Sally O'Rourke: The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

“Wickham, can you imagine what it would mean if the letter really was written by Jane Austen?” She looked at the cat, who was unconcernedly applying his long pink tongue to one of his wickedly clawed front paws. Eliza sighed, “No, of course you can’t, you poor thing, you have no forehead.”

Looking at the letter she turned it over and over again in her hands. If it was genuine and she opened it, she would forever be known as the stupid artist who ruined a historic document.

Before she burned her bridges, Eliza decided she needed to try and find out something about the fictitious Mr. Darcy. Maybe the Internet would give her the answers she sought.

In sharp contrast to Eliza’s bedroom—which, with its eclectic collection of old wooden furniture, framed prints and warm fabric accents, could only be described as cozy—the living room of her small condo (actually the workroom and studio where she created her art and operated her Internet gallery) was all twenty-first-century business.

In front of the large window that allowed her to look directly into the wheelhouses of passing freighters on the East River were arrayed her white IKEA computer desk and drawing board, and beside them the wide steel filing cabinets, air-brush, paints and other equipment necessary to her work.

Hanging on the otherwise bare walls were several meticulous illustrations of the idyllic, flower-filled country landscapes and other natural and whimsical subjects in which she specialized.

With the envelopes in her hand and her bare feet tucked into a pair of warm sheepskin moccasins, Eliza crossed the polished hardwood floor of her studio and seated herself on the tall chrome-and-leather stool at her drawing board. Taking care first to cover the painting of a woodland cottage to which she’d been adding a mistily airbrushed backdrop of thickly forested mountains, she laid the two envelopes on the board side by side and switched on her halogen work light.

Outside the moon caressed the surface of the river with a ribbon of silver light and while her rational mind believed firmly that the letters were some kind of elaborate hoax, she couldn’t stop the flights of fancy inspired by the implausible correspondence. Shaking off the romantic thoughts as silly schoolgirl fantasies, Eliza shooed Wickham out of the desk chair and sat down in front of her computer console. Signing onto the Internet, she called up a popular search engine and typed in “Jane Austen.”

The computer whirred softly for several seconds before the screen was filled with the information she requested. Eliza stared at her monitor in disbelief; there were over a million and a half Web sites. Looking over at the cat now perched on the high stool, she sighed, “I thought this was going to be easy.” Looking back at the monitor she found an array of Web sites pertaining to the author. Scrolling down through the list, Eliza discovered to her amazement that there were sites devoted to Jane Austen’s life, her birthplace, the times in which she lived, each of her books and all the movies and television shows that had ever been made from the books. There were even more Web sites devoted to the actors in the movies and television shows made from the books. In addition to those, there were hundreds of fan sites, history sites, sites for scholarly discussions of Jane Austen’s work, and sites devoted to the many sequels to Jane Austen books, written in the style of the author by latter-day imitators.

There were Japanese Jane Austen Web sites, Australian Web sites, Norwegian sites, discussion sites about Jane Austen’s letters, her family, her friends…the list went on and on.

Eliza scrolled until her finger ached and her eyes grew bleary, and yet she realized that she hadn’t even made a dent in the endless list. “Where do I start?” she groaned to Wickham.

After several more minutes of scrolling she sat back, rubbed her eyes and blinked at the screen again. The title and description of one Web site in particular suddenly caught her eye.

“Austenticity.com,” she read, liking the sound of it. “‘Everything you ever wanted to know about Jane Austen.’ Now that sounds promising,” she told the cat.

Wickham rubbed against Eliza’s arm as she clicked onto the site. A burst of romantic theme music suddenly poured from the computer’s speakers and a title popped up onto the screen:

The title faded away as a scene from the BBC/A&E television miniseries Pride and Prejudice began to play on the computer screen. In the scene, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy were alone in a sitting room.

Eliza found her lips moving in silent accompaniment to the actor playing Darcy as he recited one of her favorite lines from P&P: “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you…”

Her face reddening, Eliza abruptly broke off the monologue and turned down the sound, smiling at the casual ease with which she had been captivated.

“Darcy, you seductive devil!” She grinned at the now-silent actor still mouthing his lines. “I dearly love your first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet,” she told him. “But right now I need some hard information about the real you ! If there was a real you.”

She stopped the film clip by clicking onto the information menu at the top of her computer screen. Another screen immediately popped up, featuring a rather dour portrait of the author herself beneath a new title:

CAN’T GET ENOUGH JANE AUSTEN?

Dying to know what she ate and wore, what books she read, songs she sang? Post your question on our message boards.

One of our Austen experts is sure to have the answer you seek.

“Austen experts! Now that’s more like it,” Eliza said, reading the message. She examined the several topics on the message boards, selected one titled “Jane’s Life & Times” and started to type.

POST MESSAGE:

Was Darcy from Pride and Prejudice a real person?

Please reply by e-mail to: SMARTIST@galleri.com

Smiling to herself, she sent the message.

“There!” she told Wickham. “With any luck, somebody will have the solution to our little mystery right at their fingertips.”

The cat rolled his yellow eyes up at her, as if to say, Don’t kid yourself.

Eliza shrugged and closed out the Austenticity Web site. “Okay,” she grudgingly conceded, peering once more at the daunting list of other Internet sites. “I’ll look at a few more, but I’m not going to keep doing this all night.”

More than an hour later a thoroughly exhausted Eliza sat propped among the pillows piled against the elaborately carved figurals decorating the headboard of her bed.

As she leafed idly through her copy of Pride and Prejudice her imagination was filled with the possibilities presented by the two mysterious letters. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the little vanity table by the window, she wondered who had placed the letters behind the mirror, and for what possible purpose.

Wickham was comfortably dozing on the pillows beside her as she finally put her book aside and switched off the bedside lamp. Moonlight filled the room, casting soft reflections in the hazed mirror of the vanity table. Eliza gazed sleepily at the golden orb outside her window and snuggled down next to the cat.

“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you…” she murmured dreamily. “Oh God, Wickham, that is so romantic! Could there have been a flesh-and-blood Darcy who actually spoke those words to Jane Austen before she wrote them?”