The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen (2 page)
Read The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen Online
Authors: Syrie James
I opened it. It was an unfinished letter. The paper was of substantial weight and bore a watermark and the distinctive
ribbing from the paper molds of yesteryear. The ink was black-brown. The date and elegant cursive hand proclaimed that it had been written by quill. I read the greeting, and my heart jumped. With disbelieving eyes, I read it through.
Tuesday 3 September 1816
My dearest Cassandra,
Thank you for your Letter, which was truly welcome. I am much obliged to you for writing so soon after your arrival, and for sharing the particulars of your Lodgings, which I suspect provided far more entertainment for the reader, than for the writer.—Although your Bedroom sounds comfortable enough, I am sorry you had no fire, and am appalled that Mrs. Potter thinks to charge three Guineas a week for such a place! Cheltenham is clearly to be preferred in May! Your Pelisse is no doubt very happy it made the journey, for it will be much worn. I hope Mary gains more benefit from the waters than I did. Do let me know how she gets on. We are well here. The illness which I suffered at the time of your going has very kindly taken its leave, without so much as a good-bye, and I am happy to say that my back has given me very little pain the past few days. I am nursing myself into as beautiful a state as I can, so as to better enjoy Edward’s visit. He is a great pleasure to me. He is writing a Novel.—We have all heard it, and it is very good and clever. I believe it could be a first-rate work, if only he can bring himself to finish it.
Listening to Edward’s composition has put me in something of a melancholy state and given rise to Feelings I had thought long got over, and of which I may give vent only to you. I promise to indulge for no more than five minutes.—It brings to mind that early Manuscript of my own, which went missing at
Greenbriar in Devonshire. Even at a distance of fourteen years, I cannot help but think of it with a pang of fondness, sorrow, and regret, as one would a lost child.—Do you recall my theory as to how it came to be lost? I still maintain that it was all vanity, nonsense, and wounded pride. I should never have read it out to you that night during our stay but kept it safe with all the others—although we did have a good laugh! (What banner years for me—two Proposals!) It is tragic that I had only the one Copy.—And yet perhaps it was simply fate, and it was never meant to be seen. You
did
persuade me to tell no one about it while I was writing it, and you were right; it might indeed have troubled that most valued member of our family. Every time I thought of trying to write it out again, something happened to prevent it—all our travels—so difficult, you will recall, to work at Sydney Place—and then papa died, and it was quite impossible. To recall it now from memory would prove to be a task beyond my power. I have been inspired, however. Yesterday, I sat down and poked fun at my poor, lost creation with a piece of foolishness I call Plan Of A Novel. It is in part what I remember of that Story, embellished with hints from Fanny and others who have been kind enough to suggest what I
ought
to write next. I hope it will make you laugh.—Which reminds me. To-night, we are to drink tea with
It ended there—a fragment, unfinished, and unsigned.
Hands trembling, I read the letter a second time, and a third. There was only one person who could have written that letter; one person, and she happened to be one of the most famous and beloved authors of all time: Jane Austen. That she was
my
personal favorite author—that I had studied her life and work in detail, and that she had inspired the topic of my
never-completed dissertation—only added to my astonishment and excitement.
If
this was authentic—and I felt in my bones that it was—then I had come upon something extremely rare and valuable. Jane’s sister Cassandra, shortly before her death, had burned most of her correspondence with Jane, or expunged those parts she preferred to keep private, before giving them as mementos to her nieces and nephews. Some 161 letters survived and had been published—and I was certain
this
was not among them. This was something
new
.
I fired up my laptop to verify my theory and logged on to the Net. In no time, I found a website that posted all of Jane Austen’s preserved letters. I was thrilled to confirm that the images of her handwriting did indeed match that in the letter I’d found. I jumped to the letters from 1816, near the end of Jane’s life. There
was
a portion of a letter dated 4 September 1816, written to Cassandra when she was in Cheltenham—but the first two pages were missing, as well as the top of page three. Cassandra had deliberately disposed of those parts.
My pulse quickened. The fragment I held in my hands seemed to be an early draft of that letter’s missing first half. Jane must have been interrupted in the act of composing the letter and hidden it within the pages of this book, not wishing anyone but Cassandra to be aware of its contents. Maybe Jane forgot where she put it, and the next day began the letter afresh. She was ill at the time. She died ten months later. The book of poetry must have been passed on to Cassandra, and at some point was sold or lost. No one had ever discovered the secret it contained.
I was so excited, I could hardly breathe. If I was right—if this was indeed the real thing, an unknown Jane Austen letter—it would make headlines. But even more thrilling than the letter
itself was the mention of a missing manuscript. As far as the publishing world knew, Jane Austen had written only six full-length novels and miscellaneous shorter works, which had all been read, scrutinized, and canonized to within an inch of their lives. A newly discovered work by Austen would set off a global wave of Janeite frenzy!
I paced the room, uncertain what I should do with this precious find. Alert the media? Call a museum? No, I decided; they’d think I was a crackpot. I couldn’t tell anyone about this until the letter was authenticated. But to whom should I go?
The answer came to me in a flash: Dr. Mary I. Jesse. She’d been my advisor, my mentor, and my teacher during my graduate studies in English Literature at Oxford, and I revered her. When I had to leave the university four years earlier to help take care of my mother, Dr. Jesse had been very supportive. “I know you’ll come back and finish someday,” she’d said. But I never did.
Dr. Jesse was considered one of the preeminent Austen experts of the day. She’d written countless scholarly papers on Austen as well as a celebrated biography, was a past president of the Jane Austen Literary Foundation, and had taught Austen for more than four decades. She’d retired and left Oxford about the same time that I did, to edit and authenticate a trunk of rare manuscripts discovered in the attic at Chawton House Library. We’d fallen out of touch since.
I knew I had to find her.
I pulled out my cell phone. I had an old e-mail address from my grad-school days, and I sent Mary a quick note, telling her I was in Oxford, and I’d love to see her. The e-mail bounced back with a “delivery failed permanently” message, informing me that the account I was trying to reach did not exist. I checked every online social-media forum I could think of, but Dr. Mary Jesse wasn’t anywhere. Her phone number was unlisted.
For a few minutes, I was stymied. I’m not generally the bold, spur-of-the-moment type—but I couldn’t sit still. I grabbed my raincoat and umbrella and walked the long, familiar blocks in the freezing rain to the St. Cross Building on Manor Road. The Faculty Office of the English Language and Literature Department was thankfully open, and even better, my friend Michelle—who’d nurtured me for two years while I worked on my doctorate—was sitting behind the desk.
“Hello there,” I said, catching my breath as I dropped my dripping umbrella by the door.
Michelle looked up from her computer and greeted me with a huge smile. “Samantha! How wonderful to see you. And looking as beautiful as ever!”
We hugged and chatted like magpies, catching up on four years’ worth of news in four minutes. I briefly recapped what I’d been up to: still single at thirty-one but dating a very nice man, and happily working as a Special Collections Librarian at a small university in Southern California.
“So you’re not here to reenroll?” Michelle asked, disappointed.
“No—sorry. I’m here on holiday. My boyfriend’s attending a cardiology conference in London.”
“The boyfriend’s a doctor? Ooh. Lovely.”
“He is, rather.” I smiled and moved straight to the point of my visit: I needed to get hold of Dr. Mary Jesse.
“Dr. Jesse? She moved somewhere up near Chipping Norton, I think. From what I hear, she lives a very quiet, private life now. She wouldn’t leave us a phone number or e-mail, we just forward any thing that comes to her home address.”
My spirits plummeted. No phone number? No e-mail? Really? I impressed upon Michelle how important it was that I reach Mary and that I didn’t have much time; I was only in
England for a few days. With a fond smile and a shake of her head, she gave me Mary’s mailing address, reminding me not to share it with anyone. I profusely thanked her.
After a warm good-bye and promises to stay in touch, I stopped in the shelter of an ancient passageway and looked up Mary’s address on my phone. She lived in Hook Norton. There was no time to write to her—who knew when I’d hear back? According to MapQuest, Hook Norton was about twenty-five miles northwest of Oxford, on the A44.
I glanced at my watch. It was 1:30
P.M.
and a Friday. It would probably take a little over an hour to get there, traffic permitting. I hesitated, reminding myself that Mary apparently relished her privacy these days, and it wasn’t polite to drop in on people unannounced—but I quickly shook off those concerns. Mary was as obsessed with All Things Austen as I was—more, in fact. If she was home, she’d be ecstatic about this discovery, and she could not only authenticate it but tell me what to do with it.
I practically ran all the way back to the B&B. I made two photocopies of the precious letter, then slid the original back between the pages of the old book, rewrapped the book to keep it clean and dry, and stowed it in my purse.
Too excited to keep the news to myself, I decided to call Stephen. Dr. Stephen Theodore was the smart, handsome, forty-one-year-old cardiac interventionalist who had treated my mother for her heart condition. We had met four years earlier, shortly after I’d returned to Los Angeles from Oxford. Although
I
was an emotional wreck at the time, desperately worried about my mom, I saw at once that she was in good hands.
My relationship with Dr. Theodore had been strictly professional at first, but as the months went by, we both became aware of a mutual, growing attraction. He asked me out. I discovered
that although Stephen hadn’t read a book for pleasure since his teens, he appreciated that
I
loved them. Whereas I enjoyed cooking, he avoided kitchen duties like the plague—but we found commonality in other things. We liked the same types of music, food, and wine. His work schedule was very demanding, but we squeezed in pockets of time now and then to meet for dinner or at the gym, or for an occasional Sunday morning bike ride on the path along the beach. It wasn’t long before I ended up in his bed.
Stephen was supportive about what he teasingly called my “Jane Austen Obsession.” He watched several of my favorite Austen film adaptations with me. In return for accompanying him to various medical receptions (not my favorite thing), he—dubiously—had agreed to take a couple of English Country Dance lessons, and he’d actually rented a costume and accompanied me to a Regency ball, where we’d danced the night away, just like Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. “This is more fun than I’d expected,” my brilliant doctor had said with real surprise—and I’d floated on air the entire evening.
We enjoyed each other’s company. We were a comfortable fit. And he took excellent care of my mother.
Sadly, however, my mom’s heart failure continued to pro-gress. She had died the year before of a sudden arrhythmia—her internal defibrillator wasn’t able to restore her normal heart rhythm. I was suddenly parentless, an orphan, overwhelmed with grief, paperwork, and financial stress. Stephen was there for me when I needed him. In the three years that we’d been together, we’d made no commitment to each other, still living our separate lives—but he was important to me, and I believed I was important to him.
I could hardly wait to tell him about my discovery.
Stephen had said he’d be in back-to-back medical meetings
and seminars all day at the London conference, but I took a chance and called him. By some miracle, he answered.
“Sam?” There was the din of conversation in the background.
“Stephen! I’m so glad I caught you.”
“Me, too. Just a minute, I’m having trouble hearing you.” There was a pause. The background noise diminished, and he spoke again. “Are you having a good time?”
“I am. How’s the meeting going?”
“Great so far. We had a good turnout at my program during the IME symposium. The poster sessions have been okay although a bit heavy on the genetics. And at the Satellite Sym posium, they introduced some very interesting new research regarding dyslipidemia and effective parameters for measuring residual risk—it’s going to be challenging to implement these findings with my patients.”
“I think I understood about 45 percent of that,” I said with a laugh.
“That’s more than I did,” he quipped in return.
“Stephen: do you have a minute? I have something incredible to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“I bought a book yesterday at a used-book store—a two-hundred-year-old book of poetry—”
“Nice. Is it for Chamberlain U’s library?”
“No, it’s for me—for my collection. But that’s not what’s exciting. There was a letter hidden inside.”
“A letter? What do you mean?”
“It’s a handwritten letter, dated 1816. It wasn’t signed, but I think—I’m almost positive—that it was written by Jane Austen.”
“Jane Austen? Are you kidding?”
“I’m serious. Stephen: I can hardly believe this. I think I’ve discovered an original Jane Austen letter!”
