Memoir of Jane Austen, James Edward Austen-Leigh [e reader comics .TXT] 📗

of very unwise resentment at the time of Mr. Hollis’s death: the latter, to the advantage of being the remnant of a connection which she certainly valued, joined those of having been known to her from their childhood, and of being always at hand to pursue their interests by seasonable attentions.  But another claimant was now to be taken into account: a young female relation whom Lady Denham had been induced to receive into her family.  After having always protested against any such addition, and often enjoyed the repeated defeat she had given to every attempt of her own relations to introduce ‘this young lady, or that young lady,’ as a companion at Sanditon House, she had brought back with her from London last Michaelmas a Miss Clara Brereton, who bid fair to vie in favour with Sir Edward Denham, and to secure for herself and her family that share of the accumulated property which they had certainly the best right to inherit.’

Lady Denham’s character comes out in a conversation which takes place at Mr. Parker’s tea-table.

‘The conversation turned entirely upon Sanditon, its present number of visitants, and the chances of a good season.  It was evident that Lady Denham had more anxiety, more fears of loss than her coadjutor.  She wanted to have the place fill faster, and seemed to have many harassing apprehensions of the lodgings being in some instances underlet.  To a report that a large boarding-school was expected she replies, ‘Ah, well, no harm in that.  They will stay their six weeks, and out of such a number who knows but some may be consumptive, and want asses’ milk; and I have two milch asses at this very time.  But perhaps the little Misses may hurt the furniture.  I hope they will have a good sharp governess to look after them.’  But she wholly disapproved of Mr. Parker’s wish to secure the residence of a medical man amongst them.  ‘Why, what should we do with a doctor here?  It would only be encouraging our servants and the poor to fancy themselves ill, if there was a doctor at hand.  Oh, pray let us have none of that tribe at Sanditon: we go on very well as we are.  There is the sea, and the downs, and my milch asses: and I have told Mrs. Whitby that if anybody enquires for a chamber horse, they may be supplied at a fair rate (poor Mr. Hollis’s chamber horse, as good as new); and what can people want more?  I have lived seventy good years in the world, and never took physic, except twice: and never saw the face of a doctor in all my life on my own account; and I really believe if my poor dear Sir Harry had never seen one neither, he would have been alive now.  Ten fees, one after another, did the men take who sent him out of the world.  I beseech you, Mr. Parker, no doctors here.’

This lady’s character comes out more strongly in a conversation with Mr. Parker’s guest, Miss Charlotte Heywood.  Sir Edward Denham with his sister Esther and Clara Brereton have just left them.

‘Charlotte accepted an invitation from Lady Denham to remain with her on the terrace, when the others adjourned to the library.  Lady Denham, like a true great lady, talked, and talked only of her own concerns, and Charlotte listened.  Taking hold of Charlotte’s arm with the ease of one who felt that any notice from her was a favour, and communicative from the same sense of importance, or from a natural love of talking, she immediately said in a tone of great satisfaction, and with a look of arch sagacity:—

‘Miss Esther wants me to invite her and her brother to spend a week with me at Sanditon House, as I did last summer, but I shan’t.  She has been trying to get round me every way with her praise of this and her praise of that; but I saw what she was about.  I saw through it all.  I am not very easily taken in, my dear.’

Charlotte could think of nothing more harmless to be said than the simple enquiry of, ‘Sir Edward and Miss Denham?’

‘Yes, my dear; my young folks, as I call them, sometimes: for I take them very much by the hand, and had them with me last summer, about this time, for a week—from Monday to Monday—and very delighted and thankful they were.  For they are very good young people, my dear.  I would not have you think that I only notice them for poor dear Sir Harry’s sake.  No, no; they are very deserving themselves, or, trust me, they would not be so much in my company.  I am not the woman to help anybody blindfold.  I always take care to know what I am about, and who I have to deal with before I stir a finger.  I do not think I was ever overreached in my life; and that is a good deal for a woman to say that has been twice married.  Poor dear Sir Harry (between ourselves) thought at first to have got more, but (with a bit of a sigh) he is gone, and we must not find fault with the dead.  Nobody could live happier together than us: and he was a very honourable man, quite the gentleman, of ancient family; and when he died I gave Sir Edward his gold watch.’

This was said with a look at her companion which implied its right to produce a great impression; and seeing no rapturous astonishment in Charlotte’s countenance, she added quickly,

‘He did not bequeath it to his nephew, my dear; it was no bequest; it was not in the will.  He only told me, and that but once, that he should wish his nephew to have his watch; but it need not have been binding, if I had not chose it.’

‘Very kind indeed, very handsome!’ said Charlotte, absolutely forced to affect admiration.

‘Yes, my dear; and it is not the only kind thing I have done by him.  I have been a very liberal friend to Sir Edward; and, poor young man, he needs it bad enough.  For, though I am only the dowager, my dear, and he is the heir, things do not stand between us in the way they usually do between those two parties.  Not a shilling do I receive from the Denham estate.  Sir Edward has no payments to make me.  He don’t stand uppermost, believe me; it is I that help him.’

‘Indeed! he is a very fine young man, and particularly elegant in his address.’

This was said chiefly for the sake of saying something; but Charlotte directly saw that it was laying her open to suspicion, by Lady Denham’s giving a shrewd glance at her, and replying,

‘Yes, yes; he’s very well to look at; and it is to be hoped that somebody of large fortune will think so; for Sir Edward must marry for money.  He and I often talk that matter over.  A handsome young man like him will go smirking and smiling about, and paying girls compliments, but he knows he must marry for money.  And Sir Edward is a very steady young man, in the main, and has got very good notions.’

‘Sir Edward Denham,’ said Charlotte, ‘with such personal advantages, may be almost sure of getting a woman of fortune, if he chooses it.’

This glorious sentiment seemed quite to remove suspicion.

‘Aye, my dear, that is very sensibly said; and if we could but get a young heiress to Sanditon!  But heiresses are monstrous scarce!  I do not think we have had an heiress here, nor even a Co., since Sanditon has been a public place.  Families come after families, but, as far as I can learn, it is not one in a hundred of them that have any real property, landed or funded.  An income, perhaps, but no property.  Clergymen, may be, or lawyers from town, or half-pay officers, or widows with only a jointure; and what good can such people do to anybody?  Except just as they take our empty houses, and (between ourselves) I think they are great fools for not staying at home.  Now, if we could get a young heiress to be sent here for her health, and, as soon as she got well, have her fall in love with Sir Edward!  And Miss Esther must marry somebody of fortune, too.  She must get a rich husband.  Ah! young ladies that have no money are very much to be pitied.’  After a short pause: ‘If Miss Esther thinks to talk me into inviting them to come and stay at Sanditon House, she will find herself mistaken.  Matters are altered with me since last summer, you know: I have Miss Clara with me now, which makes a great difference.  I should not choose to have my two housemaid’s time taken up all the morning in dusting out bedrooms.  They have Miss Clara’s room to put to rights, as well as mine, every day.  If they had hard work, they would want higher wages.’

Charlotte’s feelings were divided between amusement and indignation.  She kept her countenance, and kept a civil silence; but without attempting to listen any longer, and only conscious that Lady Denham was still talking in the same way, allowed her own thoughts to form themselves into such meditation as this:—‘She is thoroughly mean; I had no expectation of anything so bad.  Mr. Parker spoke too mildly of her.  He is too kind-hearted to see clearly, and their very connection misleads him.  He has persuaded her to engage in the same speculation, and because they have so far the same object in view, he fancies that she feels like him in other things; but she is very, very mean.  I can see no good in her.  Poor Miss Brereton!  And it makes everybody mean about her.  This poor Sir Edward and his sister! how far nature meant them to be respectable I cannot tell; but they are obliged to be mean in their servility to her; and I am mean, too, in giving her my attention with the appearance of coinciding with her.  Thus it is when rich people are sordid.’

Mr. Parker has two unmarried sisters of singular character.  They live together; Diana, the younger, always takes the lead, and the elder follows in the same track.  It is their pleasure to fancy themselves invalids to a degree and in a manner never experienced by others; but, from a state of exquisite pain and utter prostration, Diana Parker can always rise to be officious in the concerns of all her acquaintance, and to make incredible exertions where they are not wanted.

It would seem that they must be always either very busy for the good of others, or else extremely ill themselves.  Some natural delicacy of constitution, in fact, with an unfortunate turn for medicine, especially quack medicine, had given them an early tendency at various times to various disorders.  The rest of their suffering was from their own fancy, the love of distinction, and the love of the wonderful.  They had charitable hearts and many amiable feelings; but a spirit of restless activity, and the glory of doing more than anybody else, had a share in every exertion of benevolence, and there was vanity in all they did, as well as in all they endured.

These peculiarities come out in the following letter of Diana Parker to her brother:—

‘My Dear Tom,—We were much grieved at your accident, and if you had not described yourself as having fallen into such very good hands, I should have been with you at