Jane Actually

some details of which may be news to you.
    Mary thought she was finally winning over the audience. Jane too thought the attendees had relaxed in their seats. She began to search the faces, wondering if she might recognize anyone from her previous visits or from online conversation, when she noticed Courtney Blake in the audience, four rows back.
    “As I’m sure you … oh, that phrase will become so tiresome. I will assume you know more about me than I do. You can imagine how upsetting it was to die. Whatever was the cause of it, I suffered increasingly and by my final days in Winchester I had lost my grasp of the world around me. And then suddenly I found myself free of pain but confused by that range of vision afforded the disembodied and the sight of my dear sister holding me in her arms.”
    Jane had now lost track of Mary’s words, her attention on Courtney, who she thought affected a look of boredom. She was tempted to leave Mary’s side but remembered her duty. She was supposedly ready to “feed” Mary lines if required, although that would require knowing where they were in the speech. She forced herself to pay attention.
    Mary, meanwhile, thought the reference to Jane’s death had definitely won the audience’s sympathies.
    “My first thought was that I had entered a madness brought on by illness, but sober reflection told me that I had passed from life to death. You will realize that I had not the knowledge of the afterlife we now enjoy. In fact my uppermost thought in the days following my death was that I had been found wanting … that I was not worthy of the kingdom of Heaven and that I was doomed to exist neither of this world nor the next.
    “You can imagine how slowly the days progressed and how over time I began to lose my reason. But having lost my reason once before as I lay dying, I resolved that I should not succumb again and in my desperation I turned to the one solace that had comforted me all my life, my writing.
    “Some people have wondered at my dedication to the craft. I wrote only six novels and had many fallow years and because I did not seek notoriety, some thought I did not seek fame. But Janeites—and my apologies to those who disown that term—certainly know of my keen interest in sales … and reviews. To hear people talk of my stories was the greatest delight, and the greatest agony if they should be so dull as to not like them.
    “I also have a reputation as a private writer, with the charming tale of hiding my work in progress at the sound of a squeaking door, not wanting to answer the question, ‘Oh, what are you writing? May I see? How is it going? Where do you get your ideas?’”
    Mary paused and Jane wondered if she might have lost her way. She was about to prompt her when Mary cleared her throat, took a sip of water and continued.
    “Excuse me. Now my friends and relations would have laughed at this reputation for privacy, for they were my early critics. Some even learned to change the conversation for fear I might ask them to read my latest work.
    “After death, however, privacy was not a choice. I must become my harshest critic and my most ardent admirer. Fortunately I had always written for my own enjoyment.
    “But your first thought now must be, how could I write without a body or any means of recording my words? This was certainly a challenge but I had a few advantages that you in the modern world do not. First, I was already accustomed to ‘writing in my head.’ Paper was too precious to write heedlessly and so I usually had a very good notion of what I would write beforehand. Second, the time in which I lived still relied on oral traditions. It was a commonplace skill to recite poetry from memory not to mention whole scenes from theatrical entertainments.
    “Thus I wrote in my head … well, in my mind … committing to memory what I thought good. And as you can imagine, removing from my memory proved more difficult. As to what I was writing … well it was natural to return to the book I was writing before my death, which you know as
Sanditon
.
    “I had essentially finished the broad outline of the story before my death and with the concentration I could now bring to the task, I was able to complete my writing in a few months time, but I found that my memory of what I’d written was faulty. With each attempt at recitation the story would subtly shift. After the course of a decade, however, I had fully committed the book to memory.
    Jane saw