Stephanie Barron - Jane and The Wandering Eye

“The Devil’s own cub,” muttered a gentleman not three paces away. He stood similarly arrested on the pavement, his eyes following the careening coach.

“Who is it, guv’nor?” cried a small boy, skipping and bouncing with excitement.

The gentleman turned angrily away, as though offended, and strode briskly towards Gay Street. His small persecutor kept pace, dodging the vicious stab of a walking stick with effortless grace. “Come on, now! Tell us who ‘tis, guv’nor! Ol’ Prinny, maybe? Or the Queen?”

“The Earl of Swithin, you unfortunate cull,” his quarry spat out, “and now I suggest you take yourself off. Swithin’s hardly the sort to throw you a penny for carting his dunnage. He’s more likely to eat you for breakfast.”

The urchin chortled, doffed his cap, and sped off in the direction of Cheap Street.

After a pause for consideration, I sedately did the same.

MY SISTER ELIZA WAS FIRMLY ENSCONCED IN A SUITE OF rooms at the White Hart; her maid, Manon, and her little dog, Pug, comprising fully half of her establishment, while the remainder — bedchambers for herself and Henry, with a sitting-room in between — might all be taken as Eliza’s to rule, so little evidence of my brother could I find. Such an apportionment of space at the White Hart must be very dear, and I wondered at the expense, and at my brother’s having failed to take lodgings in some retired square. The Henry Austens intended a visit to Bath of some three or four weeks, and it was unusual in such cases to remain more than a few days at the coaching inns. But Eliza, though accustomed to luxury, is singularly careless about convention — the result, perhaps, of her itinerant childhood. She moved with her mother, my aunt, from India to England and thence to Europe — fixing, at last, in the environs of Versailles. Even in London, Eliza is rarely at rest; she has occasioned the removal of my brother’s household several times already, and fully intends to continue the practice as long as a suitable establishment should offer.

Even her grave, I suspect, will be a temporary domicile.

“My dear Jane!” she cried now, throwing aside her netting and smoothing her hair. “And are you quite recovered from the Duchess’s rout? I am on the very point of venturing to the Pump Room. You will accompany me?”

She was dressed today in bottle-green silk, far too fine for morning wear, with small puffed sleeves and a plunging neck. A large green stone glittered on her finger.

“Is that an emerald I see, Eliza?”

“Oh, pooh,” she cried, “it is nothing of the sort. A tourmaline merely — a gift from my godfather, Mr. Hastings. We met with him only last week. You will never guess, Jane, who has come to the inn.”

“The Earl of Swithin?”

“The Earl of Swithin! How did you know? You will have seen the coach, I suspect, with its device of the snarling tiger. The Swithin fortune was made in India, you understand — my mother was intimate with his , Lady Swithin being one of the few who did not reproach Mamma for the attentions of Mr. Hastings — and the tiger was ever their device. I should know the coat of arms anywhere. He is a very fine-looking young man. Though not too young. I should put him at thirty.” [19] Eliza Austen was born Eliza Hancock, the daughter of Philadelphia Austen (the Reverend George Austen’s sister) and Tysoe Saul Hancock, a surgeon with the East India Company. While in India Philadelphia Hancock was rumored to have “abandoned herself to Mr. Hastings.” Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of Bengal from 1772 to 1785, served as Eliza’s godfather and placed 10,000 pounds in trust for her; Eliza later named her only son Hastings. It was commonly believed, though never acknowledged, that Eliza was Warren Hastings’s daughter. — Editor’s note.

“Eliza,” I said, in a tone of mock reproof. “You will not flirt in the very midst of an inn. Have a care!”

My sister shrugged her lovely shoulders. “I only hung about the stairway for a time, the better to observe his ascent; and I may fairly say that nothing should induce me now to trade a coaching inn for hired lodgings, be they ever so grand, and in Camden Place!”

“You may be certain that Lord Swithin will do so.”

“Then we must hasten away, my dear, if we are to have a glimpse of him! I heard him charge his manservant to await his return from the Pump Room!”

It is the Pump Room, in truth — situated only steps from the White Hart — that makes the inn so convenient to Eliza; she is forever looking into the place, to meet with her acquaintance, or to spy upon those who are newly arrived. My rented lodgings in a retired square should be insupportably dull for the little Comtesse; and I understood my brother Henry the better. A bored Eliza is a petulant Eliza — a complaining and a declining Eliza, who fancies herself miserable with all manner of mysterious ailments. She should never last a fortnight in retirement.

IT IS MANY MONTHS SINCE I LAST ENTERED THE PUMP ROOM — for being little inclined myself to the waters, I could find no purpose in an errand to that part of town, beyond an idle promenading about the lofty-ceilinged room. That the better part of Bath was engaged in that very pursuit, I immediately observed upon the present occasion; a hum of discourse rose above the clatter of pattens and half-boots, as a gaily-dressed Christmas crowd trod the bare planks of the floor.

Pale winter light streamed through the clerestory windows. When last I had entered the Pump Room, I now recalled, the warmth of August had turned the dust motes to gold. I had been taking leave of a friend, before journeying south to Lyme.

“Jane!”

I shook myself from reverie, and espied Eliza hard by the pump attendant, a glass of water in her hand.

“Do not you mean to make a trial of the waters?” Eliza exclaimed.

“How can you think it possible, my dear?” I replied. “You forget the example of my Uncle Leigh-Perrot, and his two glasses per day these twenty-odd years. Never has water done so little to improve a faulty constitution, or to cure a persistent gout. I shall place my faith in a daily constitutional. It may claim a decided advantage in scenic enjoyment, and cannot hope to impair the bowels.” [20] James Leigh-Perrot was Mrs. Austen’s brother. He added the surname Perrot to Leigh in order to inherit the Perrot fortune. Although his principal seat was Scarlets, an estate of his wife’s in Berkshire, he spent half of every year in Paragon Buildings, Bath, for his health. — Editor’s note.

“Pshaw. Come and examine the book,” Eliza rejoined comfortably, as she turned back the pages of a calf-bound volume, in which the most recent visitors had inscribed their names and directions. “We must learn who is come to be gay in Bath. Mr. John Julius Angerstein and Mrs. Angerstein. Well. And so they have left their home in Blackheath, and abandoned the Princess of Wales to her scandalous beaux. The Honourable Matthew Small, Captain, Royal Navy. Well, we want none of him , do we? For a naval man torn from the sea cannot, I think, be very agreeable. Officers are always labouring under the influence of a wound, or a gouty manifestation. Mr. and Mrs. Jens Wolff. Capital! He is the Danish Consul, you know, and she is nothing short of a beauty. They lodge in Rivers Street. I have not seen Isabella Wolff this age!”

And so, as Eliza exclaimed and brooded, I allowed my mind once more to wander. My eyes I permitted to rove as well, in search of a nobleman of imposing aspect. I lacked Eliza’s knowledge of the Earl of Swithin’s past, but I had heard enough of that gentleman’s reputation to believe him stern and unyielding. His suit had driven Lady Desdemona Trowbridge from her home in London — had driven her, perhaps, into the arms of Mr. Richard Portal, who now lay dead. For what else but the theatre manager’s impropriety towards the lady could have so excited her brother’s contempt?