Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

Author:Helena Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

CHAPTER 5

‘The Chain and the Cross’

Mansfield Park

London, 1813.a

The little girls, who had hoped for an evening at one of the theatres, are indulging in a fit of the sulks. It is only the mildest of fits, however. Jane has been determinedly ignoring them this past half hour, and is encouraging her eldest niece Fanny to ignore them likewise. Fanny is not always wise where her sisters are concerned. And after all, Jane is sure she would be rather sulky herself, if she had been compelled to subject her teeth, as they had earlier in the day, to the tender mercies of Mr Spence – filing and extractions and gold stops and the dear knows what else besides. And those frowns, those gusty sighs, might well be a sign, not that the girls feel themselves hardly-used, but that their letters to their brothers and sisters, at home in Kent, are proving difficult to write. No one knows better than she does that words do not always flow easily.

Jane loves a play well enough, but what with the shopping, and the wearing hour they spent at the dentist, she is glad of a quiet evening with only their own company. Her eyes are troubling her again. A trip to town often takes her this way. It is the late nights, and the smoky lamps, and the dust in the streets forever agitated by carriages and crossing-sweepers. It is pleasanter to sit round the circular table in this snug inner room in Henry’s house, even if the girls are being a trifle tiresome. It is pleasant to be wearing her new cap and to know that her hair is dressed more or less according to the fashion.

The arrival of the tea things seems a good moment to put an end to her letter. The girls evidently think so, too; they laughingly drag Fanny from the table, complaining that they’re fainting from hunger, and that some of those little cakes will be just the thing—

Fanny, struggling to maintain her seniority, begins to read them a lecture on all the trash and sweet things they eat and to threaten them with a return visit to the dentist. Perhaps Marianne will have to have all her teeth taken out!—

Marianne turns white. The drops of laudanum which she took with her wine and water have not made her forget her ordeal at the hands of Mr Spence, poor child.

Fanny, says Jane, folding her letter, this is hardly helpful—

—And, replies Fanny, as if she has not heard her aunt, as if producing a winning card, sugar is made by slaves and so it is the most immoral, unchristian thing for her sisters to eat as much of it as they do.

Is that true? the little girls ask. And, is that true, Aunt Jane – I thought we didn’t have slaves any more in England?

We don’t, says Fanny. You must know that sugar comes from the Sugar Islands, from Jamaica, and Antigua, and places such as those. And it is a shocking thing to eat it in such quantities – practically heathenish.

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