Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“Miss Crawford was so good as to think of the Tibbit children,” I said, with a casual air, “and gathered some clothes among her tenants. I offered to take them to the widow, with our sympathies and compliments.”

“Then you'll be giving Old Maggie more consideration nor half the town,” James declared, “but that's like your ways, miss, if you don't mind my sayin' “A zample to us all, so Jenny was sayin”; and I'm of her mind.”

A zample, indeed.

20 September 1804, cont.

THE RIVER BUDDIE — WHICH I SHOULD SOONER CALL A STREAM — begins in the sweet grass of the high downs above Up Lyme, and ends in the salt freshness off the Cobb; but its narrow banks are crowded with a huddle of housing, and the district bears a very ill reputation. So much I had already known; but more salacious details were imparted to me by Miss Crawford, when I called upon that lady in the guise of charity, to solicit clothing for the bereaved Tibbits — for I should not like to appear in the neighbourhood without a clear purpose, lest my visit to the widow excite local speculation.

“Maggie Tibbit?” Miss Crawford said, peering at me over her spectacles as I sat in the Darby drawing-room. “If the woman had been possessed of sense, she should have married anyone but the man she did; and having committed that folly, she should have determined to bear fewer children. There are no less than five, you will understand, and all of them decidedly ill-favoured.”

“But deprived, nonetheless, of the support of a fa-ther,” I had rejoined mildly. “Winter is coming on, Miss Crawford, and the condescension of the ladies of St. Michael's could hardly be better bestowed. Consider what Mrs. Tibbit's anxieties must be — and how slim the wretched woman's resources — with so many pitiful mouths to feed!”

“Aye, Maggie's resources are slim enough,” Miss Crawford rejoined with a snort of contempt. “She has but one, as I'm sure you'll observe, do you persist in this foolish errand.”

I made no reply, but awaited the outcome of Miss Crawford's benevolence; and in an instant, she had tidied her needlework with an air of decision, and bestowed upon her visitor another withering look.

“I will turn over some part of the clothing we hold in store, against the needs of such pathetic objects, but I cannot undertake to pay the call in your stead, Miss Austen,” she told me severely. “I truly cannot. It would appear to countenance such behaviour as Mrs. Tibbit pursues, with the church's approbation. Soon all of Lyme's degraded women will be knocking at our doors.”

“Indeed,” I replied, with a demure look and inward rejoicing; for I had no wish for Miss Crawford's company, nor the discovery of her sharp ears, as I plied my questions. It but remained to follow her creaking black skirts into Darby's offices, and to have her turn over a quantity of clean linen, dutifully mended by the dutiful Lucy Armstrong (now returned to Bath in the company of her parents), and to enquire of Miss Crawford the approximate ages and sex of the Tibbit progeny. Despite her disinclination to involve herself in Maggie Tibbit's affairs, that charitable dame revealed herself well-acquainted with them. She could recite with dispatch the intelligence I required. I paused but to wonder what knowledge of my life she had amassed all unbeknownst; and then with the profusest of thanks and my bundle of clothing, I was handed into my hack chaise, and sent speedily on my way.

THE STENCH OF THE BUDDIE EMBRACED ME WELL BEFORE I encountered its ramshackle cottages; for the river here is little more than an open sewer, that churns all manner of refuse and human waste along its course, to end in the beaches and the sea. The odours that arise from its banks must be overwhelming in the stagnant heat of summer; but I was preserved from the most unhealthful effects, by a brisk breeze and the application of a kerchief, liberally doused with lavender-water, to my nose. I had wisely donned a simple and sturdy gown — my old grey muslin, of a military cut, with the charcoal braid — my brown wool being quite sandy about the hems, the result of my Charmouth adventure, and possessed of a great slit in its backside, acquired somehow in the course of that midnight wandering. The Leghorn straw I had left behind, as too fashionable and frivolous for a charity errand; a sober closed bonnet I had adopted instead, which afforded the added benefit of shielding my features.

The cobbles of the street were few, and gaping holes pocked its surface; I saw where last week's storm had carved a rut along the verge, and the soil was much eroded. Picking my way with care, therefore, I searched about for a not unfriendly face, intending to ask the way. Several fellows lounging in doorways I swiftly discarded, as bearing too fearsome an aspect, or appearing too befuddled by drink to answer any enquiry with sense; but at last I espied a matron, with a market-basket over her arm and a cap upon her head, and an apron both tidy and white despite the squalor of her environs; and deemed her a suitable guide.

“Excuse me, madam,” I said, with a bow at once stately and condescending, as befit my role, “would you be so good as to direct me to the Tibbit lodgings?”

The woman halted in her course, and stared at me with outrage; and then, depositing a mouthful of phlegm on the paving stones at my feet, continued along her way with a sweep of skirts.

I stared after her, all amazement, then glanced swiftly about the street. We undoubtedly had been observed; and yet, the faces of the Buddie's intimates bore a carefully-shuttered ignorance. Whatever could such behaviour mean? And how was I to discover the valuable Maggie, if her neighbours proved so taciturn and hostile?

“If ye be wan tin’ the Tibbits, ye've not far to go, miss. The voice came at my very feet; and with a start of surprise, I looked down upon the bent back of a cripple, in truth not above the middle age, but from his rough appearance and apparent ill-health, seeming as ancient as a relic of Shakespeare's time. He leered up at me, head craned at an awkward angle, his gnarled fingers gripping a stave. Involuntarily, I took a step backwards, and clutched tighter at my basket of clothing — for I should not like to be taken unawares by a footpad in just such a caricature, who would leave off his martyred stance and turn his cudgel upon my head.

But no blow did I receive — only a cackle of laughter, and a rattle of indrawn breath. ‘?G Sam's long past chasin’ the likes of ye, miss. The rheumaticks've got ‘im. Not but what ye ain't a sweet bit o’ goods, and right to keep yer wits about ye.”

“The Tibbits?” I managed, by way of reply.

The creature swung his head farther down the road. “The red ‘un, with two winders what looks out onto the street. Ye'll find it, certain sure. It've got a dead pullet nailed to the door.”

I should have hastened from him as fast as my legs could carry me, but that he shuffled nearer, and held out a withered palm, grinning repulsively through all his rotten teeth. I had just enough command of my wits to find my purse, and drop a coin at his feet. This he swiftly gathered up; and his laughter followed me the length of the narrow lane.

I thus found the Tibbits’ abode, and judged it to be occupied, from the squeals and cries of children within, which were all too frequently punctuated with slaps and the swift onset of tears. It was a poor sort of place, constructed of odd bits of timber, and with a roof in sad need of pitch, and a facade that wanted paint, and a frame too prone to precarious tilting; almost I might have thought it poised to slide into the river at its back, and should misgive the effects of another storm upon its eroding foundations. The river here was narrow enough, that the houses perched on the opposite bank were but a strong man's leap away — so that the effect of the massed housing was more evocative of London's stews, than of Lyme's cheerful cottages. [65] Austen here describes a feature of the River Buddie district that was apparently not wiuiout design. Geofftey Morley notes in his book, Smuggling in Hampshire and Dorset, 1800-1850 (Newbury, Berkshire: Countryside Books, revised edition, 1994), that this was the traditional smugglers’ quarter of Lyme, and that the proximity of the housing served as a useful means of escape. When a smuggler's home was to be searched, its occupants often fled out die back windows to the houses on the Buddie's opposite bank, taking their contraband with them. — Editor's note.