First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen (4 page)

“Shall we have a story?” said her uncle, when he had hung up their coats.

“Yes, please,” said Sophie.

“What would you like?” he asked.

“You pick.”

And so he did. They settled onto the couch, Bertram with a cup of tea and Sophie with a mug of cocoa. He began to read and Sophie’s world was transformed—this was not like the insubstantial children’s stories her mother read to her at bedtime. This was ever so much more.

“
The Wind in the Willows
,” read Uncle Bertram. “Chapter One, The River Bank. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.” Sophie closed her eyes and fell into the story.

After every chapter, Uncle Bertram said, “Perhaps that’s enough for now,” but chapter after chapter, Sophie pestered him for more, until finally he said, “I think it’s time we switched to another book. I do believe it’s past your bedtime.” And only because he promised to keep reading once she was tucked up in bed, Sophie brushed her teeth and put on her pajamas at lightning speed. She discovered that not only the sitting room but every room of the flat had book-lined walls. Even the narrow corridor was made narrower by tall shelves of books.

“What’s this one called?” she asked when Uncle Bertram drew a small fragile-looking volume from the shelf next to her bed.

“
The Odes of Horace
,” he said. But this time when he began to read, the words made no sense to Sophie.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“It’s Latin,” replied Uncle Bertram. “Think of it as music, and just listen.”

And so she fell asleep to the musical sound of Uncle Bertram intoning Horace, with visions of Rat and Mole and Toad dancing around her. She didn’t wonder until much later whether it had been the kind attentions of Uncle Bertram and his gentle voice or the story itself that had so delighted her. She only knew, then, that she had never been happier.

They did not leave the flat for the rest of the weekend. The next morning Uncle Bertram finished reading
The Wind in the Willows
while Sophie had tea and toast for breakfast. After that, she explored every room and every shelf, climbing on a stepladder to reach the rows of books that towered over her eight-year-old head. Uncle Bertram’s books were not arranged by author or title or, more perplexing to little Sophie, by size or color. “You have to read a book to understand its place on the shelf,” said Uncle Bertram. And he showed her how
The Wind in the Willows
(“a book about life on the river”) sat next to
Three Men in a Boat
(“a book about a journey on the River Thames”), which sat next to
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(“a story that was first told on the banks of the Thames”), which sat next to Freud’s
The Interpretation of Dreams
(“because
Alice
is a dream story”), and so on. Sophie longed to read every book, to understand every relationship. If other books were as exciting as
The Wind in the Willows
, she could not imagine a better way to spend her life than unlocking the puzzles of her uncle’s bookshelves. She found it mystifying that this library was so alive, while the library back at Bayfield House seemed so dead.

“Why does Father never look at the books in his library?” asked Sophie as she and Uncle Bertram sat at the kitchen table eating tomato soup for dinner.

“Your father has always resented that library,” said Uncle Bertram. “I think he feels like he’s its prisoner at times.”

“Why?”

“Well, you see, Sophie, our father died when we were young, and since your father was the older brother he inherited the estate—that’s the house you live in and all the gardens and fields around it. And that also included the books in the library.”

“You didn’t get any books?”

“Not exactly,” said Uncle Bertram. “You see, our father made a sort of rule before he died that none of the books or the furniture in the house could be sold or given away unless your father and I both agreed.”

“And you wouldn’t agree to sell all those books!” said Sophie gleefully.

“Exactly. Your father thought he needed money and the easiest way to get it would be to sell the books. And since he didn’t care for books, especially old dusty books, that didn’t make him very pleased with me.”

“But old dusty books are the best kind.”

“I think so, and you think so, but your father doesn’t think so.”

“So you bought all these books yourself?” said Sophie, waving her soup spoon to indicate the entire flat.

“Almost all,” said Bertram. “Your father and I made a deal. I agreed to let him sell some paintings and things to raise the money he needed to fix up the house, and he agreed to let me have one book from the family library to take home each year.”

“The Christmas book!” said Sophie.

“Exactly, the Christmas book. So every year at Christmas I pick one book to keep for my own.” He took her by the hand and led her into a small bedroom at the end of the corridor. “Do you see this shelf right here next to my bed? Those are all the books I’ve picked over the years. It is my very special shelf.”

“It must be exciting to go into a big library and get to pick any book you want.”

“I’m glad you think so, Sophie. Because I want you to do the same thing. I want you to pick any book in my flat to take home with you and keep.”

“Really?” she said, her face lighting up.

“Really,” said Bertram. “After all, it’s almost Christmas.”

“Any book?”

“Any book. But choose carefully,” said Uncle Bertram. “A good book is like a good friend. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. When you first get to know it, it will give you excitement and adventure, and years later it will provide you with comfort and familiarity. And best of all, you can share it with your children or your grandchildren or anyone you love enough to let into its secrets.”

—

“AND WHAT BOOK DID
you pick?” asked Eric as Sophie fell silent.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said, turning to look at him for the first time since she had begun her story. “It’s personal.”

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight,” he said. “You can tell me all the intimate details of your family and their finances and your relationship with your uncle, but what book you chose is personal?”

“That’s right,” said Sophie. “What could be more personal than a book?”

“It just seems like a strange place to draw the line when you’re talking to a perfect stranger.”

“You’re not
quite
perfect,” she said, turning to walk back up the garden. Most of the “art enthusiasts” had moved on, leaving behind the occasional teacup on a low stone wall or a garden bench.

“It was
Pride and Prejudice
, wasn’t it?” said Eric, running to catch up with her.

“I was eight years old.”

“Yeah, but I’ll bet you were a pretty brainy eight-year-old. If Jane Austen was reading Samuel Richardson when she was seven, I’m sure you were reading Jane Austen when you were eight.”

“What makes you think Jane Austen was reading Richardson when she was seven?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t I read that somewhere?”

“I really don’t think so.”

“Well, I still think you picked
Pride and Prejudice
.”

Sophie, in fact, had not picked
Pride and Prejudice.
She had chosen an oversize copy of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
with dark, ghoulish illustrations by Arthur Rackham. She discovered years later that it was a signed limited edition, worth hundreds of pounds, but Uncle Bertram had placed it into the hands of his eight-year-old niece without hesitation. It still occupied a place of pride in her collection—the first in a row of sixteen volumes, each of which she had chosen as her annual Christmas gift from Uncle Bertram.

After that first visit, Uncle Bertram had become Sophie’s special friend. He loved all his family, he told her, but Sophie knew their relationship was different. Her mother could see how much genuine joy Sophie derived from her visits to Uncle Bertram and would not let Mr. Collingwood’s resentment of his younger brother interfere with the relationship. As she spent more time with her uncle, Sophie felt less and less connected to her father—but she didn’t care. Uncle Bertram understood her in a way her father never could. It wasn’t just that they both loved books. It was that Sophie, as a little girl, had yearned for mystery and adventure—something beyond her ordinary life at Bayfield House. At home she had to settle for getting her mystery from books, but her visits with Bertram were filled with adventure.

By the time she was ten, Uncle Bertram was fetching Sophie every other weekend for a London visit, a pattern that would continue until she entered university. During the long holidays at Easter and in the summer, she would often spend a week or two in town. She and Uncle Bertram walked the streets of London together, exploring any neighborhood or building with a literary connection. They visited museums and libraries that displayed rare books and attended plays and musicals based on books, but most of all they shopped—Sophie delighting in spending her carefully saved allowance on “dusty old books.” Uncle Bertram knew every bookshop in the city, every antique stall with a shelf of books tucked into the back, every street vendor in the markets of Portobello Road or Camden Passage who might have a book or two laid out on a blanket. And without fail, after a day of stalking the books of London, they would return to the flat in Maida Vale, curl up by the fire, and read. At first Uncle Bertram always read to Sophie, but soon enough she shared the task, and they would pass
The Ingoldsby Legends
or
The Secret Garden
or
Robinson Crusoe
back and forth at the end of each chapter.

Sophie had a particular fondness for first lines—they were so laden with potential. Simple first lines were the best, she thought—“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do”; “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station shall be held by anybody else, these pages must show”; “In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.” And she had never forgotten that frozen winter’s day when she and her uncle had returned to the flat in the dark of early evening after an afternoon of book hunting and he had pulled down a volume from an upper shelf, settled in his chair with a cup of tea, and read a line that, even though she was only ten, seemed to Sophie so intriguing and mysterious that she could not wait to see where it would lead: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“I
AM AFRAID
I am to leave Hampshire in a few days’ time, Mr. Mansfield,” said Jane as they stood beside the lake, which glistened in the August heat. “My brother and his wife have written from Kent and I am to go for a visit of some weeks.”

“I confess, Miss Austen, that it will grieve me to be parted from you for such a time, but it may grieve me even more to be parted from the Dashwoods. Are you to leave me at such a delicate point in their story?”

“It cannot be helped, sir. But perhaps you will write a letter of support to their creator so that you might see their story ended.”

“Do I understand, Miss Austen, that you are holding the misses Dashwood hostage with a ransom of my correspondence?”

“Indeed I am, sir,” said Jane with a laugh. “For how can I hope to write a word in such a place as Kent without your encouragement?”

“I believe, Miss Austen, that you could write anywhere with no more encouragement than paper and ink, but you may depend upon me as a correspondent nonetheless.”

As they climbed out of the valley and toward the gatehouse, Mr. Mansfield fell unusually silent. Jane thought at first it was due to the steepness of the hill and she worried that perhaps he was unwell, for just a few days earlier they had climbed the same path and he had interviewed her the entire way about her progress with
The Spectator
.

“Do you feel well, Mr. Mansfield?” she asked at last. “For I have not known you to eschew conversation with me for so long unless you have a book in your hand.”

“You must forgive me, Miss Austen. I am only silent because I feel I must chose my words carefully so as not to give offense.”

“Surely, Mr. Mansfield, you need never concern yourself with giving offense to me. Are you angry with me?”

“Certainly not,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth; it is only that your imminent departure forces me to express an opinion which I hope you will take in the kind spirit with which it is intended.”

“I could do nothing less with you, Mr. Mansfield. But you frighten me. Tell me what you have to say.”

“I am concerned,” he began, but then he broke off.

“Concerned?” said Jane. “What gives you concern? Certainly no improper words or actions on my part?”

“On your part, no,” said Mr. Mansfield. “I am concerned about Mr. Willoughby.”

Jane gave a little laugh. “Mr. Willoughby? Please, Mr. Mansfield, say what you will against him, for I confess I am relieved that it is he and not I who has earned your disapprobation, especially as he is fictional and therefore it is much easier to reform his ways than my own.”

“I only feel that when Mr. Willoughby first comes into the lives of the Dashwoods, one already has the sense that he is a scoundrel. The shock of Miss Marianne’s rejection would be so much more powerful if we had no reason to suspect Willoughby of duplicity until his true character is revealed.”

“So Willoughby should come onto the stage as more of a hero?”

“Exactly. That is precisely how I should put it. I do hope you do not think me impertinent to say so.”

“Mr. Mansfield, I have always expressed my sincere appreciation for your criticism, and I do not except this attack on Mr. Willoughby.” Lost in their conversation, Jane tripped on a root that lay across the path and stumbled forward. Mr. Mansfield caught her arm and steadied her, and the two walked on. “Perhaps it is that simple,” said Jane.

“You have an idea, I can see,” said Mr. Mansfield, “but I confess I cannot detect its nature.”

“Perhaps Marianne, walking alone and without a kind octogenarian to keep her upright, falls and twists her ankle and Willoughby rescues her. He could thus be a hero from the moment we meet him.”

“I am relieved that you not only welcome my criticism,” said Mr. Mansfield, “but that you are so quickly able to solve the problem. I did not feel I could send you into Kent to write of a Willoughby who was less than he might be.”

“And for that I am most grateful,” said Jane. They had reached the gatehouse, and Jane, who was to depart early the following morning, took her leave. “Do not forget that you have promised to write. Know that I will always be grateful for words from you—even when, or I may say especially when, they are critical of my creations.” Mr. Mansfield accompanied her through the gate of the estate and watched as she turned down the lane in the direction of Steventon. She turned back just before the opening in the hedgerow, where she would leave the road and set off across the fields, for a final glimpse of Mr. Mansfield, who stood by the gatehouse, waving.

—

AS IT HAPPENED, JANE’S
stay in Kent was so filled with visits and balls and long conversations with her brother Edward and his charming wife, Elizabeth, that she had little time for writing beyond the mandatory letters to Cassandra. She had not the heart to write to Mr. Mansfield of the scant progress she had made in the adventures of the Dashwood family, and so to his letters of literary encouragement she replied only with brief notes of family news and an account of a ball. To this last, Mr. Mansfield replied:

Dear Miss Austen,

Busbury Park is a lonely spot without you. I find neither Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper, nor the swans on the lake are able to converse on literary topics, and as for the residents of the main house, their interests lie much more in the way of shooting than reading. While I do not begrudge your brother a visit with his sister, you must return soon if my mind is not to atrophy. And please bring the Dashwoods with you. They are missed, though not as much as their creator.

Yours Most Affectionately,

Rev. Richard Mansfield

Laying this letter on her dressing table, Jane was surprised to find that a well of emptiness seemed to open in her heart. She had felt slightly odd during her visit, almost as if she were watching herself from a distance, and she had given that feeling no serious thought until this moment. Now she realized that she not only missed Mr. Mansfield, but she missed him terribly—in a way that she did not miss Cassandra or her parents. To be true, she felt their absence and looked forward to returning to the bosom of family, but this ache for Mr. Mansfield was something altogether different. It was not, she knew, the ache of a lover, for though she had not yet felt that ache herself, she knew enough of it from novels to know that the symptoms were entirely different. But she found that she could no longer think of him merely as a friend or companion.

That night she lay awake considering her feelings toward Mr. Mansfield. Certainly she was grateful to him for his kindness and encouragement, his honest criticism and his insightful suggestions—but one might feel the same way toward a schoolmaster, she thought. No, there could be no doubt about the matter: Jane loved Mr. Mansfield—not with the love of a heroine for a hero, but with a love that was slower and gentler, more intellectual than passionate, more . . . the word
avuncular
occurred to her but, though she certainly loved her uncles, her relationship with them was nothing like that with Mr. Mansfield. With him there was a meeting of the minds that she supposed was rare, even between husbands and wives. It was as if a part of her mind dwelt in him and a part of his mind dwelt in her, and when she was separated from him a part of herself was missing. She wondered if it was this, more than her busy schedule, that had kept her from returning to
Elinor and Marianne
.

That his letter arrived a few days before Jane’s departure for Hampshire only increased her desire to be home again, and the pain of parting from her brother and his family was eased, if not completely allayed, by the thought of returning not just to Cassandra and her parents, but especially to her frequent intercourse with Mr. Mansfield.