The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen Read online

The city of Southampton lies along a very pretty bay called Southampton Water, which is fed by the waters of the rivers Test and Itchen and resembles an arm of the sea, as it joins with the tide some miles distant at Portsmouth. The Southampton quay, as we arrived, was a bustle of activity, lined with barges, boats and ships of every size and description, countless crates of oysters, and nets bursting with fish. Upon leaving the carriage and horses with Mr. Ashford’s coachman and post-boy, we made our way to the docks. My nostrils were at once overcome by the pleasing tang of the salty air, overladen with the scents of fish, tar and hemp, while my ears rang from the raucous cries of gulls overhead, and the thud and clatter of the sturdy seamen moving to and fro as they loaded and unloaded great drums and chests and barrels from the vessels docked nearby. Adding to the clamour was the banter of the seamen’s wives, who sat in huddled groups making nets and shouting at the loiterers hanging about, the farmers’ wives and kitchen maids come to buy their fish, and the cries of the fishmongers, vying for attention to sell their wares.

  Mr. Ashford had hired a skiff, which was to be guided by a gruff-looking sailor who introduced himself as Mr. Grady. In a merry mood, Mr. Ashford hopped down into the boat, stowed the picnic baskets he had brought, then turned and held out his hand to help us each climb aboard. As I raised my skirts with one hand and took his hand with the other, I felt great pleasure in the strength of his grip and the warmth of his touch, which I could feel through the soft leather of my glove.

  I took the bench beside my sister, and when all were situated, with Mr. Ashford to the aft, the Churchills to the fore, and Mr. Grady at the oars, the seaman propelled us away from the crowds and noise of the docks, onto the dark, gently undulating sea.

  “I could not imagine a more perfect day, or more perfect weather for our excursion,” I said, breathing deeply of the fresh sea-air and turning my face to the breeze, which was far milder than expected. Behind us was a fine view of Southampton, beneath a blue sky replete with puffy white clouds.

  “It is lovely,” agreed Cassandra.

  “The breeze is too strong,” said Maria, with a shiver, “and the air too chill. I shall most certainly catch my death of cold. I fear you will all be bringing hot soup to my sick-bed at this same time tomorrow.”

  “If you die of the cold, my dear,” Mr. Churchill calmly told his wife, “we shall have no need to bring you soup.”

  “Do not be so tiresome, Charles,” said Maria, vexed. “You know full well what I mean.”

  “I believe that fresh sea-air always does one good,” observed Mr. Ashford. “What say you, Mr. Grady? Is the saline air not beneficial to the health?”

  “Aye, but it is,” said Mr. Grady, as he guided the small boat past the mouth of the River Itchen, and out into Southampton Water. “A month at the seaside will cure more ills than any amount of medicine, and that’s a fact.”

  “Say all you like about the saline air,” said Maria, “but if I lived here for a month, I would surely be ill the whole time from the stink of fish.”

  “I am quite fond of fish, myself,” remarked Mr. Churchill.

  “Then this be the place for you, sir,” said Mr. Grady, “for these rivers abound with fine salmons and wholesome oysters. Although, truth be told, not so many be sold in this neighbourhood any more.”

  “So I hear,” said Mr. Ashford. “Apparently they are sending all the best fish by land carriage now to the London Markets.”

  “Indeed they are, sir. But day was, not so long past, that Southampton was so fully supplied with these delicious fish, it was laid down in the indentures of apprentices that their masters should not oblige them to eat salmons oftener than thrice a week.”

  “Thrice a week!” cried Maria, aghast. “No one should be required to eat salmon three times in the same week.”

  “There are many, I am sure, who would not see it as a penance, and be grateful for the provision,” said Mr. Churchill.

  “Look! Porpoises!” cried Cassandra of a sudden, pointing out a pair of the elegant creatures darting through the waves not twenty yards distant.

  “That’s fortune smiling on us,” said Mr. Grady. “This’ll indeed be a lucky day.”

  “How so?” asked Mr. Ashford.

  “Porpoises be common along the coasts of the Isle of Wight, but only on occasion do they come thus far into the estuary, in pursuit of their prey. Locals say as how it be a good sign to catch sight of one in Southampton Water.”

  This proclamation only served to increase the festive mood of our party, with the exception of Maria, who did not believe in good luck signs, and spent the next five minutes insisting, despite all our protestations to the contrary, that a porpoise was a fish.

  As we passed the village of Hythe and the woody district in its neighbourhood, Mr. Ashford enquired, “What is that castle there?”

  “That be Calshot Castle,” answered Mr. Grady. “And there, beyond the woods of Woolston House, that manor which edges the river, be Netley Fort. Both built by Henry VIII, for the defence of the harbour. They are nothing re markable to look at, not compared to our great abbey, that is, even if it be a ruin, and none so interesting neither, as they be not haunted.”

  “Haunted?” I enquired, with great interest. “Is the abbey said to be haunted?”

  “Aye, to be sure. Folks foolish enough to go there at night have reported seeing many an apparition floating over the sacristy and elsewheres. The ghosts, they say, be protecting some treasure belonging to the abbey that has been long hidden there within the grounds.”

  I was delighted by this story, and even Maria began to shew a dubious interest when, some minutes later, we landed at the shore.

  “Yer likely to find the place empty of folk, this time of year,” said Mr. Grady.

  His prediction proved to be true, when, leaving the able seaman to wait with the boat, we followed the path which rose up from the grassy banks, and arrived after a few minutes’ walk in sight of the deserted abbey. Our companions, on seeing the ruins for the first time, gave a little gasp of pleasure. Its appearance was, as always, very striking.

  An immense, ivy-covered ruin of fine white stone, surrounded by bright green lawns and thickly intertwined with trees, Netley Abbey encompassed a variety of large, interconnected buildings. Only the high walls were still standing, roofless and open to the sky, but enough remained of the numerous graceful, curving arches and delicate rib-vaulting to display the structure’s former beauty and elegant design.

  As we strolled through the ruin from one spacious open room to another, I gave a little history of the place, as it had been explained to me. The abbey, I knew, had been built by the Cistercian monks in 1239 at the order of King Henry III, and had remained in use until the Dissolution by Henry VIII in 1536. The abbey was then granted to a man who was in favour with the king, who converted the nave and some of the domestic buildings into a luxurious private Tudor residence, which entailed the destruction of many of the abbey buildings in the process, but left the walls of the church and some of the windows still standing. Evidence of the abbey’s incarnation as a dwelling-house could be observed among the ruins in the front, where various traces of brick construction and the remains of fire-places still stood.

  “Is not that a Westminster Abbey chapter-house motif?” asked Mr. Ashford, as we stood before the east window in the church, which was fairly well preserved and beautifully proportioned.

  “It is,” I replied. “Netley, they believe, was built by the same mason who constructed Westminster Abbey.”

  “It is truly magnificent,” declared Mr. Ashford. “The whole place has a most romantic aspect.”

  “In my opinion, it is quite hideous,” said Maria.

  We all turned to her in unison, startled. “You cannot mean it,” cried Mr. Churchill. “Maria, look about you. This place is like a Roman temple, a thing of beauty.”

  “It is nothing but a sprawling old ruin,” insisted Maria. “Just a lot of roofless stone walls and windows embedded in the trees,
with ivy all grown over.”

  “Maria has never had any respect for antiquity,” said Mr. Ashford, laughing.

  “That is not true,” said she. “I admire an old building as much as the next person, when it is in fine shape and suitable to live in. But when the roof goes and the walls begin to crumble, some one ought to tear it down.”

  “Actually, some one tried to,” said I, “and died horribly in the attempt.”

  “Did they?” said Mr. Ashford, intrigued. “How so?”

  “In the last century,” I explained, “the abbey passed to a builder who intended to demolish it entirely and to sell off all the building material. One night, he had a dream that the arch keystone of the east window fell from its situation, crushing his skull. His friends warned him not to proceed with his plan, deeming it sacrilegious to destroy the abbey, but he paid them no heed. In his exertion to tear down a board, he loosed the fatal stone, which fell upon his head, and produced a fracture. The injury was not at first deemed mortal, but it seemed that the decree had gone forth—the spoiler of the holy edifice was doomed—for he died shortly thereafter under the operation of extracting a splinter.”

  The men laughed. Maria gave a little gasp of astonishment. “Is that true?”

  “Upon my honour,” said I. “His death was interpreted as a sign not to proceed with the abbey’s destruction, and so the site was left as it is.”

  “Well then,” said Maria, “since every body seems so very fond of the place, I suppose his death must be seen an act of providence.”

  We retreated to the spacious lawn outside the east end of the abbey, where we found a spot that was not too damp at the base of a great tree. Spreading our blankets, we enjoyed the picnic of cold meats, bread and cheese which Mr. Ashford had brought.

  “I love this place,” said I, staring at the roofless abbey with its endless display of open windows. “I love to think of the people who lived there, what their lives must have been like.”

  “Cold, I expect,” observed Mr. Ashford.

  Every one laughed.

  “I mean, before it was a ruin,” said I, smiling.

  “When it was a working monastery, you mean?” enquired Cassandra.

  “No,” said I, “for the monks must have led a very rigid and circumspect life, if they strictly conformed to the injunctions of the Cistercian order. I am thinking more of the period when the great Tudor mansion was still standing, when some earl or other lived here with his lady.”

  A brief silence fell, as we all took in the beauty and romantic atmospheric of the ruin. My mind began to drift. I had, in the past, invented tales quite frequently for my young nieces and nephews, but I had not been inspired to tell a story, aloud or on paper, in quite some time. All at once, however, sights and sounds began to form in my mind; my imagination caught and sprouted wings.

  “The year was 1637,” I heard myself say, in a hushed, dramatic tone, “when the abbey was not as you see it now.” The eyes of my companions turned as one to me with interest.

  “The Fountain Court had all the aspect, then, of a small Tudor castle, with red-brick fascia, a turret, and a tower to the north. It belonged to a man who had lived here for many years since the death of his young wife, with only his servants and hounds to keep him company; a man whose name was Phillip Worthington, the Earl of Monstro.”

  “The Earl of Monstro?” Mr. Ashford laughed.

  “There never was such a place!” said Maria indignantly.

  “Oh, but there is,” I insisted.

  “It exists, with absolute certainty,” agreed Cassandra, “in Jane’s imagination.”

  “Oh!” cried Maria, her countenance brightening for the first time since I had met her. “I see! It is a story! I do love stories!” With that, she turned her attention fully to me.

  “On the occasion of his fortieth birthday,” I went on, “Lord Monstro decided to take a bride. Her name was”—(since Cassandra never liked her name in a story)—“her name was Maria.”

  Maria clapped her hands with delight. “An excellent name.”

  “Maria, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy country squire, was fifteen years younger than Lord Monstro. She could have had any eligible young man in the county, but Lord Monstro wooed and won her in just a few short weeks. They shared many similarities in tastes, interests and values, and fell very much in love. In the first months of their marriage, Lord Monstro shewed his wife the same tenderness and generosity of spirit which had won her heart during their courtship, reading aloud to her from her favourite books, showering her with gifts, and ensuring that all her favourite foods were at her disposal, no matter what the season. In return, Maria was a most devoted wife, hoping to match that perfection which she saw in her mate.”

  “It sounds as if it were the ideal marriage,” said Mr. Ashford.

  “So it would seem,” said I. “But all was not well for long.”

  Chapter Ten

  What happened?” cried Maria anxiously, as I paused in my story.

  “Yes, do go on,” prodded Mr. Churchill.

  My companions were all listening with rapt attention, which was a thrilling sight to behold.

  “As Lord Monstro’s love for his wife grew stronger each day, so did his fear that she might one day find him too old for her, and leave him. Although Maria did nothing to inspire this fear, Lord Monstro’s worries increased until one day, when she spoke to the man-servant in a kindly tone, Lord Monstro flew into a jealous rage, leapt upon his horse and disappeared.”

  “Disappeared!” cried Cassandra. “Where did he go?”

  “That was the great mystery. Days went by, and Maria heard nothing from her husband. She was greatly concerned. Where was her lord? Had something happened to him? Was he even still alive? Then one night, she was awakened from a deep slumber by a terrible new sound: a violent pounding from the top of the north tower.”

  “Oh! My!” cried Maria.

  “Maria drew on a dressing-gown, lit a candle, and made her way to the great oak door leading to the north tower. The door was locked. She knocked loudly, and called out: ‘Who goes there?’ No one answered, but the terrible pounding from above increased in intensity, so violent now that the very walls and floor of the house trembled.”

  “Was this sound all in her mind? Or did the servants hear it, too?” enquired Mr. Ashford.

  “Every one heard it, from the footman to the stable boy. They all appeared in a frenzy and tried, in turn, every means at their disposal to open the door, but it was firmly bolted from within. There was nothing to be done, so the servants retired. The pounding continued all week long with very little respite. On the seventh day, the sound changed. It became lighter, like the chinking of a hammer upon chains. This continued for a fortnight. Maria could not sleep, she could not eat, she could not think, so filled was she with terror. Who or what was locked up in the tower? Was it human or spirit? If indeed her husband was dead, had his ghost come back to haunt her? Then a new fear struck. Perhaps it was not her husband’s ghost at all. Perhaps it was the ghost of his first departed wife, who, displeased by her husband’s new marriage, had come back to haunt his new wife, and drive her mad.”

  I paused, feeling the eyes of all the party on me. It was then that I caught sight of something new in Mr. Ashford’s gaze, a look of deep pleasure and admiration, directed at myself, such as I had never witnessed in another person before; and a hint of something else, something very like wonder. As our gazes met and held, my heart began to skip about, and all at once I found my thoughts scattering to the winds.

  “What happened next?” asked Mr. Churchill eagerly.

  “Yes, what did Maria do?” enquired Cassandra.

  I tore my gaze from Mr. Ashford’s and cleared my throat, struggling to collect myself. “At last, when she could bear it no longer, afraid she might go mad, she—she—” For the first time that I could recall in the telling of a story, words failed me.

  Mr. Ashford, apparently sensing my distress, interjected: “
Did she fetch an axe?”

  “Yes!” I cried in relief. “Exactly so. She fetched an axe.”

  “And then what?” enquired Mr. Churchill.

  “And then what?” I repeated, turning to Mr. Ashford with a smile.

  “And then,” replied Mr. Ashford in a lively voice, “with great effort, and a strength borne of desperation, Maria took the axe and smashed through the wood of the tower door.”

  “After which,” I continued, “she reached in and threw the bolt—”

  “—whereupon she swung open the door—”

  “—and raced up the stairs—”

  “—to the turret room atop the tower—”

  “—where she burst through the open doorway—”

  “—only to find—” Here Mr. Ashford paused, waiting for me to finish.

  “Lord Monstro himself,” said I.

  “You mean his ghost?” cried Maria in horror.

  “No, he was very much alive and well. Maria’s relief was great, as you might imagine; but even more wondrous than his miraculous reappearance was the sight of the object which stood beside him.”

  “What was it?” breathed Cassandra.

  “In the center of the room was a magnificent marble statue of Maria herself, that Lord Monstro had been carving to shew his love for her.”

  Every one gasped with surprised delight, the ladies sighed appreciatively, and there was a general burst of applause.

  “Bravo!” cried Mr. Churchill.

  “Marvelous,” said Cassandra.

  “I was on the edge of my seat the whole time,” exclaimed Maria.

  “Thank you—” I laughed—“but I must share the honours with Mr. Ashford.”

  “Hardly,” said he. “The genius is all of your doing. I could no more make up a story than I could single-handedly sail a frigate.”

  “Now there is a frightening image,” said Mr. Churchill with a laugh. “A land-locked country gentleman, who has never so much as gotten his hands dirty in his life, at the helm of a ship in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.”

  The smile briefly left Mr. Ashford’s face, the remark seeming to cause him pain; but he quickly recovered and stood up. “I feel like a stroll. Who would care to join me?”