Jane Austen's Estate of Affairs

Jane Austen's Estate of Affairs Chapter 1

Chapter One.

Any person glancing up at the carriage as it jolted its way into Chawton village that evening over rain-filled potholes, and observing the heart-shaped face, surrounded by a mass of blonde ringlets and peering out with a frown into the stormy night, might have supposed the agitation writ on those otherwise pleasing features to have been caused by the condition of the road, or by the ferocity of the growing storm, or perhaps by the prospect of alighting soon (in an undoubtedly fine dress) onto muddied ground.

Yet had our observer known the lady better, they might have surmised something closer to the truth: that the thoughts whirling inside Miss Christiana Austen’s head had very little to do with her present physical condition, and very much to do with the letter from her Aunt Cassandra that she held clutched tight in her lap. Though its contents were now impossible to read in the fading light, Christiana could have recited them word for word, so many times had she read and re-read the brief missive since receiving it that morning.

“My dearest Christiana” the letter began, its opening smudged perhaps by haste, “I fear I must bring you unhappy tidings. Since the untimely death of my dear sister, your beloved Aunt Jane, I have consoled myself with the prospect that her final novel would soon find a publisher. But one week ago, when I returned finally to our cottage in Chawton, the precious manuscript could not be found where I believed it to have been left, and a thorough search of our home in the ensuing days has produced not a single page.”

To any admirer of good literature those words must surely have brought a pang of dismay, but in Christiana they had produced an immediate urge to action, the natural instinct to preserve the memory of a much-loved aunt being magnified by Christiana’s empathy as an aspiring novelist herself. For it was true that, since the day of her fourth birthday, when presented with the gift of a small journal (by an elderly godfather somewhat confused as to her age), Christiana had delighted in the joys of composition. Major events, such as weddings or family gatherings, were immortalized in lines of poetry or prose, and even the smallest of occurrences might trigger the urge to capture their essence in ink.

By the time she reached the schoolroom, Christiana’s mind was prone to drift away from lengthy histories of Caesar or Pitt to imagined tales of heroic centurions or new adventures for Robin Hood; at an older age, she would often seek refuge from such tedious entertainments as embroidery or watercolors between the covers of books, losing herself for hours in the thrilling novels of Mrs. Radcliffe and Miss Burney, or in the poetic imaginings of Milton and Wordsworth. These works of wonder, transporting her from the day to day repetitiveness of Steventon village life, inspired in Christiana a bold, fluttering hope that perhaps she might some day swell the ranks of literary entertainments with a contribution of her own. How this miracle was to be accomplished she did not know; nor, it must be owned, had she decided what the story should contain, who the main characters might be, or whether the setting should be familiar or fantastic.

At such a young age, however, such high aspirations without any reasonable hope of them becoming true, are surely to be preferred over not raising one’s sights at all?

This opinion was not shared by Christiana’s mother, the second Mrs. James Austen. That good lady, whose intellect focused firmly on the affairs of her offspring and whose shrewdness knew no bounds when it came to managing their futures, began to worry that her eldest daughter would be relegated to spinsterhood if she maintained her present course. Such concerns could only be worsened when, in Christiana’s thirteenth year, a chance remark by her father led to the discovery that her quietly spoken Aunt Jane was the author of no fewer than two published works of fiction, “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice”, the latter of which was already a strong favorite.