Jane and the Barque of Frailty (8 page)

The room was narrow and long, lit by oil lamps suspended from the ceiling; display tables lined with velvet were set against the walls. A few gilt chairs were arranged near these, to accommodate selection; and a neat clerk in a dark blue coat and buff breeches stood alertly at the far end of the shop. When we failed to glance to either side, ignoring the settings of miniatures, the eye portraits cunningly lapped in draperies, the parures of emeralds and diamonds, or the amethyst bracelets that are everywhere the mode—this person came forward immediately and bowed.

“May I be of service, ma’am?”

“Pray present my card to Mr. Rundell,” Eliza replied briskly. “We wish to speak with him privately.”

She had barely concluded the words when a door at the rear of the shop opened, and a white head was thrust out. A pair of bold blue eyes, aloof and calculating, swept over us, missing nothing of the significance of the parcel I held.

“Comtesse,” the apparition said, “good day to ye. Will ye be so good as to step back?”

Eliza inclined her head, motioned for me to go before, and the quiet elegance of the premises was exchanged for a spare room graced only by a desk and a strong oil lamp, a ledger and a quill to one side.

“I have brought my sister Miss Austen to you, Mr. Rundell,” Eliza said without ceremony as the jeweller held out a chair. “She requires an opinion as to the value of certain heirlooms come down through the Austen family, and being upon a visit to my husband in London, could do no better than to consult the foremost jeweller of the day—or so I urged her. ‘Mr.

Rundell will never toy with you, my dear, for he knows his reputation to be founded on honesty and discretion.’ ”

“Did you say so, indeed?” He glanced from my countenance to Eliza’s, his own impassive. “Obliged to ye, Countess. Let us see what you’ve brought then, madam.”

I opened the parcel, lifted out the velvet roll the Comtesse d’Entraigues had left us, and unfurled it before Mr. Rundell’s eyes. The myriad stones flared and danced under the light of the oil lamp, wickedly alive.

There was the briefest silence.

Mr. Rundell raised a quizzing-glass and bent low over the jewels, staring deep into their depths, passing with decision from one to another, lifting now this brooch and that ring, intent as a hound on the scent. An eternity might have passed thus, the room filled with the laboured sound of the old man’s breathing and the sick feeling of deceit growing in my stomach; but that Eliza said, with the barest suggestion of doubt, “I believe these came to you through your mother’s family, Jane? Some relation of … the first Duke of Chandos, was it not?”

The spell was broken; Mr. Rundell sighed, dropped his glass, and looked me accusingly in the face. “These were never made in England.”

“No.” I glanced swiftly at Eliza. “My knowledge of their origin is imperfect, but I believe many to have been acquired from certain jewellers in France … before the Revolution.”

“Oh, aye,” Mr. Rundell agreed drily; “you’ll not be finding the like o’ these among the Corsican set what rule France now. All for swans and bees, they are, and twaddle out of Egypt. No, these are the true gems of my old master’s day, long before either of you ladies was thought of.”

He lifted a ruby necklace in his fingers, and studied it intently with his glass. “I believe as tho’ I’ve seen this before,” he mused. “For cleaning, maybe— or to have reset. Dook o’ Chandos, ye say?”

He reached for his ledger and my heart sank— for if he determined to place the jewels, we were entirely undone—but Eliza interposed hurriedly, “If my sister wished to sell, Mr. Rundell, what price should these stones fetch?”

“Sell?” he repeated, as tho’ bemused. “Well, now, Countess—that would depend upon the interest of the buyer.”

“And what is your interest, sir?” I demanded boldly—for I felt it incumbent upon me to act as principal in the transaction. “I am, as the Comtesse says, in London but a short while—and should be glad to despatch this commission. I confess I am hardly easy in having such a treasure by me, in Sloane Street.”

“What lady would be?” Mr. Rundell agreed. The ledger was allowed to languish in its place; his entire attention was fixed upon me. “The premises of this shop are very secure, ma’am—very secure, indeed. I might venture to hold these stones on your behalf, until such time as a price is agreed upon between us, if indeed you are determined to part with your … heirlooms.”

“I have no occasion to wear such precious stuff.” I dropped my eyes demurely, the picture of spinsterly deprecation. “My dear father is dead, Mr. Rundell, and my brothers much preoccupied with their hopeful families—I am quite alone in the world—in short, I find that this princely bequest would serve me far better if transmuted to a different form. I hope I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly, ma’am. But I cannot hope to offer you a reasonable price without an interval of reflection. I should be cheating you else.”

“Could you put a round figure to the whole, Mr. Rundell?” Eliza asked.

He pursed his lips. “The settings are decidedly out of mode, Countess—none but a dowd would be seen to wear them now without they was reset—and the price of gold has sadly fallen in recent weeks—”

“Tush.” I made as if to rise from my chair. “You were mistaken, Eliza, in your opinion of Mr. Rundell. I think perhaps I should have followed my own inclination, and consulted Mr. Phillips in Bond Street.”

“Not so hasty, if you please,” he said, lifting one hand. “The settings are old and the price of gold is fallen sadly—”

“—At the height of war, Mr. Rundell? That is not what we hear from my brother the banker. The price of gold has, if anything, risen—”

“But it is undoubtedly true,” he continued as tho’ I had not spoken, “that the gems themselves are of the finest, and should fetch a pretty penny. If you will trust me with the lot for a matter of two days, I will undertake to state my very best price. You won’t get as good from Phillips in Bond Street nor Gray in Sackville Street neither. They’re warm men, but they haven’t Rundell’s means.”
²

“Very well,” I answered, with just the faintest suggestion of unwillingness. “Write out a receipt for these items, if you please, and I shall return in two days’ time.”

“Done.” Mr. Rundell scrawled his name on a square of hot-pressed paper and handed it to me with a flourish.

Eliza was so relieved to have the business concluded, that it was quite an hour before I could tear her from the contemplation of the amethyst bracelets strewn about the shop’s casements.

¹
Jane’s elder brother, Edward, was adopted by his distant cousin, Thomas Knight, who bequeathed extensive estates in Kent and Hampshire to Edward.—
Editor’s note.

²
To be “warm” in Jane’s day was to be wealthy. According to Charles Greville, a contemporary of Austen’s, Rundell was so rich he was able to lend money to his bankers during the financial panic that followed Waterloo. When he died at the age of eighty, Greville notes, Rundell left the largest fortune then registered under a will at Doctors Commons—some million and a half pounds.—
Editor’s note
.

Chapter 6
The Cyprian on Parade

Wednesday, 24 April 1811, cont.

∼

O
UR ERRAND HAPPILY CONCLUDED AND THE
weather holding fine, we ordered our hackney carriage to Gunter’s establishment, and regaled ourselves with pastries and tea, followed by a thorough debauch among the volumes of Lackington’s book shop—a vast room lined with shelves and clerks poised on the steps of ladders necessary to reach them, a vision so replete with the printed word that I stood as one stunned, incapable of voicing a request for full seven minutes. Mary Brunton’s Self-Controul then offered as the ardent object of my writer’s soul—it being the only novel talked of in London this April—but in vain; among all that wealth of books, not a copy of Brunton was to be had. Eliza quitted Lackington’s with a volume in the French, and I with some poems of Cowper and a dissatisfied heart. Of what use is it to reside for a time in the very centre of the world, surrounded by every possible whim or comfort, if one cannot obtain Self-Controul?

Having spent all our money, we made a virtue of necessity, and extolled the benefits of exercise in walking the remainder of the way to Hans Town.

“Only think, Jane,” Eliza observed as we bent our steps towards Hyde Park, “what it shall be to find your book in Lackington’s window! I am sure I shall faint!”

“It could never be deemed worthy of such prominence,” I said despairingly. “It shall be thrust with the other lamentable publications beneath the counter, there to languish unread—or abused by every rational critic as the most vulgar and silly effusion yet offered by an ill-educated ape-leader. What can I have been thinking, Eliza, to throw Henry’s money after such folly? —When there are already so many books in the world!”

“But none can boast a creature half so entertaining as Willoughby, I assure you, nor half so … so improving … as Elinor. Jane—” She stopped short, shading her eyes with one hand. “Is not that the old Count I espy before us? In animated conversation with the ladies in that very dashing perch-phaeton? I wonder if he is forever speaking to them in French!”

I should judge it to be nearly three o’clock in the afternoon—a fashionable hour to promenade in the Park, whether by foot, horse, or carriage; and the parade was thronged with parties of young ladies in open carriages, Corinthians astride their showy hacks, and sedately strolling misses in the company of chaperones. There was also, I may add, a quantity of those persons commonly known as the Muslin Company: showy hacks of a different kind of animal, also intended for a gentleman’s pleasure. My mother should have called them Bold Pieces, and abhorred their display of charms; but the present age held such women in something like admiration, as might be divined from the euphemisms commonly applied to them: High Flyers, Fair Cyprians, Birds of Paradise, Snug Armfuls, Barques of Frailty, Demi-reps. These were not the common women of the streets, but mistresses of the highest order, who lived under the protection of a variety of swains to whom they offered a fidelity commensurate with the quantity of gold laid out to secure it. The dashing perch-phaeton Eliza had espied was certainly commanded by one of these: a golden-haired, ringleted creature of perhaps seventeen, who tooled the ribbons of a very fine pair of matched greys. The phaeton was of a sort usually driven by a gentleman rather than a lady; and this daring, coupled with the extraordinary cut of the girl’s habit, must draw the attention of every male eye.

“It does not do to stare, of course,” Eliza observed reprovingly, “when a gentleman of one’s acquaintance is in conversation with such a person; one ought to affect an interest in the opposite side of the parade. But do you think it possible, Jane, that we see before us poor Anne’s rival? The agent of all her fears? The girl is very lovely, I daresay—but barely out of the schoolroom!”

I did not immediately discern Comte Emmanuel-Louis d’Entraigues, who was supported by an ebony walking cane, his grey hair surmounted by a showy beaver. But an instant’s study revealed the elegant scholar of Barnes, Surrey: a man in his middle fifties, well-dressed but with something foreign in the cut of his coat; a figure once elegant and strong but now tending to corpulence; a Gallic beak of a nose and a pair of lips that might be judged either sensual or cruel. The hands alone were still very fine: untouched by labour or traffick with the world, accustomed to the handling of leather-bound volumes and objets d’art—such as the girl who now dimpled down at him, a confection of innocent beauty and knowing vice.

I studied the creature’s complexion of rose and cream, straight line of a nose, and wide sapphire eyes; there was breeding as well as beauty there, if one chose to find it, yet the girl would never be taken for other than an adventuress. Her carriage dress was too formed to her body, and the décolleté plunged as deep as a ball gown’s. A dark blue hussar’s cap was set at a raking angle over her brow, and guinea-gold curls clustered at the nape of her white neck. There was something familiar in her looks, tho’ she was entirely a stranger to me … and then I had it: in figure and countenance, she might have been Anne de St.-Huberti’s younger self.

“I cannot put a name to that little Bird of

Paradise,” Eliza whispered, “but her companion is none other than Harriette Wilson, the most accomplished Cyprian in London. You will recollect the box at the Opera House—the Ponsonbys and Mr. Canning … ”

At that moment the Comte laughed in appreciation of some saucy remark; the girl in the phaeton lifted her whip carelessly over her horses’ backs; and the equipage surged forward. I am no judge of horsemanship, having never mastered the art—but the girl handled the ribbons well. Certainly Miss Wilson was in easy looks as the pair flashed by, upright and animated with two burning spots of colour in her cheeks; but it is not in the nature of a Cyprian to betray fear or doubt. Her style is bound up in confidence, she does not lay herself open to criticism or rebuke.

“I used to dash about myself in that way,” Eliza said wistfully. “I kept a neat little gig—a two-seater, Jane—and put Pug on the seat beside me. I daresay the equipage should be accounted unbearably dowdy now, but it was all the crack when I was a young widow, and had the leisure to consider of such things. I was used to take up a gentleman of my acquaintance for a delightful coze, and then set him down when another presented himself; one might spend an hour very agreeably in flirting about the Park. But Henry is so tiresome—he actually refuses to keep a carriage in London. To be setting up one’s stable is so very dear!”

It was a fair description of Harriette Wilson’s way of life, I thought—the taking up and setting down of gentlemen—but one cannot tool round the Park forever and ever. Age advances. Younger women appear to attract the gentlemen’s eye. One finds oneself no longer the driver, but the companion—grateful to be offered a place even in a rival’s perch-phaeton. I supposed this was, in a sense, Anne de St.-Huberti’s fate— she who had been both performer and mistress in her salad days; but having achieved a measure of respectability, was it remarkable that she remained at her husband’s side?