Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [97]
“Convey me tomorrow to the Countess's cell. I would know better, by my own eyes, how she fares; and Fitzroy Payne as well.”
“Newgate is no place for a lady,” the barrister said, his doubt in his voice.
“Fiddlesticks!” I cried. “You know very well, Mr. Cranley, that visiting the condemned has become a sport for the best society. If Newgate is fit enough to lodge a Countess, it is fit enough for me to call. I shall expect you after breakfast.”
1. Wilborough House has since been torn down.—Editor's note.
2. Though Jane is clearly Eliza's sister-in-law, it was the custom in Austen's time to refer to one's relations by marriage as though they were of birth.—Editor's note.
3. Britain's roughly twenty years of war with France—from about 1795 to 1815—had a brief hiatus from 1801 to 1803, though the entire island lived in fear of Napoleonic invasion.—Editor's note.
2 January 1803
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LONDON'S AFTERNOON FOG CURLS NOW BEYOND SCAR-grave House's many windows, blotting out the forms of carriage and horse as they pass in the street below. There is a like obscurity in my soul, a darkness bred of too much sadness; I have spent the better part of the morning enshrouded in perpetual night, in the depths of Newgate prison. That I rejoice in my deliverance from that place, I need hardly add, but for my heartache at leaving Isobel a prisoner within its walls. But I carry something of Newgate with me still, in the grime and odour of its interior, which sits heavily upon my person.
I have ordered a hot bath, the better to rid myself of the unwholesome stench. Part refuse, part excrement, part human despair, it is noisome, indeed; and I was driven so wild by the foetidness during my return in Mr. Cranley's coach, that I barely stopped at Scargrave House's door to shed my pelisse and bonnet before hastening upstairs to my room. That the Earl's smart Town butler, Simmons—as unlike poor Cobblestone in his youth and vigour as Scargrave House is to the Manor—detected a certain ripeness in my scent, I little doubt, from the curling of his nostrils as I entered; he held my outer garments with the tips of his exquisitely gloved fingers, and hastened to pass them to a housemaid, with a frosty injunction that they should be “brushed.” Brushed, indeed! A se'nnight's immersion in hot lye and ashes would be unlikely to rid them of Newgate's pollution. But I had dressed in my oldest things, foreseeing how it should be; and could hardly lament the loss of so small a part of my wardrobe in such a cause.
And now the maids have come, with steaming coppers held high, and pronounced the water as yet too hot for my liking. So I have drawn out my journal, and put pen to paper, in the hope of fixing indelibly my impression of that hellish place in which I spent but a few hours. The horror shall pass from my mind with time; but I would retain something of it here, to harden my resolve when despair at Isobel's fate threatens to overcome me. I know her to be innocent, and will not suffer her to spend a minute more than she must in so terrible a hole.
Mr. Cranley was as good as his word, and arrived not long after the breakfast hour—half-past eight, by the great clock that relentlessly chimes the quarters in Scargrave House's entry. His face wore a dubious aspect, and he would have dissuaded me from my visit; but that firmness of purpose, where I know myself to be right, overruled all objection.
I wore my most serviceable gown, a warm wool worsted of dark blue, and my stoutest boots, as though intending a walk over country stiles; and of these I read the barrister's approval as he surveyed my form.
“A clergyman's daughter, you say?” He smiled despite the sombre nature of our errand. “I should almost have thought your father a Colonel, Miss Austen, and yourself well hardened to the privations of campaign.”
“Parish work may be as arduous, and its contests as bitter, as the mounting of a siege,” I replied, pulling on my gloves. “Have you never been forced, Mr. Cranley, to parcel out the parts in a Christmas pageant, and suffer calumny and abuse for the neglect