Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“Mr. Milsop,” the bold Irishwoman said, with an eye my way, “you have not been very kind. In fact, I must quite accuse you of cruelty. You have extolled the virtues of this lady to everyone who might listen; and yet, you deny us the felicity of an introduction. I am sure you mean to keep her acquaintance all to yourself, for fear that she shall like others better, and desert you.”

“My dear Mrs. Barnewall!” the counter fop cried. “It would be an ecstasy to make hvo such examples of womanly excellence, known the one to the other” And before I could demur, he had turned to his office with alacrity.

“Miss Austen, may I introduce to your acquaintance Mrs. Mathew Barnewall, of Kingsland. Mrs. Barnewall, Miss Austen — of Bath, was it not?”

“Your faculty for placing your patrons is indeed remarkable, Mr. Milsop,” I replied, and shook Mrs. Barnewall's hand.

“Bath! How delightful! You are a native of the place?” that lady enquired.

“I am not,” I replied, “and, in truth, I cannot think of anyone who is. But that is to be expected, when one makes a pleasure-place a home.”

“Indeed. You trade one pleasure-place for another, I see, in visiting Lyme.”

“Ah! But the two are so different! The one merely called a pleasure-place, from convention and long familiarity; and the other, so infinitely capable of inspiring real happiness!”

I could not keep the admiration from my accent. Lyme is a town that has become dear to me, for reasons I cannot fully explain; unless it be that the smallness of such a place, particularly after its season has closed, offers a peace and solitary beauty I cannot find in Bath or London — a peace denied me since my removal from dear Steventon.

“You think such a village charming, then?” Mrs. Barnewall said, with obvious disbelief.

“Certainly there is little to admire in the buildings themselves,” I conceded; “but the remarkable situation of the town! The principal street, almost hurrying into the water! The pleasant manner in which the Cobb skirts the bay, and the beautiful line of cliffs stretching to the east! — These are what a stranger's eye will seek, and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs, to make her wish to know Lyme better!” [20] These words, slightly modified and expanded, make up Austen's principal description of Lyme Regis in her final novel, Persuasion. — Editor's note.

“But the people are so coarse, in general; one rarely encounters good society, beyond the doors of the Assembly Rooms. At this time of year, the town is overrun with common labourers and fisherfolk; and the degradations to which one is subjected! You have heard, I suppose, of the hanged man.”

“Only a little,” I said coolly. “But men may be hanged anywhere, I believe. I had understood it to be quite a common thing in Ireland.”

“But in such a manner!” my new acquaintance cried. “The placement of the gibbet! The placard hung about his neck! The binding of his hands and feet! The mutilation of his features!”

“Of all these, 1 had not heard,” I said, with greater interest. “There was a placard, you say?”

“Assuredly, my dear girl.” Mrs. Barnewall advanced rather too rapidly to terms of intimacy for my taste, but in search of further particulars, I ignored her familiarity. “My tyger told me all of it. ‘Done for as he did,’ the words read, in ragged letters; and it was hung about his neck with a bit of fishing twine, of the sort such folk use for their nets.”

“How very odd!” I said thoughtfully. “One supposes such violence to be the result of a bitter feud among the fishermen.”

“Undoubtedly,” Mrs. Barnewall replied, and loosed her parasol. “I trust, Miss Austen, I shall see you tonight at the Assembly. Not that it is worth the trouble of attending; neither so very good company, as to be called select, nor so very bad, that one might fancy it dangerously exciting. But when in Lyme, it may be termed a delight, for want of competition.” And with a nod for Mr. Milsop, she took her leave.

“What a very singular lady,” I said.

The draper stiffened and surveyed me narrowly with his quizzing glass. “The Honourable Mathew Barnewall is to be a viscount. He is heir to extensive estates in Ireland.”

“And yet, even that does not explain his wife, my dear sir.” I drew on my new gloves with a smile, and left the spotted pair on Milsop's counter.

IT WAS AS I APPROACHED WlNGS COTTAGE THAT A PROCESSION FROM the Cobb neared where I stood, and I pressed hard against a neighbouring building so that they might more easily pass. A glimpse only of their sad burden did I have; but it was enough to nearly overpower me. Do not think, however, that it was the corpse's starting eyes, or its lolling tongue, or what Mrs. Barnewall had airily termed a “mutilation”—in this instance, a knife slash that opened one cheek — all these, I could have withstood. But the source of my faintness upon viewing the hanged man was entirely of another order. For I had seen these features and this fellow before — and only the previous afternoon, as he lounged in the doorway opposite, hurling what I believed to be drunken insults at the angelic Seraphine. The man had appeared to earn Geoffrey Sidmouth's contempt on that occasion, and possibly his rage. But as the body slowly passed, I wondered with a chill in my heart whether his impertinence had cost him even dearer — whether it had won him, in fact, the brutal manner of his death.

7 September 1804

THE LYME ASSEMBLY ROOMS SIT ON BROAD STREET, AT BELL CUFF and Cobb Gate, and their windows so o'erlook the sea, that when one is twirling in the midst of the floor (and well supplied with negus [21] Named after Captain Francis Negus, this was a warm punch made of water, sugar, and sherry or port, and frequently offered at balls. — Editor's note. ), one might almost believe oneself aboard ship, and borne on the crest of a wave. Or so Captain Fielding observed; and as he is a Naval man, albeit lame in one leg and now retired, I must take his observations as more generally apt than most

But I run ahead to the middle of the play, and neglect to draw open the curtain and set the scene; and so I give you the Reverend George Austen, attired in a shabby if respectable black tailcoat of uncertain vintage, his younger daughter by his side in her borrowed pink feathers, entering upon the Assembly at the stroke of eight o'clock. Henry and Eliza intended joining us later, believing the hour far too early for fashion; but I rejoiced to find the majority of Lyme society less nice in their distinctions, and the rooms already quite full, and of a happy mixture of ladies and gentlemen — the former being generally of that middle age that assures them either married or safely beyond susceptibility, and the latter retired Naval officers. Lyme has proved so attractive to the seafaring set, in fact, that a coterie of Naval families has settled in the cottages lining the streets of town; and their society seems at once so self-sufficient, and so cheerfully good, that one quite longs to marry a daring commander of the Red or White [22] The Royal Navy was divided into three squadrons — the Red, the White, and the Blue. Austen's brother Frank, for example, advanced to become Admiral of the Red, before his promotion to Admiral of the Fleet at the age of 89. — Editor's note. , if only with a view to settling in Lyme some twenty years hence.

But perhaps Captain Fielding has influenced my views.

“What a fearful crowd, my dear Jane,” my father remarked, in his vaguest tone, as though only just emerging from the leaves of his book. “Had not we better return to Wings cottage, and the society of your mother? For the crush is heavy, and we know no one/’ And he would have turned for the door, had I not seized his arm, and urged him firmly into the room.