Bad Austen Page 6

  “Indeed we could,” he murmured, rising to his feet so that he could look down at her. “And perhaps, Miss Bennet, we could pay a visit to the kitten shelter.”

  Lydia closed her eyes and sighed, nearly weeping with joy. She knew that any resolve she might have had before this day would be lost, along with her virtue, the moment Wickham came for her in his barouche and took her to visit a houseful of kittens.

  In a More Canine-Like Manner

  TAMARA HANSON

  Miss Basset was suddenly roused by the sound of the doorbell, and her spirits were a little shaken when after only two barks who should enter but Mr. Tabby. Her tail lay straight and still beside her, demonstrating the annoyance she felt to see him only sit and stare at nothing on the wall. She couldn’t help but be curious at his behaviour. Just as she tilted her head and raised her eyebrows at him, he began:

  “In vain have I tussled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must have noticed the uncontrolled purring, the gazing at you, the slow blinks I have given you. When I greet you nose to nose, I have a strong urge to rub my face against yours and curl up beside you. Miss Basset, I must urge you to ease my suffering and consent to being my napping partner and mate.”

  Miss Basset’s bewilderment was beyond expression. She had noticed him blankly staring at her before, but she had been taught that it was the way of his kind. Indeed, she was truly astonished. She paced in a circle, nipped at her sides, and made a low growling whine. She felt none of the great good luck he supposed she would be feeling to be addressed by one with such a pedigree.

  She did not bark or snap at him, so he continued: “You must see the aversion I have had to come to this conclusion. In doing so I know I am insulting myself, alienating my family, even going against nature itself, but it cannot be helped. I cannot stop the warmth or fuzziness of my feelings.” He went on with describing how he had tried to sleep away his feelings for her, but in all his usual activities, even pouncing, his mind was only on her and her brown eyes, chubby feet, and blasé expression.

  His confidence of her acceptance, his assurance of her docility, and his certainty of getting what he wanted tested her excellent training and obedience too far. Her stubbornness came out as the hair on her back raised and her teeth began to show. She responded at last, “You seem to believe that my faithful and affectionate disposition, even more so than my kin, will cause me to roll over and lay down at your offer. I will not. I am positive the unnaturalness of your feelings, as you have described them, will ensure that this is a short-lived game for you and you can be back to your usual amusements very quickly.”

  Mr. Tabby, who was sitting on the mantelpiece, at first stared silently at her. The M on his forehead became more pronounced as he struggled to comprehend her unforeseen response. He licked his paw and flicked his tail as he said, “And this is your response after all the occasions of your trying to entice me by moving your tail slightly under furniture and rolling on your back in the grass. Now I see the training you have had. I did think that the faithfulness and affection of your reported disposition would indeed cause you to jump heartily at my proposal. I clearly see that my assumptions were flawed. I am most astonished at the manner of your refusal.”

  “You have expressed the objections you have had to my situation in a most insulting way. You chose to tell me your feelings were against your personality, to the mortification of your family, even counter to your own species! Is that not some cause for incivility, if I was uncivil?”replied she.

  “Do you expect me to easily lower myself to your pack’s lack of breeding, submission, or lifestyle? One of your sisters is not even fully housebroken! I am not ashamed of the feelings I related. They were not natural but were just, cozy, and fervent. Perhaps the coolness of my manner in hiding my sentiments was the greatest insult to you. Had I lost my usual snooty haughtiness and acted in a tail-wagging, flattering sort of way, you might have a different response right now. But concealment of my feelings with aloof and dignified conduct was the greatest of evil in your opinion.”

  “You are mistaken, Mr. Tabby, if you suppose the mode of your behaviour has affected me in any way other than that it spared me the concern I might have felt in refusing you had you behaved in a more canine-like manner.”

  With that Mr. Tabby slowly got up and, not wanting to show any of the shame he felt, stretched slowly and thoroughly in his supercilious manner, nudged a vase off the mantel, and walked out.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  The Reverend George Austen was a warm, loving father who did all he could to see not only that his ambitious boys succeeded in their professions but also that his brilliant daughter found an audience for her writing beyond the lucky and appreciative family members who acted as her sounding board. This is even more impressive when you realize that it was long before the age of women’s liberation.

  Moreover, Reverend Austen might have been excused for thinking that much of Jane’s violent, vice-filled juvenilia was not exactly suitable material for a respectable clergyman’s daughter to be dealing in. Yet he indulged and encouraged her as a child, buying her notebooks and letting her scribble in the parish register the names of imaginary future suitors. In one of the notebooks he gave her, he wrote these sweet words: “Effusions of Fancy by a very Young Lady Consisting of Tales in a Style entirely new.” And we’ve seen how he later wrote to a publisher about Pride and Prejudice, even offering to put up his own money to see his daughter’s book published.

  Mr. Austen was a great reader (as well as a writer of sermons) and read aloud to his children from his vast library. He let them look through his microscope, which no doubt delighted them. He let them put on plays in his barn. Altogether, the parsonage over which Mr. Austen presided must have been a good place for a child to grow up in.

  Pluck and Plumage

  TRACY MARCHINI

  As was to be expected, the day that Mallard Bingley arrived at the pond was a blustery one indeed. It was not, however, the wind blowing hot air so much as the beak of Mrs. Bennet.

  “Mr. Bennet,” she quacked, “I insist that you escort our darling ducklings across the pond immediately. For it’s clear that Mallard Bingley has the ability to take up much of the pond, and we’d certainly want our girls to be friendly with such a duck as that. Look at our dear Quane. She and he would make quite the pair indeed.”

  Mr. Bennet ruffled his feathers, brushed off a few mites, and sat on yesterday’s copy of the Times. “If you insist, but I think our Quelizabeth is just as good a match as Quane. Not that we play favorites here, of course.”

  “Please, Mr. Bennet. My nerves. I shall start quacking about my nerves if you don’t get off that paper and swim over there. You know how my nerves can get on your nerves.”

  “Quite right, dear. Quite right,” Mr. Bennet said as he hopped into the pond and started swimming toward the slightly foppish figure of Mallard Bingley. He turned toward his ducklings only once and, for a brief moment, wished they were already flying south for the winter.

  Nothing is worse than a pair of young ducklings making a last-minute attempt before the pond freezes, he thought. It’s how I ended up with Mrs. Bennet. She had a shinier beak then, and a quieter one.

  Mallard Bingley waded back and forth, waiting for Mr. Bennet to formally introduce himself. Mr. Bennet did, and Bingley dipped his head in a low bow, bringing up an offering of lake moss. Quite the gentleman, Mr. Bennet thought as he devoured the treat.

  “Sir,” started Mallard Bingley. “I dare say that your lovely ducklings are among the most becoming on the pond. It would be an honor to invite you and your ladies to a wading ball this coming Saturday. I have some friends flying in from out of town, and I am sure that your ladies would be quite the welcome sight to them as well.”

  Mallard Bingley spread his wings and showed his under-feathers in a gesture of friendship. He was becoming quite agreeable to Mr. Bennet, who thought that perhaps one less duckling to worry about on the flight south would not
be such a terrible circumstance after all. He could part with Quane; she wasn’t that interesting to talk to anyway. Or perhaps Bingley might take Quydia; she could be quite the handful during a long flight.

  Anyway, thought Mr. Bennet, the ducklings could certainly do worse than this overappeasing mallard.

  Mr. Bennet quacked a goodbye and promised to escort his ducklings of marriageable age across the cooling pond on Saturday.

  Upon his return to the Longbourn side of the pond, Mrs. Bennet, Quydia, and Quitty immediately flocked upon him. A plethora of quacks filled the air, and Quane and Quelizabeth would have turned quite red in embarrassment, had their feathers the ability to turn colors. Quary, however, never turned her beak from her Bible and secretly prayed that all of her sisters would go off with the mallard and his friends. It was unnatural the way her sister ducks wanted to dance and take tea together.

  Simply unnatural, she thought as she burrowed further into Genesis.

  “Well, Quelizabeth,” said Mr. Bennet when the quacking had died down. “I pray that you find the mallard agreeable, but I hope indeed that you shouldn’t leave me for him. Your mother has it in mind to push Quane on him. I think she’d be agreeable to it; he’s got too much sense to take Quydia or Quitty.”

  DID YOU KNOW?

  Jane’s nephew, James-Edward Austen-Leigh, wrote this now-famous description of his aunt’s habits of composition at Chawton:

  She had no separate study to retire to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions. She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by servants, or visitors, or any persons beyond her own family party. She wrote upon small sheets of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper. There was, between the front door and the offices, a swing door which creaked when it was opened; but she objected to having this little inconvenience remedied, because it gave her notice when anyone was coming.

  Quelizabeth looked toward her dear sister Quane, and then across the pond to Mallard Bingley. “He seems rather awkward and dull. I am sure she shall like him very much. For my part, I’ll make sure Quane is available for as many dances as possible. I shan’t like any of his friends, I’m sure. City ducks are all the same.”

  “Quite right,” Mr. Bennet said. “Quite right. No city ducks for you indeed, my Quizzy.”

  Pride, Prejudice, and Revenge

  WESLEY SILER

  It is most fitting at this day and time that I be writing to you in this, your hour of need, my dearest Fitzwilliam Darcy. How I have missed you! I hope that this letter finds you in good stead, and I can only hope you think of me as pleasantly as I have thought of you. I know that your recent incarceration is much troubling, and I have hope that I will be able to bring you some joy in spite of this as you look upon my writing.

  Everyone around me tells me you are of dastardly reputation and that it would thusly be better for me not to think more on you, or your recent transgression, which has unfortunately landed you into jail, but I find that I cannot. For I know there is no heat and very little in the way of clean water and facilities in such places. I wish there was a way to make your time there more pleasurable, until the most unfortunate thing which must come to pass has.

  I wonder, what is your cell like? Has anything of interest happened as you have looked through that small window of yours with the vertical iron bars? I know it must be dreadfully dull. I myself have been asked to attend a fancy dress party. And have it on most good authority that everyone who is anyone will be there. Would that you could be there as well … if only … if only. I remember the night was beautiful, that rich full moon shining like the sun as we had gone out onto the veranda. I loved the way that your hand dwarfed my own and how your warm lips brushed against mine. My breath quickened as you nuzzled your bearded face against my skin. My heart leapt as you brushed your fingers against the silkiness of my gown, and I knew then I needed to be next to you. After all, I was a woman of five and twenty years, far too long for anyone to be without the comforts of adult company.

  But you were not to give me any further interest, no matter how much I played with my hair, batted my lashes, nor even when I had gone so far as to “accidentally” brush my hand across your inner thighs. Nothing … nothing…. It was then, thirty and three nights ago, I paid a visit to the local apothecary and obtained a sleeping draught. You, my sister Catherine, and I then met some nights later in the pub. I slipped the draught into your mead as you were looking over at Catherine and not at me … the one that you should have been concentrating on. The draught took hold, and I helped you from the pub and into a waiting carriage under the auspices of getting you abed and driving us back home.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  We don’t know how many copies of Sense and Sensibility were printed—750 or 1,000—but the first edition had sold out by July of 1813. Jane Austen had made a profit of 140, and the few reviews in the press were good. Also good were word-of-mouth reviews: It was discussed at gatherings in high society, and people raved about it in letters to family and friends. Even the royal family was impressed. Fifteen-year-old Princess Charlotte wrote, “I have just finished reading; it certainly is interesting, & you feel quite one of the company. I think Maryanne & me are very like in disposition, that certainly I am not so good, the same imprudence, &c, however remain very like. I must say it interested me much.”

  Now, after so many years and so many trials, Jane Austen was seeing her first “child” in print and what’s more, she was learning that people were buying it, and reading it, and finding it interested them much.

  It was then that I ripped my own clothes and kicked my knickers off, unbuttoning your breeches as well. When my scream echoed throughout the night, and everyone came rushing to my aid, the draught was then starting to wear off and you were only slightly aware of your faculties. With my histrionics, it was all the easier to make people think that you had done the deed that I myself had contrived. I am thereby sending you a little memento along with this letter, my soiled knickers so that you might enjoy them in the moments before the morrow’s hanging.

  Sincerely yours, elizabeth Bennet.

  Emma Interrupted

  JOCELYN ARCHER

  Emma Housewood, greedy, crafty, and far too wealthy for her own good, was blessed with a somewhat-less-than-sour disposition and the possession of an estate, which many somewhat-better-than-lesser men would happily marry for and united in her form the many blessings of the slightly more than mediocre.

  The youngest of nineteen daughters of a most doting and liberal father, Emma had little but that of her own making to ever distress, vex, or otherwise frustrate her. Her mother had died at a young age, mainly of exhaustion, and so Emma kept house for her father once her sisters had married suitable young men of the most noble professions with handsome estates of their own, or at least so was Emma’s impression, though she retained little memory of those things which pertained to beings other than herself.

  As her mother was dead, Emma herself had been raised by the most kind of governesses, a woman whose laziness and love of distraction never allowed her to show Emma unkindness in the form of harsh words or deeds. The two were more like sisters than teacher and pupil, or so they were considered, mainly due to the fact that Emma’s rich diet caused slight pockmarks and a less-than-delicate figure which gave her an air of one twice her own age.

  When her governess married, Emma was not sure how she could bear the loss. What would she do without another being in the house entirely lacking in any desire to better or edify Emma? How could she live without a friend to verify her own high opinions of herself and low opinions of others? No one but Emma herself could ever esteem her as Miss Tyler had. Sadly, Emma accepted the fact that her one true friend and sister would be the great distance of one hour’s carriage ride away and set upon a most important task, to find one closer whom she could impart her wisdom on and whose will was easier to bend to her own
. By luck, the very next day she met the toady and obsequious Hester Merwin, and her newest of projects began.

  Wild and Wanton Jane

  ANABELLA BLOOM

  After a day spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity, Mr. Collins worked up the courage to kiss his fiancée. He had been thinking of it most earnestly since their private walk. Preparing her for this advance in their relationship, he felt, was his solemn duty, and therefore he spent several minutes lecturing on the state of an engagement and how it was very like a marriage in the eyes of all, especially with steady characters such as theirs. Then, proceeding to wet his mouth as to not make the experience unpleasant, he took her by the arms and pressed his mouth to hers.

  Charlotte was by no means deficient in knowledge when it came to such matters. She had grown up on a farm, tending to animals, and had a fair bit of knowledge of husbandry. Though she did not suppose humans mated like sheep, she understood well how a child was conceived. And her mother, wishing to help her advance her engagement before the joyous event took place, had been obliged to suggest helpful hints into securing Mr. Collins’s interest.

  Though Charlotte hardly doubted Mr. Collins’s intent, she knew one word from Lady Catherine, whom she had never met, would be sufficient in turning his regard and making him end the engagement before the wedding took place. Only a strong inducement on her part would secure her lot, and she intended to see that her future was indeed hers. So it was, as Mr. Collins pressed his lips to hers on the private bench, she allowed her hand to slide onto his thigh, as if by unconscious design, and pretended to be so enraptured by his kiss that she did not know what she did. Her fingers kneaded into his leg, indecently high, and she felt the muscles stiffen beneath her hand.

  Mr. Collins instantly took hold of her face, pressing most earnestly against her so that her teeth cut into the tender flesh of her mouth. There was no art to his lovemaking, for the indelicate fumblings of his hands were hardly adept for the task. However, this did not stop him from taking control of the situation, and so he took Charlotte’s hand and moved it up to caress the heavy press of his manhood through his breeches. The sensation was all too pleasurable, and he began to rock most insistently.