Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (18 page)

W
ith almost the full day in front of me, I said good-bye to Barry and ambled off down Long Acre toward Charing Cross Road. That busy thoroughfare had long been synonymous with bookstores, and what better way to kill a day than by immersing myself in them?

By the third shop, though, I was overwhelmed and irritable. I kept walking in the direction of the Thames and found myself in once-familiar territory. Just before Trafalgar Square, there on my right, was one of my favorite places in London. The National Portrait Gallery.

Most people, of course, preferred the centuries of European masterpieces at the larger National Gallery that fronted Trafalgar Square. But the Regency rooms at the Portrait Gallery, not to mention the restaurant on the top floor,
whose windows presented diners with a Peter Pan-like view of London's skyline, were something of a spiritual home for me. Any Austen aficionado, much less a true devotee, could revel for an entire afternoon in the Gainsborough and Reynolds portraits of luminaries like Admiral Nelson, Lord Byron, and King George III.

I ducked through the glass doors and made my way up the steps, then up the escalator to the third floor. My indulgence at this particular museum had been one of which Edward approved, although I'd had to feign interest as we wandered through all the other rooms before I finally lured him to the Regency Galleries.

While I loved the elegant portraits by the most renowned artists of that day, my favorite portrait had little, if any, artistic merit. It was also quite small, no more than a few inches square. The subject's sister had done a quick study in pencil and watercolor, left half finished, and no relative of the subject had ever thought it much resembled the person who posed for it.

Still, it was the only authenticated portrait of Jane Austen known to exist.

In the room dedicated to the artists and writers of the early nineteenth century, I paused before a small wooden pillar, not more than three feet high, topped with a glass case. As I stepped toward it, a dim light within the case flickered on, casting a pale glow over the picture.

There she was. She stared back at me, half slumped in a
chair with her arms crossed over her chest. A cap of some kind covered her head, with a few dark, curly tendrils escaping to dance across her forehead. She looked a little annoyed but not unpleasant, as if someone had interrupted her work, but since she loved that someone, she would tolerate the interruption. Her eyes were dark, her face round, her nose strong. I had seen portraits of her father, and I thought she resembled him. No known portrait of her mother existed. In fact, of all eight Austen children, only two never sat for a formal portrait--Jane and her brother George, who had been mentally handicapped or epileptic or somehow physically challenged. George had been farmed out to caretakers in a nearby village at an early age, so his lack of a portrait wasn't surprising. But Jane? Surely her family had suggested one.

I believed, judging from her expression in this authenticated picture, that she'd hated having her image taken with as much ferocity as she adored painting verbal pictures of her characters.

I stepped back, and the light flicked off, leaving Austen in the dark once more. I stepped forward. Illumination. Back. Shrouded in mystery once more. The symbolism wasn't exactly subtle.

Around me, visitors moved through the galleries, and when one or two stopped to see the Austen portrait, I graciously stepped aside. I stayed there, though, for a long while, studying her in both the light and the dark. She seemed so small
when compared with the other great figures of her day, whose images were captured on enormous canvases that dominated the high-ceilinged rooms around me.

Austen had been unknown to the public in her lifetime. Her books had been published with the simple attribution
By A Lady
or
By the Author of
, although her fans included the Prince Regent, later to become King George IV. Because she was a gentleman's daughter, the stench of trade prevented her from exposing herself publicly. But here she was in spite of that, in this room. The most modest, and yet in the minds of many, the greatest English novelist of them all.

Austen could so easily have been lost to history, had her father not championed her writing, had her brother Henry not been willing to act as her agent, had her family and friends not enjoyed her work and complimented her on her abilities and encouraged her to continue writing. The very existence of her novels was a miracle.

That thought, that moment, standing in front of her portrait, renewed in me a desire I hadn't experienced in years. I slipped my purse off my shoulder and dug around in it, fumbling for the notebook and pen I'd purchased that morning. I looked around, eager for a place to sit, but this particular gallery didn't have any benches, so I slid to the floor, letting go of any sense of dignity and decorum. Then I uncapped the pen and let it fly across the page.

I didn't know where the words came from, but they'd been
stored up for so long that there were oceans of them, pouring onto the page as quickly as my pen would allow. I must have sat there an hour or more, jotting down random thoughts and semicoherent memories, before a pair of navy slacks appeared beside me. I stopped writing and looked up, up, up to find a frowning security guard staring down from a great height. Well, probably not that great a height, but I was sitting on the floor, after all.

"Miss?" he asked, all British dignity. "Are you ill?"

Which was a polite way, of course, of saying that crazy Americans should get up off the floor and find a proper bench to sit on.

"Um, yeah. I mean, no. No, I'm fine."

With great reluctance, and a few imprecations muttered under my breath, I closed my notebook, put the cap back on my pen, and shoved both into my purse. Getting up off the floor took a minute, but I finally managed it. My legs were numb from sitting in such an unfamiliar position.

"Perhaps you would prefer a bench? There are some in the next room." Again, his tone was polite, but his meaning was clear.

"No, thank you. I believe I'm done in this gallery." I tried to smile brightly, to convince him I wasn't completely off the beam.

"Perhaps a cup of tea ..." He let the suggestion trail off. "There's a cafe downstairs, near the bookshop."

"Yes, that sounds lovely. I'll just ..." I turned and walked away with as much dignity as I could muster.

I didn't actually go to the cafe, though. Instead, I made my way out of the museum and around the corner to Trafalgar Square. Throngs of people filled the plaza, lunchtime hordes eating their meals on the vast steps or at the feet of the enormous lions that flanked Nelson's Column. Pigeons flew overhead, and traffic whizzed toward the Admiralty Arch and the long promenade of the Mall that led to Buckingham Palace.

Tea was an excellent suggestion. I couldn't fault the security guard for that. Perhaps a sandwich too. I headed off across the square and toward the arch. Just beyond, along the south side of the Mall, lay St. James's Park, yet another oasis of peaceful greenery in the midst of the city. It also boasted an excellent cafe. It was time to part with more of my precious pound notes, because what had just happened deserved a celebration. I had given in to that deep-seated, almost primeval impulse I'd ignored for years. I'd allowed myself to write. Not academic papers or abstracts or book reviews but real, original, personal writing. It felt glorious.

My lunch consisted of a chicken-and-bacon sandwich along with the prescribed cup of tea. I settled onto a bench under a sheltering tree beside the lake that stretched the length of the park. Like Kensington Gardens, this park had once been
attached to a nearby royal residence, in this case St. James's Palace.

From my vantage point, I could look across the water toward the magnificent white building known as the Horse Guards. Beyond that, the London Eye, the world's largest "Ferris" wheel, arched toward the sky. The clock tower of the Houses of Parliament loomed in its golden baroque glory next to it. The scene was postcard perfect.

The day was cooler, and the last of the bluebells decorated the edges of the sidewalks. My sandwich and tea tasted divine, and as I ate, I began to feel my strength return. It was not just physical strength but something spiritual as well. I felt more familiar to myself, more at home in my own skin.

When I raised the last bite of sandwich to my mouth, I studied my left hand. A pale strip remained at the base of my ring finger, reminding me that all evidence of my life with Edward was now gone. Well, not quite all. The sandwich demolished, I dug in my purse again, although this time not for my notebook and pen. Instead, my fingers found the side zipper pocket. I opened it and rummaged around until I found what I was looking for. I pulled out the objects and placed them in the palm of my other hand.

My wedding rings. I closed my fingers around them, weighed their lightness in my hand. Then, with a deep breath, I stood up, walked toward the water, and ...

Stopped my arm in midmotion. Instead of flinging my
rings into the lake, I shoved them into my pocket, picked up a small stone from the bank, and tossed it into the water. It landed with a satisfying plunk and sank beneath the surface, leaving only the small ripples that undulated outward, marking where it had disappeared. In a moment, even those were gone, and the surface of the lake was as still as ever.

I returned to the bench, opened my purse again, retrieved the notebook and pen, and set to work once more.

By the time midafternoon rolled around, it was a toss-up as to which was more sore, my hand from all that writing, my posterior from the wooden bench, or my brain. Writing like this was far different from dry academic scholarship. As I emerged from the trancelike state I'd been in, a thought occurred to me. While the theater might accommodate a range of apparel choices, dinner at the Ivy would require more elegance than my jeans, white button-down shirt, and cross-trainers provided. And unless I wanted to go home to Hampstead and change clothes, I was going to have to go shopping. But with what?

Almost of their own volition, my hand dug into the pocket of my jeans. My wedding rings. I hadn't been able to go through with it before, when I'd asked Adam about the pawnbrokers, but now--

It wasn't sensible. If I was going to pawn my rings, I knew I should save the resulting cash for the most absolute of
emergencies--in case I got sick or couldn't find any other way to buy a plane ticket home. I certainly shouldn't use it to go on a shopping spree, or even a shopping spurt.

But behind me, across Green Park, past the Ritz and Hatchards bookshop, lay Bond Street, Regent Street, and Oxford Street. Among the three, they were home to every designer and high-end boutique known to womankind. They were filled with appropriate choices for a night out at the theater followed by dinner at the Ivy. And all available to me, if I was willing to throw out all my old notions of doing the responsible thing and indulge myself for once.

Before I could allow myself to think it through, I leaped up, discarded the remains of my lunch in a nearby trash bin, and struck out toward the biggest financial indiscretion of my life.