It is said there is an ancient tradition in the East, that close on a
certain date of the year are born the men to whom are given special
gifts to enlighten and delight their fellow-creatures. To, or near
to, this date we can assign the birthdays of William Caxton, by the
invention of printing the father of widely-diffused learning; William
Shakespeare, with his marvellous knowledge of human nature; Cervantes,
the great humourist; and William Wordsworth, to whom skies and hills,
trees and flowers, beasts and birds, had a voice, and told a story
which he could make plain to the duller comprehension of thousands. But
no Oriental sage had a word to say in anticipation of the birthday--at
a very different season of the year--when there looked out for the
first time on the world and its wonders, the child-eyes of a woman who
was to edify and charm some of the wisest men of her own and succeeding
generations.
Women may well be proud of the woman who has been held, on high
authority, second only to Shakespeare in the comprehension of the
springs which move the heart.
Girls may well be proud of the girl who, strange to say, wrote two
of her masterpieces, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Northanger Abbey,”
before she had completed her twenty-third year. When other girls were
practising their music and working at their embroidery, having their
youthful gaieties and youthful dreams, Jane Austen, who was fair to
see and charming to listen to, who practised her music, sewed at her
worsted-work, joined in gatherings of young people, and had her morning
visions with the best, possessed in addition the power, and found the
time, to accomplish those wonders of fiction which, for their subtle
reproduction of character, and exquisite weaving of a web so like
that of the common lot, have been the instruction and solace--not of
companion girls alone, but of statesmen and historians, philosophers
and poets, down to the present day.
Both men and women may be proud of the woman who did this great
thing, yet who never forfeited a tittle of her womanliness; who was
essentially as good, true, and dear, as devoted to home, as cherished
in its narrow circle, as the most obscure of her sisters, who are
nothing to the world while they are everything to their own people.
The slight yet not unsatisfactory record of Jane Austen’s life
came late to literature, after most of the materials which might
have supplied a fuller memoir had been destroyed, and nearly every
contemporary recollection of her was lost. The relatives who were left
to accomplish a biography of the “Aunt Jane” whose personal kindness
had made so deep an impression on them half a century before, and of
whose permanent and still-increasing fame they have remained justly
proud, were more or less elderly people, and were not writers like the
subject of the biography. But any disadvantages which exist are not
without their ample compensation in the affectionate simplicity and
pathos of the narrative.
Jane Austen was born a hundred and four years ago, on December 16th,
1775, at the parsonage house of Steventon, in Hampshire. The Austens
were a Kent family, originally one of those aristocratic clothworkers
who, possessing landed property in the Weald, did not disdain to work
in wool, and who were generally known as “the Greycoats of Kent.” Mr.
Austen Leigh, Jane Austen’s nephew, writes that a trace of the family
origin survives in the family livery of light blue and white, called
“Kentish Grey.”
Jane Austen’s father, an orphan, brought up by an uncle, a lawyer
in Tunbridge, was, in succession, a scholar at Tunbridge School, a
fellow of St. John’s, Oxford, and rector of the two livings of Deane
and Steventon, Hampshire villages little more than a mile apart, and
numbering a united population of not more than three hundred.
The young rector married Cassandra Leigh, a daughter of the incumbent
of Harpenden, near Henley-on-the-Thames. The Leighs were a Warwickshire
family, descended, on the mother’s side, from the Chandos house. Jane
Austen’s grand-uncle, Dr. Theophilus Leigh, was Master of Balliol
College for upwards of half a century. I mention him because he was a
man famous in his day for ready repartee, and it is possible his wit
may have descended to his grand-niece Jane.
For thirty years the Austens resided at Steventon; and there Jane
Austen spent, for the most part, the first twenty-five years of her
life, in a quiet country circle, certainly not without its cultured
members, among whom was her father, a scholarly and accomplished man.
When Mr. and Mrs. Austen were still a young couple, they were entrusted
with the charge of a son of Warren Hastings, but the child died in
infancy; otherwise we might have had a long train of life-like
Anglo-Indians in fiction, many years before they were conjured into
existence by Thackeray.
The next parish to Steventon was Ashe, of which the clergyman then
happened to be Dr. Russell, grand-father of Mary Russell Mitford.
The Rev. George Austen was so good-looking a man, from youth to age, as
to have been called “the handsome proctor” at Oxford, and to be still
noticed at Bath, when he was over seventy years of age, on account of
his fine features and abundance of snow-white hair. I have already said
he was a man of ability. He directed the studies of all his children,
and increased his income by the practice, usual with clergymen, of
taking pupils. Mrs. Austen was also reputed a clever woman, endowed
with a lively imagination, in addition to much good sense.
Jane Austen’s biographer says rightly, the members of her own family
were so much to her, and the rest of the world so little, that a
brief sketch of her brothers and sister is necessary, to furnish a
complete idea of her life. He remarks elsewhere, in alluding to the
retirement in which she generally dwelt, that she had probably never
been in company with anybody of greater literary ability and reputation
than herself. In these observations, he touches inadvertently on
what I think formed the root of the defects--to which I shall refer
afterwards--in an otherwise fine character.
Jane Austen had five brothers and one sister. James, the eldest of
the family, and the father of Jane’s biographer, is described as well
read in English literature, writing readily and happily both in prose
and verse. When yet a young man at Oxford, he originated a periodical
called the “Loiterer,” and by his example may have turned Jane’s
attention to authorship. He was a clergyman, and succeeded his father
at Steventon. Edward Austen was early adopted by his cousin, Mr.
Knight, of Godmersham Park, in Kent, and Chawton House, in Hampshire.
He adopted the name of Knight, and was, like Frank Churchill in
“Emma,” a good deal separated from his family in their youth. But it
was to his neighbourhood, and to the support of his position as the
squire of the parish, that the women of the Austen family returned at
last. This brother Edward is said to have been full of amiability and
fun. He seems to have borne some resemblance in his character, as well
as in his circumstances, to the Frank Churchill of Jane’s story.
Henry Austen was a good talker, but he was the least successful of
the brothers. While he resided in London, he appears to have been the
literary authority, and the means of communication between his sister
Jane and her publishers.
Francis and Charles Austen were both sailors, and both lived to become
admirals. Francis possessed a firm temper and a strong sense of duty.
He was distinguished by his religious principles at a time when a
religious profession was rare in the service. At one station he was
pointed out as “the officer who knelt in church.” Charles--specially
beloved in his family for the sweet temper and affectionate disposition
which resembled Jane’s--was, on one occasion, seven consecutive years
absent from England on active service. He died of cholera in the course
of the Burmese war, Lord Dalhousie expressing his admiration of the
staunch, high spirit which, notwithstanding his age (seventy-four) and
previous sufferings, had led the admiral to take his part in the trying
service that closed his career.
Cassandra Austen was three years Jane’s senior. The warmest affection
subsisted between the two, Jane, in her maturity and fame, continuing
to look up to her elder sister, a beautiful, staid, thoughtful woman
from her girlhood. When Cassandra was sent to the school of a Mrs.
Latourville (probably a French _émigrée_), in the Forbury of Reading,
Jane went with her, not because she was old enough, but because she
would have been miserable without her sister, her mother observing
“that if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would
insist on sharing her fate.”
Steventon was one of those villages and parsonages which Jane Austen so
often described. “It was situated among the low chalk hills and winding
lanes of North Hants. The parsonage house stood in a shallow valley,
surrounded by sloping meadows well sprinkled with elm-trees, at the end
of a small village of cottages, each provided with a garden, scattered
about prettily on either side of the road.” Within the house, though it
was reckoned rather above the average of the parsonages of its day, no
cornice marked the junction of wall and ceiling, while the beams which
supported the upper floors projected into the rooms below in all their
naked simplicity, covered only by a coat of paint or whitewash. About
five years after Jane Austen’s death, her old home at Steventon was
pulled down.
“At the front of the house was a carriage-drive through turf and trees.
On the south side the ground rose gently, and was occupied by an
old-fashioned garden, in which flowers and vegetables kept each other
company, flanked on the east by a thatched mud wall, and overshadowed
by fine elms. Along the upper side of the garden ran a terrace of fine
turf, where Jane in her childhood might have emulated young Catherine
Morland in rolling down the green slope.”
Mr. Austen Leigh says the chief beauty of Steventon was in its
hedgerows--borders of copsewood and timber, often wide enough to
contain a winding footpath or rough cart-track. “There the earliest
primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be found, the first
bird’s-nest, and sometimes an unwelcome adder.” Two such hedgerows
radiated from the parsonage garden. One, a continuation of the turf
terrace, ran westward, and formed the boundary of the home meadows.
It was made into a rustic shrubbery, with occasional seats, and was
called, in the sentimental language of the day, “the Wood Walk.” No
doubt Jane Austen often strolled or sat there, alone, or with her
sister, or one of her brothers. She might carry there her little
work-box, or the volume of “Evelina,” or “Cecilia,” the “Mysteries of
Udolpho,” or the “Romance of the Forest,” which she was devouring. It
was to such a shrubbery or “wilderness” that she sent Elizabeth Bennet
to seek her father--to read an important letter--or to hold her famous
interview with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
The other hedgerow bore the name of “the Church Walk,” because it
climbed the hill to the parish church, near which, surrounded by
sycamores, was a manor-house of Henry VIII.’s time, tenanted for
upwards of a hundred years by a yeoman family bearing the appropriate
name of Digweed.
The little church without a spire, with its narrow early English
windows, is said to have been upwards of seven hundred years old.[1]
Sweet violets, purple and white, grew in profusion beneath the south
wall. The churchyard had its hollow yew coeval with the church, its old
elms and thorns among its mossy stones and green mounds.
We hear many regrets in our day for the demolition of the old church
of Haworth, in which the Brontë family worshipped, that may very
likely be followed by the destruction of the old parsonage house.
Jane Austen’s admirers, though they are choice spirits and cannot be
denied the merit of fidelity, have not been so enthusiastic. I do
not know that one protesting voice was raised when the iconoclast’s
changes and improvements reached the peaceful old parish. I am not
sure whether many pilgrims ever sought that birthplace, and as to
those who have visited the grave in Winchester Cathedral, we have Mr.
Austen Leigh’s authority for the statement that they drew from the
verger the puzzled inquiry--what was there particular about the lady
buried there that people should come and ask to see her resting-place?
No: Jane Austen and her work must always be regarded in one of two
lights--that of quiet though intense appreciation, or that of puzzled
non-comprehension.
The large family at Steventon were worthy, prosperous, and happy.
They had in some respects the position and privileges of the family
of the principal squire, as well as the rector of the parish, since
the Rev. George Austen represented the absentee cousin, of whom the
clergyman’s second son was the adopted son and heir. The Austens kept a
carriage and pair of horses, and lived in a style equal to that of the
neighbouring county gentry, whose near relatives or intimate friends
the household at the parsonage were. In reckoning up the special
advantages of such a home in one of her novels, Jane Austen lays stress
on its being well connected, “a well connected parsonage.”
Among the most frequent visitors at Steventon were two families
of cousins, who could both of them bring fresh experiences to the
country parsonage. The one family, the Coopers, lived in the brilliant
Bath of their generation, where Cassandra and Jane Austen, as young
women, visited their relations long before they ever thought of Bath
as a residence for themselves. Jane was still able to enjoy the gay
watering-place with the keen appetite of a country-bred girl, and
it is these vivid reminiscences which she transfers to the pages of
“Northanger Abbey,” while she reserves the much more sober, rather
adverse estimate of later years for the concluding chapters of
“Persuasion.” One of these cousins, Jane Austen’s dear friend and
namesake, was married from her uncle’s house at Steventon to a captain
in the navy, under whom Charles Austen served. A few years afterwards,
this favourite cousin was suddenly killed in a carriage accident.
Another cousin had been brought up in Paris, and had married a Count
de Feuillade, who was guillotined during the French Revolution. His
widow escaped through many perils, took refuge in her uncle’s parsonage
of Steventon, and ended by marrying her cousin Henry Austen, with
whom she went to France, during the short Peace of Amiens, in 1802,
and narrowly escaped being detained among the unfortunate English
prisoners of war, by Napoleon.
Thus the quiet Hampshire parsonage was not entirely without its
excitements, in addition to the arrivals and departures of its sailor
sons, the naval battles and sieges in which they were engaged, the
ship-intelligence which was always eagerly scanned on their behalf.
Had the future author been so disposed, she might have found in the
conversation and adventures of her cousin and sister-in-law materials
for novels which would have been more to the taste of a large section
of the public than Jane Austen’s perfect tales. As it was, the chief
immediate results of the young widowed countess’s stay at Steventon,
when Jane Austen was just entering on her teens, were the improvement
of the family French, and the performance of amateur theatricals
in a summer theatre in the barn and a winter theatre in the little
dining-room. Out of these theatricals Jane Austen made stock for
“Mansfield Park,” in which, by the way, she infers decided disapproval
of the amusement. Whether or not the real theatricals led to the
attachment and engagement of Henry Austen and Madame de Feuillade we
may conjecture, but cannot ascertain from Mr. Austen Leigh’s narrative.
Jane Austen’s biographer writes of the Austens’ long stay at Steventon
as having remained unshadowed by any serious family misfortune or
death. But one great disaster, which, though it did not concern Jane
directly, touched her nearly, befell a member of the family. Cassandra
Austen, more regularly beautiful than Jane, wise for her years, and
good, was engaged to be married to a young clergyman who had a prospect
of early preferment from a nobleman, his relative and friend. The two
men went together to the West Indies, the one to act for a time as
chaplain to the regiment of the other. Very soon the chaplain died of
yellow fever. The melancholy news, descending like a thunderbolt on the
cheerful Hampshire parsonage, brought great grief to Cassandra Austen,
and Jane was certain to suffer with her sister.