Jane and the Stillroom Maid

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THIS IS THE FIFTH OF THE AUSTEN MANUSCRIPTS I have been privileged to edit for publication since their discovery, in 1992, in the cellar of a Georgian manor house outside of Baltimore. I may say that I find it by far the most exciting, for it sheds light on Jane Austen’s life and travels in 1806 that helps to confirm events only suspected before.

One of the most vividly described and memorable locations in all of Austen’s novels must be the county of Derbyshire, where Fitzwilliam Darcy, the reticent hero of Pride and Prejudice, makes his home. Here Elizabeth Bennet is privileged to travel in the company of her relations, the Gardiners. The party tours Matlock and Dovedale before visiting Darcy’s estate of Pemberley, where they unaccountably stumble across the owner. Elizabeth, in conversation with Darcy, refers to the inn at Bakewell, where she has been staying with the Gardiners — and to this day there is a tradition in Bakewell that Jane Austen was once a guest at the town’s principal Georgian inn, The Rutland Arms. She must have been to Bakewell, the local inhabitants reason; her description of the landscape surrounding Pemberley accords so closely to the town’s physical reality. Furthermore, she imputes to Elizabeth Bennet an enthusiasm for the beauties of the Peaks that sounds entirely genuine.

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