The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen (8 page)

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I could hardly breathe.

I picked up the first booklet in the pile. Atop the title page, penned by quill in black-brown ink, it read:
The Stanhopes
.

The neat, flowing hand of the prose below was unmistakable. Although it included cross-outs, insertions, revisions, and capitalizations of some words in a manner no longer in common practice, the text was eminently legible. I read the first paragraph aloud.

My heart seemed to be leaping inside my chest.

“Oh my God…It sounds like her. It
has
to be hers!”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Anthony said, sitting down on the floor beside me, beaming. “Let’s read it.”

VOLUME ONE

C
HAPTER I

For nearly all of her twenty-one years, Rebecca Stanhope had lived very happily in the same house on a quiet, tree-shaded lane in the tiny village of Elm Grove, a situation so pleasant and comfortable that she had no desire to alter it in any way. A lively, intelligent, handsome, and accomplished young woman, Rebecca awakened every morning to glimpse the same prospect from her casement window—a lovely view of the grassy slope behind the rectory down which she used to roll as a child—a sight which never failed to make her smile.

Rebecca loved every thing about Elm Grove Rectory. It was not a perfect house; the walls had no cornices, the ceilings were plain plaster without a single ornately carved cherub, and the doorways were so low that many gentlemen had to stoop to move from one chamber to another. But with its balanced, two-storeyed Georgian front, it maintained a dignified, orderly appearance, and it had enough
bedrooms, parlours, pantries, offices, and attic chambers—resulting from the many improvements which her father had made over the years—to comfortably accommodate a household of eight, with ample space for guests. It included a glebe of sufficient size for one cow to graze, a neat, enclosed garden for the growing of fruits and vegetables, and surrounding woods which were very picturesque.

Rebecca loved the village of Elm Grove, too, and was content in the belief that she would spend all the days of her life within the confines of its borders, continuing in blissful ignorance of its many deficiencies. The village was very small, and at first glance, had little to recommend it. Its population numbered a mere twenty-seven families, and it was comprised of but a few outlying farms and a single row of cottages scattered for half a mile along a rutted lane. Only two houses were superior to those of the yeomen and labourers,—the manor-house and its park at one end, and the rectory (adjacent to the church) at the other. There was no inn, and not a single shop. Its residents were obliged to go to Atherton, three miles away, to find an apothecary or to buy cloth, ink, drawing paper, or a pair of gloves; and as the Stanhopes had no carriage, the women of the household had to make the most of infrequent visits from travelling salesmen to buy lace and stockings. The Stanhopes’ only true companionship in the parish were the Mountagues, who were first in consequence, wealthy, and much respected. None of these aspects, however, were seen as evils by Rebecca. To her, Elm Grove, with its many comforts, familiar walks, and friendly neighbours, was and always had been all perfection; an idyllic place which could not be superseded by any other—and her father shared her opinion.

Rebecca was the second daughter of the Reverend
Mr. William Stanhope, an amiable, scholarly, highly principled man with a bright and hopeful disposition. The only child of a country surgeon, whose money upon his death (through carelessness in not altering his will) had all gone to his second wife, the young Mr. Stanhope had not allowed his destitute position to dampen his spirits. As a young man, he travelled, worked where and when he could, and lived much in the world. At age two-and-twenty, through the grace of a Fellowship, he entered Oxford; and three years later, by joining energy of character to superior abilities, he earned a divinity degree.

Mr. Stanhope might have stayed a Fellow of St. John’s for ever, if not for his desire to marry; and though it took more than eight years to come about, through the patronage of an old school friend, Sir Percival Mountague, he was offered an incumbency at Elm Grove. He then sought the hand of the woman he loved, and married her. Margaret Parker was as beautiful and clever as she was kind; a gentle, well-informed woman of pleasing address and considerable conversational powers, who shared his values and interests, and returned his affections. She bore him two children; first Sarah, and three years later, Rebecca.

Mr. Stanhope was a model parish priest, entirely devoted to his community, and an excellent husband and father. Only two faults stood in the way of his being considered a truly flawless individual: he possessed a tendency towards being overly fastidious (which manifested itself in a rare disgust of dirt); and he had no head for finances, giving himself to acts of impulsive, unthinking generosity, which put his own family in difficult straits at times. The Elm Grove living, at three hundred pounds, was not large, but could be improved by the collection of tithes; however, Mr.
Stanhope, sensitive to the difficulties of his parishioners, was averse to such collection. Fortunately, his wife brought an inheritance, the interest of which added to his income; this he further embellished by teaching schoolboys he took in as boarders—a practice which profited his daughters, as they, in turn, received the benefits of his tutelage.

Life went on quite happily in this manner in the Stanhope household for many years. Mr. Stanhope and his wife esteemed a tidy household, and were enthusiasts of music, writing, and literature. He was proud of his ever-increasing collection of books, which filled the shelves of his study. Mrs. Stanhope happily performed all those duties expected of a rector’s wife, raised their girls, and served as house mistress to the succession of boys who lived and schooled with them. Sarah and Rebecca, being very close, chose to share a bedroom, and many a night was spent whispering away to each other in the darkness. The two girls did, however, have very different interests.

Sarah was an obedient student, but far more interested in drawing, needlework, and gardening; and she had no aptitude for music. Rebecca loved music from an early age. She was accomplished at playing the pianoforte by age eight, and later the harp; and she possessed a fine voice, which her family and their friends loved to hear. She was skilled at drawing, and good with languages; but more than any thing else, Rebecca adored reading. Every lesson entranced her, and made her eager to learn more.

When Rebecca reached twelve years of age, a small tremor shook the foundations of her carefully ordered life. Mr. and Mrs. Stanhope decided that their daughters required more accomplishments and a more worldly edification than could be taught at home, and sent them off to boarding-school.
The experience proved less than satisfactory. The establishment, situated at a remote country house some ten miles distant, was, to Rebecca, nothing more than a place at which young ladies, for an exorbitant price, attained heightened vanity and elegant accomplishments, without any actual learning. She felt she had achieved more in six days via her father’s tutelage than in six whole months at school; and she and Sarah both missed Elm Grove and their parents dreadfully. After a year, the exercise was thankfully ended, and they were brought home.

At age eighteen, Sarah married one of her father’s former pupils, Mr. Charles Morris, a clergyman who had received an appointment in Buckinghamshire. This loss to Rebecca was very great, for it took away her best friend and confidante; but additional sorrow lay on the horizon. Her mother fell seriously ill. It became Rebecca’s responsibility to nurse her, a task which she took on with devotion, bestowing on Mrs. Stanhope all the tender care which a loving heart can provide. Although the advice of the local surgeon was strictly followed, along with that of two physicians in town, Margaret Stanhope did not rally. When she died, the family grieved long and deeply. Mrs. Stanhope’s place could never be filled; yet somehow they must go on.

Without his wife to assist him, Mr. Stanhope closed down the school. Without the company of the boys who used to tread up and down the stairs, and enliven their dinner table with boisterous conversation, the rectory was very quiet; but Rebecca and her father became accustomed to it, and grew to prefer it. At age fifteen, Rebecca was mistress of the house, proving herself useful, and assisting her father just as she ought, as she continued her education under his guidance. Over the course of the next six years, a strong bond formed
between them. Despite the disparity in their ages (he was now sixty years of age, having not married early), they became each other’s dearest and closest companion. She was her father’s prime source of comfort, and he hers; they had much in common intellectually; they loved and admired each other with all their hearts.

Twice a month, she and her father dined at Claremont Park, the elegant home of their patron, Sir Percival Mountague, with whom her father enjoyed a weekly game of cards. On occasion, they dined with friends from the adjacent parishes, where she was asked to play and sing. But most evenings, they spent alone at home, either reading aloud from the paper, or from whatever book had been newly purchased or acquired from the circulating library.

Each and every newspaper and volume seemed to Rebecca like a window to the world, which fascinated her with its many cultures and diversities; yet, she had no desire to move beyond the safety and comfort of that window. She had never undertaken a journey longer than ten miles—had never even seen her sister’s house, it being too distant for a day’s excursion—and the pleasure of her sister’s company was now restricted to but a few weeks at Christmas or midsummer, when Sarah and her husband and family came to them. These visits, which filled the rectory with the happy bustle, noise, and confusion peculiar to children, and obli ged Mr. Stanhope to give up any attempt at household order, made Rebecca very happy. She wished they could occur more frequently; indeed, she dearly missed her sister, and their regular, intimate correspondence could never make up for the joys of a face-to-face conversation; but she contented herself with what was offered.

Although there were no longer any young ladies of
Rebecca’s age with whom she could keep company in Elm Grove (the Mountagues’ youngest daughters, like Sarah, having been removed by matrimony), Rebecca was busy and content. Every morning before breakfast, she practised her music. She took daily walks in the nearby meadows. She worked in the garden and the poultry yard, sewed her father’s shirts and household linens, made clothes for the poor, visited the cottagers when they were sick, and read to their children (teaching many to read).

Sarah understood and honoured Rebecca’s affection for her home and its environs, yet she worried.

“The true difficulty in the neighbourhood,” Sarah had pointed out on her last visit, “is the complete lack of eligible young men.” How, she wondered, was Rebecca ever to marry? The balls at the assembly room in Atherton were sparsely attended, by men with no pretensions to culture. The curate-in-charge of Farleigh was married. The vicar of Calderbury was a widower of fifty. The Mountagues had only one son, who was promised to one of his cousins. Was Rebecca destined to be an old maid, dependent on her father all her life, never to give her heart to any one, or to know the joy of raising a family? Rebecca calmly insisted that if she
was
never to marry, she would graciously accept her fate, for her life and heart were full in caring for her father, and in her activities and associations in the parish; and as to children, one must never discount the importance of being an aunt.

It was now a mild evening in early August, the sun hanging low in the sky, the air redolent with the fragrance of roses in bloom and the gentle sound of the breeze brushing the trees. Rebecca sat with her father on a garden bench beneath a large elm, listening to him read aloud from
The Female Quixote
. She loved to hear him read; he was highly skilled at
the activity, imbuing his performance with spirit and feeling. When Mr. Stanhope finished a chapter and closed the volume, she gave a happy sigh, drinking in the quiet of the surroundings, thinking how fortunate she was, and how happy and content.