Seven. Platitudes
Seven
Platitudes
THAT SAME NIGHT
Portsdown Lodge, June 16, 1865
The thin white curtains blew back into the study with the breeze. Admiral Sir Francis Austen stood before the open window, peering out at sea through his finest telescope tonight. The four-pull spyglass had been an early gift from his patron, Admiral Lord Gambier, for whom Frank had commanded the Peterel and captured forty ships when just a lowly officer himself.
The view of the night sky yielded nothing but a last-quarter moon and summer constellations, and the easterly wind foretold a stormy sea, but Frank could not repress his excitement. He was eager for his visitors from the New World. Had they already met on the China ? Who might be first to disclose the reason for their trip? Certainly not Henrietta, whose poise and discretion shone through her letters, nor Nicholas Nelson, the very formal and restrained businessman. Frank intuited such similarity between these two eldest siblings, each of them towing a younger, more impetuous one along.
As the sixth of the late Reverend George Austen’s eight children, Frank had for a time been indulged and mischievous himself, the boy affectionately called “Fly,” until Jane and then Charles had come along and stolen his luster. Perhaps this was one reason why his mood of late kept turning in a more playful direction, after decades of crushing responsibility and deep, abiding faith. There was a change in his bones, a strange new lightness—a buoyancy—to accompany the frailty; he could tell the end was near.
The recent and fortuitous correspondence with two sets of American siblings was also setting Frank’s mind to race; he came from a long line of matchmakers, after all. His second wife, Martha, despite being ten years Jane’s senior, had proved to be her lifelong friend, and early on Jane had tried but failed to match her with Frank. Jane had even dedicated one of her juvenilia to Martha and given her a place of prominence within the small circle of people aware of her writing. Martha had kept the secret of her authorship for years, until Jane left them all far too early and the question of her legacy had begun. Years later, a widowed Frank had indeed married Martha Lloyd to the satisfaction of almost everyone—Jane’s keen eye always won out in the end.
Martha’s late-in-life marriage to Frank had not, however, pleased the distant aunt on whose eventual bequest he and his large family had long depended. He had further failed to consider how the date of this second marriage, being the same as his first, might put some relations off. The disapproving aunt had left her nephew ten thousand pounds instead of the hoped-for estate, and a nonplussed Frank had immediately bought Portsdown Lodge, with its fourteen bedrooms, thirty-five acres, and view of his beloved sea. All’s well that ends well , he had declared at the time, prone to platitudes as he was.
Today Frank resided at Portsdown with six servants and only his youngest daughter, Fanny-Sophia, for company. At age forty-four, Fanny was not married and unlikely to become so. Then again, Martha, nine years Frank’s senior, had married him when she was sixty-three ( Hope springs eternal , he also liked to say). Since Martha’s death in 1843, Fanny had run the household for her father, keeping a tight ship but a loose lid on her emotions. Frank found himself increasingly unsure of how she would react next—he only knew that she would, and this shredded his nerves like so much rope.
“Father, the hour.” Fanny stood in the doorway to the study in her plain white muslin dressing gown and cap, kerosene lamp in hand, the shadows under her eyes as dark as bruises. “You should have retired long ago.”
She always spoke to him as if he was the child. It was not endearing and made him trust her even less. “You must not worry so, my dear. This night owl has lasted long enough.”
She bustled over and slammed the window next to him shut. “I wouldn’t want you on ship in this wind.”
Frank didn’t respond. The sea was, in fact, all he wanted. In its place, he would deal with the past before it was too late.
Fanny bent down to give his cheek a dutiful kiss goodnight, and Frank tapped her hand on his shoulder several times in his eagerness to see her go. After she left, he waited for the tell-tale creak of the stairs, the low rumble of breathing through the floorboards above. Only then did he remove an unusual round key from inside his dressing gown collar. The key fit the special Bramah lock to his desk, the greatest security Frank could find for what was hidden inside: most of the little that remained of his famous sister’s writing.
Years ago, their sister Cassandra had destroyed nearly all of Jane’s correspondence. Of the several thousand letters Jane must have written in the course of her short life, Cassandra had only saved and bequeathed one hundred. She had marked to be burned on the rest, as forcefully as if written by Jane herself. But who was now to say? If Jane could have guessed at how much pleasure her books would continue to give, would she have relented? Yes, she at first published anonymously—“by a lady”—in the fashion of her time. But she had also been prodigiously proud of her talent, enjoyed hearing others talk about her books and kept record of it all, and would surely have been gratified by the increasing appreciation for her genius. Other famous authors held on to everything: there were at least ten volumes of Sir Walter Scott’s letters alone. Would Jane, discreet as she was, have been able to withstand the world’s interest in her as well as in her work?
Bending down on creaky knees, Frank inserted the round key to unlock the bottom drawer to his desk. He pulled out a cast-iron strongbox and placed it on top of the blotter, then used a smaller, different key from his dressing gown pocket to unlock that box as well. Inside were three stacks of paper, each tied with black ribbon. One stack contained dozens of letters from Jane, who had written monthly to each of her sailor brothers while at sea, with almost as many letters to Martha in the second stack. The third had been given to Frank decades ago and under strict instruction; until now, he had kept even the family from its existence.
Cassandra had been visiting Portsdown Lodge in the spring of 1845 when she had pressed it in his hands. Days later, she had collapsed from the strain on her heart and died in this very room. By then, Frank had left Portsmouth, under orders to depart for the Royal Navy’s North America and West Indies Station where he was to take command. It was their brother Henry who arranged for Cassandra to be brought home to Chawton and buried next to their mother.
Chawton had been the beloved home of Mrs. Austen and both her daughters, as well as Martha, who lived with them for years before her marriage to Frank. In 1809, all four women had moved into the little steward’s cottage on his brother Edward’s Chawton estate. Whenever Jane or Martha traveled from the village, they kept in constant touch through letters—letters that Frank now examined by firelight, an unintentionally large fraction of Jane’s physical legacy, plunder should it fall in the wrong hands. Like Cassandra, Martha had been a lodestar for Jane; someone to write for; a way home. Martha also helped keep house so that Jane could write, just as Fanny now did for him. But Frank needed no such freeing of time. If anything, he wished—and waited—for activity.
Just nine more days .