A Jane Austen Encounter (5 page)

Anne Elliot had attended no assemblies here, her balls having been impromptu country entertainments for which she played indefatigably on the pianoforte for the amusement of the Musgrove daughters and their friends. But Elizabeth found it the most natural thing in the world to enter into Catherine Morland’s head as she entered these very rooms for her first time. The great event—nay, Catherine’s “entree into life”—had been preceded by three or four days of learning what was worn and shopping with her chaperone Mrs. Allen, undoubtedly in Milsom Street.

Elizabeth smiled dreamily as she recalled the account of the preparations for the great evening on which Catherine was to be ushered into the Upper Rooms. “Her hair was cut and dressed by the best hand, her clothes put on with care, and both Mrs. Allen and her maid had declared she looked quite as she should do.”

Jane, with her superb understanding of human nature, had taken this moment to give her readers an insight into her heroine’s unspoiled character: “With such encouragement, Catherine hoped at least to pass uncensured through the crowd. As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came . . .”

As it turned out, though, Catherine was neither admired nor able to admire anyone else, because, unlike the spacious area Elizabeth now shared with the milling tourists, on the occasion of Catherine’s assembly, the room was so crowded that even when she and her chaperone at last managed to gain the top of the room, Catherine could still see nothing more than the feathers some of the dancers wore in their hair. And worst of all, Mrs. Allen had no acquaintance there, so it was not possible for Catherine to dance, since a proper introduction was essential for any social intercourse.

Even when they found a less-crowded spot in the passage, they were not able long to enjoy their comfort because it was then time for the company to go into the room across the way for tea. And when at last they arrived in the tearoom, “she felt yet more the awkwardness of having no party to join, no acquaintance to claim, no gentleman to assist them.”

Elizabeth understood the feeling as she wished for Richard’s presence. Not that she needed him to fetch tea, as an anonymous gentleman at last did for Catherine and Mrs. Allen, nor was she in want of a dancing partner just at that moment, but she would very much have preferred to share this time with Richard than with Muriel Greystone.

“Come now, don’t dawdle. Nothing to see here.” Elizabeth was surprised at Muriel’s words, for she had thought there a great deal to see there, indeed, as she had been busy watching some of her favorite fictional characters. Richard would have entered into her fantasy and matched her quote for quote. Odd that this noted academic seemed so impervious to the emanations of the building.

Muriel tugged her from the ballroom. “The Fashion Museum is downstairs. Everything absolutely authentic there. Nothing got up for tourists or borrowed from a television show.” She hurried them down long aisles past tall glass cases filled with dresses from the twenty-first and twentieth centuries. “Dress of the year, they call them.” She waved her hand dismissively at a case of striking, if somewhat bizarre, examples of
haute couture
. “New one added every year. Modern codswallop. Who would wear such things?”

Her pace slowed, though, and her attitude seemed to soften when, going backward in time, they reached the nineteenth century with cases full of dresses first with birdcage crinolines and bustles and then on to the wide, full crinolines of mid-Victorian times, with one dress filling an entire case. At last Muriel came to stop before the Regency display. “Neoclassical, you see, copying the drapery of Greek and Roman statues to give the effect of a slender column. Hence the great vogue for white dresses. Cotton muslin was favored because it draped so well.”

Elizabeth viewed a pale evening dress that seemed to shimmer with moonglow. It was covered with solid rows of what the placard informed them were tiny cylinders of glass sliced into decorative beads. Elizabeth couldn’t begin to imagine the countless hours it must have taken to produce such a gown.

They moved on to a plum-brown pelisse, a long, high-waisted coat made of sarcenet, a soft twilled silk. Elizabeth considered. The garments were too sophisticated for the young Catherine Morland, and perhaps too fine for the understated Anne Elliot. Elizabeth Bennet—the sarcenet pelisse with its close-fitting poke and reticule would be just the thing for her. Mr. Darcy would admire it excessively. The moonbeam dress would be fitting for her more demure sister Jane to wear to a ball with Mr. Bingley.

Having dressed the Bennet sisters, Elizabeth started to move on to the printed cotton dress in the next case when she stopped. Since there were so many visitors to the museum, Elizabeth would have been unlikely to have noticed another reflection in the glass of the case as she leaned forward to read about the production of printed cotton in England in the eighteenth century, but this figure appeared so stealthily, then jerked back so suddenly when Elizabeth reacted to the furtive movement, that she gave a startled gasp.

“What? Did you forget something?” Muriel turned back to her from across the aisle.

Elizabeth blinked. What had she seen? Had she seen anything? Overactive imagination, she chided herself. Undoubtedly from so recently having entered into the thoughts of Catherine Morland. Jane’s heroine, too, realized—somewhat belatedly—the mischief of having too much indulged in Gothic literature. But Catherine had been a raw girl; Elizabeth was a mature woman. She had no business to be thinking a passing tourist was about to hit her over the head.

Although something very similar to that had happened to Claire Cholmley, she reminded herself.

“Are you all right?” Muriel demanded again.

“Oh, yes. Sorry. I was just thinking.” Elizabeth resisted the urge to look over her shoulder, even though she still had the tingling sensation that someone was watching her.

They moved on to the court dress of the 1760s filling the breadth of its case, the extreme expanse of its French silk skirt held out by basket-like panniers underneath. But before Elizabeth could examine it closer, Muriel darted a demand at her. “Right, so tell me about this paper Richard is writing. For publication, is it?”

“I—I don’t know.” Elizabeth was so surprised by the sudden query that she didn’t know how to answer. “Something about Jane Austen.” Well, that was obvious, wasn’t it? “I’m not sure he’s narrowed his topic yet. He would like to do something original, but that’s difficult.”

“No specific agenda, then?”

“No. This is really meant to be more of a vacation for us. A second honeymoon, even.”

“Hmph.”

Elizabeth was baffled. What was Dr. Greystone getting at? Did she suspect Richard of trying to plagiarize her scholarship? What nonsense. And if she did, then why agree to be his tour guide? Unless she wanted to keep a closer eye on him. But Richard was no threat to Dr. Greystone. She was an internationally acknowledged authority.

Elizabeth was still puzzling over her guide’s strange behavior some time later when they returned to the main floor of the Assembly Rooms. The ballroom was occupied with far fewer visitors than it had been earlier, and Elizabeth was reminded of the end of Catherine’s first evening there when, as it drew to a close and the throng dispersed enough for Catherine to be seen, Jane Austen again showed the underlying good sense of her imaginative heroine when two gentlemen pronounced her to be a pretty girl.

Elizabeth smiled as she recalled that Catherine “immediately thought the evening pleasanter than she had found it before—her humble vanity was contented—she felt more obliged to the two young men for this simple praise than a true-quality heroine would have been for fifteen sonnets in celebration of her charms, and went to her chair in good humour with everybody, and perfectly satisfied with her share of public attention.”

Elizabeth was so enjoying her thoughts that she almost walked into a newcomer to the room. “Careful.” Hands grasped her by each shoulder.

She started to cry out when she looked up. “Richard!” She fell against him with a gasp of laughter. “Oh, I’m so glad it’s you.”

“Of course it’s me. Who did you expect?”

“I don’t know. No one, really. It’s just that I had the feeling—earlier. Oh, nothing. Truly. I’m just so glad to see you. I was lost in thought, remembering Catherine Morland’s first visit to the Upper Rooms, and I had been wishing you were here.”

“And here I am. I trust that rake John Thorpe hasn’t engaged you for a dance?” He held out his hand as if he would lead her to the floor.

She placed her hand in his, wishing for the swirling music of a waltz, but instead it was the sharp tones of Muriel Greystone that filled their ears. “So, you have joined us, Dr. Spenser. You don’t mean to say you’ve completed your work at the Centre?”

“Not completed, no. Arthur is still beavering away. But we have discovered something.”

Elizabeth caught her breath. She had the strongest impulse to clap her hand over Richard’s mouth. But if they had found something exciting in that box of papers, why on earth shouldn’t he tell Muriel?

Chapter 5

“OF COURSE, IT’S JUST guesswork at this point, but I couldn’t wait to tell you.” Richard retained his grasp on Elizabeth’s hand and spoke directly to her, but Muriel Greystone assumed command of the conversation.

“What did you find?”

“Well, it’s hard to say at this point.”

“Come on, out with it, man. Either you found something or you didn’t.”

Richard looked around a bit wildly. He hoped he wasn’t showing how trapped he felt by Muriel’s insistence. He wanted to tell Elizabeth what he suspected, but he didn’t want to be ridiculed by the expert Dr. Greystone before he had had a chance to check on whether or not this fit the known facts.

“Well—” The inference was clear. Richard could have been a wayward undergraduate who had turned up for his tutorial woefully unprepared.

He realized now. He should have stayed in the office and continued on through the other papers with Arthur rather than dashing off to share with Elizabeth. Unfortunately, he was into it now. No going back. “Yesterday, when we were touring the Jane Austen Centre, I quite literally bumped into a continuation of
The Watsons
by Edith Brown, her great-grandniece.”

Muriel gave an impatient wave to indicate that this was old news and certainly of no scholarly interest. But Elizabeth’s eyes lit up. “Did you find evidence of Jane’s plan?” Elizabeth gasped. “Not journal notes in Jane’s own handwriting? A letter? A letter to Cassandra?”

“No, no, nothing that direct, I’m afraid. But, yes, a letter. From Edith to her father about a biography they were collaborating on about his grandfather.”

Muriel snorted. “Don’t tell me that’s the cause of all this excitement. Surely you know the book—Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers.”

Richard knew the book and the subtitle as well: Being the Adventures of Sir Francis Austen, G.C.B., Admiral of the Fleet and Rear-Admiral Charles Austen by John Henry and Edith Charlotte Hubback, but Muriel allowed for no reply.

“It’s standard-enough fare. Since it was published in 1906, it’s hardly a matter of amazement that such letters would be extant.

“Of course you know,” although her tone indicated that she didn’t think they did, “the whole thing was something of a cottage industry for the Hubback family. Catherine, daughter of Jane’s brother Francis, published the first completion of
The Watsons
in 1850. Called it
The Younger Sister
. Her husband had some sort of breakdown and she had to support her family.”

Richard started to make a comment, but the lecturer was in full sail. Richard could almost hear the clicking of keys as her students took notes on their laptops. “Edith carried on the tradition begun by her grandmother Catherine. After her completion of
The Watsons
—interesting that both are supposed to be from Jane’s plan, yet are quite different books—Edith published more continuations of Jane Austen’s novels. She can be said to have set off the phenomenon of the Austen sequel for good. Or for evil, depending on your point of view.”

Richard nodded.
Margaret Dashwood; or Interference,
and
Susan Price; or Resolution.
He was about to mention the titles when Muriel’s monologue took a sharp U-turn. “Still, I suppose it would be interesting enough to see your letter. Anything with an Austen connection seems to rouse a certain level of excitement these days. I suppose the Centre will want to put it in a glass case, at a minimum.”

“Yes, as you say.” Richard had to restrain himself from bowing to her. He would have liked to turn pointedly to Elizabeth for his next question, but he didn’t want to be rude to Muriel, no matter how domineering she was. “I, ah, was wondering if I could take you ladies to a late lunch.”

Elizabeth agreed readily, but much to his relief, Muriel said something about meeting Gerri. “Need to see how her work went this morning. She’ll probably be needing a spot of bucking up.” She started to turn toward the exit. “Ta, ta.”

“Oh, Dr. Greystone, er—Muriel,” Elizabeth called. “Thank you for the tour this morning. It’s really magnificent.” She spread her arm to encompass the entire museum. Muriel gave a jerky nod and left.

“Oh, my goodness,” Elizabeth took Richard’s arm. “That woman is heavy going. But I did appreciate her showing me around. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this.”

Richard led her to the door. “What do you say to lunch in the Pump Room?”

They walked downhill toward the Abbey and Roman Baths which were the heart of the city, too busy enjoying the sights and dodging the bustling tourists for a sustained conversation. Elizabeth exclaimed at the overflowing floral baskets hanging from the double arms of the gas lamps marching down the middle of the pedestrianized area. At busy Cheap Street, they were obliged to stand for several moments, waiting for a break in the traffic so they could cross into the Abbey churchyard.

Richard smiled and quoted, “Ah, the difficulties of crossing Cheap Street, ‘a street of so impertinent a nature.’”