Chapter 26

New Beginnings

Wednesday, 26 July 1809

My dearest Frank, I wish you Joy

Of Mary’s safety with a boy,

Whose birth has given little pain,

Compared with that of Mary Jane. —

So far I had managed to compose, in my letter to my brother Captain Frank Austen, when the Muse failed me. Lord Harold might love to instruct that writing is all we have— but in my experience, on too many occasions we may not command even so much as a word. I sighed, and set aside my pen, and determined to take a turn in the garden to refresh my jaded senses.

Cassandra and my mother were gone out to Alton, and the cottage was mine to possess alone. In the past few weeks since our descent upon Chawton, turmoil had given way to peace, and the rightful enjoyment of the summer months in all their lazy plentitude. We had the imminent arrival of Martha Lloyd from Kintbury to look forward to; and increasing intimacy with the Great House family to leaven the simple bread of our usual days; restorative walks through the surrounding country; and the promise of an occasional visit from some one of our brothers. Not to mention the delights of the hopeful family in Lenton Street, and the babe so newly born.

For my part, the past few weeks had been one of discovery and acceptance. The salvation of Julian Thrace from a murderer’s gibbet, and the determination of his father to present the young man as his son and heir without further delay, had sent the most interesting part of our local acquaintance flying from the country. The Heir to the House of Holbrook had been discovered sheltering in a shepherd’s cot long since abandoned on Robin Hood Butts. By Julian’s side, in terror of his life, was Old Philmore — who had been brutally served with a club by Charles Spence after delivering the Bengal chest into the Major’s hands. This cowardly act had been achieved in darkness, on the very night of the cottage burglary; and it having been a night of waning moon, Old Philmore succeeded at escaping from Stonings with his life, and a great wound to the head. Knowledge of his own guilt in the matter of the chest, and a terror of what the steward might further do, had convinced the old man to lie low until such time as Justice had been served. A chance meeting with Julian Thrace, who had his own story of persecution to tell, had sealed the matter, and made of the two fugitives friends in need.

My application to Catherine Prowting — without the necessity of informing her father or betraying the folly into which his daughter had plunged — had wrested the young man’s location from her terrified lips. The Earl himself rode out to find Julian, and no one else was privileged to witness their reconciliation, or to know what was then said. My brother Edward, however, was able to satisfy Mr. Prowting that Charles Spence was entirely responsible for the murders of Shafto French and Lady Imogen; and in the conversation of the two magistrates, Justice was allowed to have been served.

Catherine Prowting received a very pretty round of thanks from Mr. Thrace for her care of him in distress, but no offer of marriage; and as that gentleman is now gone a fortnight from Hampshire, and no one knows whether he is ever likely to return, the unfortunate Catherine appears certain to fall into a decline.

To supplement the loss of such compelling society, however, I have had my Bengal chest: returned with a forced lock and a splintered face, but with the contents mostly intact. Great disorder reigned among Lord Harold’s papers, as Charles Spence had obviously gone through them in immense haste, and failed to discover the proofs he so desperately sought; but there is a satisfaction in bringing order from chaos, against which even I am no proof. I have spent many consuming mornings closeted in my bedchamber, with packets of letters and journals spread out all around me, and am in a mood to welcome any shower of rain, as discouraging all other activity but that of reading. Cassandra, observing me, sniffed with disdain that I was as much Lord Harold’s inamorata in death as in life — and I did not trouble to argue the point. Entire worlds of experience have been opened to me through his lordship’s letters; and I feel now as tho’ I hardly knew him, when he stood in my parlour with one booted foot on the fender, and his hooded grey eyes fixed on my countenance. There is much to trouble, and much to shock, among these papers; much also to admire and love. But what a burden he has placed in my safekeeping! I no longer trust to the security of a cottage.

I have written to Mr. Bartholomew Chizzlewit of Lincoln’s Inn, and desired him to despatch a special courier to Chawton, so that Lord Harold’s bequest might be returned to the solicitor’s offices. There, from time to time, I might visit his lordship’s ghost — and determine how best to fulfill the heavy charge he has placed upon me. The writing up and publication of the Rogue’s memoirs will prove no easy task — but if it is to be a lifework, it is one I feel myself equal to undertake. The effect of the Memoirs of a Gentleman Rogue should be as a bombshell bursting upon the Polite World; and nothing would deprive me of the privilege of unleashing so cataclysmic a force. I have not yet learned to ignore Lord Harold’s loss. Here, in the simple beauty of this country garden, with the prospect of my family’s society always around me, I must know myself even still for a woman set apart. Great love denied has been my burden; and its bastards are silence and loneliness. It is my very singularity I must struggle with now — as perhaps I have always done. It was Lord Harold alone who understood this; and honoured me with his esteem despite the ways in which I shall never be quite like other women.

Or perhaps— as he told me once —because of them.

Letter from Lord Harold Trowbridge to Miss Jane Austen, dated 3 November 1808; one leaf quarto, laid; watermark Fitzhugh and Gilroy; sealed with black wax over signature.

(British Museum, Wilborough Papers, Austen bequest)

My dearest Jane—

If I survive the morning’s work — as no doubt I shall — this letter will never reach you; but if I am fated by some mischance to fall under Ord’s hand, I cannot go in silence upon one subject, at least.

I am no sentimentalist. I will tell you that you are hardly the most beautiful woman I have ever known, Jane, nor the most enchanting. Your witchery is of a different order than others’—

and springs, I believe, from the extraordinary self-possession you command. It is unique in my experience of women. You have my unqualified esteem and respect; you have my trust and my heart; and if I love you, my dear, it is as one loves the familiar room to which one returns after desperate wandering. In this room I might draw the shades upon the world and live in comfort forever.

Do not cry for me, Jane — but carry me always in your heart, as one who loved you for that courage to be yourself, and not what convention would have you be.

Your Rogue