Travelling to the infernal regions was easy. True, the ferry leaked and the water seeping in through the planks of the hull was dark and cold, but remembering the hardships her brothers must endure in the navy, Jane decided to make light of it. Anyway, she did not think the ferryman would pay much heed to the remonstrations of a lone passenger like herself.
When she reached her destination and disembarked, the long terraces laid out upon the slope above the fiery lake put her in mind of Bath. The climate of the place was mild and the prospect of the distant hills pleasing. Provided that the society was pleasant she could, she thought, reside here with much happiness.
Before she could settle she had, like all mortals, to answer the charges brought against her in the court of the dead. Entering the half-timbered courthouse and making herself known to the phantasmal usher who greeted her, she reminded herself that she was hardly likely to find herself acquitted on all counts. There was no denying her life had had its faults: that tendency to be sharp, especially with her mother; the occasional fruitless burst of resentment at the good fortune of others; and of course that wretched business when she had accepted Mr Bigg-Wither’s proposal of marriage only to change her mind twelve hours later. True the two of them would never have fadged, but it might have caused him less hurt if she had been plain from the outset. On the other hand, she was no Medea, nor Lucrezia Borgia, nor yet adulterous Lady Coventry. She had lived within her means and although she had sometimes been short with her family, in truth she loved them well. Had she not taken every care of her sickly mother, even when they both knew the sickness had no existence whatever outside the patient’s fertile fancy?
The usher led her into an oak-panelled room with a gallery at one end and a low dais at the other, on which sat the three austere gentlemen who made up death’s tribunal. For a second, she stood quite still, amazed to see how much the exercise of eternal justice resembled the workings of English law – one of those three presiding judges had even extracted a large bone snuffbox from the folds of his gown and was offering it to his companions before helping himself to a liberal pinch. The sight comforted her; she knew several snuff-taking gentlemen and found them in the main genial and warm-hearted. What had she to fear?
Fingers, bony and cold through her woollen gown, pushed her in the small of the back. The spectral usher was thrusting her with no great civility towards the dock. Disliking his prodding, she entered it at once. The wooden surround reached almost to the level of her eyes – she was not a tall woman – and she found herself surveying the courtroom from behind a row of iron spikes. Her confidence began to sink. In this setting, everything must point to her guilt before the hearing began. But guilt upon what charge? What indictment did she face? Deliberately she stared across the court to get the measure of the prosecution.
Where she had expected to meet her mother’s acid eye, deep-set in the folds of her face, or hear poor, good Harris Bigg-Wither stammer out his grievance, instead she beheld no fewer than six women. Theirs were not faces of women whom she remembered from her childhood in Steventon, nor yet from the Chawton years, and she did not think they belonged to Bath. At the same time, she knew she had seen these fighting chins before. Musing, the truth dawned. The prosecuting counsel were her own creations – Mrs Bennet, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mrs Ferrars, Mrs Churchill, Lady Russell and Mrs Norris, whose sharp elbows had thrust her to the fore.
A black-clad clerk rose from his seat at the foot of the dais.
‘Prisoner in the dock, what is your name?’
‘Jane Austen, sir,’ said Jane crisply.
‘Kindly address your replies to the bench, ma’am. Well, these ladies,’ he nodded to the prosecution, ‘have summoned you here to answer a serious charge: namely, that you, Jane Austen between the years 1775 and 1817 did maliciously undercut the respect due from youth to age, in that when you created female characters of advanced years, you wilfully portrayed every one of them as a snob, a scold, or a harpy who selfishly or manipulatively interferes with the happiness of an innocent third party. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’
She was by inclination truthful – in death as in life, but to give an honest answer was unthinkable. At the same time, the thought of having to lie brought on a rush of confusion. Now, as they stared down at her, their faces inert and colourless, the judges no longer looked so benign. What sentence might they pronounce? Prison? One of her aunts had gone to prison for stealing a piece of lace, and a miserable time she had had of it. That had been in Somerset. Although this place appeared orderly, she did not think its prisons would be as comfortable as those of Somerset, nor yet so civilised.
‘Not guilty,’ she replied.
‘Counsel for the prosecution,’ the clerk glanced at the terse old women, ‘outline your case if you please.’
There was a brief babble, an altercation involving Lady Catherine, and then the mistress of Rosings deflated unsteadily upon an upright chair and Mrs Norris, adjusting her bonnet, stepped forward.
‘Your honours, the facts of the case are simple. The issue is that nowhere in her clever books does the irresponsible female in the dock portray elderly women in any true light of kindness.
‘Look at us. Here is Mrs Bennet who always worked hard for her daughters but who emerges in Miss Austen’s writing as foolish and noisy; devoted Mrs Ferrars is made to look grasping, her friend Mrs Churchill self-absorbed and demanding. The worthy Lady Catherine, so interested in young people’s welfare and so conscientious in setting their feet upon the right path through life, she presents as misguided and supercilious. She would have us believe that even beneficent Lady Russell cared less for her goddaughter’s happiness than for her own. There, your honours, would I rest my case, except that I cannot forbear to remind you that my creator has the temerity to suggest that the true devotion I showed my niece Fanny Price – making her aware of her lowly station, impressing upon her the virtue of frugality, reminding her of every Christian’s call to humility – was no more than crabbed meanness. Here is pure malice. And she directs all her hostility to women who are old. Female kindness and liberality, according to Miss Austen, are youth’s province alone.’
‘Your evidence?’ enquired the judge on the left-hand side.
‘In these wretched books,’ Mrs Norris asserted, producing the familiar volumes from her reticule and holding them at a distance from her face as though the pages gave off a bad smell. ‘For youth, Miss Austen makes every allowance. Her young women – Elizabeth, Elinor, Catherine and all – have ready charm. Anne Elliot, who is not old so much as faded, proves wiser than her father. The benevolence Emma Woodhouse shows her father counterpoises her impudence and arrogance. Mary Crawford may flirt where she should preserve decorum and speak lightly where she should be reverent, but Miss Austen tempers her impropriety by indicating the kindly fellow feeling she bears both towards her sister and, on occasion, to Fanny.
‘Pray where does Miss Austen ever show a woman who is at once old, virtuous and wise? I contend, nowhere. Is not this omission a gross calumny upon the worthiest of our sex?’
‘Would it be fair to add, ma’am,’ the right-hand judge surveyed Mrs Norris through a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, ‘that Miss Austen is not entirely gentle in her dealings with old men either? Mr Woodhouse’s extreme preoccupation with his health is perhaps less than edifying, and the gluttony of Dr Grant nothing short of contemptible. But neither gentleman lays charges against her. Is it really worth coming to court for the sake of Miss Austen’s teasing?’
‘But—’ all six accusers rose protesting and Lady Catherine’s voice carried through the court. ‘Do not trifle with us, sir. You would not say such things if you were a woman.’
With a sigh, he subsided, but no sooner had he leant back than Jane found his colleague in the middle of the dais addressing her.
‘Well, Miss Austen, you’ve heard the prosecution’s evidence. What have you to say?’
These ladies – their bodies either stiff inside their corseting or else fleshy and sagging under their righteous fury – ought to make her laugh, not tremble, but when she rose to reply she found her knees were not quite steady and she had to grasp the dock’s wooden surround to stop her hands from twisting together in alarm. Taking a deep breath, she made herself speak slowly as though she were calm.
‘Ladies, your indignation is great indeed. You accuse me of having defamed you. But I repudiate your charge. When I wrote Emma, did I not take my impetuous heroine to task for her thoughtless behaviour? When my Mr Knightley asserts that Miss Bates’s age and indigence should arouse Emma’s compassion, not her flippancy, do I not speak out on behalf of every old woman who has ever found herself a target for youth’s barbs?’
‘Not so, dear.’ Lady Russell had risen. ‘For the fact is, your creations enjoy a more vigorous life than the sentiments they utter. We all admire Mr Knightley’s integrity, but actions speak louder than words. In preparing to come to court, I had to remind myself of what he says that day on Box Hill. My memory requires no such prompting to recall how my friend Mrs Norris refuses to let Fanny have a fire to warm that chill East Room. Further, I cannot set eyes on a green baize surface without recalling Mrs Norris’s effrontery in appropriating the curtain intended for the Mansfield theatricals. You may claim that respect is our due, but so often you show us forfeiting it by our conduct.’
‘Is this assertion true even of Mrs Jennings?’ Despite the deep breaths, her question came out in a gasp.
‘Mrs Jennings who pours heartbroken Marianne Dashwood a glass of Constantia wine because it helps soothe colicky gout? Now really, that is as much a blending of the good and the ridiculous as anything you achieve with Miss Bates. Mrs Jennings doesn’t help you at all.’ Lady Russell’s voice became stern. ‘When, in the future,’ she asserted, ‘Mr D. W. Harding of London University will come to join us here, he will seek to convince you that in your heart you hated – his word, dear, not mine – your society and that in order to make your life bearable, you regulated your hatred by turning it to ridicule. Now, none of us much cares to be made to look ridiculous. That is why we press our charge and ask the judges of the dead to punish you by consigning your books, your letters and all evidence of your writing to Lethe. When everything is forgotten, we shall consider ourselves vindicated.’
Forgotten? When those works were so dear to her? Even if she could not refute the charge, surely she might frame some plea in her own mitigation? If she might only return to earth once more, she would create an elderly woman who combined such benevolence and sagacity that the whole world would love her and long to be as old and as clever and as kind as she. Jane opened her mouth to speak.
‘Silence,’ announced both the usher and the court clerk in the same second, and the judge at the left-hand end of the dais rose with upheld hand.
‘Before the bench pronounces judgement,’ he said, ‘it behoves us to consider our powers. To suppress these books through all eternity when they stand published by Mr John Murray in elegant demi-octavos and when some of them have attracted the favourable opinions of royalty, no less, is quite beyond our remit. The court’s learned advisers, Mesdames Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis, have already shown us future generations enjoying them. Sit down, please, Mrs Ferrars. Even the judges of the dead cannot fight fate.
‘But neither, prisoner in the dock, can we acquit you of the charge that Mrs Norris and her co-prosecutors bring. However we have, we believe, found a way forward. Your books, Miss Austen, shall be spared and read until the end of time.’
She closed her eyes in relief.
‘But listen, young woman,’ the judicial voice went on, avuncular but resolute, ‘to our sentence. You have, throughout your life, maintained regular correspondence with your brother Vice-Admiral Sir Francis Austen, have you not?’
Frank? An Admiral? How wonderful!
But—
‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ was all she said.
The judge nodded.
‘Francis Austen we know to be fond of you. Throughout his earthly life – which will prove long – he will cherish every letter you ever wrote him.’
Every letter? There must be hundreds. She had kept no journal, but her writings to Frank served a journal’s purpose. They held her innermost thoughts.
‘He will often re-read them to catch in their sentences the cadence of a favourite sister’s voice.’
At the thought of it, she wanted to laugh for pure pleasure.
‘He knows you opened your heart to him as you did to no other creature upon earth.’
It was true. The novels were witty in their way, but all her happiest teases and shrewdest remarks lay in the letters to Frank.
‘Your confidences,’ the grave voice pronounced, ‘will delight him all his days and bring him a little consolation for your early death. Further, he will harbour the hope that in time your letters’ wisdom and shrewdness will reach and delight other readers too. But they never shall.’
He paused.
‘Francis Austen’s daughter, Fanny, shall burn them in bundles on her father’s death. With them will vanish a fair part of yourself, Miss Austen – perhaps the pithiest, most compassionate part; the part that speaks through Mr Knightley rather than Mrs Norris. But your books shall remain. You may stand down.’
At the time, the thought of all her exchanges with Frank passing into oblivion left her wretched. As she departed from the court, she had to steel herself not to cry. But in the fullness of eternity, she met her niece Fanny under the white cypresses surrounding the Elysian Fields. She recognised her at once.
‘What thought was in your mind,’ she asked, their greetings done, ‘when you destroyed my letters to your father?’
‘Oh,’ said Fanny, ‘did I really do that?’
She frowned, as though scouring her thoughts. At last she sighed and shook her head.
‘When I arrived in this place,’ she said, ‘I was thirsty and they gave me water of Lethe to drink. It is extraordinary that I should even know who you are, Aunt Jane, for of my earthly life I can remember nothing.’
My inspiration: Jane Austen is strong on rebarbative women. I wanted to show them turning the tables on her, and had a suspicion that Mrs Norris would take the lead.