Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Stillroom Maid

Lord Harold exchanged a look with Sir James, and both men were silent a moment. “His Grace must feel his wife’s passing, to be sure. But his consolation in life has always been the friendship of Lady Elizabeth Foster; and she is presently his guest at Chatsworth.”

“I see,” I said, although I saw nothing but that Lord Harold would dissemble, and that he moved in deeper waters than I had previously understood. A change of conversation appeared advisable. “Pray tell me, my lord, how does your family?”

“Very well, thank you. My nephew Lord Kinsfell is very lately married.”

“I wish him joy! And your delightful niece? Is the Countess of Swithin in health and beauty?”

“Desdemona is blooming,” he replied, with more of lightness than I had yet seen; “indeed, she is increasing. We expect the child to put in its appearance at Christmas.”

“How delightful!” I cried, and marvelled inwardly at the effect of time. I had first made the acquaintance of Lady Desdemona Trowbridge some two years before, in Bath, when she was a girl of eighteen and all unmarried. Now she was a lady of fashion — a formidable hostess in Town — a Countess in her own right, and soon to be a mother. Life for Lady Swithin had only grown more dazzling, while life for Jane Austen had contracted yet further. I had survived the passage of my thirtieth birthday, the loss of my father and a very dear friend; I was soon to give up my abode of three years, and venture forth into the unknown. I possessed even less inclination for marriage, and fewer prospects of achieving that state; I must live upon the princely sum of fifty pounds per annum — the probable cost of one of Lady Desdemona’s gowns — and did I dwell too long upon the impoverishment of my circumstances, I should grow unutterably depressed.

“It was precisely this that drew me to your side today, Miss Austen,” Lord Harold was saying. “My niece is come with me to Chatsworth, to condole with Lady Harriot Cavendish, who is of an age with Mona and a friend from her earliest years. The Countess learned of your presence in Derbyshire only last evening, from Sir James” — this, with a glance for the Justice — “and could not know of it, without desiring to renew the acquaintance. My niece would have waited upon you this morning, indeed, but that Sir James assured us you were to appear as witness at the Inquest; and so it was settled that I should seek you out and bring you back to Chatsworth when all was concluded. Lady Swithin is wild to meet with you again — I say no more than she would herself,” he added with a smile, “for those were her very words.”

Chatsworth! Second only to Blenheim as the most venerable and exalted estate in the land! That I should be invited, the acquaintance of one of its intimates — that I should walk into its grand foyer, not as a member of the touring public, but as a guest desired and welcomed! I might stroll through its extensive grounds, arm-in-arm with a Countess, and admire the fabled fountains and the Spanish oaks scattered about the lawns — I might take tea at a table set out on the grass, or sample fruit from a hothouse tree. I might fancy myself an equal with such a man as Lord Harold, and turn to find his gaze upon me. I, Jane Austen, an intimate of Chatsworth — and of the heathen Whigs it harboured!

Whatever would Cassandra say?

But then, with an inward sinking, I considered my state of dress. I had donned a respectable muslin gown of pale blue that morning, and had gone so far as to submit to a navy-blue spencer, despite the heat, in deference to the austerity of the occasion. I was very nearly suffocating. My gown, moreover, was not in the first stare of fashion, and grossly unequal to the grandeur of the Cavendishes.

And I was emphatically not in mourning.

“The Countess is very good,” I told Lord Harold haltingly, “but it is beyond my power to accept her invitation. Perhaps, if she intends to prolong her stay in the neighbourhood, we might walk together in Bakewell—”

“Courage, Jane,” said Lord Harold quietly. “You always possessed it of old. Do not fail me now.”

His grey eyes met my own, and held — and for the barest instant, I saw deep into his soul. Lord Harold was oppressed with worry, an anxiety so fearful he could not share it before Sir James; and I knew with absolute certainty that the visit to Lady Swithin was in the nature of subterfuge. He desired my counsel. And if I would learn of his secret concern, I must brave all the impropriety of appearing without black gloves, in a suffocating spencer, at the most hallowed house of mourning in all England.

“I await your pleasure, my lord,” I said.

To Make a Tart That Is Courage to a Man or Woman

Boil two peeled quinces, three peeled burdock roots, and a pared potato in a quart of wine until tender. Put in an ounce of dates, and when these are tender, force the whole through a strainer. Add the yolks of eight eggs, and the brains of four cock sparrows, or mourning doves if sparrows be not handy, and add a little rose or orange water.

Next stir in some sugar, cinnamon, and ginger. Add cloves and mace if they be close at hand. Put in some sweet butter, and place the whole in a copper pudding mold. Tie the mold with cloth and string, and boil until done.

If courage be not found in the eating, then a dose of strong spirits be advised.

— From the Stillroom Book

of Tess Arnold,

Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire , 1802–1806

28 August 1806, cont.

THE CAVENDISH FAMILY ARE WITHOUT QUESTION AMONG the Great in Derbyshire — indeed, throughout all of England. It may fairly be said that the Whig party was born among these peaks in 1688; for it was the Cavendishes who conspired with their near neighbours, the Manners family — later the Dukes of Rutland — to call William of Orange and his consort, Mary, from Holland in a Glorious Revolution. Having seized the throne of England from James II, William III rewarded his king-makers with dukedoms; and they served him in turn, by reminding him that though the throne might be his, the kingdom was now theirs . It is a Whig tenet that the monarch serves at the pleasure of the people — if one considers the people to be solely those who own a vast deal of property. The Whigs will court the common rabble in order to preserve their own heads secure upon their shoulders, without ever intending to do very much to ameliorate the rabble’s condition — other than to set them against their kings.

I write all this in the pages of my journal despite my deep regard for Lord Harold Trowbridge, a Whig if ever there were one. The Dukes of Wilborough, having always possessed a keen sense of interest, were no more slow to champion William than their Cavendish brothers; and thus fortunes were made, influence won, and Lord Harold preserved from want from the moment of his birth. It should not be remarkable that such a man is an adept at the manipulation of faction, and at the preservation of his own life, regardless of the tempests of warfare and politics; he was formed in intrigue, schooled in calculation, and took the cynic’s breath with his mother’s milk.

And now he was to carry a respectable Tory Austen into the very heart of Cavendish territory. If I must storm the gates of Chatsworth, then no one but Lord Harold would do for my lieutenant.

At our first entering the country, my mother determined that we should view Chatsworth’s grounds and some part of the house, which by custom are made open to the public. But upon learning that the family were down for the summer, and thrown into the deepest of mourning, we gave up the scheme in excessive disappointment. A sense of delicacy would not allow even Mrs. George Austen to invade the Cavendishes’ privacy at such a time.