CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Finally in my room, I settled myself on the wonderfully comfy bed, propped up by plenty of pillows, and I reached for Charlotte’s notebook lying on the duvet.
I re-read the diary entries that had sparked my imagination when I’d read them on the train. Then eagerly, I read on:
They met again this evening. I walked a little way ahead as they lingered at the bend in the lane, unseen by anyone passing by on the road.
J remained composed, but my dear brother Lovell could not command himself quite so well, and I was struck, not for the first time, by the difference in their years.
He so much younger than she. Their worlds are so different.
J is occupied playing the piano, writing letters, paying visits and sewing with her sister and her mother.
Lovell’s days are spent in labours which help to put food on the table.
Their affections I know to be honest and true. But I wonder how such a thing can ever be made right in the eyes of our neighbours in the village.
July 27th
The old oak tree at the bend in the lane is now privy to the secret I alone have been guarding. I went there today, looking behind me to ensure I walked alone and was not observed, and I placed the letter my brother had entrusted to me deep in the hollow of the tree.
I allowed myself a smile of true pleasure when I thought how it would be received .
. . how every word would be read over and again until she could recite it from memory!
The letter would be as precious to J as the folding writing slope given to her by her father for her travels, and which I know she treasures dearly.
August 15th
J spoke to me again of the door at the cottage and said, with a smile, that she hoped it should never be mended. ‘It gives warning,’ she said, ‘and I prefer to be warned.’ I believe she meant more than she chose to explain!
October 12th
There are matters I will not set down, even here. It is enough to say that I have promised to keep close what must be kept from others. But they must part. They must! For society will not give its blessing to such a union. But I fear it will end in hurt to all parties.
January the 8th
It is decided. My brother Lovell will sail before the month is out, and no objection has been raised, for there is nothing in such a plan that invites remark.
He says the sea will make a man of him, and I believe it will at least keep them both from the disapproval of those whose favourite pursuit in life appears to be gossip and the procurement of it!
Should their friendship become known, judgement would be severe – and I mean to keep them both from suffering such a fate.
J received the news with a steadiness that I admired.
She wished Lovell well and spoke of the usefulness of his employment, and of how little one may choose the direction of one’s life.
‘Though one may choose to bear it,’ she said, with a smile that spoke of her courage and her grief all at once.
I saw that smile fade the instant Lovell hastened from the room.
There will be no more meetings, no more arrangements that require my help. I am relieved of my office, though not of my concern. I hope I have helped them part without bitterness, and without consequence to anyone but themselves.
Later, I lay in the claw-foot bath among the silky, scented bubbles, thinking about the doomed love affair between Charlotte’s brother Lovell and her friend.
‘J’ was clearly older than Lovell, who was probably around twenty-two at the time of Charlotte’s diary entries. For there to have been a noticeable difference between them, ‘J’ must have been maybe thirty-five, forty even?
I found Charlotte’s reluctance to commit all the details of the romance to paper very frustrating because I wanted to know more!
But I understood the need for secrecy. In those days, a romantic bond between two people of differing ages would have caused a real scandal – even more so, I imagined, if the woman was older, and if the woman’s place in society was higher up the social scale than her agricultural worker lover.
Three details intrigued me.
There was the mention of the door that needed attention but which J was resisting having fixed.
I was trying not to leap ahead in my imagination and make up things that weren’t actually there.
But . . . could this be the door that squeaked?
The door that Jane Austen found so useful in alerting her to unexpected visitors when she was busy writing her stories?
(Or busy entertaining certain guests of the male variety, which would have to be kept a secret?
But that was just my wild imaginings, of course.)
The other things that caught my attention were the mention of J having a sister, and also Charlotte making reference to J’s ‘writing slope’.
I knew from books I’d read about the period that these portable writing desks were fairly common in Jane Austen’s day, and were especially useful for people who wrote letters regularly.
They could be used as a case when travelling.
And . . . I remembered reading that Jane’s father, the Rev George Austen, had gifted his daughter one such desk on the occasion of her nineteenth birthday.
A feeling of excitement was building inside.
I’d need to talk it all over with Dante. We couldn’t jump the gun and start making wild assumptions.
But was it possible that Charlotte’s friend, who she talked of as simply ‘J’, was actually Jane Austen herself?