It's actually an uncomfortable thing to pursue one's dreams, however attractive they may sound. Perhaps this is why most of us only dream dreams and never live them. For several years I have tried to err on the side of taking risks to live the life I want, to do the things I feel must be done. But there is a creeping, stealthy anxiety that has wound itself around me in such a way that I cannot escape, even here. So here I am, alternately anxious and pinch–myself–I–must–be–dreaming thrilled.
I am wearing ugly hiking shoes and have decided I don't want to go to England, which wouldn't be such a problem if I wasn't at forty–one thousand feet somewhere south of Greenland, headed into a month of following Jane Austen's life through the country.
Also, I'm in a mood for falling in love, which is its own kind of malady. Meeting loads of interesting people—one of the initial attractions of this trip—now seems painful, and I'm sure I would be far more comfortable at home with a good thick book, and I'm sure Jane would agree. Jane did not like to be forced out of her familiar circle either. Perhaps the people I meet will not be terribly nice or intelligent to save me the trouble of liking them much.
If I could manage to fall in love without having to actually meet someone, that would be ideal.
My friend Kristine talks about "crowded rooms," as in "one day you spot a stranger across a crowded room" and everything changes, and I think the Oxford classroom I'm headed for may be crowded in that sense of the word.
And part of me believes in the mystical and mysterious—and wacky—just enough to think that, because I'm an Austen devotee following in her steps, perhaps she will deign to craft a little romantic comedy of my own, in real life, from beyond the grave (which seems absolutely ridiculous on paper, but there it is). Funny that these little thoughts we barely acknowledge become hopes or beliefs.
Plus, I suppose, as a single woman there is always the expectation that if you are going to meet someone (not that you have to, but if you are going to, and it seems right somehow to imagine this happening in your life), it should be now, because time is getting on and all and now we are thirty–three (and who could have ever imagined that we would be thirty–three and single?).
Of course, my friends were glad to help me ponder the possibility of a whirlwind British summer romance while acknowledging that it would be completely unnecessary to the outcome of the trip—but wouldn't it be fabulous, if, you know, you never know when you might meet someone, and I am going to be in England after all—home of Colin Firth in all his shirt–dripping glory. (Except thanks to Bridget Jones we now know that Colin Firth actually lives in Italy, for all his traipsing about the English countryside in movies.)
Actually, the Austen story may have begun with an Oxford romance. It's thought that this is where Jane's parents first met. George Austen, around thirty, was finishing a divinity degree at St. John's and working there as assistant chaplain. Cassandra Leigh visited her uncle Theophilus in Oxford from time to time. Cassandra may have known George the way everyone else did, as "the Handsome Proctor." And Cassandra's wit and beauty must have gotten his attention.
What we know for sure is that George and Cassandra Austen married in Bath shortly after Cassandra's father died and seemed to have loved each other deeply. Neither had much money. Their eight children (they never adopted the regularly used birth control of separate bedrooms) and bustling home were a reversal of fortune of sorts for George and must have been a great comfort to him. He had been orphaned as a small boy and then kicked out of his father's house by his stepmother, eventually taken in by an aunt until he landed with a scholarship in Oxford.
