Book One: Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

"It is rare to find a woman who places her personal happiness above her fears for the future.  You refused Mr. Bigg-Wither, refused his offer of a home, a family, and the comfortable means they assured, to retain your independence, despite the counsel of all who wished you well and threw their weight behind the match.  What strength!"
     "Did you know Mr. Bigg-Wither, you would think me less noble," I said.  "There cannot be two men so likely to meet with refusal in the entire country."

When I wrote that snippet of dialogue in the opening pages of Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, I unconsciously betrayed the inspiration for the entire series.  What was a young woman of six-and-twenty to do in the year 1802, knowing that she had no fortune and no immediate prospect of passionate romance, as the Years of Danger (as Jane once phrased them) approached?  Did she grasp at the only acceptable offer of marriage that came her way--with no more than tolerable liking for her life partner--or did she embark on the far lonelier proposition of spinsterhood, with all the privations and burdens that entailed?

Jane did both, within a twenty-four hour period; and the consequences determined the course of her life.

When I decided to write a mystery series featuring Jane Austen as an amateur detective, I knew only a few things: I wanted to write about Jane herself, rather than attempting a continuation of one of her novels.  I wanted to use the richness of her distinctive language--the intimate and acerbic tone of her private letters as well as her narrative voice.  I wanted to set Jane within the frame of her time: the late Georgian and Regency periods, when constant warfare on land and sea deprived the ballrooms of eligible gentlemen, and a lady was actually accorded a good deal more freedom than the subsequent Victorian era would allow.   And I wanted to give her a mystery to solve. 

Why a mystery?  Because Jane understood nothing so well as human motivation--the crux of every conflict and murderous impulse.  Hearts and minds were her preferred playgrounds.  Several of her books--Emma and Northanger Abbey come to mind--can be read as early novels of detection.  She loved to offer her readers false suspects and hidden clues.  In an era when all law enforcement was informal--when England had no police force, and justice was administered by the wellborn as one of the privileges of birth--an amateur detective was the norm.  That Jane was a woman seemed no bar to the adventures I'd planned for her.  She had access to every level of the English power structure through her brothers--a wealthy landowner, a banker, a clergyman, and two captains in the Royal Navy. 

I had studied Napoleonic France as an undergraduate, so I was familiar with the period.  I had been reading Austen's novels for decades, and had an echo of her voice in my head.  But I realized I knew more about Eliza Bennet or Anne Elliott than I did about Jane herself.  Once I had a bevy of biographies under my belt, I knew I had to write about Jane before she was Austen: the successful writer.  It was the uncertain young woman who interested me--the woman confronting age, potential poverty, and the terrifying challenge of independence.  This was a Jane who was often rootless, who moved from hired lodging to hired lodging before landing, finally, in her thirties, in the sanctuary of Chawton; who suffered grief at the loss of people she loved and the evanescence of certain dreams.  It was clear I had to start Scargrave Manor at a pivotal moment in Jane's life--when she accepted Harris Bigg-Wither's offer of marriage, only to jilt him the following morning.  It was perhaps the most courageous and reckless act of her nearly twenty-seven years; and those of us who cherish her prose owe her a debt of gratitude for turning her back on a loveless marriage. 

Had she consented to become Mrs. Harris Bigg-Wither, we would probably never have known her name.

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor drops our unsuspecting heroine into the sort of life she might have chosen: a marriage of convenience, with disastrous consequences.  Jane's friend Isobel Payne rescues her from the mortification of her broken engagement with an invitation to Christmas at Scargrave Manor, where Jane meets a cast of characters reminiscent of some of her own.  George Hearst, the clergyman; his brother, the dissolute Lieutenant Tom Hearst; Fitzroy Payne, an inscrutable, proud, and handsome young heir to an earldom; Fanny Delahoussaye, whose behaviour would make Lydia Bennet's look tame.  When one of the company is poisoned, all are suspect--and Jane is compelled to learn the truth.

Along the way she encounters a man she rightly believes capable of every intrigue and violence, a man she describes as malevolent--and yet, by the end of the novel, chooses to call her Dark Angel: Lord Harold Trowbridge.

When I introduced Lord Harold in Scargrave Manor, I never imagined he'd become an obsession for so many readers.  But the Gentleman Rogue, as Jane and her world know him, has a subtle charm that makes him hard to ignore.  He cropped up in book after book, almost without my intending it. The silver-haired second son of a duke, Lord Harold is the constant subject of idle gossip, rampant envy, and malicious intrigue. Negligently at home in the breathless halls of the ton--London's Great--he chooses to devote his time and energy to the foiling of Napoleon Bonaparte's plans.  From the moment he meets Jane, he compels her with his intelligence; and his appreciation of her own is something Jane cherishes.  They make a fitful, star-crossed and unwittingly romantic pair.  But in Scargrave Manor, this is all in the future; I knew nothing of it myself, when I wrote the book back in 1994.

I have to confess that I'm ambivalent about Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor.  When I look through it now, the language feels correct but stiff, the footnotes overly-pedantic.  I'm struck by how much more familiar Jane has become over the past sixteen years.  We scraped an acquaintance at Scargrave; it was only later that she unbent, and shared her vicious sense of humor, her uncanny wisdom, her love of absurdity and some of her pain.  Those are the best Austen gifts--the kind that return us again and again to her remarkable novels, the kind we carry with us always.

Reading Group Questions for Scargrave Manor

1. Jane Austen is nearly twenty-seven when this novel begins, and is considered long since "on the shelf," as her contemporaries would put it--meaning well past the marriageable age for a woman, which in her time was roughly between fifteen and twenty-two.  Lacking any dowry or personal fortune, she had only her looks to recommend her, as she would later write of the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice.  Well-born women of her day were prohibited from pursuing any sort of income-producing profession, and unless they married, were regarded as a financial burden on the male members of their families.  Given these considerations, does Jane show great courage--or great selfishness--in refusing an excellent offer of marriage?  Discuss.

2. A woman's life was often short in the late Georgian and Regency period.  Three of Jane's sisters-in-law would die by the age of thirty-five, all three as a result of childbirth, and Jane herself lived only to forty-one.  Did the shortness of one's span make individual life choices more or less important?  Did a woman of Austen's time have the luxury of pursuing personal ambitions and dreams, or was her focus primarily on her family or community?  Do these considerations make Jane's particular choices more or less remarkable? 

3. In a society that placed inordinate importance on both beauty and wealth, was Jane's intellect a gift or a handicap?

 

4. Justice in Austen's day was largely administered by the wellborn and well-connected.  There was no police force, no presumption of innocence, no conception of evidence collection and few rights accorded to defendants during trials.  Has the justice system benefited or suffered with the passage of time? 

 

5. Fans of Austen's work frequently cite the civility of society in her day, as evidenced in the ritualized behavior of men and women in both public and private venues, and contrast it negatively with our own.  Is this an idealized version of Austen's time, or an accurate one?  How does Isobel Payne's experience inform your thinking on this question?  Is she protected by the implicit civility of her society--or a victim of her limited capacity to defend herself? 

Stephanie