Edgar and Emma: an excerpt

As previously posted here in August, I’ve undertaken a new Austen project: turning Edgar & Emma—the hilarious four-page story Austen wrote in her teens—into a full-length novel in the mature Austen style (or at least my best approximation thereof).

Alas, I’ve only made incremental progress since announcing the project, because as a freelance writer I’ve had to set it aside whenever paying gigs have presented themselves. And they’ve presented themselves frequently lately…though without paying quiiiite enough to enable me to make any real commitment to Edgar and Emma.

So I’ve decided to mount a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to let me do just that. I’ll furnish the relevant details here, once the campaign is live; but as a precursor, I thought I’d give you all a glimpse at how Emma and Edgar has been progressing. Hence, the excerpt below.

But first, a few words about our dramatis personae:

Emma is the daughter of a baronet, Sir Godfrey Marlow, who has just moved his family back to Malhurst, the Sussex neighborhood of their early childhood. Emma has many fond memories of this place, particularly of a very intense young boy, Edgar Wilmott, who once, when they were both eight years old, rescued her from an encounter with a very long (yet entirely harmless) snake.

In the interval, Edgar has gone on to study Classics at Oxford, and now desires nothing more than to pursue an academic career. His dream is to produce a new English translation of Plutarch’s Lives, which pairs biographies of great Greeks and Romans…and also to add a third chapter to each entry, focusing on a corresponding British statesman. But these scholarly ambitions are thwarted by his wealthy father, who has decreed that as the eldest son, Edgar must instead inherit and run the bulk of the Wilmott estate.

Edgar’s dashing younger brother Ralph, meanwhile, has set his sights on social advancement, and sees the nubile young daughter of a baronet as just the ticket for his first step up the ladder. Edgar knows of Ralph’s self-interested plans for Emma, but can’t bring himself to declare himself in his brother’s place; he’s too shy, and too uncertain of his own qualities.

In the meantime, Edgar himself is pursued by Alice Nesmith, the grasping young daughter of the local vicar. Alice scorns country life; she wants London, and she wants money. Edgar, the educated son of a very rich man, can furnish her with both.

The only other character to feature in this excerpt is Emma’s aunt, Mrs. Curtis—a comparatively young woman who at a tender age married a much older man, so that she’s never had a proper outlet for her girlish need to flirt and be coquettish. Now she funnels all this stored-up sexual energy into her niece. Mrs. Curtis’s chief aim is to see Emma married to handsome, debonair Ralph Wilmott.

In the excerpt that follows, Emma and Mrs. Curtis have come to Malhurst town to do some shopping. They’ve no sooner arrived than they bump into Alice Nesmith. The three women saunter up the high street together.

“What do you think Emma has just been telling me of?” said Mrs. Curtis.

“I am sorry to say,” said Alice with perhaps too much satisfaction, “that I have not heard Miss Emma Marlow speak sufficiently often to guess at what she might say.”

“Why, she has only been telling me which of the Willmot brothers she finds the most handsome. I think you may surmise which she chose.”

“I beg your pardon, Aunt,” said Emma, feeling color come to her face. “I have said not one word on the subject. The discourse has been entirely your own.”

“But there are so many Willmots,” said Alice, ignoring Emma’s protest; “I don’t like to venture a guess as to which one you mean.” But her eyes—which she now turned on Emma—betrayed that she had indeed ventured a guess.

“Difficult creature,” said Mrs. Curtis, and she playfully tweaked Alice’s arm—a familiarity that made Emma feel quite faint. “Why will you never guess when I ask it of you?”

“I am sorry, but I am very stupid at it.”

“I will have to tell you, then,” said the older woman, and she drew Alice closer that she might lower her voice. “It is of course Ralph whom Emma favors.”

“Aunt,” Emma cried, “forgive me, but I never said such a thing! It was yourself who named him.”

“Ralph is very fair,” said Alice with a nod of approval. “Though I confess I prefer a darker complexion. No doubt Miss Emma Marlow and I do not share the same taste in men.”

Emma, who did not like to consider that she and Alice Nesmith might share the same taste in anything, stilled the protest that was poised to leap from her tongue; in which interval her aunt renewed her discourse on the male Willmots.

“That is the benefit, you see,” she said, taking Alice in one arm and Emma in the other and leading them up the high street, “of having so very many brothers in a single family. There is certain to be one to fit every fancy. Think of it, girls: Ralph is light, Edgar is dark; Richard is slender, David is burly; and Peter—well, Peter is too young yet to say what he will be. I suppose we must be content to wait.”

“I think he will be tall,” said Alice. “He is very high already, for just twelve years.”

“Then the Willmots must be persuaded to have another son,” quipped Mrs. Curtis, “that there may also be one who is short.”

“But what if he should instead be round? Then the Willmots must have two more sons: one who is short, and another who is gaunt.”

“Mrs. Willmot will not thank you for that, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis, and the two laughed very wildly. Emma, whose elbow was securely interlocked with that of her aunt, could think of no greater mortification than to be seen with them behaving thusly, and indeed several heads turned in response to the noise they were making. But alas, she was to learn that greater mortification always awaits those helpless to defend against it.

“Why, bless me,” cried Aunt Curtis, “are those not two of the gentlemen we have only just named?”

Emma looked up, and to her horror saw that indeed Edgar and Ralph Willmot were a short distance ahead, very near to the milliner’s shop.

“Emma, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis with telling deliberation, “was not our principle destination this morning the milliner’s?”

“No, indeed, Aunt,” said Emma, pretending not to take her meaning, “we have no business to transact there.”

Mrs. Curtis gave her arm a little shake. “Silly creature! You understand me, I am sure. I mean to say, what a chance this is to speak extemporaneously to your lover, Mr. Ralph Willmot!”

Emma felt her face burn again. “I have no such lover,” she insisted.

“Ah, but here is an opportunity to make it so!”

“The mere fact that an opportunity presents itself,” Emma said desperately, “does not make it advisable to take it.”

Mrs. Curtis cawed out a laugh. “How clever you are! Ever ready with a turn of phrase. I suppose you think that gentlemen find cleverness an attractive quality in a lady. They do not. You may trust me on this, my dear; I know it for a certainty.”

“I am sure no one knows it better,” snapped Emma; and as soon as she had said it, she regretted that provocation had rendered her pert.

Fortunately her aunt was oblivious to her meaning, and merrily pulled her in the direction of the milliner’s shop. Emma was chastened enough by her momentary rudeness to allow it.

“I declare,” said Mrs. Curtis when they came within hailing distance of the brothers, “here are friends of ours! Look, girls; it is the Misters Willmot.”

The brothers, who had been conferring together, lifted their heads at this, and a momentary look passed between Emma and Edgar—a look of such candid, unaffected interest that each was embarrassed by it, and turned their glances quickly away, and did not risk allowing their eyes to meet a second time.

“How do you do, ladies,” Ralph said as he and Edgar tipped their hats.

“Very well, thank you,” said Mrs. Curtis. “We are just come to visit the milliner’s. And what,” she added with unconcealed glee, “do you think we have all been talking about?”

Emma, whose skin was so recently reddened by shame, now felt it go pale with anxiety. “Aunt, no,” she whispered.

“You must not ask us to guess,” said Ralph. “For we might inadvertently scandalize you by deducing quite wrongly.”

“Mrs. Curtis is fond of guessing,” said Alice, who seemed to direct the observation directly at Edgar. He gave her a grateful smile, but said nothing in reply.

“Then I will have to tell you,” said Aunt Curtis, and as Emma felt herself begin to sink into the ground, she declared: “We have been singing the praises of this lovely springtime weather.”

“Indeed it is very clement,” murmured Edgar, whose gaze remained downcast, as though in search of coins from Roman Britain that might be easily unearthed by the toe of his shoe.

“Such a wonderful moistness in the air,” said Mrs. Curtis with a quick glance at Emma; and the spark in her eye revealed how much she enjoyed causing her niece trepidation, then relieving it at the last possible moment. “So beneficial for the skin. Does not Emma’s face have a particular glow this morning, Mr. Willmot?”

“Indeed it does,” said Ralph, at whom she had quite pointedly directed the question; for Edgar seemed to drift ever further to the outskirts of the group. “And yet she looks no less fine than Miss Nesmith—or dare I say it, yourself, ma’am.”

Mrs. Curtis laughed wildly again. “You must not say such things to me, Mr. Willmot! I am an old married lady.”

He flashed her a dazzling grin. “Then this moist air is more efficacious than any I have yet known; for you look no less a maiden than your two companions.”

Again she shrieked with laughter; up and down the street heads turned in curiosity at such stridency, and Emma longed to be gone. But she knew she was fixed in place for the time being. It was unlike her aunt to hurry away from a place where compliments were aplenty.

“To be sure,” Mrs. Curtis said, “there is but a difference of seven years between my niece and myself. My brother Marlow is fully a dozen years my senior, you know; so that I was but a child myself when Emma was born.”

“That explains it,” said Ralph with another bow. “I congratulate your husband, ma’am, on his good fortune in winning so young and comely a bride.”

“As well you might,” she said with a little smirk of pride. “For Mr. Curtis was nearly forty when I married him and might have done much worse, as I often tell him. But I daresay I have made him happy. He will not say so; but as he has not got rid of me in all these years, I must conclude he is not unsatisfied.”

“He is the happiest of men, I am certain,” said Ralph.

She crowed again. “Oh! if Mr. Curtis is the happiest of men, then what dour creatures all the rest of your sex must be!” She turned again to Emma. “I shall wish better for my niece, sir; that I shall. For her, I shall wish a husband who is always gallant, always gay, always ready with a compliment.” She took another quick look at Ralph, as if requiring further inspiration, then added, “A well-looking fellow, who is always attentive and smiling. That is my ideal. That is what I wish for Emma.”

“Such a paragon of positivity!” said Ralph, shaking his head and feigning a dubious look. “I wonder whether he exists in the world.”

“I am certain he does, and in quantity. In fact, you may be sure there is one to be found wherever you go.” She gave him a very sly look, as if daring him to take her meaning.

“Aunt,” Emma whispered frantically; “you grow too bold.”

“And Miss Nesmith,” Ralph said, nodding his head at Alice; “is she not included in your marital good wishes?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t like a cheerful husband,” protested Alice. “I should be much more contented with a sober-minded man—a scholarly man of great, mindful silences.” She did not look at Edgar as she said this; but Emma saw Edgar color and turn further away, as though he felt Alice’s eyes on him all the same.

“Then at least,” said Ralph, “you ladies will never be rivals for the same suitor. I congratulate you on the safety of your friendship.” He turned his head, as if to say something to Edgar, then appeared momentarily confounded at finding him so far off. “It appears my brother is impatient to depart,” he said, “and indeed we have lingered here longer than we had ought. But with such company as this, none would dare to blame us.”

TO BE CONTINUED.