Stephanie Barron: Jane and The Wandering Eye

Dedicated with love to my sister,

Liz Ferretti—

she of the truest eye

THIS, THE THIRD OF JANE AUSTEN’S RECENTLY DISCOVERED journals to be edited for publication, finds the Georgian novelist at home in Bath for what would be her last Christmas spent in that city. It proved a time of excitement, intrigue, and loss — one of the most memorable seasons in Austen’s life. She celebrated her twenty-ninth birthday and bid farewell forever to a dear friend amid a sinister web of scandal and murder.

The familiarity with theatrical and artistic circles Austen displays in these pages will hardly shock those who study her life and work, for it has long been apparent that she possessed a cultivated taste and a fondness for playacting and dramatic composition. In editing the present volume, however, I found it necessary to consult a number of works pertinent to the theater and portraiture of the day. The Kemble Era: John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, and the London Stage by Linda Kelly (New York: Random House, 1980) was a marvelous guide to one of the most exciting epochs (and families) in British theater. Sir Thomas Lawrence: Portraits of an Age, 1790–1830 by Kenneth Garlick (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 1993) and Richard and Maria Cosway: Regency Artists of Taste and Fashion by Stephen Lloyd (Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1995) were also invaluable to one of my benighted ignorance.

My deepest thanks, however, must go to Elle Shushan, Manhattan gallery director of Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge. Her knowledge and expertise in the world of Regency eye portraits is irreplaceable.

Stephanie Barron

Evergreen, Colorado

Wednesday,

12 December 1804

Bath

A ROUT-PARTY, WHEN DEPICTED BY A PEN MORE ACCOMPLISHED than my own, is invariably a stupid affair of some two or three hundred souls pressed elbow-to-elbow in the drawing-rooms of the great. Such an efflorescence of powder shaken from noble wigs! Such a crush of silk! And what general heartiness of laughter and exclamation — so that the gentler tones of one’s more subdued companions must be raised to a persistent roar, rendering most of the party voiceless by dawn, with only the insipid delights of indifferent negus and faltering meat pasties as recompense for all one’s trials.

So Fanny Burney has described a rout, in Cecilia and Camilla; and so I should be forced to record my first experience of the same, in a more modest volume I entitle simply Jane , had not Fate intervened to render my dissipation more intriguing. For last night I endured the most fearsome of crushes — a post-theatrical masquerade, forsooth, with myself in the role of Shepherdess — at no less exalted an address than Laura Place, and the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s abode, with attendant hundreds of her most intimate acquaintance.

And what, you may ask, had Miss Jane Austen to do in such company? So my father gently enquired, at the moment of my setting out from No. 27, Green Park Buildings (where all my dear family have been situated but two months, having lost our former lodgings in Sydney Place to the infamous Coles), my brother Henry at my side, a most formidable Richard the Third, and his wife, Eliza, done up as Marie Antoinette.

“Why, Father,” I replied, with a wave of my Shepherdess’s crook, “you must know that the invitation is all my brother’s, procured with a view to amusing Eliza, who must have her full measure of Bath’s diversion during so short a visit to the city, and in such a season. Bath at Christmastide may yet be called a trifle thin, in requiring the larger crowds of Easter to lend it style; and if Eliza is not to be thoroughly put out, we must seize our diversion where we may. A masquerade, and at the express invitation of a Dowager Duchess, cannot be let slip. Is not this so, Henry?”

“Indeed,” my brother stammered, with a look for his elegant wife, who appeared to have entirely swallowed her little dog, Pug, so pursed with false innocence was her mouth. Eliza is but a slip of a lady, tho’ in her present towering headdress, complete with ship’s models and birds of paradise bestowed about her heavily powdered curls, she bid fair to rise far above her usual station.

I must confess to a greater admiration for Eliza’s queen than for Henry’s king — for though both may be called cunning by history’s judgement, Eliza has the advantage over Henry, in having at least seen Marie Antoinette in all the Austrian’s former glory, and thus being capable of the incorporation of that lady’s vanished style in her present dress; while Henry is dependent upon the merest notion of humped backs and twirling moustachios, or a general reputation for squintyness about the eyes, for the affectation of his villain.

“And our own dear Madam Lefroy is to be in attendance at the Duchess’s party as well, Father,” Eliza added. “It is to form the chief part of her final evening in Bath — she returns to Hampshire on the morrow — and we cannot part without some notice on either side. I am sure you would not wish us to neglect so amiable a neighbour, so dear a friend. For who shall say when we shall meet again?”

“But are you even acquainted with the Duchess, my dear Jane?” my father asked, in some bewilderment. “Assuredly—” Henry began.

“—not,” I concluded.

“That is to say,” my brother amended hastily, “the acquaintance is entirely mine , Father. I have performed some trifling service for the Wilborough family, in the financial line. The rout tickets came to me.”

“I had not an idea of it, my dear boy.” The expression of pleasure that suffused my father’s face, at this indication of his son’s advancement in his chosen profession of banking, made the falsehood almost worth its utterance.

“But now we must be off,” Eliza interjected firmly, “or lose another hour in search of chairs, for our own have been standing at the door this quarter-hour. [1] In Austen’s day, it was the custom to travel about the streets of Bath and other major cities in hired sedan chairs carried by a man fore and aft. — Editor’s note. It has quite struck eleven, and how it snows! Do observe, my dear sir, the unfortunate chairmen!”

Bath’s climate is usually so mild as to escape the advent of winter, but this night at least we were subject to a fearsome blast. And thus, as my father clucked in dismay from the drawing-room window, all benevolent concern for the reddened cheeks and stamping feet of the unlucky fellows below, we hurried down to the street, where indeed our chairs had been idle already some minutes, and settled ourselves comfortably for the trip to Laura Place — or would have, had not my Shepherdess’s crook refused the conveyance’s close accommodation. This small difficulty resolved, by the abandonment of the offending object on the stoop of No. 27, Green Park Buildings, the chairmen heaved and hallooed, and off we went — with only the occasional bobble to recall the untidiness of the snowy streets, and the likelihood of a yet more strenuous return.