Following Austen

50: The truth about Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy

Anne Hathaway will be on David Letterman tonight talking about Becoming Jane.  And according to my Tivo, she will be on Good Morning America and Live with Regis and Kelly on Wednesday Aug. 1, and on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on Friday Aug. 3.  The movie opens nationwide on the 10th.  I have a pass to a screening next week, so I'll let you know what my thoughts are when I see it.  It looks lovely, just not exactly Jane's story.

Before all the hubbub starts, here's a primer on what happened between Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy.  Forgive the long post -- wanted to get this all in one.  (You can also see excerpts from Jane's letters to her sister about Tom here.)

50: Jane and Tom

Jane Austen essentially created the chick lit genre.  We all know the formula—girl meets guy, girl falls in love with guy, guy breaks her heart, girl meets nicer, better-looking guy with more money and they live happily ever after.  Obstacles abound in Austen’s stories—lack of money on the part of the otherwise lovely heroine, meddling family members who pull lovers apart because they disapprove the match—but these things are always overcome by the abundant worth of two good people who truly love each other.

The love stories in Austen’s own life echo these themes, but without the “happily ever after” ending.

Jane’s first love, at twenty, was Tom Lefroy. He was a law student from Ireland, the nephew of her dear friend Anne’s husband, and Anne may have introduced them. We know little about the relationship, really. Much of what we know of Jane’s life is from her letters, but her sister Cassandra burned many and mutilated more before passing them on to nieces and nephews late in her life. Perhaps Cassandra cut out the juiciest bits, or, as Austen expert Deirdre Le Faye suggests, the parts that could have offended one family member or other. Either way, there are gaps.

Jane and Tom spent some time together over the course of a few weeks, over Christmas and New Year's.  He was fairly serious, quiet and very good—maybe a balance for Jane’s energetic humor. They bantered over Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and after a ball, Jane wrote jokingly to Cassandra of “everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.” She writes about how Tom is given a hard time in the Lefroy household for the attachment, so that when she pays a visit he manages to hide.  But he would pay her another visit, as was the custom, to thank her for partnering him at the ball, and the only fault she could really find with him was that his morning coat was “a great deal too light.”

There is much debate these days about just how in love Jane was with Tom, and how much this relationship influenced her writing. Some say it was just a flirtation—clearly, in Jane’s letters, she is being sarcastic, they say. To me she writes like there is some depth to her feelings, in spite of trying to laugh them off.  “I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening,” she writes of their last meeting.  “I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.” She sounds a little bit like my friends and I as well, telling stories of a romance that fell into the middle of a life that was largely without romantic interest, making much of a little thing. Yet, it’s easy to imagine her being teasing and sharp with Tom.

Tom was from a good family but not wealthy.  His father had been in the army.  He was the oldest son, but it was a large family, eleven children with five daughters ahead of him, and he was made to feel that the future of the family was on his shoulders. He was expected to do well, to do much. Though the attachment seems to have been mutual, Anne and her husband stepped in and quickly sent Tom home. The family history is that Anne Lefroy was forever frustrated with Tom over this, his leading Jane on when he knew there was no chance he could propose.

Tom eventually married someone with an appropriately large fortune, had seven children, and went on to become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He was no Darcy—not heir to great estates or wealth—but clearly his family had expectations Jane did not meet. If Jane wrote about family interference, she learned it firsthand. Tom may have adored her and she him but she hadn’t enough money to qualify.  Most likely Jane never saw him again.

When it ended, Jane wrote to Cassandra:  “At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over—My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.” She was joking, of course. How deeply she felt the joke we will never really know. But her heart had been engaged for likely the first time.

No doubt this relationship and her repartee with Tom fueled her writing.  Whether it was "her greatest inspiration" as the trailers for Becoming Jane claim, well, that's debatable.  But I'm sure it provided as spark.

Sources:
Jane Austen's Letters (ed. Deirdre Le Faye)
Jane Austen: A Family Record (Deirdre Le Faye)
Jane Austen: A Life (Claire Tomalin)

Picture is of Ashe House, Anne Lefroy's home.

Finding Godmersham (part 3: the best cabbie in the world)

At that point, the absolute best thing that could have happened, happened.  A cabbie went by in one direction, saw my pitiful thumb sticking out, and turned around and came back a few minutes later.  Cue the trumpet voluntary.  God saved me.  At least, that is what it felt like.

Brian is officially The Best Cabbie in the World.  “You’re awfully wet,” he said.  He drove me to Godmersham, first to the church and then to the big house, turned off his meter and sat and waited for me twenty minutes while I walked through the fields to see the house (and when I got back in the cab, “You’re still awfully wet.”), then drove me all the way back to Canterbury.  He wasn’t creepy at all, which a girl might worry about in that situation.  He had short blond hair that might have been going the tiniest bit white, bright blue eyes and a solid build.  He was wearing a nice shirt and dark pants, nothing about him was messy.  We had a little bond going, Brian and I.  When he found out about the Austen connection, he wanted to take me out to Goodnestone as well (which was the Bridges’ home, Edward’s in-laws), but I couldn’t afford another adventure.  As it was, I paid him 30 pounds, and now it seems like such a bargain.  It felt wrong somehow to just say goodbye to him there in the tourist district of Canterbury, feeling like he had saved my life.  (Of course, it only took about five minutes to get to Godmersham once I got in the cab, but I don’t think I could have gone further, and I never could have walked back.)

Godmersham was one of the loveliest spots I’ve ever seen.  It stopped raining, though the sky was still heavily gray.  You can’t get into the house (at least, I couldn’t find contact info for anyone), which is now a professional school of some kind.  The walking path leads through the sheep pasture, next to the cows, and up a hill into a cornfield so you can get a better perspective on the whole layout.  None of my pictures do it justice.  It’s simple and grand, gorgeous red brick, classical lines with two rows of windows and two wings on either end, and maybe more in the back.  The house sits in the valley of the Stour (though I was in such a hurry I couldn’t figure out where the river was in relation to the house), broad hills rising behind and in front of it.  When Jane came to visit, they made a point of hiking (or walking, as they called it) every afternoon.  I wish I had hours to explore.

Jane and Cassandra spent a great deal of time there, usually separately, one being called from time to time to help with household duties after the birth of the latest child.  There were eleven children before Elizabeth died just after the youngest was born.  Cassandra seems to have been Elizabeth’s favorite.  No doubt Cassandra was more compliant, Jane’s wit more disconcerting. Jane's niece Anna said, “A little talent went a long way . . . & much must have gone a long way too far."   And Jane, who loved to laugh at everyone, herself included, no doubt found material enough at Godmersham.

At 5:09 P.M. in Faversham, on the train back, the sun came out.  My feet were still soaked.

48: Finding Godmersham (part 2 - hitchhike like a librarian)

At 1:40 I caught the train to Chilham.  By 2:40, I was drenched, my hair soaked, my pants wet 4 inches deep, walking on a narrow slippery shoulder of an incredibly busy A road in the middle of the Kent countryside.  I didn’t know that A roads were the main routes, until Margaret told me just a few minutes ago.

One of my most frequent prayers of late is that I will just not be an idiot.  And I don’t mean the socially awkward, always saying the wrong things at the wrong time kind of idiot, though perhaps I should pray for that more as I have some talent in that area.  I mean, the kind of proud ridiculous idiot who thinks highest of themselves and as a result whose life adds up to very little in the end.  But this was idiocy of a whole other kind.  About fifteen minutes into the experience, I knew that this was one of the dumbest things I had ever done, and begged God to please do something to get me off the side of the road, even though I often question His direct involvement in my life as a result of prayer.  Today I believed.

It made sense when I started out.  Chilham was the smallest train station I had seen yet.  There were no cabs, not even a shack, no phone numbers posted on a sign anywhere.  Everyone who got off the train with me disappeared.  I started to walk in what seemed like the direction of town.  I passed a tea shop and thought perhaps I shoud stop there to call a cab, but just beyond it was a signpost that said Godmersham.  I remembered that Chilham was mentioned in the book I had, the one that describes all the Austen hikes.  I looked it up there at the side of the road and found it was only two or three miles, but the writer recommended a back way through fields and I couldn’t figure that out.  Better to stick to the road.  It had stopped raining, although it was spitting a little.  There was a marked walking path beside the road, even, so I set out.  What is two or three miles on a walking path by a country road in spitting rain to reach a village no one has ever heard of?  I could hear Marianne saying, It’s not going to rain.  And anyway, it’s nothing I mind at all.

The walking trail quickly veered off to the left and I decided to follow the road instead.  It started to rain again, harder, until it was raining so hard it seemed to be coming straight through my Goretex jacket, under which I was sweating from the exertion.  I tried to keep my hood up to keep my head dry, but it cuts off my vision and eventually it just annoyed me so I took it down and let my head get soaked.  The shoulder was gradually disappearing.

Fifteen minutes in, I knew it was a mistake.  But I thought, how much further can it be?  Fifteen more minutes, and the shoulder had completely disappeared so that I was walking in the road and jumping up on the bank between trees when I heard cars coming.  Like a horrible sitcom every car that went by splashed me with water.  The road curved so much and the cars were going so fast, I thought how easy it would be for a car to whip around a corner and hit me dead on.  I was officially terrified.  But now I was 30 minutes into the walk, and I know I can easily walk a mile in 15 minutes, so I thought it really couldn’t be that much further.

I slipped on the grass and my hand landed on nettles of some kind.  All I could think was, what if I had slipped into the road? I passed a simple, expensive-looking house with handcrafted bronze gates.  Feeling incredibly foolish, I rang the intercom, but the phone on the other end just rang and rang and no one picked up.

So when I made it to a little clearing, I did the only thing I could think of:  I stuck out my thumb.  Only I don’t know how to hitchhike the cool way, so I looked like a soaked crazy woman now having an incredibly bad hair day sticking out my thumb in the manner of a librarian and occasionally trying to wave cars down.  No one stopped.

to be continued...

47: Finding Godmersham (part 1)

Here is another little bit from the book, one of my favorite experiences.  (Or at least, one of my favorite stories to tell from the trip.)  You can tell that I have made some changes.  I've put everything in present tense, and am writing it in the form of a journal.  Enjoy!

For those who don't know, Godmersham was Jane's brother Edward's grand house in Kent.  He's the brother who was adopted by wealthy relatives and inherited their estates.  Godmersham is very close to Canterbury.

Sunday, July 25, 6:43 P.M.
on the couch at Margaret’s

Margaret has made me promise never to hitchhike again.  She laughed at me, of course (which I had no problem with, because I was laughing at myself anyway), and has refused my help with dinner, sitting me on the couch with tea and biscuits while she makes quiche.  I will miss her tomorrow when I leave.  The view of Godmersham from the fields was worth everything.

It’s been an ugly day—both for me and the weather.  I wore my green cropped sweatpants and dark red tank, which would have been okay, except that I had to wear my hiking shoes with it, which threw the whole outfit off, and then it was so cold I had to put on my red fleece, which clashed with everything, and it was raining off and on so I kept putting on and taking off my rain jacket, which clashed with the fleece, and it was a bad hair day on top of everything.  I had planned to try Winchester today, thinking it would be simpler, but they were doing work on the tracks in that direction this morning.  Instead, Margaret drove me to the Bromley station and I was able to get a train directly to Canterbury, which was so much easier than I imagined it would be. (She made a point of coming in with me to make sure I would be able to make it through the gate, although I knew it wouldn’t be a problem.)

The town center is small, the streets narrow.  The sky was gray and spitting wet.  I found my way from the train station to the Cathedral without a map.  It’s hidden behind a stone wall right in the center of town.  I mean, as if you could hide a cathedral, but it seemed a little strange to me that it was walled in.

I made it there a little after 11, just after the morning service had started.  To me it felt oppressive and lifeless—maybe because it was so gray and cold.  Maybe because the sermon was rubbish, a woman going on about some cartoon character I’d never heard of, but even I could tell her analogies were weak and overall she seemed to lack strength and conviction.  I shouldn’t judge so quickly, but that was my impression.  They were charging everyone 6 pounds to get in unless you were going to the service, and then you were supposed to pay more for a pass if you wanted to take pictures.  I didn’t pay anything, and I didn’t give them a donation because I thought what they were doing was so obnoxious and so against the spirit of Christianity.  I realized regretfully as I sat there in the folding chairs at the back that this is officially the seat of the Anglican church, my church.  Blech.

By 1:00 I was choking on a dry ham omelet in a great little café above the tourist center, and at 1:40 I caught the train to Chilham from the West train station on the other side of town.  The lady at the tourist center had never heard of Godmersham.  Very bad beginning, I thought.  Then when she did look up the bus schedule, she said the buses didn’t run on Sunday, so I should take the train to Chilham and get a cab from there, which would be much cheaper.  (Lesson:  ALWAYS ask the tourist office for the number of a local cab company.)

I sat there drinking my watered-down instant decaf, literally choking on my dry ham omelet because I was trying to eat it so fast, feeling like an ugly, conspicuous, backpack-toting tourist.  I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, and had far too many un-chic accoutrements.  I wondered if I should even try to find Godmersham, what kind of challenges I would find, if it would even be worth the effort.  So I made a conscious decision to choose adventure.  Hang it all, I thought.   So much goodness has met me so far on the trip, who knows what I’ll find today?  And that is when the fun began.

to be continued...

46: On beauty (or, being a fat little skinny girl)

I promised this post last week, then my grandmother passed away and this didn't seem very important.  So, here it is.  (And, yes, I know I'm a little crazy.  Aren't we all sometimes?)

Jane was not beautiful.  I think this is one of the reasons I like her, or the idea of her.  Actually, really, we don’t know what she looked like.  The only likeness we have is this little drawing her sister did, that looks like just the work of an afternoon and that no one thought looked especially like her at the time.  The proportions seem off—the shoulders slope, the eyes and mouth and shape of the head and neck are not quite right—yet nearly every image we have of her has been adapted somehow from this.  They probably never imagined it would make it outside their little family circle.  And now it sits in a little case in the National Portrait Gallery in London, the light going off and on from time to time to protect it.

Jane’s niece, Caroline said in her brief memoir of her aunt:

“Her’s was the first face that I can remember thinking pretty, not that I used that word to myself, but I know I looked at her with admiration—Her face was rather round than long—she had a bright, but not a pink colour—a clear brown complexion and very good hazle eyes—She was not, I believe, an absolute beauty, but before she left Steventon she was established as a very pretty girl, in the opinion of most of her neighbors . . . Her hair, a darkish brown, curled naturally—it was in short curls round her face (for then ringlets were not.)”

Caroline was much younger than her aunt, and perhaps her admiration made her see Jane in a more positive light.  Her sister Anna was older, and got to the point of being very good friends with Jane, and almost feeling like her peer. She sought Jane’s advice on her marriage and brought around silly books she had gotten from the lending library for their general amusement.  She even started to write and Jane offered guidance.

She wrote in a letter to her brother James-Edward:

“This has brought me to the period of my own greatest share of intimacy; the two years before my marriage, & the two or three years after, when we lived, as you know almost close to Chawton when the original 17 years between us seemed to shrink to 7—or to nothing.  It comes back to me now how strangely I missed her; it had become so much a habit with me to put by things in my mind with a reference to her and to say to myself, ‘I shall keep this for Aunt Jane.’”

But Anna was not so entirely gracious about Jane’s appearance:

“The Figure tall & slight, but not drooping; well balanced, as was proved by her quick firm step.  Her complexion of that rather rare sort which seems the peculiar property of light brunettes.  A mottled skin, not fair, but perfectly clear & healthy in hue; the fine naturally curling hair, neither light nor dark; the bright hazel eyes to match, & the rather small but well shaped nose.” 

Which all sounds very nice.  And then Anna adds:  “One hardly understands how with all these advantages she could yet fail of being a decidedly handsome woman.”

I have often felt that way myself—there are parts that should add up to a good-looking whole that don’t entirely.  Tall and thin, with lovely eyes, a decent complexion (not as much of that smooth tan as I would like to have gotten from my Norwegian forebears, but still, decent), a nose which could be called “small but well shaped,” thick-ish brown hair that looks good when I do something with it, although that’s not very often, and cheeks which are “a little too full,” which is how another family acquaintance described Jane.  My ears are crooked, and there are moments when I look in the mirror and think the jowls are beginning. Then there are moments when I catch myself in the mirror and think it’s not so bad as I thought, and maybe it’s actually far better than I usually imagine.  But I’ve often thought that, if there is beauty here, it is with a kind of weirdness underlying it—like the disproportions of Cassandra’s sketch—which throws everything off.

The current American fashion, as everyone knows, is boobs-on-a-stick.  As I am not actually a stick figure, and you have to have a good imagination to see my breasts, I do not exactly fit in.  But then, I think this is not really a trend for normal women so much as for cocaine addicted, surgically altered models.

I try to tell my friends that I am actually a fat little skinny girl, but no one believes me. The only place on my body that seems capable of carrying fat cells is my stomach,  which I wouldn’t mind if there were something to balance it out, but there’s not, so on my worst days I look rather disproportioned.

If you caught me sitting on the couch you would as likely see my little pudgy stomach sticking out as not.  The thing is, it’s easy to hide these particular faults with a good outfit, a series of carefully constructed optical illusions.  But it is still there, this weird little body, my skinny little frame with the stomach of a much larger woman, and I know it even when other people don’t.

My sister-in-law, who is wise and witty, tells me that women are supposed to have stomachs.  Jane probably had a stomach and couldn’t have cared.  But then, they were (and I think the British still are) much more satisfied with normal sorts of bodies than we are.

I don’t believe in plastic surgery.  For one thing, I think it’s far easier to learn to be content with your body than to have someone knock you out, cut you open, and stuff foreign objects inside you.  Maybe I’ve got that wrong.  Maybe surgery really is easier than contentment.  But I think contentment is healthier and more admirable and in some way much more attractive.  So I am choosing to believe that my stomach looks big only because the rest of me is so very small.

I don’t think Jane would have wanted to be the most beautiful person in the room.  I imagine that she was incredibly content with her own little blend of beauty and intelligence and wit.

She gives her characters only the vaguest physical descriptions.  Odd that we have such clear pictures of them in our minds, because she didn’t labor over this at all.  We get to know them most through what they say, their friendships, their place in society, the choices they make.

45: Divergences (or, the birth of a perfectionist)

There are several places where Austen and I diverge.  She didn’t keep a journal—at least, none that survive.  From the time I began writing it was about capturing my own thoughts and feelings.

The summer I was nine, we packed everything up and drove for six hours through central Texas, hundreds of miles of barren dirt punctuated by the occasional Dairy Queen.  Everything changed in Wichita Falls.  I went to a public school where nothing spoke of home—everything had a tinge of mediocrity to me, and I felt lost.  The teaching was perfunctory and cold, far behind the schools I’d been in.  The girls were so different.  They were reading Judy Blume books and anxiously waiting for their periods to start.  I was reading Little House on the Prairie and The Black Stallion, still playing make-believe.  I don’t remember having any friends there; I was the awkward one without anyone to talk to.

Ballet was lost, just when I could have gone on pointe—we couldn’t find a studio.  I’m not sure I even told my mom how much I wanted to keep dancing.  Instead, the whole family took up tennis; my brother and I had hours of practice every day after school and all summer in the hot sun.  Our house on Lou Lane, walking distance from the university, flooded that first spring.  Three feet of water floated away baby pictures and ruined shoes.  I remember feeling poor, wearing hand-me-down clothes that someone from church brought over, and realizing that now I knew what it felt like—for a brief time, at least—to be in need.

I started making straight A’s.  I became a perfectionist.  And I started to write.

I can remember sitting on the formal couch in the living room, looking out the tall windows at a rare north Texas snow, writing bad elementary-school poems about God.  The journal—brown, with pink and white flowers—has disappeared, but I’m sure I’ll be horrified when I find it.  And then there are notebooks of self-indulgent, poorly written journals going back to high school.  I can’t throw them away, but I can’t bear to read them, either.

As far as we know, there was none of this for Jane, no self-indulgent scribbling, no journaling about her feelings or about trying to find her place in the world.  Her “quiet life” had its share of upheaval.  Her first experience at the boarding school in Oxford must have been somewhat traumatic.  A few years later, when she and Cassandra were at a different school with their cousin Jane Cooper, a fever broke out.  Mrs. Austen and her sister rushed in to get the girls, but their aunt Cooper caught the fever and died shortly after.  The household was constantly changing as Jane’s brothers were sent off to school—James and Henry to Oxford, Frank and Charles at a younger age to naval school—and returned home.  At twenty, of course, she met Tom Lefroy, and immediately lost him again.  Cousin Jane Cooper went on to marry extraordinarily well, only to die in a coach accident several years later, when Jane was twenty-three.  At twenty-five she lost the dear family home at Steventon when her parents abruptly announced her father’s retirement and the family move to Bath.  At twenty-nine, her dear friend Anne Lefroy died in a riding accident on Jane’s birthday, and then Jane’s own beloved father died, sending the small family unit of mother and two daughters spiraling into something close to poverty.  But there’s no record of any of these in Jane’s own hand, other than in the letters that remain.

Another point where we diverge is the source of our writing.  I believe Jane wrote because she was a great conversationalist, full of wit in a day when wit was prized, a sharp observer of society.  While I write in many ways from weakness rather than strength--I write because I am a poor conversationalist, because there are so many things I can’t sort out in conversation and have to put in print to get right.

Jane wrote for fun, while I write in some ways from need.  Perhaps she felt the need to write as well.  Perhaps there were days when it was a burden.  But when she made 200 pounds on Sense and Sensibility, she spoke of the great return for “that which had cost her nothing.”

44: San Antonio

I first tasted Haagen Dazs coffee ice cream when I was eight years old, sitting at an outdoor table overlooking the ocean, everything seemingly whitened by the sun.  It was one of those small moments that children tend to remember, the cold metal bowl with perfect round scoops, the lovely taste from something that seemed like it should be bitter and strange, the mid-level resort which felt designed to pamper us.  We were in Hawaii for the first time.  Grammy and Bob paid for most of everything, which meant that we could afford to fly first class, with soft wide leather seats.  When I think of my childhood, I think of the bright sun—the Texas sun, the Hawaiian sun—and the water, the clear blue of chlorinated pools or the darker ocean.

We lived in San Antonio then, which had all my favorite childhood memories—the long backyard where we had sack races, and pinatas at birthday parties; the classroom full of kids I had known for three-and-a-half years, which at that point seemed like all my life.  We wore maroon plaid uniforms to school, with matching knee socks and white shirts.  My shirts and uniforms were invariably wrinkled, my socks rolled down to form perfect, big tubes around my ankles.  My handwriting sprawled.  I got B’s and a couple A’s and thought that was really fantastic.  Susan, with her white-blond wavy hair always got the straight A awards, which seemed ridiculously over the top.  One of my best friends, Diane, wrote as perfectly as the examples in the book and even then seemed more put together than I would ever be.  We had crushes on the cute boys and passed them notes during class to see if they might happen to return our affection (to which they remained determinedly aloof).

The elementary kids had races every year in a huge field beyond the playground.  In second or third grade I won the 400-meter with my big brother running alongside me the whole way cheering me on.  Beyond that was an old drive-through that made strawberry milkshakes with real strawberries where we walked after school while mom was working on her lesson plans.  And then there was dance class, and the stage, where I thrived on small recitals in big auditoriums with huge lights and applause.  I loved every minute of performing.  It made me happy in a way nothing else did.

My brother played in endless weekend basketball games, in small gyms where there was nothing to do but be bored and sit in the girls bathroom talking to my friend Jeanene.  And there were sleepovers at Diane’s with her neat, organized, put-together house; or Jennifer’s, happily crowded with smaller children; or Jeanene’s, out in the country, where sometimes scorpions came up through the drains—enough to keep a small child awake at night.

I knew that Diane and I, our families were about the same.  And that Jennifer’s was poorer, maybe a level below us, but it seemed wonderful to me, all those children in their small house, all eating together around the thin kitchen table, with bowls and plates and cups that didn’t match.  And Jeanene’s family did not seem to care about church so much.  Her mother had big hair and wore thick makeup; she gave us green-apple chewing gum and taught us the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bikini song.

We were in a new house in a suburb, with white sheetrock walls and maroon shag carpet.  My brother and I had bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and for some reason, although I had never seen Psycho, I was afraid in that shower.  (What is there to be afraid of when your parents are there to protect you?  But still I saw shadows and made them into evil men, and was always rinsing my hair in a panic.)  The narrow lawn sloped up behind the house for what seemed like ages.  Thick, menacing-looking spiders popped out of small holes in the metal swingset from time to time, so I covered the holes with Scotch tape before I went on swinging.

Hard Texas rains brought with them threats of tornadoes, cooling and softening the air, releasing all the backyard scents just beyond the sliding kitchen door—the yellowing sod struggling to put down roots, the dirt splashing into mud—where we sat eating our occasional Saturday-night steaks and salads.

The pool went in after my first-grade year, I think.  I lived in bathing suits, smelling of chlorine and Coppertone, my skin getting darker and darker until I would be the only girl in dance class who didn’t need to wear hose for our pictures. I’ve always been lighter than my father whom I take after most, who seems to be somewhat lighter than his father, whom I never met but they say could have passed for an American Indian.

Vacation always meant the beach.  We camped under the pines at Myrtle, hunted sand dollars in the wide expanses of Corpus Christi, went back to Hawaii a couple times.

But there was no stability for us, no quiet village.  We were plucked up every two to four years, moving from one Air Force assignment to the next.  In Phoenix, where my brother was born, my mom fell in love with the smell of the orange blossoms.  I made my grand entry at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, when all the leaves were changing and the sun had assumed its October intensity.  After six months in Virginia Beach, where I always avoided the ocean for fear of sharks, we headed to lovely Hispanic San Antonio. And then when I was nine, we moved to barren, tornado-alley Wichita Falls, where my dad was squadron commander of a NATO training unit. 

I didn’t grasp the craziness of this life.  It was normal to me, what happened to so many families we knew.  I understood at a young age that my friends could only be friends for a couple of years, and then I’d be moving on.  (In some ways, when you live like that, you become adept at building temporary friendships.)  The only permanence our family had was our love for each other, and our faith—both of which, however imperfect, left me with a sense of great abundance.

43: Home and family

The Austen home was warm, full of laughter and love.  Perhaps I'€™m reading into this what I want, the way those historians do who imagine Jane to have been a rather harsh feminist, and her father to have been involved in the slave trade.  But we know that in their adult years the family all genuinely respected each other, that there was a great deal of friendship and camaraderie—an enviable family to have been part of.

They had their hints of dysfunction.  (Is any family without them?)  James, the oldest, could be demanding and officious.  Edward, not unlike his mother, developed a talent for imagining himself ill.  Charming Henry had some difficulty making his way in the world, and at one point went bankrupt and lost some valuable family holdings.  If Jane and Cassandra had a weakness it was that they were generally thought to have rushed into spinsterhood, hurrying themselves into middle age.  But all the children remained close throughout their lives.

There were eight in all, six before Jane and one after her, all delivered with no anesthesia and remarkably with no problems.  Well, perhaps there were problems with George, the second.  Many people who talk about the Austen family say there were only seven children, and I think it is because they are forgetting George.  We don’t know exactly what was wrong with him, but he appears to have been learning disabled in some way, and had fits.  It’s possible he was deaf and dumb.  The Austens sent him to live in Monk Sherborne, a neighboring village, with the same people who cared for Mrs. Austen's younger brother, who struggled with similar difficulties. The Austen parents seem to have visited George and loved him, but he was apparently not a great part of their lives.

Actually, all of the children were sent out when they were small to stay with a family in the village, after about three months of breastfeeding and careful attention.  (Claire Tomalin details this in Jane Austen:  A Life.)  The Austens visited the babies every day during their 12- or 18-month stay with the nurse.  The village is so small, it’s easy to believe that the little ones still saw their parents all the time.  Though it sounds cruel to us, it seems to have been an accepted part of raising chidren then.  As Tomalin points out, they did not understand the significant bond between mother and child.  Perhaps even if they did understand, they would have done it anyway, as a means of survival—running a household, farm and school along with a growing family, without any extended family nearby, you can imagine the couple needed help.

So there they were€--James, Edward, Henry, Cassandra, Frank, Jane and Charles--with a mother who loved to write charming little poems and a father who could teach them all they would ever need to know of Greek and Latin.

42: St. Nicholas

The next few posts may be a little repetitive for those who read the travel article I posted earlier about walking with Jane.  But, of course, there's still some great stuff here! 

Jane Austen had an idyllic childhood. This is easy to say, since I did not live her childhood (and it is what I imagine people would say about my own, although my own didn’t feel that way—normal, maybe, free of tragedy, but not idyllic).

This was just one of the thoughts threading through my mind as I sat on a bench in the graveyard of St. Nicholas church in Steventon Monday morning. Jane, my friend from the Abbey, had finished her retreat yesterday and gone back home, but offered to drop me here today on her way to Basingstoke. I had not rented a car, not wanting to attempt driving on the wrong side of the road, with no one to navigate. Only, I discovered, public transportation is nearly non-existent in Hampshire. So that morning Dom Nicholas knocked on my door as I was drying my hair. “The bus to Steventon has arrived. We are having coffee,” he said, in a voice that hinted of reprimand. “Be quick!”

My mind was pulsing and jumping to be here in the village where Jane spent her first 25 years. I had to—impossible to come all this way and not accomplish this—go inside the church, but as yet, the doors were stuck, or locked, or I just didn’t know how to open them. I wanted to find the site of the rectory, the old well the only remaining landmark. And I planned to spend most of the four hours I had hiking through the countryside Jane knew so well, in search of her friend Anne Lefroy’s house.

The very air seemed to buzz. My ears were opened to new noises—raucous bugs and birds, the same activity I had seen yesterday as I sat by the willow pond. I expected to find it quiet, which it was, but it was also fully alive. Every stalk of grass, every bit of water held movement. It made me remember the layers of sounds and activity that we forget about, silenced beneath our concrete and condos, drowned out by cell phones and TVs.

Most of us know little of this natural realm anymore, I suppose, but Jane would have been tuned to its cues—when the chestnuts dropped in the fall, the damage a spring storm could do, which kind of winter fronts could be weathered in thick pattens and which would leave the women housebound for weeks on end.

There are twenty or so mostly kept-up graves spread around the graveyard. Jane’s brother James and his two wives are buried here, along with some of the Digweed family who lived in the manor house when Jane was a girl. A massive yew tree fills the front yard. They used to hide the church key here until someone stole it. I think this tradition went back to Austen’s day, but I’m not sure. I looked for the key anyway, hoping for some stroke of luck, but found nothing.

The church sits at the end of a very small lane, the only cross-street in town, which turns to gravel past the churchyard. The brick manor, rebuilt, is just across this lane, and the rest of the church is surrounded by a field of high grass, through which an Englishman in shorts (someone ought to tell them not to wear shorts when they are so terribly white) was running his dogs. He thought the church would be open. I tried again. No luck. The directions for finding the site of the rectory were indecipherable; the Lefroy home—some two or three miles off—felt easier. So I set off through the fields.

41: Again, grace

I’m not sure why the goodness and grace of God were so oppressive to me there at Alton Abbey.

The great (and embarrassing) disappointment of my life thus far has been the not-getting-married thing.  (Embarrassing partly because I have not been asked, never been adored like that, and partly because in this feminist age I still want it so much.)  And if that will sound crazy to some, since I am currently 34 and still very marryable, it may help to know the expectations in the conservative Christian world in which I was raised.  Girls were supposed to grow up, go to college, and get married.  Nearly all of my friends did just that.  Well, two of my best friends got married before our senior year.

So as the years went on I worried about trying to catch up to them and their growing families, and gradually came to realize—contrary to popular American Christian belief—that God does not always give you what you want.

The American Christian mentality can be a dangerous one.  We are so successful, so rich, that we begin to equate these things with the blessing of God.  And they are great blessings, to be sure.  But in some ways this leads to a faith that evaluates God’s work in our lives (and the lives of our friends) by the amount of stuff we have received.  When things work out (marriage, children, 401K) God is clearly present.  When things do not work out, we tell ourselves and others to hold on, that God will surely come to our aid and act quickly on our behalf, bringing us what we want/need/desire/cannot live without.  These are not entirely untrue; God loves to give us good things.  And yet, what we end up with in many ways is a faith focused on all of our riches, a faith that works only in America.  (Just thinking about trying to encourage third-world believers the way we talk to each other belies the fact that these “truths” we hold on to are not universal.)

Through the window of this great disappointment, my unmet longing for someone to share life with, my eyes were opened to the other side of God—the withholding side, the hard side, the side that could smite the Amalekites and keep someone in the greatest want.

I chose to believe that this harshness was still love, was still somehow for my best, would work for my good.  Of course, I love the freedom of my life.  Nothing but my bank account will stop me if I want to fly to Paris for the weekend.  And truthfully, I’m thankful not to be responsible for a gaggle of toddlers.  But somehow through this loss I grew to associate God’s love with something harsh and difficult, with things that didn’t feel like love at all.

And now I was immersed in sun and friendship and something like love.  I felt like God was asking me to believe once again in his actual goodness, in his ability and desire to give me things that not only were good for me, but felt good.