin, he is chiefly valuable in being addicted to the sport of angling; to myself, he appears more in the guise of social saviour. Possessed of conversation, and not entirely ignorant of the world, Mr. Hemming must be regarded as a decided advantage — particularly after too many days in the confines of a closed carriage, with a vigorous soloist for company.

This morning Mr. Hemming came, at the reins of his admirable trap; he displayed no irritation at the company of a female; and his comments during the course of the hour’s journey from Bakewell to Miller’s Dale were always sensible, and sometimes droll. I quite liked him, for the amiability of spirit that urged the revival of a friendship of such ancient formation, as much as for the evenness of temper that marked all his conduct. The conversation of well-informed men falls but too rarely in my way, and I intended to profit from Mr. Hemming’s company.

“Are you Derbyshire born and bred, sir?” I enquired, when my cousin’s five verses were done.

“I am,” he replied, “and have never found a cause to repine. Other than a brief period in the South, when I was so fortunate as to make Mr. Cooper’s acquaintance, I have been happy to call Bakewell my home these thirty years and more. I should never exchange it for another.”

My cousin closed his eyes, as though lost in contemplation or prayer; I knew he should soon be asleep. The gig had not progressed another mile before the gentle sound of snoring fell upon my ear.

“I think I should be content to live my whole life in Derbyshire, Mr. Hemming,” I said. “Never have I seen a country so blest in the marriage of the tame and the wild, so replete at once with romance and comfort.”

“You do not share the opinion of so many fine ladies, then, that these hills and rocks lack refinement?”

“What is refinement,” I cried, “when one has glimpsed the whole force of Nature? Who, having witnessed the Dove toiling amidst her course, could wish for the quieter banks of the Stour? If by refinement you would offer me the dull, Mr. Hemming — if you presume that having spent my life in Hampshire, I know nothing of Beauty — then I must assure you to the contrary.”

“What is it Cowper writes?” he mused. “That ‘Nature is but a name for an effect,/Whose cause is God’?”

Admirable fellow, to have looked into Cowper! “I have always supposed him to mean that true Beauty, true perfection — which is the essence of God, is it not? — may only be found in what is simple . A life of artifice and affectation must prove hollow, and incapable of granting happiness.”