With Caroline, she knew and had been its witness, the problem was one of maternal control. Though Mary herself had benefited enormously from the institution of marriage, she held no similar ambitions for her offspring. She liked, at all times, to have Caroline beside her, and found no pleasures in wider society.
Still, Cassandra had often wondered that neither Isabella nor Caroline had found suitors of their own. After all, many a more unattractive woman was married; plenty of less sympathetic women had children. Yet somehow these two had failed to provoke Life into noticing them. It had simply just passed them by.
Were she to work on their likenesses—Had anyone ever done so? Neither had the sort of personal power that inspired others to cause their likenesses to be taken—Cassandra would use only charcoal for Isabella. With the exception of those bright blue eyes, and the pale brown hair that had not yet any gray, she was otherwise a naturally monochrome creature. Caroline, though, would demand the use of her colors—the stronger, the redder, the better—for she flushed at the merest suggestion of attention. A casual “Good morning” could provoke the deepest of hues.
Caroline was reddening now as she asked Isabella a question. Her voice was low, but the room was all ears: “So have you seen the good doctor since the funeral?”
“Doctor?” Mary’s voice cut in from the sofa. “Are you, too, unwell, Isabella?”
“Quite well, thank you, Aunt Mary. Other than the stress of my current situation.” Isabella rattled the cups as she passed round the tea.
“Ah. This must be the doctor Caroline speaks of, who attended your father?” Mary turned to Cassandra: “You may not know that Caroline offered an incalculable support to the family when Fulwar was dying. The poor girl was quite wrung out by it, here all the time.”
“I did not know,” Cassandra replied warmly. “But am most pleased to hear that someone helped carry the burden.”
“Oh, but I only came for a few afternoons, Mama! It was Isabella, truly, who did everything. She never left my uncle’s side.”
“Nonsense, my dear. It is my clear recollection that you were almost permanently absent over that trying period. Caroline is”—she addressed the room—“like her mother, too prone to give.”
“Shall we read?” Isabella asked brightly. “Cassandra and I have started your aunt Jane’s Persuasion. You will know it well, of course. I did not. It really is most entertaining!”
“If you happen to appreciate novels,” countered Mary. “Poetry, to me, offers a more profound experience. Poetry and more lyrical prose. Caroline, pass my bag. It so happens that I have with me my husband’s journal. While a great deal of fuss is made of your aunt Jane, it is most useful to remind ourselves that she was not the only writer in the family. Indeed, nor the best, I have heard some people say. And I do believe my James-Edward to be the greatest of all. He has his father’s talent and then some. Mark my words: He will write something someday and astonish the world with it. Then the Austen name shall be made.”
Cassandra felt a dull ache—first in her back, then creeping round to her groin—which she ascribed to nothing beyond deep irritation. Why must she refer to it as a “journal” when quite clearly it was nothing of the sort? This red leather album that Mary was now opening with reverence was no more than a scrapbook, filled with fragments of James’s writing. The woman’s ignorance in all matters of literature was so profound and far-reaching that she did not know enough even to know she was wrong.
“I think we should hear his Kintbury poem now. Do not you agree? I presume you know it already, Isabella? No doubt you, like me, can recite it almost word for word. No? You do not know it? What were my sister and brother-in-law doing with their time and their children? I often wonder. It is not every family that has such words, such exceptional poetry, written for and about them! Why, if such a thing had been composed in honor of me and my kin I should make sure to celebrate it! Well, thank goodness I brought it—that is all I can say. This may, after all, be the last time we ever sit together in this very drawing room, and this very drawing room is above all the best place in which to hear it. But prepare yourself, Isabella dear. Do prepare yourself. I warn you, it is moving”—she dabbed her nose with her handkerchief—“so very, very, quite exceptionally moving. I do not believe there has ever been a writer like my Austen for moving a person.” She cleared her throat, and began in her flat, lackluster tones:
“Amid the temperate hours of evening grave
Oft was I wont in thoughtful mood to stray
Where Kennet’s crystal stream with limpid wave
Through Kintbury’s meadows takes its winding way…”
Mary was forced to stop for a moment, overcome. “Limpid wave—is that not wondrous? Limpid wave.” She looked about, shook her head. “Only Austen. Only my dearest Austen.” She collected herself and went on:
“And still in my mind’s eye, methinks, I see
The village pastor’s cheerful family …
“So that’s the Fowles, dear! Yes. Your family! In a poem!
“The father grave, yet oft with humor dry
Producing the quaint jest or shrewd reply;
The busy bustling mother who like Eve
Would ever and anon the circle leave,
Her mind on hospitable thought intent,
Careful domestic blunders to prevent.”
She stopped again. “Oh, that is so like your grandmother, Isabella! Careful domestic blunders to prevent! So like her! So brilliantly put! So like all we married women, of course.” She looked around the room, took in, one by one, the single women gathered about her, and gazed at them with sympathy, then shrugged and went on: “‘While yet a gayer group, four manly boys’—He is writing of your father and his brothers, now. Where was I? Yes:
“While yet a gayer group, four manly boys,
Heightened with relish of domestic joys,
Of future happiness gave promise fair,
And eased with pleasing hopes a parent’s care…”
Caroline and Isabella both glanced over at Cassandra with fear in their eyes. The younger generation of her family took great care never to mention Tom in Cassandra’s presence. Until that moment she had never been quite sure whether this was a policy that they had agreed upon together, or whether it was merely because they had never known him and so he did not often come to their minds. She now understood—it was written on the younger women’s faces—that they were gripped by terror at the thought of her reaction.
This revelation quite bemused her. Surely, if they knew anything at all, they must know that her own stoicism on the subject was quite celebrated. Yet now here they were, looking for all the world as if she were on the brink of A Scene! It was preposterous. She arranged her features into a study of calm, and focused, with dignity, upon Mary.
“And one sleeps where Ocean ceaseless pours
His restless waves ’gainst West India’s shores:
Friend of my Soul and Brother of my heart!”
But—and it was most odd—this verse appeared to be new to Cassandra. Had she simply forgotten it? Or never before been made aware of it? Either way, she did fear that Mary was here straying into the region of tactlessness.