First Impressions Page 11

  “Do you truly believe,” said Jane, “that the primary motivation of humankind is, as I believe the Americans call it, the pursuit of happiness?”

  “I do,” said Mr. Mansfield, “though that in itself is not an evil thing. It is only when we attach happiness to those things which are worldly and unimportant that our lives become corrupted.”

  “And what of me?” said Jane. “Am I wrong to pursue the happiness I believe would come to me with the publication of my writing?”

  “To answer that question, one must first know why you yearn for publication. Do you envision riches and the opportunity for the ‘noisy joys of riot and excess’?”

  “You jest with me, Mr. Mansfield, for you know that I do not. You know that, although I enjoy the occasional ball, I am happiest when I am here with you, sharing our thoughts, reading to one another, living simply in the world of the mind. It is not riches that I seek but rather the possibility that my published words might allow me to have a similar communion of thought with those unseen.”

  “Then I think we can safely say that you have not fallen into the trap that claimed Alphonso. By your labors at the writing table, Miss Austen, you do anything but, as Gregory says, ‘sacrifice your prospect of distant happiness to the delusive pleasure of an hour.’ I should say you do quite the opposite.”

  “It comforts me to hear you say that, Mr. Mansfield.”

  “I am pleased to give you comfort,” said Mr. Mansfield. “However, while I am happy that my stories stimulate self-reflection, as was their intent, if we are to discuss the place of each in our own lives, it may be weeks before I discover the fate of the dear Dashwoods.”

  “You are right, Mr. Mansfield. In my self-concern I am too cruel. Pray continue.”

  And for the next hour, he read, until four more of his stories were finished.

  “I wonder,” said Mr. Mansfield, laying the book aside, “if by listening to my meager attempts as a writer you have perhaps come to understand how accomplished you are at that same endeavor?”

  “I do not admit to a difference in quality between your work and my own,” said Jane, “only in style and perhaps intent.”

  “Nonetheless, were my intent wedded to your abilities, it might produce something rather new,” said Mr. Mansfield.

  “You’d best continue reading, Mr. Mansfield,” said Jane, “or we shall never return to Elinor and Marianne.”

  London, Present Day

  THE NEXT MORNING Sophie rang her sister, still feeling delightfully light-headed from her time with Winston.

  “I met someone,” she said.

  “Marry, kill, or shag?” said Victoria.

  “Shag,” said Sophie. “Definitely shag.”

  “So you’ve forgotten all about your American?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Sophie. “But Winston has the distinct advantage of being located in this country.”

  “Winston? Sounds yummy,” said her sister. “Here I thought I was the woman of action in this family, and in a week you’ve gotten a job, a stack of Uncle Bertram’s books, and a boyfriend.”

  “He isn’t my boyfriend.”

  “Well, I’m glad you had a good day.”

  “It was a good day,” said Sophie, “but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about Uncle Bertram.”

  “I know. Oh, God, my boss is coming into the office. I have to go. Love you, Soph,” said Victoria, and she was gone.

  —

  SOPHIE SPENT THE MORNING in the basement of the shop, sorting through new acquisitions. The most promising volumes she set aside for cataloguing, ordinary but desirable stock she brought up to Gusty to be priced and shelved in the shop; the dregs she relegated to the bargain display outside. When she had carried the third armload of bargain books outside and stood in the doorway brushing the dust from her clothes, Gusty commented, “You look happy.”

  “I am happy,” said Sophie.

  “Oh, by the way, I had an old customer in here this morning. He’s on the trail of something and since you seem so talented at mining the want file, I’ll let you take care of him.” He handed Sophie a card on which was written the name George Smedley and a phone number. Below that were the words “Richard Mansfield. A Little Book of Allegorical Stories. 2nd edition. 1796.”

  “Is this some sort of joke?” said Sophie with a laugh.

  “Not at all,” said Gusty. “I know it’s an odd request, but bibliophiles are an odd bunch.”

  “I don’t suppose this Smedley is tall and blond and broad-shouldered and good-looking?”

  “No,” said Gusty. “I’d say he was my height. Hair is dark and curly and he’s certainly built solidly but he’s hardly classically handsome. Has a face like . . . well, like a bull terrier. Looks rather frightening, but he’s harmless. Used to come in here quite often a year or two back but I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  Sophie was on the verge of telling Gusty that another customer had come in yesterday looking for the same book, when it suddenly occurred to her that here, at last, was a real mystery to solve.

  “I’ll see what I can do for Mr. Smedley,” she said.

  Once back in the basement, Sophie picked up the shop phone and dialed the number on the card Gusty had given her. She heard a click on the line, but no answer.

  “Hello?” she said. “Is this Mr. George Smedley?”

  “It is,” said a brusque voice. Sophie guessed the accent was from somewhere up north. To her ear he sounded more like an aggravated plumber than a book collector.

  “I’m calling from Boxhill’s Bookshop.”

  “Why, what rapid service,” said the voice, a bit more cheerfully. “I knew old Gusty would pass my request on to his new shop assistant. Have you found my little book of allegories already?”

  “No, sir. I just thought I would give you a call to see if I could get a little more information.”

  “And what other information could you possibly need,” said the voice, turning cold again. “You have the title and the author. You know, I presume, that I require the second edition of 1796. You clearly have my name and number. I suggest you get to work.”

  “Well, I just wondered—”

  “Young lady, I want you to understand that I am willing to pay a lot of money for this book. A lot of money. More than others will be willing to pay. Do you understand?”

  “I believe so,” said Sophie, though all she really understood was that this phone call was getting stranger by the second.

  “And I can offer you certain, shall we say, protections that others will not.”

  “Protections?” she said, for the first time feeling genuinely frightened by this strange man.

  “Let us say simply that if you find this book for me there will be rewards; if you find it for someone else . . .”

  “Are you threatening me, Mr. Smedley?” said Sophie, doing her best to sound confident.

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” said the voice. “And another thing. You are to keep this conversation—you are to keep all our conversations—confidential, even from your employer. It would be a shame to drag poor Augustus into all this.”

  Sophie shivered at the implications of this statement, and the line was silent for a moment. “Now,” said Smedley, “are you looking for my book?”

  “Actively,” said Sophie, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “I’ve done some research and I think I may have one or two leads.” This was stretching the truth considerably.

  “You’d better not be lying.”

  Sophie swallowed hard and decided not to be intimidated. If she was going to get to the bottom of this, she thought, she needed to find out everything she could about Smedley. She pretended to ignore his comment and put on her cheeriest voice.

  “Do you live in London?” The line was silent. “I only ask because I thought perhaps
we might get together sometime, to discuss your interest in . . . book collecting.”

  “Don’t try to outsmart me.”

  “I just thought it would be nice to meet,” said Sophie, who could think of nothing less nice than meeting this particular customer. “When I worked at the library at Christ Church it was so much more interesting to meet researchers face-to-face than to talk on the phone or e-mail.”

  “You were at Oxford, then,” said Mr. Smedley, softening. “I was at St. John’s, but I’m sure before your time.”

  “You don’t sound that much older than me.”

  “Suppose we dispense with the detective game.”

  “Fine,” said Sophie. “Then I’ll just ask you a question, plain and simple. Why this book? What possible interest could it have?”

  “Young lady,” said Mr. Smedley, ignoring her question, “my patience is not infinite, and I don’t think you would like me when I lose my patience.” And with these ominous words he rang off.

  “I don’t like you when you are patient,” said Sophie aloud to the phone. Her attempts to ferret out information had been all but fruitless. If she was going to discover what was so special about Richard Mansfield’s book, she would have to find another way.

  She sat on a stool in the basement, her mind cluttered with questions. Why had two such different customers come to the same shop looking for the same obscure book? None of the other dealers she had talked to the day before had ever heard of Richard Mansfield, much less had requests for his book of allegories. And why was one of these customers issuing not-so-veiled threats? Obviously there was more to this book—or to this particular edition—than met the eye. She wondered if she ought to tell Winston that a mysterious man was after what she had already begun to think of as his book, but Mr. Smedley’s threats and demands for secrecy still rang in her ears. She would honor his wishes, until she found out more. But she couldn’t imagine finding two copies of A Little Book of Allegorical Stories, and, she reasoned, Winston had asked first. So if she did find a copy, by all rights she should sell it to him, regardless of the price Mr. Smedley was willing to pay. But what if his threats of punishment were serious?

  Her first thought, as she pondered this puzzle, was that Uncle Bertram must have owned a copy of the book, and that was why both men had come to her. But if he had, how would two different collectors have known? Besides, whether or not Bertram had owned such a book was immaterial now. His books were scattered; finding any specific one was virtually impossible. As she thought over the situation, she could hear the voice of her sister in her head: “What can you do? Figure out what you can do and do it and don’t worry about the rest.” What she could do was find out everything she could about Richard Mansfield and his book of allegories.

  In a case in the basement, Gusty had a substantial reference library—bibliographies, biographical dictionaries, and biographies of well-known authors. Maybe one of them would include an entry on Richard Mansfield.

  She had plowed through most of the biographical dictionaries without success when she finally came across an entry in Alumni Oxonienses, a four-volume work that listed every person to attend Oxford University from 1715 to 1886.

  MANSFIELD, RICHARD NORMAN, 1s. Tobias Charles, of Bloxham, Oxfordshire, cler. Balliol Coll., matric. 1734, aged 18; B.A. 1737, M.A. 1740. Curate of Bloxham 1743, Master of Cowley Grammar School 1758–1780, Rector of Croft, Yorkshire, 1780. Died 4 Dec. 1796.

  So, his father was a clergyman, Richard had attended Oxford, he had worked in his father’s church, taught school for more than twenty years in what was now the Oxford suburb of Cowley, and then gotten a parish of his own in the north. Nothing in his biography sounded remotely interesting. Mansfield, like his book, was completely ordinary. So why all this fuss about his allegories?

  “Gusty,” said Sophie, emerging from the basement, “do you mind if I do some work over at the British Library this afternoon? There are some bibliographical questions on some of these want cards that I’d like to work out.” She had already phoned her friend Nigel Cook at the British Library and arranged to have their copy of the first edition of Mansfield’s book waiting for her.

  “Of course, of course,” said Gusty. “Wednesdays are always slow once the matinees start.” Thirty minutes later, Sophie was settling into a chair in a light and airy reading room holding a copy of Richard Mansfield’s book.

  She copied down the bibliographical details—size, number of pages, and the publication information: “Printed in Leeds by Gilbert Monkhouse, 1795”—and then turned to the text.

  Sophie had not previously read any allegorical tales from the late eighteenth century, and it didn’t take her more than a page of A Little Book of Allegorical Stories to realize why. Mansfield’s stories had the triple distinction of being heavy-handed, poorly written, and dull. When she read Jane Austen, Sophie felt transported back two hundred years and found herself in a place and time she loved to inhabit—attending balls, taking walks in the countryside, paying visits, all in the company of witty and charming heroines. Reading Richard Mansfield, she found herself in the same era yet in the company of people so dull they would pay actual money to own and read these dreadful stories. It made her want to run screaming back to the present. How could two such different authors, united by a desire to write fiction, represent the same world? In a way, slogging through Richard Mansfield was a revelation to Sophie. We judge the past, if we are readers of novels, only by the output of the best writers, she thought. How differently might we feel if instead of viewing the turn of the nineteenth century through the lens of Jane Austen, we viewed it through the lens of Richard Mansfield?

  The best Sophie could say about Mansfield’s allegories was that they were blessedly short. A typical example was titled “Sickness and Health,” and began:

  When the original chaos was first reduced to form, and primeval darkness and confusion were superseded by light and harmony, the Gods joined together Exercise and Temperance, and sent them down among mortals to facilitate and hasten the population of the new world. These two had not lived long on earth, before they were blessed with a daughter called Health.

  It continued on in this vein, talking of all the good things this daughter HEALTH brought to the world until after many generations the men of earth became insolent and “rebelled against the Gods,” who then sent INDOLENCE and LUXURY to “sojourn upon earth,” and wouldn’t you know it, they had a daughter named SICKNESS, and you know what trouble she’s made for everybody ever since. What on earth could Winston Godfrey want with this rubbish?

  Sophie scanned the rest of the book, checking for any marginal markings and making a few notes on stories with such scintillating titles as “The Pleasures of Benevolence,” “Youth and Vanity,” and her favorite: “General Depravity of Mankind.” What a wonderful Christmas gift this book would make!

  By five o’clock she could take no more, and she returned the book to the desk, pushed her way through the glass doors into the brick piazza, and headed toward the tube at King’s Cross. She had looked at every page of the book, racking her brain for any reason why not just one, but two people would want to buy the second edition of something so utterly ordinary. This was something worth making veiled threats and offering large sums of money? It simply didn’t seem credible. Sophie wondered if it was all some elaborate hoax perpetrated by Winston. Perhaps he was the second customer, disguising his voice on the phone. But then she remembered that Gusty had met Smedley and he looked nothing like Winston. Besides, she couldn’t imagine why Winston would play such a trick. Then again, she also couldn’t imagine why he wanted the second edition of a book that preserved for future generations stories like “General Depravity of Mankind.”

  Hampshire, 1796

  THE DAY AFTER she had forced Mr. Mansfield to read her his book of allegories, Jane read to him the final pages of Elinor and Marianne. She was pleased to find that he in no way anticipat
ed the possibility that Lucy Steele had married not Mr. Edward Ferrars but Mr. Robert Ferrars. Her friend even uttered a little squeal of delight when she revealed this twist in the plot.

  “It is a triumph,” said Mr. Mansfield. “A truly magnificent first draft.”

  “What can you mean by that, Mr. Mansfield?” said Jane. “Do you imply that it needs improvement?”

  “Certainly not in story or character,” said Mr. Mansfield. “But I do believe, and I know that you are understanding enough to take my suggestions as encouragement, not as criticism, that it might benefit from being written as a conventional narrative.”

  “You feel a novel of letters is inferior to a narrative?”

  “Not in your capable hands,” said Mr. Mansfield, “but I do fear this practice of writing novels in letters may be no more than a passing fashion. I should think it a waste if, in the decades to come, your novels were given no more attention than other passing fashions.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Mansfield, do you truly believe that my novels will ever be read by anyone outside my circle of friends and family?” said Jane.

  “I am certain of it,” said Mr. Mansfield. “Trust me, Miss Austen, your name will be known when all around you are long forgotten.” Jane blushed at this prediction, touched by his confidence in her success.

  “I must say, Mr. Mansfield,” she replied, laying her manuscript aside, “I continue to be amazed at your unconventionality.”

  “And in what ways am I unconventional?”

  “First, that you are a clergyman of the older generation who delights in novels rather than scorning them from the pulpit as evil influences on the weak minded.”

  “Only because I have passed four score years will I allow you to refer to me as of the ‘older generation’ without censure.”

  “And second, that you treat a woman—that is, myself—as an intellectual equal.”

  “I am afraid you are wrong on that count,” said Mr. Mansfield. “I never meant for you to think that I viewed you as my equal. I am afraid you exceed me by a wide margin in matters of intellect.”