Authors: Peter Archer
Bad Austen (23 page)
Craning her neck out of the open window, she looked both ways and saw nothing but a green thickness of trees.
Like an apparition appearing from thin air, a pale face was suddenly in front of her. Jane gasped, and with her hand on the carriage latch, fell forward and tumbled out of the carriage.
Suddenly strong, muscular arms were grasping and holding her.
Jane blinked and stared up into topaz eyes. Shocked beyond speech, Jane was hypnotized by the face staring down at her.
He was pale, almost sparkling, and cold to the touch. Impossibly handsome, like something out of a dream, the boy who couldn’t have been more than ten and eight looked more of a man than Jane had ever seen before.
Without warning, he released an arm beneath her, allowing her feet to come crashing to the ground.
“Who are you?” she murmured.
“Are you alright, miss?” he persisted harshly in a musical voice. It was as if the heavens had opened up and the angels were singing, the sound coming from his mouth was so beautiful.
Jane gasped as she realized his eyes were changing color. The brightest spot in his flawless, dazzling cold face, they had somehow turned to a shallow green.
“What are you doing here?” she continued. “Where is everyone else?” Jane whispered. His icy fingers were suddenly wrapped around her wrists.
Without warning, the boy-man was lifting her into the carriage and closing the door behind her. He uttered a low oath before stalking toward the front of the carriage.
And almost as if awaking startled from a dream, Jane jerked back as the carriage began to move.
“Who are you?” she cried, her hand still icy from his touch now opening upon her heated cheek.
The sight of Northanger Abbey at twilight looming in the distance was mystical and menacing. Jane squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, willing the journey to be over, as she looked out the carriage window once more. She had hoped to catch view of the mysterious stranger again, now wondering if it wasn’t a dream.
When the carriage finally came to a slow roll in front of the large stone building, Jane blew out a sigh of exhausted relief.
Shortly, she was gathered into her sister’s waiting arms. “Jane, how glad I am to see you,” Catherine exclaimed as her arm went around her sister’s shoulder.
“Cathy, the strangest thing has happened.”
Catherine raised an eyebrow in anticipation.
“The carriage was stopped by this boy—this man. His eyes changed color and he was so cold to the touch….” Jane’s voice trailed off in wonder.
“Jane, do you like scary stories?” Catherine asked, helping her sister up the steps of Northanger.
Jane nodded dully.
“Then I will tell you about him. But only if you promise never to go near him again.”
D
ID
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OU
K
NOW?
It does not appear that Jane Austen pursued publication of
Lady Susan
, her completed novel in letters. Rather, we have her nephew, James-Edward Austen-Leigh, to thank for its publication. He included the text, taken from an untitled manuscript transcribed in 1805 (a “fair copy”), in the second edition of his
Memoir of Jane Austen
, published in 1871. It is a fascinating work from Austen’s early period, probably written between 1793 and 1795. The consistently high emotion and the melodramatic events and speech in
Lady Susan
also mark it as an early work. There is none of Austen’s brilliant re-creation of the ordinary and everyday, which is everywhere in the later novels. It is, however, an astonishingly impressive work for any writer, never mind a girl not yet twenty years old.
Austen’s bad mothers in the major novels are mainly guilty of neglect and foolishness, but Lady Susan is downright wicked in her treatment of her daughter Frederica, whom she is determined to marry off very much against her will. This wickedness is also shown in Lady Susan’s cool, remorseless indulgence in adultery and her manipulation of others for her own convenience. However, she is also dazzlingly attractive to men and to many women—beautiful, strong-willed, witty, spirited, unsentimental (some of which traits are usefully hidden when necessary under a sweet, gentle exterior).
Lady Susan is, as many readers have noted, a kind of immoral version of Austen’s witty, spirited heroines Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse—and perhaps, even more, of the endlessly debated figure of Mary Crawford from
Mansfield Park
. Just as she does in the case of the winning Miss Crawford, however, Austen makes her disapproval of Lady Susan clear when she has that character say, “I take town in my way to that insupportable spot, a country village.” Austen loved the country, and those characters in her novels who do not like it and prefer the “town”—London—must and do have the wrong values.
T
he
B
ennet
B
unch
E
ILEEN
M
ITCHELL
It is a whimsically acknowledged truth that Mrs. Bennet was a lovely lady who was bringing up five very lovely girls. Some of them had hair of gold like their mother, the youngest one, Lydia, bedecked in curls.
Coincidentally, through fortuitous proximity, there was a man named Bingley, dispatched from London with five sisters of his own. They were six siblings sojourning all together, yet they were much alone.
Till the one day when the Bennets met the Bingleys, and they surmised that it was much more than a hunch that this assemblage must somehow intermingle, if not at tea, if not in town, perhaps at lunch.
But before even a few lines of formal invitation had been extended to the bachelor Bingley, Mr. Bennet announced his intentions to throw in a good word for his daughter Lizzy, much to the consternation of his wife.
“Lizzy, Lizzy, Lizzy!” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed, quite disconcerted. “We have five daughters with much to recommend them. Why must you always give Lizzy the preference? Her sister Jane is twice as handsome.”
“Much to recommend them?” Mr. Bennet parried with his usual endearing, misogynistic charm. “Jane is handsome, indeed, with the lantern-jawed profile of a longshoreman. kitty is an inconsiderate consumptive whose hacking disturbs my revelry.Lydia is a glandular case of freakish height, suitable for employment in a traveling circus, and that other daughter—her name escapes me at the moment—scarcely makes a memorable impression. At least Lizzy has a quickness about her.”
Lizzy, Lizzy, Lizzy! Jane echoed her mother’s protest in silent pique. Her father’s effusiveness toward elizabeth was a source of constant vexation, thereby inspiring Jane to concoct a plan. She would outshine Lizzy on the croquet field, and then perhaps her father would admire her cleverness and Mr. Bingley would favor her hand in marriage. For she had overheard, through closed doors, that there was nothing a gentleman fancied more than a quick girl who knew how to handle a mallet.
Within a fortnight, an invitation to luncheon had been dispatched to Mr. Bingley. He first declined and then capitulated at the urging of his friend Mr. Darcy, who extracted an invitation when he learned croquet was on the agenda. It was not so much Mr. Darcy’s love of the game, but rather his supercilious delight in watching the designing females comically entangled in stakes and hoops, and felled by mallets. Nothing like a good stumble to brighten his day. How his eyes sparkled with pleasure at their feminine posturings on the manicured lawns, never more so than when an errant swing upended a player. His inability to stifle merriment at such moments often turned the tide of his popularity, despite his good looks.
When the day of the party arrived, Mrs. Bennet’s nerves were jangling like porcelain marionettes. Vexed from the preparations, she forthwith instructed her servant, Alice, to attend to the remaining details: drawing up the menu, going to market, slaughtering the ox, polishing the silver, assembling the croquet field, and renovating the manor. enervated at the sight of her servant’s exertions, Mrs. Bennet took to her bed. Amidst fluffing Mrs. Bennet’s pillows and turning the roast, Alice was kept exceedingly busy attending to the ox.
When at length the guests arrived and were assembled on the lawn, a healthy rivalry ensued among the ladies to capture the attention of the eligible gentlemen. Those left standing after the melee were entreated to play croquet. Jane seized the moment to make a favorable impression on Mr. Bingley by driving the croquet mallet with such vigor as to send the ball flying into the air.
“My nose!” cried Lizzy, upon being struck in the face by her sister’s misguided enthusiasm, not to mention the wooden missile that had once been a croquet ball.
If Jane’s ambition was to outdo the others, she succeeded handsomely as Mr. Bingley was indeed impressed by her unmatched boldness with the mallet, Lizzy’s maiming notwithstanding. The question of whether the shot was mere gusto or repressed envy would never be answered, but Mr. Bingley was nonetheless captivated by the rather unconventional display of coquetry.
Elizabeth made a full recovery and harbored no ill will toward Jane in the event that Mr. Darcy’s attentions were drawn to her over the mishap. Where he had once overlooked her entirely for what he considered her ordinariness, he later reconsidered, not coincidentally, after a misplaced guffaw at her misshapen countenance threatened his reputation in town. encouraged by Bingley to call upon her with roses, a full-blown courtship took flower along with the bouquet.
The bloodlines, that day, were destined to comingle, ultimately inspiring a saucy jingle: The possibilities were pregnant at lunch, and that’s the way they all became the Bennet bunch.
D
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NOW?
When she was just sixteen, Austen wrote a brilliantly funny “unfinished Novel in Letters” called
Lesley Castle
, this time dedicating her work to her brother Henry. Here we can see the beginnings of one of her comic specialties, the monomaniacal talker who thinks of the world as it relates to just one subject and turns all events and all discussions back to the one thing dearest her heart. Mrs. Allen, from
Northanger Abbey
, with her obsession with clothes, is the finest example of this type in the novels. Like
Jack & Alice
,
Lesley Castle
also contains some improper matter for a young girl (never mind a clergyman’s daughter) to be writing about—for example, adultery and child abandonment go unpunished.
D
ead and
L
oving
I
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