His advice to refuse Mr. Gibson, he believed, had been tolerably sound at the time he gave it, and certainly he had acted out of genuine affection for his niece and laudable regard for the family reputation. And yet, he feared he had not, in the end, done right by Fanny.
Such were the private concerns and cares to occupy the mind of Sir Thomas. And yet this was not all, for he was also much engrossed in following public matters, and most especially in that year of 1815, the year of Napoleon’s escape and return to power.
This final act of the long-standing drama, the clash of the assembled princes of Europe against the French tyrant, was borne by the armies, rather than the navy. The great sea-battles of the war were long past, which meant a change in the situation of Julia and her husband Commander William Price.
Despite the confident assertions of his mother back in Portsmouth, the Navy found it could do without Commander Price, though he was well respected, still young, enterprising and vigorous. He and many other officers were turned ashore in the year ‘15. Such virtue and merit could not be long neglected, however, and Commander Price was offered the captaincy of a convoy making regular journeys between Newcastle and London. Coal, the transport of coal, was to be his new occupation. He was to supervise its loading, shipping and unloading.
Commander Price’s means did not permit him to establish a home in London for his growing family, so he concluded that he and his wife Julia must settle at the other end of the route—in remote Newcastle. Julia could not like the prospect of removing to such an inhospitable place, but she was devoted to her husband and their child—and she had the further consolation of being welcome to visit her parents at Everingham whenever she chose.
* * * * * * *
“Are [the Miss Owens] musical?” [asked Mary Crawford]
“I do not at all know. I never heard.” [said Fanny]
“That is the first question, you know,” said Miss Crawford, trying to appear gay and unconcerned, “which every woman who plays herself is sure to ask about another. But it is very foolish to ask questions about any young ladies—about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows, without being told, exactly what they are: all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family; it is a regular thing. Two play on the pianoforte, and one on the harp; and all sing, or would sing if they were taught, or sing all the better for not being taught; or something like it.”
“I know nothing of the Miss Owens,” said Fanny calmly.
—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter XXIX
Richard Owen, the resident curate of Thornton Lacey, owed his good fortune to the benevolence of his friend Edmund Bertram. The handsome dwelling and generous income attached to the living enabled him to support his sisters, who depended upon him since the death of their parents.
Shortly before their removal from Lessingby to Thornton Lacey, Miss Sarah, generally held to be the beauty of the family, was wed to a respectable surgeon in Huntingdon, and so Mr. Owen brought Miss Owen and Miss Helen to his new home.
His sisters were excellent companions, but he felt some anxiety for their prospects. To live in so secluded a place! With no-one in the immediate neighbourhood who could even be called a gentleman, how should they ever find husbands? Who in Thornton Lacey could justly appreciate their accomplishments—Portia’s skill at the pianoforte and Helen’s charming watercolours?
The two sisters were by no means without stratagems and resources of their own. They took it in turn to pay visits to their friends and relations. When Miss Helen was at home to keep house for Richard, Miss Owen was free to bestow her time on their married sister. When Miss Owen returned to her family, then Miss Helen was off to see her friends in Peterborough.
A few years of this sensible regimen saw Helen become the wife of a captain of the __ militia, but left Miss Owen contemplating the more-than-possibility of spinsterhood, a fate she preferred to marrying merely for situation.
She began to feel the necessity of making her own way in the world, to lay up something to provide for her future. Her brother always urged her to delay taking this fatal step, for he enjoyed her company and he valued the comfort and domestic regularity she brought to his household, and so the matter was continually deferred.
Miss Owen did not fail to think, and think often, upon the fate of unmarried women of limited income. She felt all the deficiencies of her education—for all her accomplishments, she required a better acquaintance with geography, mathematics and natural history to be a governess. Fortunately, the Reverend Bertram had left most of his library behind in Thornton Lacey. The collection took up three full walls in his little study, and this library served as the chief source of information and entertainment for both brother and sister. In the absence of other distractions in their isolated neighbourhood, Portia applied herself to improving her mind.
“Edmund is such a philistine,” remarked Richard one evening, as the pair sat comfortably before the fire with a pot of tea between them. “He has a terrible habit of marking up books — this volume of Gibbon is covered with his jottings.”
“I understand your feelings,
