CHRISTMAS TO TWELFTH NIGHT PASSED IN A FASCINATING BLUR OF feasting and wassailing and Yule log lore and mummers before life settled into the quiet routine of a rural winter, but two things troubled me. We could not live at Chawton forever; although Edward insisted, in his quiet way, that we were his guests as long as we wished, there’s oppression in being a houseguest, even in the friendliest house. We needed a place near enough to visit Jane and the others easily, but nothing seemed to be available. Edward kept assuring us he had his ears open, that it would all work out, and anyway we were welcome.
And then there was the problem of winning over the ladies at the cottage, to find a way to the letters and the manuscript. Progress felt slow, particularly before Jane’s return from London. I’d called on Martha and Mrs. Austen and Cassandra several times in those weeks, and was received with more formality than warmth; I sensed they did not know what to make of me. The wealth that had gotten Henry’s attention made us almost too grand for them; this might have been making them uncomfortable. Yet it was irritating to notice how they’d seemed much happier the few times Liam accompanied me. He was better with the banter; I’d resigned myself to that. Worse was my suspicion they considered him more important merely by his being male. A widespread attitude in 1815, but to find it at Jane Austen’s house, of all places, was disturbing.
MARY-JANE, AGED SEVEN AND A HALF, ENJOYED SPILLIKINS, which I also turned out to be good at, and sewed faster and better than I. She liked to question me about Jamaica, showing lively curiosity but a grasp of geography strangely weak for a sea captain’s daughter. With Jane back, she had new enthusiasm for visiting her aunts, and I often accompanied her. I grew attuned to the rhythms of that household, learning not to call too early, when Mary-Jane and I would be in danger of finding Martha Lloyd and Cassandra busy at some household task and Jane at her little table in the front room, putting away pen and paper and looking up at us with a strained smile. An hour or two after noon was best; weak winter light streamed into the parlor and everyone sat down to sew, the talk flowing more freely when it was just women: village gossip, family gossip, discussion of whatever book was currently being read aloud in the evenings.
Jane’s return, and her obvious warmth toward me, seemed to have reassured the others. My sense of becoming closer to them all had limits, though. I was no nearer to the letters or “The Watsons”; I had never gained access to the bedrooms upstairs, where they presumably were. One day I’d chanced to find myself alone in the front room with her writing desk sitting temptingly open, papers arrayed around it covered with tiny lines of her beautiful handwriting. I’d just stared at it, fascinated but unwilling to come closer, not sure even in that moment if it was fear of getting caught or the dishonor of the act that stopped me. Perhaps one need not exclude the other.
WHILE JANE AUSTEN WAS IMAGINING THE FAMILY OF UNMARRIED Watson sisters left in dire financial straits by the death of their father, her own father died. Like the fictional Mr. Watson, Mr. Austen was a retired clergyman, kind and intelligent. Like the Watson women, the Austens were left to manage on a painfully meager income, but were richer than their fictional counterparts in brothers. Without James, Edward, Henry, Frank, and Charles, Jane would have ended up like the Bront?s, a governess or a schoolteacher; it is the dreadful fate that lurks offstage in her work. And perhaps it is no accident that it was her friend Anne Sharpe, long-suffering former governess for Edward Knight’s children, to whom she confided she had finished “The Watsons” but would never try to publish it. “It turned out, my dear Anne, to have shown far too much of my heart,” she explains in the Croydon Ivanhoe letter.
“Poverty is a great evil; but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest,” earnest Emma Watson says in “The Watsons,” adding: “I would rather be teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.”
To which one of her sisters replies: “I would rather do anything than be teacher at a school.”
OUR WALKS TO SEE JANE AND THE OTHERS DELIGHTED ME NOT ONLY because of the destination: Mary-Jane outside was even more entertaining than Mary-Jane inside. Tutored by her father, she knew a lot about nature, not just for a little girl, but for anyone. We took the long way, through the woods, where even in their leafless state she could identify every tree I asked about, as well as point out the burrows of various animals.
“A fox lives there,” she said, pointing to one. “Or, he used to. I hope he moved away. They hunt them, you know. I think it is horrible.”
I did too, but I was wary of agreeing too readily, as if I might betray myself as alien. “But they eat the chickens. That is not good.”
“We eat the chickens. Why is that better? The fox has to live, too.”
“Mary-Jane, you are wise beyond your years. What is that tree?”
“For shame, ’tis a hornbeam. Everyone knows that. And look there—”
I looked where she pointed, but saw nothing.
“An owl! In the hollow of that tree, there.”
Then I saw it: a spookily pale heart-shaped face looking at us, large eyes and no visible beak. “What kind of owl is he?”
“Barn,” she said pityingly. “You don’t know anything, do you?”
“Do you know the names of all the plants, too? Will you teach me, when they start to come up?”
“I don’t know the names of all the plants,” she corrected. But she promised to teach me what she knew, and when spring came, she proved true to her word.
MARY-JANE AND HER FAMILY HAD MOVED OUT OF CHAWTON HOUSE by then, to the place in nearby Alton that they had arranged to rent. And so had Liam and I, with surprising ease considering all the energy I’d put into worrying about it. Edward had assured us that he would be the first to hear of anything suitable, but in the end it was Jane who saved us.
“I had it from old John Waring, who delivers milk for the Prowtings, who heard it from the carpenter there,” she told me one day in early January. “They had found a new tenant for Ivy Cottage, had even made some repairs, which it badly needed, but now it’s all gone awry.” She looked up from her sewing. “You have said you are looking for something, so I thought I would mention it. But Ivy Cottage is very humble. Probably it will not answer.”
“Is it one of those brick thatched ones, beyond the turning to the Winchester road?”
“Not the one that looks like a strong wind could bring it down at any moment, the other one.” She paused. “It is even smaller than this house. I should not have mentioned it, only—”
“No, I am very glad you did.”
I WAS GRATIFIED NOT ONLY BY THE PROSPECT OF LIVING SO NEAR, but also that she had told me about it; this meant she was willing to have us there. When I raised the subject with Edward at dinner, he looked surprised, then doubtful.
“I knew about that. But it isn’t the sort of place you would want to live in, I assure you. Very small.”
“We have no need for a palace,” Liam said. “It sounds charming. I shall write Mr. Prowting at once.”
“We can go call on him tomorrow,” Edward said, still looking doubtful. “I have a free morning, and I am sure he would be happy to—But you will not—Well, you will see.”