Jane Austen Stole My Boyfriend (24 page)

I hardly know how to write the next bit. After Augusta went, neither of us knew what to say. Eventually he rang the bell for some sweetmeats for me. I took one, but I hated it. It had a strange
sickly taste – coconut, according to him. I chewed and chewed and wished that I could spit it out.

And then, when my mouth was full of this horrible flaky stuff, he suddenly got off the settee and knelt on the floor. At first I thought that he was going to point out another pattern on the
carpet and obediently I looked down. I remember my attention being caught by the twisted, rather spindly legs of the settee and thinking that it was amazing that they held his weight as well as
Augusta’s and mine.

And then I realized that he was asking me to marry him!!!

And I was so embarrassed!!!

He was an old man – well, he might be less than forty, but he looks older because he is so fat.

He took hold of my hand and I thought it might be impolite to snatch it away.

And there I was with my mouth full of sickly coconut and my hand imprisoned by a fat old man.

Suddenly I felt angry. Augusta had planned all of this – left me alone with him while she went next door. She would marry me off to this rich old man – my little legacy of fifty
pounds a year would be nothing to him – he would never demand that! In fact, he would probably bring lots of nice little items back for her from over the seas– I could just imagine what
Augusta would get out of this marriage . . .

I swallowed the rest of the coconut sweet. I hardly tasted it now and I didn’t care if I was sick all over his specially woven carpet. I stood up and dragged my hand away from his and
thanked him politely for his offer of marriage but said that I had to decline it.

I was quite pleased with this little speech, but it didn’t work. He tried to take me in his arms. I screamed! And then I managed to get one of Mr Chippendale’s elegant Chinese
lacquered chairs between him and me. I held it out in front of me, and when he grabbed the seat I suddenly let go and escaped by the long windows out to the front of the house and shrieked for
Augusta.

Jane, who has been writing at her desk, has just interrupted me and asked me to read out my journal to her. This is how our conversation went:

Me: ‘I don’t want to.’

Jane: ‘Well, at least tell me what he said.’

Me: ‘I don’t remember exactly.’

Jane (quite shocked): ‘My dear Jenny, I don’t think that you take your duties as a cousin to a novelist seriously. I don’t seem to get any offers of marriage myself so
I’m relying on you, who seem to get them every few days. How can I write about love scenes when no one will describe them properly?’

Me: ‘That was not a love scene.’

Jane: ‘Doesn’t matter. I could turn it into an abduction scene. That might be more fun. I think I’ll write it up about you being dragged screaming into his chaise. Wait a
minute, though, and I’ll write a letter that you can put under Augusta’s door before you flee through the darkness to find your own true love and beg his protection.’

When I read Jane’s letter I giggled a bit. I was beginning to feel better about the whole day. After all, I had stood up to that man and I had stood up to Augusta, and when we came home
and she complained about me to Edward-John, I had stood up to him as well. I shouted at the two of them and told them that they could not sell me off to a slave dealer. I don’t think I will
give this letter to Augusta though. She is too stupid to understand that it is satirical, so I will stick it into my journal.

Thursday, 5 May 1791

Augusta has not been speaking to me since our talk last night. She called me downstairs just after I had written my journal and told me how stupid I was being and what a
fantastic (that was her word) match this would be.

‘After all,’ she commented, ‘the family is rather in disgrace over this business of your aunt being imprisoned.’

Once I become Mrs Stanley Wilkins, apparently, I will have everything that I could possibly desire (and HIM, of course). I kept telling her that I consider myself engaged to Captain Thomas
Williams and she kept shouting me down. And then she got Edward-John in to talk to me, but that didn’t work either. I was very proud of myself. When Edward-John said that Mama had left me in
his charge I replied very quietly and very reasonably, ‘That was because she thought you, as my brother, would do everything for my happiness.’

And he went red and said no more.

Augusta then tried to be friendly and sisterly, shaking her head and saying: ‘Jenny, Jenny, you really are a very sad girl and do not know how to take care of yourself. You must let others
do that for you.’ And she assured me that my ‘timidity’ had done me no harm with dear Mr Stanley Wilkins. She even told me – these are her exact words – that:
‘
In those who are at all inferior, it is extremely prepossessing
.’

But I held firm, and after a few minutes’ silence from both of them said that I was going up to my bedroom.

Jane has just said that she can see Harry walking down the hill past the house. He will be waiting for us at Queen’s Square Gardens. We are both going to take letters. Mine is to Charles,
who is recovering slowly from the chickenpox, and Jane’s is to her mother, telling all about the Leigh-Perrots. She has just been down to tell Augusta that we are going out to put our letters
in the post. She tells me that Edward-John is entertaining Mr Stanley Wilkins in the breakfast parlour and that Augusta and Mr Jerome Wilkins are nowhere to be seen!

‘Perhaps he has abducted her in his barouche,’ said Jane.

Later on Thursday, 5 May

Now it is after dinner and I have two things to write down – three things really. One is that Augusta is still not speaking to me. It’s quite funny actually,
because at dinner she asked Jane to tell me that I should eat cabbage. Dear, kind Franklin looked rather troubled as he glanced from one to the other of us, but Jane enjoyed it all very much,
putting Augusta’s questions and orders into a very formal, old-fashioned style.

‘
Jenny, dear, I do assure you that it is a truth universally acknowleged, that cabbage brightens the complexion
.’

Or,

‘
My dear Jenny, your sister wishes to request you to be good enough to remove your wrist from the table and hold your fork daintily, as becomes a young lady.
‘

The second thing is that we met Sir Walter, the baronet who is paying attentions to Thomas’s sister, Elinor. He was walking along with his eyes fixed on the pavement and muttering to
himself. He did not even appear to see us, which was quite strange after his quarrel with Harry at Sydney Gardens. I wonder whether he is thinking about his card games.

The third thing is more important because it is what Harry has found out. He has now established – no doubt through the friendly chambermaid – that Sarah Raines, Miss Gregory’s
apprentice, who had testified that she watched Mr Filby wrap Aunt Leigh-Perrot’s parcel (and that he had definitely not put any white lace in with the gown), could not have done so.
Apparently a girl in the shop opposite saw Sarah Raines come out of the pastry-cook shop with a large pie on a plate – and this was well before Mrs Leigh-Perrot had emerged.

‘I shall have to write another anonymous letter to the lawyer,’ said Jane with satisfaction.

I asked her what she had written in the first letter, and she promised to let me have a copy to stick in my journal.

We had a peaceful evening. Jane and I played cards and Edward-John stared at a book. Augusta had gone off to have supper with a friend who was staying at the Greyhound Inn. We know that’s
where she went because Franklin told us that he ordered a sedan chair to take her there and to pick her up again at ten o’clock.

Now I am going to put away my journal, but before I do so I will stick in the letters that Jane wrote to the lawyer. I must say that I would have liked to see his face when he broke the wax seal
and unfolded the sheet.

Friday, 6 May 1791

This morning a letter came for Jane to say that her parents, along with James, would be arriving on the stagecoach on Sunday. Charles was very much better, and Mrs Austen felt
that she should come to support her brother and his wife.

Augusta actually spoke to me this morning. It was only to enquire whether Rosalie had washed and pressed my blue muslin gown. I nodded silently and she gave me an annoyed glance and said,
‘Come now, these sullens don’t become a young girl. Look up and speak up; that’s what I was told when I was your age.’

‘And see how generally esteemed you are now, ma’am,’ said Jane in her politest manner. I choked over a piece of toast and Franklin fussed over me, bringing a glass of water and
bending over me. I thought I glimpsed the shadow of a grin on his face.

Augusta just smiled sweetly and cast a glance at Edward-John to see whether he was going to say something complimentary. My brother, however, seemed in a troubled mood. He was eating very little
and drinking cup after cup of coffee.

‘Come now, not you too,’ his wife said to him impatiently. ‘Pray, let us have some news, Mr Cooper! How are things going for the unfortunate Mrs Leigh-Perrot?’

‘Well,’ said Edward-John, making a visible effort to rouse himself from his depressing thoughts, ‘when I was there yesterday afternoon the lawyer came with some good news.
Apparently this is not the first time that the clerk, Mr Filby, has wrapped up something not paid for in a lady’s parcel. The lawyer thinks that is very significant.’

‘Good gracious me, Mr C., how can you be so tiresome!’ Augusta’s voice was so shrill that it made the glasses on the sideboard ring. She stared at Edward-John in an exasperated
manner. ‘Why ever didn’t you tell me that last night?’

‘Because you went straight out to dinner with your friends, my dear.’ His voice was quiet, but it seemed to hold a meaning in it. Jane and I exchanged glances across the table.

Augusta’s face seemed to colour a little. I had never seen her blush before. But then she turned on me in a most vindictive manner.

‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Jenny. Pray sit up straight. Perhaps you can’t help being dwarfed, but you can at least hold yourself
properly.’