_Postscript_.
When first I was asked to put together a memoir of my aunt, I saw reasons
for declining the attempt. It was not only that, having passed the three
score years and ten usually allotted to man's strength, and being
unaccustomed to write for publication, I might well distrust my ability
to complete the work, but that I also knew the extreme scantiness of the
materials out of which it must be constructed. The grave closed over my
aunt fifty-two years ago; and during that long period no idea of writing
her life had been entertained by any of her family. Her nearest
relatives, far from making provision for such a purpose, had actually
destroyed many of the letters and papers by which it might have been
facilitated. They were influenced, I believe, partly by an extreme
dislike to publishing private details, and partly by never having assumed
that the world would take so strong and abiding an interest in her works
as to claim her name as public property. It was therefore necessary for
me to draw upon recollections rather than on written documents for my
materials; while the subject itself supplied me with nothing striking or
prominent with which to arrest the attention of the reader. It has been
said that the happiest individuals, like nations during their happiest
periods, have no history. In the case of my aunt, it was not only that
her course of life was unvaried, but that her own disposition was
remarkably calm and even. There was in her nothing eccentric or angular;
no ruggedness of temper; no singularity of manner; none of the morbid
sensibility or exaggeration of feeling, which not unfrequently
accompanies great talents, to be worked up into a picture. Hers was a
mind well balanced on a basis of good sense, sweetened by an affectionate
heart, and regulated by fixed principles; so that she was to be
distinguished from many other amiable and sensible women only by that
peculiar genius which shines out clearly enough in her works, but of
which a biographer can make little use. The motive which at last induced
me to make the attempt is exactly expressed in the passage prefixed to
these pages. I thought that I saw something to be done: knew of no one
who could do it but myself, and so was driven to the enterprise. I am
glad that I have been able to finish my work. As a family record it can
scarcely fail to be interesting to those relatives who must ever set a
high value on their connection with Jane Austen, and to them I especially
dedicate it; but as I have been asked to do so, I also submit it to the
censure of the public, with all its faults both of deficiency and
redundancy. I know that its value in their eyes must depend, not on any
merits of its own, but on the degree of estimation in which my aunt's
works may still be held; and indeed I shall esteem it one of the
strongest testimonies ever borne to her talents, if for her sake an
interest can be taken in so poor a sketch as I have been able to draw.
BRAY VICARAGE:
Sept. 7, 1869.
_Postscript printed at the end of the first edition; omitted from the
second_.
Since these pages were in type, I have read with astonishment the strange
misrepresentation of my aunt's manners given by Miss Mitford in a letter
which appears in her lately-published Life, vol. i. p. 305. Miss Mitford
does not profess to have known Jane Austen herself, but to report what
had been told her by her mother. Having stated that her mother '_before
her marriage_' was well acquainted with Jane Austen and her family, she
writes thus:--'Mamma says that she was _then_ the prettiest, silliest,
most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers.' The editor
of Miss Mitford's Life very properly observes in a note how different
this description is from 'every other account of Jane Austen from
whatever quarter.' Certainly it is so totally at variance with the
modest simplicity of character which I have attributed to my aunt, that
if it could be supposed to have a semblance of truth, it must be equally
injurious to her memory and to my trustworthiness as her biographer.
Fortunately I am not driven to put my authority in competition with that
of Miss Mitford, nor to ask which ought to be considered the better
witness in this case; because I am able to prove by a reference to dates
that Miss Mitford must have been under a mistake, and that her mother
could not possibly have known what she was supposed to have reported;
inasmuch as Jane Austen, at the time referred to, was a little girl.
Mrs. Mitford was the daughter of Dr. Russell, Rector of Ashe, a parish
adjoining Steventon, so that the families of Austen and Russell must at
that time have been known to each other. But the date assigned by Miss
Mitford for the termination of the acquaintance is the time of her
mother's marriage. This took place in October 1785, when Jane, who had
been born in December 1775, was not quite ten years old. In point of
fact, however, Miss Russell's opportunities of observing Jane Austen must
have come to an end still earlier: for upon Dr. Russell's death, in
January 1783, his widow and daughter removed from the neighbourhood, so
that all intercourse between the families ceased when Jane was little
more than seven years old.
All persons who undertake to narrate from hearsay things which are
supposed to have taken place before they were born are liable to error,
and are apt to call in imagination to the aid of memory: and hence it
arises that many a fancy piece has been substituted for genuine history.
I do not care to correct the inaccurate account of Jane Austen's manners
in after life: because Miss Mitford candidly expresses a doubt whether
she had not been misinformed on that point.
_Nov_. 17, 1869.
NOTES.
{0a} _The Watsons_ and _Lady Susan_ are not included in this reprint.
{1} I went to represent my father, who was too unwell to attend himself,
and thus I was the only one of my generation present.
{3} My chief assistants have been my sisters, Mrs. B. Lefroy and Miss
Austen, whose recollections of our aunt are, on some points, more vivid
than my own. I have not only been indebted to their memory for facts,
but have sometimes used their words. Indeed some passages towards the
end of the work were entirely written by the latter.
I have also to thank some of my cousins, and especially the daughters of
Admiral Charles Austen, for the use of letters and papers which had
passed into their hands, without which this Memoir, scanty as it is,
could not have been written.
{5} There seems to have been some doubt as to the validity of this
election; for Hearne says that it was referred to the Visitor, who
confirmed it. (Hearne's _Diaries_, v.2.)
{6} Mrs. Thrale writes Dr. _Lee_, but there can be no doubt of the
identity of person.
{31} The celebrated Beau Brummel, who was so intimate with George IV. as
to be able to quarrel with him, was born in 1771. It is reported that
when he was questioned about his parents, he replied that it was long
since he had heard of them, but that he imagined the worthy couple must
have cut their own throats by that time, because when he last saw them
they were eating peas with their knives. Yet Brummel's father had
probably lived in good society; and was certainly able to put his son
into a fashionable regiment, and to leave him 30,000 pounds. {31a} Raikes
believes that he had been Secretary to Lord North. Thackeray's idea that
he had been a footman cannot stand against the authority of Raikes, who
was intimate with the son.
{31a} Raikes's Memoirs, vol. ii p. 207.
{35} See 'Spectator,' No. 102, on the Fan Exercise. Old gentlemen who
had survived the fashion of wearing swords were known to regret the
disuse of that custom, because it put an end to one way of distinguishing
those who had, from those who had not, been used to good society. To
wear the sword easily was an art which, like swimming and skating,
required to be learned in youth. Children could practise it early with
their toy swords adapted to their size.
{41} Mrs. Gaskell, in her tale of 'Sylvia's Lovers,' declares that this
hand-spinning rivalled harp-playing in its gracefulness.
{62} James, the writer's eldest brother.
{63} The limb was saved.
{65} The invitation, the ball dress, and some other things in this and
the preceding letter refer to a ball annually given at Hurstbourne Park,
on the anniversary of the Earl of Portsmouth's marriage with his first
wife. He was the Lord Portsmouth whose eccentricities afterwards became
notorious, and the invitations, as well as other arrangements about these
balls, were of a peculiar character.
{66a} The father of Sir William Heathcote, of Hursley, who was married
to a daughter of Mr. Bigg Wither, of Manydown, and lived in the
neighbourhood.
{66b} A very dull old lady, then residing with Mrs. Lloyd.
{68} The Duke of Sussex, son of George III., married, without royal
consent, to the Lady Augusta Murray.
{75a} Here is evidence that Jane Austen was acquainted with Bath before
it became her residence in 1801. See p.[25].
{75b} A gentleman and lady lately engaged to be married.
{80} It seems that Charles Austen, then first lieutenant of the
'Endymion,' had had an opportunity of shewing attention and kindness to
some of Lord Leven's family.
{83} See Wharton's note to Johnson and Steevens' Shakspeare.
{102} This mahogany desk, which has done good service to the public, is
now in the possession of my sister, Miss Austen.
{107} At this time, February 1813, 'Mansfield Park' was nearly finished.
{110} The present Lady Pollen, of Redenham, near Andover, then at a
school in London.
{117} See Mrs. Gaskell's 'Life of Miss Bronte,' vol. ii. p. 215.
{122} It was her pleasure to boast of greater ignorance than she had any
just claim to. She knew more than her mother tongue, for she knew a good
deal of French and a little of Italian.
{126} Mrs. Gaskell's 'Life of Miss Bronte,' vol. ii. p. 53.
{130} This must have been 'Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk.'
{136a} A greater genius than my aunt shared with her the imputation of
being _commonplace_. Lockhart, speaking of the low estimation in which
Scott's conversational powers were held in the literary and scientific
society of Edinburgh, says: 'I think the epithet most in vogue concerning
it was "commonplace."' He adds, however, that one of the most eminent of
that society was of a different opinion, who, when some glib youth
chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity,
answered quietly, "I have the misfortune to think differently from you--in
my humble opinion Walter Scott's sense is a still more wonderful thing
than his genius."--Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vol. iv. chap. v.
{136b} The late Mr. R. H. Cheney.
{140} Lockhart had supposed that this article had been written by Scott,
because it exactly accorded with the opinions which Scott had often been
heard to express, but he learned afterwards that it had been written by
Whately; and Lockhart, who became the Editor of the Quarterly, must have
had the means of knowing the truth. (See Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter
Scott_, vol. v. p. 158.) I remember that, at the time when the review
came out, it was reported in Oxford that Whately had written the article
at the request of the lady whom he afterwards married.
{142} In transcribing this passage I have taken the liberty so far to
correct it as to spell her name properly with an 'e.'
{145} Incidentally she had received high praise in Lord Macaulay's Review
of Madame D'Arblay's Works in the 'Edinburgh.'
{146} _Life of Sir J. Mackintosh_, vol. ii. p. 472.
{149} Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vol. vi. chap. vii.
{159} The Fowles, of Kintbury, in Berkshire.
{161a} It seems that her young correspondent, after dating from his
home, had been so superfluous as to state in his letter that he was
returned home, and thus to have drawn on himself this banter.
{161b} The road by which many Winchester boys returned home ran close to
Chawton Cottage.
{161c} There was, though it exists no longer, a pond close to Chawton
Cottage, at the junction of the Winchester and Gosport roads.
{162} Mr. Digweed, who conveyed the letters to and from Chawton, was the
gentleman named in page[22], as renting the old manor-house and the large
farm at Steventon.
{167} This cancelled chapter is now printed, in compliance with the
requests addressed to me from several quarters.
{169a} Miss Bigg's nephew, the present Sir William Heathcote, of
Hursley.
{169b} Her brother Henry, who had been ordained late in life.
{171} The writer was at that time under twelve years old.
{173} It was the corner house in College Street, at the entrance to
Commoners.