“Oh, mother of god, it was humiliating.” He paused and added: “And, that thing he was wearing? I want one. I am going to the tailor’s tomorrow.”
His digression into fashion amused me more than I let on. “The banyan? It was nice. But, more to the point, you sly dog, did you know? Did you know, when you went back there—”
“That I was taking us to meet Jane Austen?”
“Exactly.”
He did not answer right away. “Something Henry said earlier made me know she was in the house. But if you are asking if I expected that—no.”
“She said she wanted to talk to me again. But I don’t know if she meant it.” I paused. “Do you think she suspects . . .” I stopped, thinking my question would just sound crazy to him.
“That we are time travelers from the future? No.”
CHAPTER 6
OCTOBER 17
33 Hill Street
I WOKE UP WITH A SORE JAW, LIKE I’D BEEN CLENCHING MY TEETH in my sleep, and a memory of a dream about Isaac of York, the emotionally overwrought moneylender in Ivanhoe. I did not have to work to understand: Isaac personified my anxiety about what I’d decided against asking Liam on the way home. But would they even recognize a Jew? I wondered, eyes still closed. Or would they expect the hook-nosed caricature of satirical prints? Chances are Jane never saw one before, up close. But Henry. Could you work as a London banker in 1815 and never—
But I had more immediate problems. Yesterday, meeting her had loomed as a huge achievement; today, it made me realize how many hurdles remained. We had to devise a reason to be in Chawton, and a way not just to be invited to her house, but to get into the very bedroom of the two sisters, the probable location of the letters and “The Watsons.” To earn her trust, and to know her so well she would confide details of her illness. Yet it was clear she did not like people easily or right away, unlike her brother, and had no motive to cultivate them for business reasons, as he did. How to make her like us? It seemed hopeless. What did I have to offer? My starstruck adoration would only scare her. My knowledge of her future, posthumous fame—but what use was that; how could I leverage it?
Perhaps, in superior understanding. What I love about Jane Austen has never been the marriage plot; the quest for a husband in her novels struck me, even when I was younger and more susceptible, as a MacGuffin, or at least a metaphor. I have always suspected this is how she meant her books to be read. Many people from my world find it strange, even tragic, that the author of such emotionally satisfying love stories apparently never found love herself, but I don’t.
For one thing, she was a genius: burning with the desire to create undying works of art, not a cozy home for a husband and children. For another, she wrote the world she knew, and what she felt would appeal to readers. The marriage plot is interesting mostly for how it illuminates the hearts of her characters, what they learn about themselves on the way to the altar. She concerns herself with bigger questions: how to distinguish good people from plausible fakes; what a moral life demands of us; the problem of how to be an intelligent woman in a world that had no real use for them. If I could get to the point of talking about her books with her, and make it clear I understood this—maybe then she would see I was not like everyone else, and I would not need to steal “The Watsons.” She would share the manuscript with me of her own accord.
I was consumed with curiosity about this book; what did it reveal about her, that she felt the need to destroy it?
THE FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS, ALL THAT SURVIVED IN MY TIME, TELL the story of Emma Watson, nineteen, brought up by her wealthy, affectionate aunt and uncle in refined comfort and expectations of a tidy inheritance. When the action opens, her uncle has died, her aunt has remarried unwisely, and Emma has been cast out penniless, to return to brothers and sisters she barely remembers, and a kind but ailing father, whose impending death is certain to make the four unmarried sisters’ precarious financial situation even worse.
Why Jane Austen supposedly never finished it is a question that has long tormented scholars. James-Edward Austen, the nephew who would in his old age write the first biography of his aunt, snobbishly speculated she had made a mistake in setting the novel among people too lowborn. Others have argued that its depiction of the brutalities of class and money was too painfully realistic for her to continue with. But I never believed that, even before the discovery of the Anne Sharpe letter. Sense and Sensibility has an equally grim opening of disinheritance and a slide down the economic ladder; if we did not know its happy ending, we would think of it differently.
LATER THAT MORNING, WHEN I ARRIVED TO VISIT MRS. TILSON, she greeted me with “Miss Ravenswood, such good news: Mr. Austen’s sister is come to town!”
“Yes. I went to Number Twenty-three with my brother—which is how I missed your call yesterday—and there I had the pleasure of meeting her.”
“So you saw him? Mr. Tilson says he is excessively ill, and has not appeared at the bank for days.”
“My brother was concerned about his health, and stopped to inquire.”
“And?”
“And there we had the pleasure to meet Miss Austen.”
“Oh, she is a delightful creature! But, what of Mr. Austen? Is he really very ill?”
I hesitated. “My brother expects him to make a full recovery.”
“The poor man, he has suffered enough. The loss of his wife—”
“Yes, very sad.” I was trying to decide how to direct the conversation back to his sister when I did not have to: the servant appeared to announce her.
That morning Liam had decided to go see Henry again, while I’d come along to Hans Place but had gone next door, to Mrs. Tilson, whom I owed a visit. I hadn’t felt ready to see Jane again so soon. Despite being what I had come to 1815 for, it had been overwhelming; I needed to process the experience, maybe think of some suitable conversational topics I could produce with the appearance of spontaneity the next time we met. That she might show up at Mrs. Tilson’s was a possibility I should have anticipated, but hadn’t.
She was wearing the same light blue dress as on the previous day and a warm smile that dwindled as she walked into the room and realized Mrs. Tilson was not alone. She doesn’t like me, I thought, my courage failing. And why should she?
“Dear Jane!” Mrs. Tilson stood up to take her hands and give her a kiss on each cheek. “How is your brother? Better today, I hope.”
She took a moment before replying, still holding Mrs. Tilson’s hands. “He says he will go to the bank, though he has not actually gone yet. He sends his best love.” She acknowledged me with a quick look.
“Miss Ravenswood tells me her brother is confident of his speedy recovery.”
Jane gave me a second look. “Is he? A comfort indeed.”