Jane and the Man of the Cloth (2 page)

Jane and the Man of the Cloth
offers one possible answer to the debate. Austen's acquaintance with both Geoffrey Sidmouth, whom she believed to be the notorious Reverend, and Captain Percival Fielding—as well as Sidmouth's friendship with the medical doctor William Dagliesh, whom Cassandra knew and might well have visited in later years—make it likely that the writer's “nameless and dateless” romance occurred in Lyme in the late summer of 1804. To offer further evidence here would be to spoil the tale for the reader; so I shall allow Jane to speak for herself and leave it to the reader to determine the truth of matters.

In editing this volume, I found that Geoffrey Morley's 1983 work,
Smuggling in Hampshire and Dorset: iy00—1850
(Newbury UK: Countryside Books), was very nearly indispensable. I would offer it to readers who wish to know more about Free Trade and the Gentlemen of the Night. Novelist John Fowles, who has lived and worked in Lyme for many years, is the author of
A Short History of Lyme Regis
(Little, Brown
8c
Co., 1982), a concise but thorough summary of the town and its past.

STEPHANIE BARRON
EVERGREEN, COLORADO

1
For a full account of the journals’ discovery, readers are directed to the Editor's Foreword in the first volume of the Austen collection, published by Bantam Books in May 1995 under the tide
of Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor.

2
For an excellent survey of the “nameless and dateless” romance theories, as well as a rich portrait of Austen's milieu, see George Holbert Tucker,
Jave Austen the Woman,
St. Martin's Press, 1994.

3 September 1804
at High Down Grange,
on the Lyme road

∼

I
T IS? TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED, THAT THE EXPECTATION
of pleasure is generally preferred to its eventual attainment—the attainment being marred, at its close, by the resumption of quotidian routine made onerous by the very diversions so lately enjoyed. But as I gaze upon the tortured aspect of my dearest sister, her head bound round in a makeshift bandage, her pallor extreme, and her features overlaid with suffering, I must declare all such nice distinctions the indulgence of a frivolous mind. For how much more melancholy still, to find pleasure usurped entirely by the advent of disaster! To have no chance of mourning the
end
of good times, by observing them waylaid and truly routed before they had even
begun!
And Cassandra's is the sort of misfortune one never anticipates, being met in unhappy accident—the chance of a moment decided it; and the course of our long-awaited pleasure trip to Lyme is thrown utterly to the winds.

But I write entirely of outcomes, and am quite heedless of causes; a testament to the discomposure of my mind. I shall step back, the better to govern the tumult of my reason, and endure again the horror of those moments that left my dear one insensible in a stranger's bed.

BATH BEING UNBEARABLY HOT THIS AUGUST, AND MY FATHER'S
health indifferent, we determined to exchange our rooms in Town for more salubrious ones along the coast. We had little inclination to try the bustle and vulgarity of Ramsgate,
¹
though my brother Edward
would
take a large establishment there; Brighton was not even to be spoken of; and so to Dorsetshire we would go, and to Lyme Regis in particular, having made a several-weeks’ trial of its delights the previous autumn. No coaching inn should be good enough accommodation on the present occasion, however; none of your Three Cups or Golden Lions would do for us—no, the Austens of Bath should travel in style, and take furnished lodgings. A cottage on the water, where my mother might gaze at the sea, and consider her Naval sons, and my father might indulge his passion for botany in walks along the shingle, should do very well. Cassandra and I meant to be happy with frequent turns about the Cobb,
²
and even more frequent dances in the town's pretty little Assembly Rooms; our memories of the place were so cheerful, in fact, that the plan met with immediate approval. Bath was forgotten; Ramsgate consigned to those of little sense or taste; and Lyme became the object of all our fondest hopes.

Being possessed of a fortune that no longer admits of a private carriage, but finding ourselves above the meaner conveyance of mail coach and stage—the former being adjudged too swift and precarious for my father's temper, and the latter too crowded and vulgar for my mother's— we were forced to adopt the only alternative, a post chaise initiating in Bath, with horses changed daily
en route.
Having descended towards the southern coast by way of Shepton Mallet, Somerton, and Crewkerne, as recommended by
Paterson's
³
we were even yet embarked today upon the final stage of our journey, with a new postboy, hailing from Lyme, mounted before; when the appearance of a murkiness upon the horizon gave rise to general alarm. Our fears were rewarded, as such fears generally are, with the sudden convergence of a gale above our heads; and the fierceness of the wind and rain that then ensued was indescribable.

Though it was not much beyond six o'clock, the light had failed utterly, leaving the interior of our coach in a grey dimness through which the faces of my sister and mother, seated opposite, shone palely. Cassandra, who is ever indisposed by the motion of a carriage, and who, after long days of travel, was at the last extremity of her endurance, was in very ill looks; and her temper could hardly be improved by the proximity of my mother, whose general alarm at the fearful neighs of the horses as the storm built wrathfully above our heads, and the postboy's resultant curses, had taught her to seek comfort in a fierce pinching of Cassandra's hand within her own. I observed the whitened knuckles of her grip, and silently thanked the force of chance that had placed me beside my father.

“We shall be overturned! I am sure of it! Overturned, Mr. Austen!” my mother cried.

“Now, my dearest,” my father said, in a tone ofgende reproof, “you must not give way to womanly fears. The Lord looks after His own.”

“Then He must be looking after them in Town,” my mother replied, in some exasperation, “for He is assuredly
not
along the Lyme road at present. We shall be overturned, and all of us killed, and I should like to know what you will say
then,
Mr. Austen. I am sure you shall be very sorry you did not listen to your wife!”

“Now, my dear,” my father said again, and took up once more his book.

A fearsome jolt then occurring, I was thrown abruptly against the coach window, and seized my chance to gaze out upon a storm-tossed world. The pitted road, but poorly maintained in the best of times, was awash in muddy water; the adjacent trees lashed into silvery indistinctness by the combined effects of wind and rain; and no relief apparent in the lowering density of cloud. I drew back to the relative comfort of the coach's interior, and attempted to calculate the distance remaining. We were some hours removed from Crewkerne, where we had spent the previous day and evening, not being prone to Sunday travel;
⁴
and should even now be breasting the long hill into Up Lyme. Was not the carriage rising? But as this very thought struck, a yet more bone-rattling shudder seized the coach's frame, as though a great beast had taken us up in its jaws and tossed us about for sport. I cried out, and was rewarded with a look of terror from my mother and a squeak of pain from Cassandra, whose hand was no doubt suffering under the effects of her companion's anxiety.

“Overturned, Mr. Austen!” the good woman cried, and half-stood as though to throw herself upon her husband's breast.

A great crash from the road ahead, and a lurching of the carriage; then the screaming of horses, and a tumult that could only be due to chaos within the traces. For the world to revolve an hundred degrees, was required but a moment; and when I found the courage to open my eyes, the floor was become the coach's ceiling. A most ludicrous position, particularly when viewed through a quantity of muslin, the result of one's skirts being tipped over one's head. I lay an instant in utter silence, feeling the rapid patter of my heart and the laboured nature of my breathing; and was relieved to find that both continued in force.

A grunt from my father roused me.

“Sir!” I cried, endeavouring to secure him amidst the murk and confusion. “May I be of assistance?”

At that, the coach's nether door was seized and opened—by the postboy, no doubt—and my father, whose main support the door had been, tumbled from the vehicle. Hardly a dignified antic for a clergyman of three-and-seventy, but followed by the still less-seemly exit of his younger daughter, her skirts in a tangle about her knees. The relief, however, at being freed from such a world gone topsyturvy, was beyond every indecorous attempt to achieve it; I drew a shaky breath and tested my limbs, heedless of the fierce rain that pelted my cap. My father, having been helped to his feet by the postboy (a burly fellow of some five-and-thirty, one Hibbs by name), was seized with a coughing fit. The poor man's senses were little assisted when Hibbs thought to pound upon his back, and I hastened to intervene.

“Father,” I said, taking him by the arm, “I trust you are not injured in any way?”

“Only in complaisance, my dear,” he replied, with the ghost of a smile, “and that has been decidedly shaken. I shall be forced to attend your mother's every warning, by and by—a triumph, I fear, that she shall not know how to sustain.”

My mother! I turned in an instant, and peered back within the carriage's depths—and oh! What a scene I then descried!

My beloved sister lay wan and lifeless, in a heap of crushed muslin against the coach's farthest wall—the wall that had received all the force of impact in the conveyance's upheaval. My mother was attempting to shift Cassandra towards the open door—which, given the tossing of the coach, was well above her head; but the poor woman lacked the strength for it, and was reduced to tears as a consequence.

“Stay, madam,” I cried, and leapt for the postboy.

The man Hibbs saw the necessity in a moment; and lifted Cassandra to safety so swiftly and gently that I was all but struck speechless; the condition of the poor sufferer being of paramount importance, however, I offered broken thanks and turned to her comfort, overcome by nameless dread. So much lively beauty, reduced to deathly silence! It was not to be borne. My beloved sister was carried to the shelter of a tree, and my father's cloak propped on a few sticks above her, in an ineffectual attempt to shield her from the rain.

My mother's wails declared her incapable of use; my father was consigned to comfort her; and 1 turned to Cassandra to see what ill I might find.

A great bruise overspread her temple, and in feeling about her scalp, I was rewarded by a grimace of pain flitting across her countenance, and a warm trickle of blood upon my fingertips. I chafed her wrists, and called her name; implored her, in desperation, to awake; but she continued insensible, lying at the verge of the road like so much cast-off clothing. The horror that seized me then! I shudder to recall it. I was the closest to despair 1 have been in all my life—and so resolved upon action. To
do,
when one is very nearly past hope, is the sole means of relief. I turned from Cassandra and looked for the postboy.

“Hibbs!” I shouted. The tumult of the storm continued unabated, making all attempt at conversation a dubious affair.

“Yes, miss,” the man rejoined, turning from the wreckage of his rig.

“My sister cannot remain here”

“Don't know as she ‘as much choice, beggin’ yer pardon, miss. The horses be gone, and the coach a fair ruin. Then there's the matter o’ that there tree,” he said, tossing a look over his shoulder.

I regained my feet and peered ahead into the tempest A massive trunk indeed lay full across the road, barring further passage. How unfortunate that it should be
before
us, rather than behind. But I comprehended, now, the reason for the horses’ terror and flight. We were any of us fortunate to be alive.

“We cannot hope to shift it?”

Hibbs shook his head in reply. “And with the nags run off—”

“Then we must fetch assistance from some neighbouring farm,” I said with authority, and cast about me into the gloom. Misfortune could not have chosen a more desolate place to befall us. As far as the gaze might reach, the high downs roiled unimpeded to the sea. But wait—

“Is not that a light, away there in the distance?”

The postboy shrugged, and his brows lowered. “Happen it is. But you'll not be finding help for the young lady at the Grange.”