Because I Could Not Stop for Her, Jane Austen Kindly Stopped for Me
The carriage was waiting when I arrived—black, elegant, without ostentation. Excuse the excessively showy pun right out the gate. The horse snorted once as I approached, as if to say, You're late. The driver nodded and opened the door. I stepped up into the plush blue interior shaped with gold trim, where she was already seated, gloved hands resting lightly in her lap, her bonnet slightly askew in a way that made it seem purposeful.
"Mr. Timpson?" she queried. "Any relation to the Timpsons in Derbyshire? I once danced with a lieutenant of that name who couldn't tell a quadrille from a contradance. And who is this Timp of whom you are the son? Does he have property?
"Theral is fine," I said, momentarily stunned by her presence. It wasn't just her eyes, sharp and amused, but the feeling that I was stepping into someone else's prose.
"And I," she said, "am still Jane. Thank you for asking."
The carriage lurched forward. The English countryside unfolded outside the window: green and wet, hedgerows like lines of repressed opinions. We passed a man walking with a cane and a dog who clearly thought itself the master. A postboy waved. A rook scolded the sky.
"I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I like to take the long way when the company is right."
Theral: Thank you. Jane, I must ask—since your own books, whose novels have you truly liked?
Jane (smiling wryly): A few. I liked Dickens when he wasn’t being so Dickensian. That is, when he wasn’t preaching or naming a woman "Mercy" only to break her spirit two chapters later. George Eliot gave women a mind and kindly left them with it.
Theral: And before you? Who shaped your own voice?
Jane: Shakespeare, always. His dialogue—how he lets it dance before meaning takes its bow. But also, the author of Evelina, Fanny Burney. I owe her a great debt. She gave women permission to be observant in print. This dialogue strikes me as not just a little pompous. Perhaps you can improve it.
I am not Zadok, the Priest.
Theral: God save the Queen! But you have become a touchstone for feminism, though you yourself never used the word.
Jane: I used something better—wit. Feminism, you see, often marches. I preferred to dance around the room—and then quietly take the house.
Theral: What do you make of your popularity today?
Jane (gently shrugging): I wrote of manners, which never go out of fashion, and of marriages, which are always in fashion. And then there is irony. Modernity mistakes irony for cynicism. I assure you, they are not the same.
It’s a dazzling, if morbid title you’ve given our piece, but what is the plot here?
Theral: Just two characters on a carriage ride. A taste of modern American sensibility—today every novel is either just characters or science fiction.
Jane: How dreary! Either no ride or a ride to nowhere.
Theral: Haha!
She turned and whispered in his ear. I was aghast and whispered something back.
Jane: You see. Now we’re in a plot, Mr. Timpson. Plot is merely having a secret.
Theral: But will I keep it?
Jane: Be careful! Character comes in how it’s shared.
Theral: Speaking of secrets, you never married, yet you wrote so piercingly about love.
Jane: Oh, love I understood. It was permanence I distrusted. I valued solitude too highly to mortgage it on certainty. There. How’s that for being the character, Jane Austen?
The carriage continued on at a healthy pace.
Theral: Do you think of yourself as a philosopher?
Jane (tilting her head): Good heavens, no. Though I do think of philosophy as a very fine thing to enjoy, often at the philosopher’s expense.
Theral: That first line of Pride and Prejudice. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune . . ." You're stepping straight into metaphysics.
Jane (smiling): Ah, yes. A universal truth, tethered to a man who owns things. Property as predicate! I admit, it is a jest on Plato. If the Forms descended into Hertfordshire.
Theral: And then the second clause—"must be in want of a wife." Possession leads to desire?
Jane: Or perhaps to a state of moral emergency.
Theral: Haha.
Jane: The entire sentence is an act of polite absurdity. I merely held the mirror up—though I may have given it a little shake.
Theral: But you do deal in ethics, don’t you? What are your novels if not explorations of character, action, and consequence?
Jane: I would say I dealt in manners. But yes, manners are simply ethics observed in public. Morality with a bonnet.
Theral: So Elizabeth Bennet is a moral philosopher?
Jane (nodding slowly): She is my Socrates. Though with better teeth and a more readable dialogue. She too questions pride, prejudice, appearance. And she pays the price for truth—not hemlock, but humility. And you. How did you come to my work?
Theral: Emma was an assignment in college.
Jane: I’m dreadfully sorry!
Theral: It grew on me.
Jane: Yes, she often does. Like ivy.
The carriage climbed a gentle rise. Trees thinned. Chimneys began to poke the horizon like commas in a long paragraph.
Theral: And Dickens? What do you make of him?
Jane (brows lifting): Ah, the chronicler of orphans and outrage. He writes as if the world might be saved by sentiment and spectacles. I like him best when he remembers to laugh. Which, thankfully, he does often enough to be tolerated.
Theral: Chopin or Beethoven?
Jane: Oh dear. Chopin if I’m writing letters I hope no one reads. Beethoven if I’m reading letters I wish someone had written me.
Theral: And London? Did you like it?
Jane: I liked what one could observe from a distance. London is a bookshop with far too many mirrors.
We carried on this way and that for the afternoon, and finally the carriage turned onto a familiar lane. Chawton Cottage stood ahead. The pace slowed. Through the window, we both Jane’s sister Cassandra in the garden cutting flowers, as if no time had passed at all.
Theral: What do you think of her burning all the letters?
Jane (sighs): A great act of love, or cowardice. Perhaps both. Some truths are too indecent for the family album.
Theral: Do you think Cassandra was in love with you?
Jane (after a pause): Aren’t you all? We were each other’s constant. Call it what you will. Some things grow beyond names.
The carriage stopped. She looked at me kindly, and just for a moment, as if weighing something.
Jane: Shouldn’t this carriage ride be ending at a grave?
Theral: That’s years away.
Jane: You know that I never do this.
Theral: Take a carriage ride?
Jane: Say more than I intended. It was only for the best sort of company.
Theral: What sort is that?
Jane (with a sidelong glance): The kind who lets you finish a sentence—and then surprises you by remembering it.
With that she stepped down lightly, the door closing with a soft finality. I watched her go, bonnet bobbing, until she and her sister vanished into the home she never really left.
The horse snorted once more. This time, I understood.