Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“You flatter me, Miss Austen.”

“Do I, sir?” I affected surprize. “Then my portrait of your character must be flawed in its chief points. It has been my habit to regard you as prizing a profound understanding above all else.”

“That is self-evident.” He drew himself up. “But what right you assume to question me regarding that abhorrent occasion—or advise me on my present course of action—I fail to apprehend.”

I offered a bewildered gaze. “Have I done so? I intended merely to suggest that Edward must be distinctly indebted to your assistance. However, if you mean to persist in being private about the affair, Mr. Moore, I must assume that you regard it with uneasiness.”

“On that question I may put your mind at rest, Miss Austen,” he retorted with obvious dislike. “There is nothing in my life, I am thankful to say, that I regard with uneasiness; I am so much in the habit of interrogating my conscience, and acting according to its dictates, that I am a stranger to moral ambiguity. I would advise a thorough canvassing of your conscience in future as a useful aid to conduct.”

“Come, come, Mr. Moore.” I could not disguise the amusement in my voice; it would break out. “Hypocrisy is a quality in a gentleman—particularly a cleric—that I cannot endure! Three years since, you so far disregarded your conscience as to gamble with a hardened gamester you admit to having thoroughly disliked—and for so breathless a sum as pound points! How reckless of you, to be sure! I perceive that even the most correct of men—in Holy Orders, and with a reputation to consider—may lose his head from time to time. Some profound emotion, rather than Reason, must account for it; but the question that will invariably arise, is this: Was it ardent love for Adelaide MacCallister—or profound hatred for her husband?”

Mr. Moore was now quite white about the lips, and it was with difficulty that he controlled his temper. “Your strictures, Miss Austen, are distasteful, and unbecoming in one whose role in life ought to be submissive and retiring. I owe you no explanation of my conduct, and your presumption in demanding it—in speculating upon the nature and motives of actions long past, and in which you had no part—is repugnant. I decline utterly to discuss the matter further; you do not deserve such notice.”

He reopened his book, and made a poor pretence of reading it; and I sighed a little at my failure as I returned to gazing out the carriage window. Such men as may be unmoved by flattery, wit, calculation, or humour are beyond the reach of my powers; and Mr. Moore was certainly one of these.

Chapter Eighteen Correspondence

The worm of conscience will shudder, and somehow show

Wickedness its face, which may well be

Hidden from all the world but God and he.

Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Physician’s Tale”

Sunday, 24 October 1813

Mr. Sherer, our excellent and most reverend Mr. Sherer of St. Lawrence Church, whose sermons so frequently envigour the flagging Christian spirit, is vicar also of Westwell—a neighbouring village in Kent—and from this multiplicity of livings, which any clergyman’s wife must rejoice in, as ensuring the Sherers’ worldly comfort and survival, has come a peculiar evil, in that Mr. Sherer is forced to quit his excellent vicarage here at Godmersham, and repair to Westwell for a period of full three years—the curate charged with supplying Mr. Sherer’s duties in that place having failed to suit the parishioners so well as they should like. The complaints that have come to Mr. Sherer’s ears in recent months have so alarmed that assiduous gentleman, that nothing will do but the curate must be got rid of. What the poor fellow’s crimes may have been—a disinclination for sermon- making, a persistent stutter, or perhaps too glad an eye to the ladies of Westwell—I cannot tell; Mr. Sherer will not speak of them, but only look grave, while Mrs. Sherer casts up her eyes to Heaven.

“These young men, Miss Austen, ought not to consider Holy Orders, if the vocation is not upon them,” she says, with all the vicarious complaisance of one who has married an Emissary of Providence. “Too many are simply out for all they can get.”

“And if they are, who can blame them?” Mr. Sherer observed heavily as he quaffed my brother’s sherry, tea being too dangerous an offering for the Sabbath. “The world offers such young men but poor examples of clerical life! If one were to credit the world of Fashion, we are all scoundrels and renegades! Only consider the insults to which the Divine Work of Holy Orders is subjected, among the novelists and playwrights of the stage!”

“Oh, the stage,” Mrs. Sherer returned dismissively. She is a plump woman with protuberant blue eyes, much given to fondling the bugle beads that adorn her bodice, of which she is inordinately proud. “If you look for respect for the Cloth, my dear, among the swaggerers of Covent Garden, I despair of you! But surely there are many admirable portraits of the Clergy in works of literature? I do not speak of novels—”

“I beg you will not utter the word, my dear,” Mr. Sherer declared, with a look of pain, and a hand pressed to his brow. “When I consider of the hectic success of that vulgar work—you know the one I would mean, that all the young ladies hereabouts are forever consulting—and the shameful picture of its clergyman, so very worthy a young man I thought, and feeling just as he ought about his Patroness—so quick to apologise whenever his natural feelings outstripped his good sense—”

“I think you must refer to Mr. Collins,” Fanny interposed, without a hint of betrayal in her voice. “He comes in Pride and Prejudice. I found him vastly amusing, myself.”

Mr. Sherer shuddered, and reached for Edward’s decanter.

“You read it, then?” I enquired, in a cheerful accent. “This novel you profess to despise?”

“I? Read a novel?”

“—For your portrait of the clergyman is as clear as life, Mr. Sherer. It cannot have been formed by merely hearing of Mr. Collins spoken of, among your acquaintance.”

The poor vicar flushed. “I cannot say. I cannot recall. It is possible that Mrs. Sherer read me the passages aloud, in her natural indignation at the licence of the author! I declare that any sort of trash may be found at the booksellers today—even in so sacred a city as Canterbury! The French have much to answer for, indeed!”

What Buonaparte might have to do with the failings of Mr. Collins, I did not trouble to enquire; I have given over admiring Mr. Sherer, tho’ his sermons are so inspired. My sympathies now are all for the dismissed curate.

It does seem hard that the poor young man (for a curate is invariably a young man, and invariably poor) should have all the tiresomeness of Westwell’s duties, while Mr. Sherer enjoys all its tithes. Perhaps the curate experienced a little of the revolutionary fervour which is so catching in Europe and England these days, and refused any longer to be Mr. Sherer’s slave; but whatever the cause, the curate is to be gone in a fortnight, and Mr. Sherer and his wife—whom I cannot admire—removed to Westwell, leaving another eager young man to do the Lord’s and Mr. Sherer’s work at Godmersham. Our new curate is rumoured to have a wife, who is said to be musical—which might prove beneficial to Fanny’s happiness, at least.

All this we were told when the Sherers came to take tea with Fanny after the morning service—Sunday being a day of strict observance in the Godmersham household, particularly when George Moore is among its intimates. I do not think his little son was permitted to smile, much less laugh, for the whole of the morning; and when Lizzy broke out in giggles at something Marianne whispered behind her hand, Mr. Moore gave both girls so scandalised a look that they were reduced to blushes, and led immediately from the room by Miss Clewes, her lips compressed in profound disapprobation.