Stephanie Barron: Jane and the Genius of the Place

“No,” I fondly replied, “only born to an elegance that is as natural as breathing, and that must serve as a lesson to all who meet you. The muslin shall survive, Lizzy, without the intervention of Miss Sharpe.”

The governess was in no danger of hastening to her mistress's aid, however, for her interest was entirely claimed by a scene unfolding well beyond the limits of the barouche. As I watched, Miss Sharpe drew a sudden breath, and clasped her gloved hands together as tho' desperate for control. I glanced over my shoulder to discover what had so excited her anxiety — and found myself arrested in my turn.

The lady in scarlet, whom I had remarked some time earlier, now stood upright in her elegant perch phaeton. Her countenance — which in easier moments might well have been judged lovely — was contorted with rage, and she held a whip poised in her right hand. A gentleman stood calmly at her carriage mount, as tho' braced for the issue of her fury; and as I watched, the whip lashed down with a stinging sigh upon his very neck. Beside me, Anne Sharpe cried aloud, and then stifled the sound with her hand.

Lizzy's green eyes narrowed. “Whatever has Mrs. Grey got up to now?”

“Mrs. Grey?”

“The banker's wife. She is capable of anything, I believe—”

“She has just struck the gentleman by the phaeton with her riding whip. Are you acquainted with him?”

“Not at all.” Lizzy sounded intrigued. “I have never seen him before in my life. A gentleman from Town, perhaps, come down to Kent on purpose for the races.”

“He is possessed of the most extraordinary countenance,” I whispered. “But why should she abuse him in so public a manner? I cannot believe he offered her an insult — there was neither heat nor drunkenness in his looks.”

Not a commanding figure, to be sure — for he was slight and taut as a greyhound, in his elegant coat of green superfine and his fashionable high-crowded hat. A young man of perhaps thirty, whose auburn hair fell loose to his shoulders, like a cavalier's of another age. In these respects, he looked very much like any other gentleman of breeding who strolled about the race grounds; but in his aspect there was something more: an air of nobility and unguessed powers, that demanded a second glance.

“Perhaps he has declined the offer of Mrs. Grey's favours,” Lizzy murmured, “and she could not abide the affront. It would be in keeping with her reputation, I assure you.”

As we watched, the scarlet-clad woman pushed angrily past the man she had injured, and hastened from the phaeton. He gazed after her a moment, his countenance devoid of expression, and then drew a handkerchief from within his coat. This he applied to a great weal standing out above the line of his neckcloth; and then, rather thoughtfully, his eyes shifted towards our own. He held our gaze some few seconds, and then, quite deliberately, raised his hat in acknowledgement.

“Yes, Jane,” Lizzy breathed, “self-possession and nerve are in all his looks. I would give a great deal to know his name.”

“Fanny,” Anne Sharpe said abruptly from the seat opposite, “you are crumpling your mother's dress. Do come and sit by me, dear, and partake of the jellied chicken. I am sure this litde fit of temper is entirely due to your nerves. They cannot withstand such heat, you know, if you refuse Cook's excellent luncheon.”

“Some jellied chicken, Lizzy?” I enquired.

“Every feeling revolts,” she said dismissively. Her eyes were still trained on the elegant young man, who had moved off through the crowd in the direction opposite to Mrs. Grey. “I shall never make a patroness of the turf, my dear Jane, for I find the stench of dust and dung very nearly insupportable. Without the parade of fashion that always attends such events, I should be bored to tears.”

“Are you perhaps increasing again?” I enquired delicately.

“Lord, no! That is all at an end, I am quite sure,” she retorted; but I thought her voice held a note of doubt. Lizzy's ninth child is as yet a babe in arms; but at the age of two-and-thirty, she might expect any number in addition. “Perhaps some raspberry cordial.”

I secured her the collation. “Fanny? Miss Sharpe? Some cake and cordial, perhaps?”

My niece raised a tear-stained cheek. “I could not stomach a bite, Aunt Jane, from all the anxiety attendant upon his prospects.”

“His prospects,” her mother repeated in some perplexity. “Whose, my dear?”

“I believe she means the horse, ma'am,” Miss Sharpe supplied in her gentle voice.

“Such elevated language! You have been lending Fanny your horrid novels, Miss Sharpe, I am certain of it.”

“Indeed not, I assure you, madam — merely Mrs. Palmerstone's edifying letters to her daughters.” [3] Miss Sharp — whose surname Jane was in the habit of spelling variously with or without a final “e” — refers here to a popular work of young lady's instruction, Letters from Mrs. Palmerstone to her Daughters, inculcating Morality by Entertaining Narratives (1803), by Mrs. Rachel Hunter. — Editor's note. Anne Sharpe raised eyes full of amusement to my own, and I could not suppress a smile — for we had debated the merits of such writers as Mrs. Radcliffe and Madame D'Arblay for nearly an hour in the schoolroom, with Fanny pleading to borrow my subscription volumes of Camilla. I had pressed them, instead, upon Anne Sharpe — and did the governess often resort to horrid novels, I should be the very last to blame her. With the schooling of two small girls in her charge, and limited reserves of strength or health to aid her, she must find in the Austens' exuberance a trial.

Particularly since the Commodore had come to plague us all.

A fearsome, snorting chestnut steed of nearly sixteen hands, the Commodore might be termed my brother Henry's latest folly. Being a man of some means, well-established in banking circles, and possessed of an elegantly-aristocratic wife in my cousin Eliza, Henry aspires to the habits of the Sporting Set, and has gone in for horse-racing in its most vicious form. Not content with losing breathless sums at Epsom and Newmarket, he has gambled his all on a dearer stake — the possession of an actual beast.

Knowing little of horseflesh, and still less of such points as action or blood, I have been rendered mute in almost every conversation since Henry's arrival in Kent a week ago. He is full of nothing but the subject; and it has been all a matter of furlongs and oat mash and Tattersall's betting room for a se'nnight. [4] Richard Tattersall (1724–1795) was the foremost horse trader of London. Although deceased by Jane's writing of this account in 1805, the institutions he fostered endure in part to this day. By 1775, Tattersall was providing the newly formed Jockey Club with a room (and his famous claret) for its meetings, and in 1780 he opened a Subscription Room, a club with an annual paid membership, for the laying and settling of bets. The committee that adjudicated betting disputes was known as Tattersall's Committee — the governing body of bookmaking. — Editor's note. The children have caught a dose of the fever; Neddie himself is hardly immune; and never have I found dear Henry's company so profoundly tedious. The flight of his wife, the little Comtesse Eliza, to a shooting party in the North, suggests that she is as impatient for the fad's decline as any of us. And so I prayed that the Commodore might stumble to his ruin in the present race, or perform as wretchedly as a carter's nag, and thus save us all the trouble of adoring him.

“It is too bad!” Fanny was craning over the carriage's side for a view of the course. “In sitting at such a remove, we shall be denied the smallest glimpse of the Commodore's triumph. I believe my heart shall break!”