Jane, Actually Read online

  Jane, Actually

  or Jane Austen’s Book Tour

  Jennifer Petkus

  © 2013 Jennifer Petkus

  Published by Jennifer Petkus at Smashwords

  Jane, Actually

  or Jane Austen’s Book Tour

  © 2013 Jennifer Petkus

  Published by Jennifer Petkus at Smashwords

  The cover illustration is © 2013 Jennifer Petkus

  All rights reserved, whatever that means.

  Sanditon cover photo by Michael “Mike” L. Baird.

  Seen from Windy Point, on the Point Buchon Trail,

  south of Montana de Oro State Park

  in central California.

  Published by

  Mallard Sci-Fi,

  an imprint of

  Mallard Press

  Denver, Colorado

  Paperback edition

  ISBN-13: 978-0615796710

  ISBN-10: 0615796710

  Kindle Edition

  ASIN: B00D5H4TXE

  visit www.janeactually.com

  Thanks

  I would like to thank my advance readers and proofreaders, especially my sensei, Susan Chandler; fellow JASNA member Maryann O’Brien; my husband James Bates; UK Janeite Christopher Sandrawich; and fellow Sherlockian Michael J. Newman. Their kind assistance is not meant to be endorsements of this story. Any mistakes are my fault.

  Apologies

  The real-life characters mentioned in this book have no association with or knowledge of this book. Garrison Keillor didn’t write an introduction to Pride and Prejudice; Brian Cox and Stephen Fry have never been on a radio program with Jane Austen; Amanda Vickery has never interviewed her; Jane has never been on the Graham Norton Show; and Colin Firth and Jane have never met. The Austen scholars/authors Joan Klingel Ray, Deirdre Le Faye, Elisabeth Lenckos, Janet Todd, Paula Byrne and Jon Spence mentioned in this book have my deepest respect but I cannot claim their imprimatur. This book also draws on the work of Claire Harman (Jane’s Fame) and Claire Tomalin (Jane Austen: A Life). I must also credit Vic Sanborn, Laurel Ann Nattress and Julie Wakefield, authors of the influential blogs Jane Austen’s World, AustenProse and AustenOnly. None of these persons should be blamed for this book.

  For reasons understandable only to myself, I decided to employ a trans-Atlantic narrator, but who generally follows UK spelling and grammar.

  As to Jane’s voice, please realize I’ve imagined a Jane Austen who’s been observing the world for two centuries, who’s been online for a decade and who now has a close friend, almost a sister, in her mid twenties. She’s read and enjoyed Hemingway, Dickens, Chandler and Christie. She may not be the Jane you were expecting.

  Chronology

  I borrow from a device employed by Stella Gibbons, author of Cold Comfort Farm, who prefaced her book: “The action of the story takes place in the near future.” The world of the AfterNet takes place in the recent past, but a past that diverged from our reality in 1997. I choose to parallel and depart from our timeline at my pleasure. This story takes place in 2011.

  “It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death”

  Mark Twain

  Jane lies in Winchester—blessed be her shade! /

  Praise the Lord for making her,

  and her for all she made! /

  And while the stones of Winchester,

  or Milsom Street, remain, /

  Glory, love, and honour unto England’s Jane! /

  From Rudyard Kipling’s “The Janeite”

  The Real Jane Austen

  Jane Austen died in 1817.* In her forty-one years alive, she published four novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma, and two were published posthumously, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. She left Sanditon unfinished, and it promised to be quite different from her previous works, which have been described and criticized as both romantic, dull, witty, plotless, brilliant, complex, insightful, second only to Shakespeare and boring.

  To millions of Janeites, however, the best way to describe her novels is only—only six novels, plus two unfinished novels, and her Juvenilia (early works).

  Her novels are third person, chiefly from the viewpoint of the heroine; they always end happily with a marriage; they’re devoid of explicit sex but filled with rakes, cads and bounders; and the plots are simply driven by two people clearly meant for one another who still manage to deny their love for an entire book. The reader is rewarded, usually after considerably more than 100,000 words, with a single kiss (but only in the movie versions) and a wedding.

  Jane was born to George and Cassandra Austen. Her father was a rector (Church of England priest) of the parish of Steventon in Hampshire, a southern English county. Jane had six brothers (James, George, Edward, Henry, Francis and Charles) and a sister, who was also named Cassandra.

  Jane never married, although shortly before her twenty-seventh birthday, she famously agreed to Harris Bigg-Wither’s proposal and returned it the next day. The only sure romance in her life was with Tom Lefroy, who at the time was studying law under the sponsorship of a great uncle. The romance fell apart and Jane shows no great sorrow in her letter to her sister: “At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea.”

  Most detect a sarcastic tone, although perhaps her arch words disguise a true disappointment. Lefroy never proposed; it would have been an unsuitable match for him and had they married, who can say whether Jane would have pursued her career.

  That career began early, encouraged by her father, his library and her perusal of it. She began early versions of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey while the family lived in Steventon, but in 1801 her father decided to retire and the Reverend Austen and his wife and two daughters moved to Bath in Somerset. The hot mineral baths of the resort town attracted the fashionable and the infirm and the city was also a marketplace where parents could hope to find their children suitable marriage partners.

  For Jane, however, the move was a wrench from the home and the country she loved and to a city that she grew to dislike. With his death, Mrs Austen and her two daughters were in dire financial difficulties. Jane’s sister had income from the bequest of a fiancé who died before they could marry, and Mrs Austen had income from her family, but Jane had little to call her own. Fortunately her brothers contributed to the upkeep of the Austen women, but they remained largely homeless after George Austen’s death, constantly visiting friends and relatives, including the homes of Edward Austen Knight. It was this same Edward, the third child of George and Cassandra, who offered Chawton Cottage as a home to the Austen women in 1809.

  If you’re wondering about Edward’s last name, it came about after he was adopted by wealthy relatives who saw in him the child they never had. Austen’s novels also had several examples of children raised in absentia by wealthy relatives (or relatively wealthier friends in the case of Jane Fairfax in Emma). Whatever grief or disruption or relief this caused Jane’s parents, Edward’s adoption provided an important safety net. Even before the death of Jane’s father, they often visited Godmersham Park, the home of the Knight family, and later Chawton House, Edward’s estate very near the cottage.

  The offer of Chawton Cottage meant a return to Hampshire for the Austen women and for Jane it meant a return to writing. She revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and gave them their final titles. With the financial help of her brother Henry, S&S was published in 1811. P&P followed in 1813.

  In her lifetime, all her novels were published anonymously, first attributed to “By a Lady” and later as the author of the previous books. It wasn’t until Persuasion and N
orthanger Abbey that her identity was acknowledged.

  The choice of keeping her identity secret was largely her own. She did see some financial success and critical acclaim in her lifetime, but her works lapsed out of print after her death, until they were revived in 1832. Since then, they have never been out of print and her fame has risen steadily. The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom, started in 1947, and the Jane Austen Society of North America in 1987, have contributed to her fame. Her novels have been made into movies, television serials and even computer games. Many authors have written continuations of her stories and have recast her characters as vampires, zombie slayers and detectives.

  * Jane lived during the reign of King George III and his son, George IV. The Regency period, during which Jane’s novels were published, began in 1811, when George III was incapacitated (just watch the movie The Madness of King George) and his son became Regent, and ended in 1820 with the death of George III, whence his son was crowned king.

  The afterlife explained

  In 1997, a researcher inadvertently confirmed the existence of the afterlife. Her research and her invention confirmed both the existence of souls and the terrible knowledge that each soul remains alone after death, unable to communicate with the other dead and with the living.

  Then in 2001, the technology she invented gave rise to the AfterNet, a worldwide network that allowed the dead—or disembodied as most preferred to be called—to interact with the living via the Internet. The device or terminal she had invented projects an electromagnetic field that the disembodied can recognize and manipulate.

  Unfortunately there is no easy way for a disembodied person to prove who they were in life. The energy of a disembodied person is unique, however, and could be used for later identification, but gave no clue if that person was male or female, of what race or ethnicity or when they had died. People could record their individual energy signatures before they died (for later identification), but that didn’t help those who’d died before the discovery of the afterlife.

  One could petition the AfterNet to verify one’s identity, but obviously the more famous a person one claimed to be, the harder it was to prove. And consequently the more famous an identity, the more claimants there were to it.

  The majority of the disembodied, however, were just happy to be able to communicate again. Sadly, an eternal existence trapped with no ability to interact with the world had left many disembodied psychologically damaged.

  . . .

  Even if a disembodied person has not succumbed to despair, the reality of the afterlife is still daunting:

  The disembodied cannot be seen and cannot hear, although the dead can see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. They also have a 360-degree field of view. The disembodied cannot smell, touch or taste. They do not sleep.

  The disembodied are so insubstantial they cannot affect the physical world, but their energy can be contained. They can’t walk through walls, open doors or clank chains. They are easily trapped in rooms until someone opens the door. The living are constantly colliding with them. To the living, the collision is unnoticeable; to the disembodied, it is very annoying.

  The disembodied vastly outnumber the living, but still have little economic and political power because of the difficulty in laying claim to their legacy, unless they made provisions before death. Thus many disembodied still work after death, to help provide for family members left behind or to pay for those amusements that help make eternity bearable. After all, reading books and watching movies and television (with subtitles) require the wherewithal to pay Amazon and Netflix.

  The disembodied are unaware of each other and can only communicate via an AfterNet terminal and the Internet. The AfterNet is a multinational, non-profit organization that provides free public terminals and maintains the AfterNet portal, which offers free email to the disembodied.

  The AfterNet also maintains the free terminals that most disembodied use to communicate. These nondescript black boxes can be found in shopping centres, libraries and post offices.

  Using a terminal is not easy; a disembodied person has to form his or her thoughts clearly enough for the terminal to translate those thoughts into text or speech for the living to understand.

  A living person who wishes to speak directly to the disembodied cans simply use the Internet, or use a portable terminal, a device similar in size and appearance to a smart phone. One speaks aloud and the terminal translates the words and projects them into the AfterNet field for the disembodied to read. The thoughts of the disembodied are similarly turned into speech for the living to hear, usually through an earbud.

  A person who can project his or her thoughts directly into an AfterNet field—a difficult task for the living—could find employment as an avatar, representing a disembodied person who had managed to claim their identity and their legacy.

  Dramatis personae

  Principals

  Jane Austen, disembodied Regency novelist

  Mary Crawford, Jane’s avatar

  Melody Kramer, Jane’s agent: Her life partner is Tamara Johnson

  Albert Ridings, Jane’s friend, who died in the Great War. His wife was Catherine

  Dr Alice Davis, Austen scholar at the University of Chicago.

  Stephen Abrams, Dr. Davis’ graduate student

  Courtney Blake, freelance journalist/writer, author of The Real Jane Austen

  Supporting

  Alan Pembroke, Random House editor

  Ajala Johnsson, JASNA President

  Cindy Wallace, JASNA North Texas Regional Coordinator. Her fellow coordinators are BethAnn and Megan.

  Mrs Westerby, the inheritor of several Austen documents

  Fictional

  Many characters from Jane Austen’s novels are mentioned in this book, including:

  Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, from Pride and Prejudice

  Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram from Mansfield Park (also, of course, Henry and Mary Crawford)

  Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley from Emma

  Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey

  Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth from Persuasion

  Elinor and Marianne Dashwood and Edward Ferrars from Sense and Sensibility

  And from Sanditon, Charlotte Heywood and Sidney Parker

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  The Real Jane Austen

  The Afterlife explained

  Dramatis personae

  Volume I

  New York City

  An offer from her publisher

  15 Per cent

  “I am Jane Austen’s Agent”

  Ripples

  The Austen world reacts

  An empty chair

  Jane needs an avatar

  Albert Ridings

  Keeping watch for minimum wage

  Something Fresh

  Something new

  Virtual Chawton

  Jane Austen’s online home

  Mary Crawford

  It beats waiting tables

  Bath, England

  Looking for traces of Jane

  First Impressions

  Jane meets the improbably named Mary Crawford

  Planning for the future

  Melody faces the changes in her life

  Finalists

  Jane and the finalists begin training

  Differing opinions

  Jane and Melody clash on choice of avatar

  Sandwich money

  Jane chooses Mary

  Hampshire

  Jane compounds her lie

  Something fresher

  It was the best of times?

  The Real Jane Austen

  Melody learns of Court’s book

  English country dance

  Some experience required

  Business decisions

  A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of

  The secret fear of Janeites

  “Wil
l the AGM become the equivalent of a Star Trek convention?”

  An open letter

  Jane responds online

  Shared interests

  She looked fully capable of ripping most men in half

  Volume II

  Deeper still

  Jane’s fantasy expands

  A new portrait

  Creating a likeness of Jane Austen

  Launching Sanditon

  Planning the NYC/London book launches

  Roommates

  Stephen and Albert meet online

  Where to put Jane

  Accommodating the author at the AGM

  White soup for the soul

  Regency medicine

  A sneak peek

  Jane and Mary’s first book reading

  Excerpt I

  A dark and stormy night

  Persuasion

  Somewhere there must be cats

  Despatch boxes

  Journal of Jane Bigg-Wither

  London

  Jane and Mary arrive at Heathrow

  Walkabout

  Jane feels restless

  In her own hand

  “Yes, very providential”

  Feeling silly

  Pursuing a girl

  UK book launch

  May I introduce Mr Colin Firth?

  Chicago

  Eighties hair

  The Fellowship of Austen

  Stephen gets his copy of Sanditon

  Meet cute

  Stephen and Mary spend the day

  How considerate

  Stephen tells Dr Davis he’s met Mary

  Boston

  The obligations of being civil

  The Graham Norton Show

  Indelicate questions

  Chawton

  Civility must be our guide

  Excerpt II