If you’re a Janeite, you know who you are. If you live at my house, you go easy on the Jane binges. Once or twice a year, I reread one of Jane Austen’s novels. My dear husband does not like to see this.

“Haven’t you read that before?”  Well, even he has read Pride and Prejudice – once.

He is scandalized by dedicated Janeites, some of whom read nothing but Jane. Even I admit they get a LITTLE carried away, making Regency gowns and dancing the minuet (or whatever) at JASNA conferences.

I recently reread Rudyard Kipling’s short story, “The Janeites,” which is a true pleasure once you get past the dialect. A group of Masons, most World War I veterans, are chatting and reminiscing while polishing and cleaning their lodge.

And then Humberstall, who used to work in the mess hall with Macklin, “a toff,” during the war, tells the Masons about Macklin’s obsession with “this secret society woman I was telling you about – Jane.”

Humberstall wanted to join the Janeites, but the preparation was stiff. Macklin required him to read all six books first.

When asked by one of the Masons if Jane was real, he replies,

“Jane? Why, she was a little old maid ‘ood written half a dozen books about a hundred years ago. ‘Twasn’t as if there was anythin’ to ’em, either.  The weren’t adventurous, nor smutty, nor what you’d call even interestin’ – all about girls o’ seventeen (they began young then, I tell you), not certain ‘oom they’d like to marry; an’ their dances an’ card parties an’ picnics, an’ their young blokes going off to London on ‘orseback for ‘aircuts and shaves….”

Such a charming short story, but also very sad. War is hell, but Jane’s books comfort “the toffs”, and she survives this particular military unit because she has been passed down to the working-class survivor, Humberstall.