JANE AUSTEN AND HER TIMES
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A BACHELOR GIRL IN LONDON
THE GIFTS OF ENEMIES
THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF LONDON
[Illustration: MORNING EMPLOYMENTS]
JANE AUSTEN
AND HER TIMES
BY
G. E. MITTON
WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1905_
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. PRELIMINARY AND DISCURSIVE 1
II. CHILDHOOD 22
III. THE POSITION OF THE CLERGY 34
IV. HOME LIFE AT STEVENTON 49
V. THE NOVELS 80
VI. LETTERS AND POST 105
VII. SOCIETY AND LOVE-MAKING 117
VIII. VISITS AND TRAVELING 148
IX. CONTEMPORARY WRITERS 161
X. A TRIO OF NOVELS 176
XI. THE NAVY 196
XII. BATH 212
XIII. DRESS AND FASHIONS 229
XIV. AT SOUTHAMPTON 249
XV. CHAWTON 266
XVI. IN LONDON 278
XVII. FANNY AND ANNA 296
XVIII. THE PRINCE REGENT AND _EMMA_ 303
XIX. LAST DAYS 313
INDEX 327
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MORNING EMPLOYMENTS _Frontispiece_
From a Painting by BUNBURY.
THE REV. GEORGE AUSTEN _Facing page_ 16
From a Family Miniature.
THE REV. JAMES AUSTEN „ „ 16
From a Family Miniature.
JUVENILE RETIREMENT „ „ 26
From a Painting by JOHN HOPPNER.
THE VICAR RECEIVING HIS TITHES „ „ 42
From a Drawing by H. SINGLETON.
JANE AUSTEN „ „ 58
From a Portrait by her Sister CASSANDRA.
THE HAPPY COTTAGERS „ „ 74
From a Painting by GEORGE MORLAND.
MISS BURNEY (MADAME D’ARBLAY) „ „ 96
From a Portrait by EDWARD BURNEY.
FROM A SUMMER’S EVENING „ „ 156
From a Drawing by DE LOUTHERBOURG.
TRAVELLERS ARRIVING AT EAGLE TAVERN, STRAND „ „ 159
From an Old Engraving.
DOMESTIC HAPPINESS „ „ 170
From a Painting by GEORGE MORLAND.
COWPER „ „ 192
From a Painting by GEORGE ROMNEY, in the
possession of B. Vaughan Johnson, Esq.
VICTORY OF LORD DUNCAN (CAMPERDOWN), 1797 „ „ 208
From a Painting by J. S. COPLEY.
FAÇADE OF THE PUMP ROOM, BATH, IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY „ „ 220
From a Contemporary Engraving.
DRESSING TO GO OUT „ „ 230
From a Drawing by P. W. TOMKINS.
INIGO JONES, HON. H. FANE, AND C. BLAIR „ „ 246
From a Painting by Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
A PLATE FROM THE GALLERY OF FASHION „ „ 260
CHARING CROSS, 1795 „ „ 285
From an Engraving in the Crace Collection.
THE LITTLE THEATRE, HAYMARKET „ „ 291
From an Engraving by WILKINSON in _Londina
Illustrata_.
THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE „ „ 293
From a Drawing by Sir F. CHANTREY, in the
National Portrait Gallery.
THE GARDEN OF CARLTON HOUSE „ „ 304
From a Painting by BUNBURY.
JANE AUSTEN AND HER TIMES
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY AND DISCURSIVE
Of Jane Austen’s life there is little to tell, and that little has
been told more than once by writers whose relationship to her made them
competent to do so. It is impossible to make even microscopic additions
to the sum-total of the facts already known of that simple biography,
and if by chance a few more original letters were discovered they could
hardly alter the case, for in truth of her it may be said, “Story there
is none to tell, sir.” To the very pertinent question which naturally
follows, reply may thus be given. Jane Austen stands absolutely alone,
unapproached, in a quality in which women are usually supposed to be
deficient, a humorous and brilliant insight into the foibles of human
nature, and a strong sense of the ludicrous. As a writer in _The
Times_ (November 25, 1904) neatly puts it, “Of its kind the comedy
of Jane Austen is incomparable. It is utterly merciless. Prancing
victims of their illusions, her men and women are utterly bare to our
understanding, and their gyrations are irresistibly comic.” Therefore
as a personality, as a central figure, too much cannot be written about
her, and however much is said or written the mystery of her genius will
still always baffle conjecture, always lure men on to fresh attempts to
analyse and understand her.
The data of Jane Austen’s life have been repeated several times, as
has been said, but beyond a few trifling allusions to her times no
writer has thought it necessary to show up the background against
which her figure may be seen, or to sketch from contemporary records
the environment amid which she developed. Yet surely she is even more
wonderful as a product of her times than considered as an isolated
figure; therefore the object of this book is to show her among the
scenes wherein she moved, to sketch the men and women to whom she was
accustomed, the habits and manners of her class, and the England with
which she was familiar. Her life was not long, lasting only from 1775
to 1817, but it covered notable times, and with such an epoch for
presentation, with such a central figure to link together the sequence
of events, we have a theme as inspiring as could well be found.
In many ways the times of Jane Austen are more removed from our own
than the mere lapse of years seems to warrant. The extraordinary
outburst of invention and improvement which took place in the reign
of Queen Victoria, lifted manners and customs in advance of what two
centuries of ordinary routine would have done. Sir Walter Besant in his
_London in the Eighteenth Century_ says, “The passing of the Reform
Bill in 1832, the introduction of steamers on the sea, the beginning
of railways on land, make so vast a break between the first third and
last two-thirds of the nineteenth century, that I feel justified in
considering the eighteenth century as lasting down to the year 1837;
in other words, there were so few changes, and these so slight, in
manners, customs, or prevalent ideas, between 1700 and 1837, that
we may consider the eighteenth century as continuing down to the
beginning of the Victorian era, when change after change—change in
the constitution, change in communications, change in the growth and
extension of trade, change in religious thought, change in social
standards—introduced that new time which we call the nineteenth
century.”
According to this reckoning, Jane Austen may be counted as wholly an
eighteenth-century product, and such a view is fully justified, for the
differences between her time and ours were enormous. It is impossible
to summarise in a few sentences changes which are essentially a matter
of detail, but in the gradual unfolding of her life I shall attempt
to show how radically different were her surroundings from anything to
which we are accustomed.
It is an endless puzzle why, when her books so faithfully represent the
society and manners of a time so unlike our own, they seem so natural
to us. If you tell any half-dozen people, who have not made a special
study of the subject, at what date these novels were written, you will
find that they are all surprised to hear how many generations ago Jane
Austen lived, and that they have always vaguely imagined her to be
very little earlier than, if not contemporary with, Charlotte Brontë or
George Eliot. So far as I am aware, no writer on Jane Austen has ever
touched on this problem before. Her stories are as fresh and real as
the day they were written, her characters might be introduced to us in
the flesh any time, and, with the exception of a certain quaintness of
eighteenth-century flavouring, there is nothing to bring before us the
striking difference between their environment and our own. It is true
that the long coach journeys stand out as an exception to this, but
they are the only marked exception. If we had never had an illustrated
edition of Jane Austen, nine people out of ten at least would have
formed mental pictures of the characters dressed in early Victorian, or
perhaps even in present-day, costume. It is only since Hugh Thompson
and C. E. Brock have put before us the costumes of the age, that
our ideas have accommodated themselves, and we realise how Catherine
Morland and Isabella Thorpe looked in their high-waisted plain gowns,
when they had arrived at that stage of intimacy which enabled them to
pin “up each other’s trains for the dance.” Or how attractive Fanny
Price was in her odd high-crowned hat, with its nodding plume, and the
open-necked short-sleeved dress, as she surveyed herself in the glass
while Miss Crawford snapped the chain round her neck. The knee-breeches
of the men, their slippers and cravats, the neat, close-fitting
clerical garb, these things we owe to the artists,—they are taken for
granted in the text. It would have seemed as ridiculous to Jane Austen
to describe them, as for a present-day novelist to mention that a
London man made a call in a frock-coat and top-hat.
Yet her word-pictures are living and detailed, filled in with
innumerable little touches. How can we reconcile the seeming
inconsistency? The explanation probably is, that without acting
consciously, she, with the unerring touch of real genius, chose that
which was lasting, and of interest for all time, from that which was
ephemeral. In her sketches of human nature, in the strokes with which
she describes character, no line is too fine or too delicate for
her attention; but in the case of manners and customs she gives just
the broad outlines that serve as a setting. Her novels are novels of
character.
But the problem is not confined to the books; in her letters to her
sister, though there is abundant comment on dress, food, and minor
details which should mark the epoch, yet the letters might have been
written yesterday. Austin Dobson in one of his admirable prefaces to
the novels says: “Going over her pages, pencil in hand, the antiquarian
annotator is struck by their excessive modernity, and after a prolonged
examination discovers, in this century-old record, nothing more fitted
for the exercise of his ingenuity than such an obsolete game at cards
as ‘Casino’ or ‘quadrille.’”
And this is true also of her letters. More remarkable still is the
entire absence of comment on the great events which thrilled the world;
with the exception of an allusion to the death of Sir John Moore, we
hear no whisper of the wars and upheavals which happened during her
life. It is true that the Revolution in France, which shook monarchs
on their thrones, occurred before the first date of the published
letters, yet her correspondence covers a time when battles at sea
were chronicled almost continuously, when an invasion by France was
an ever-present terror; Trafalgar and Waterloo were not history, but
contemporary events; but though Jane must have heard and discussed
these matters, no echo finds its way into her lively and amusing
budgets of chit-chat to her sister. Of course women were not supposed
to read the papers in those days, but with two sailor brothers the news
must have often been personal and intimate, and she was, according to
the notions of her time, well educated; yet we search in vain for any
allusion to such contemporary matters. It may be objected that the
letters of a modern girl to a sister would hardly touch on questions
which agitate the public, but there are several replies to this: in
the first place, few such exciting events have occurred in recent
times as happened during Jane Austen’s life; our war in Africa was
a mere trifle in comparison with the bloody field of Waterloo, where
Blucher and Wellington lost 30,000 men, or the thrilling naval victory
of Trafalgar; and stupendous as have been the recent battles between
Russia and Japan, they affect us only indirectly—England is not herself
involved in them, nor are her sons being slain daily. In the second
place, surely even the South African War would probably produce some
comment in letters, especially if the writer had brothers in the army
as Jane had brothers in the navy. Thirdly, letters in Jane Austen’s
time were one great means of news, for newspapers were not so easy to
get, and were much more costly than now, so that we expect to find more
of contemporary events in letters than at a time like the present, when
telegrams and columns of print save us the trouble of recording such
matters in private.
In the forty-two years between 1775 and 1817, vast discoveries of
world-wide importance were made. When Jane Austen was born, Captain
Cook was still in the midst of his exploration, and the map of the
world was being unrolled day by day. Though New Zealand and Australia
had been discovered by the Dutch in the previous century, they were all
but unknown to England. Six years only before her birth had the great
navigator charted and mapped New Zealand for the first time, also the
east coast of Australia, and had christened New South Wales. When she
was four years old, Cook was murdered by the natives at Hawaii.
The atlas from which she learnt her earliest geography lessons
was therefore very different from those now in use. The well-known
cartographer, S. Dunn, published an atlas in 1774, where Australia is
marked certainly, but as though one saw it through distorted glasses;
the east coast, Cook’s discovery, is clearly defined, the rest is
very vague; and the fact that Tasmania was an island had not then
been discovered, for it appears as a projecting headland. In the same
general way is New Zealand treated, and neither has a separate sheet
to itself; beyond their appearance on the map of the world, they are
ignored. Japan also looks queer to modern eyes, it almost touches China
at both ends, enclosing a land-locked sea.
The epoch was one of change and enlargement in other than geographical
directions. In the thirty years before Jane Austen’s birth an immense
improvement had taken place in the position of women. Mrs. Montagu, in
1750, had made bold strokes for the freedom and recognition of her sex.
The epithet “blue-stocking,” which has survived with such extraordinary
tenacity, was at first given, not to the clever women who attended
Mrs. Montagu’s informal receptions, but to her men friends, who were
allowed to come in the grey or blue worsted stockings of daily life,
instead of the black silk considered _de rigueur_ for parties. Up to
this time, personal appearance and cards had been the sole resources
for a leisured dame of the upper classes, and the language of gallantry
was the only one considered fitting for her to hear. By Mrs. Montagu’s
efforts it was gradually recognised that a woman might not only have
sense herself, but might prefer it should be spoken to her; and that
because the minds of women had long been left uncultivated they were
not on that account unworthy of cultivation. Hannah More describes Mrs.
Montagu as “not only the finest genius, but the finest lady I ever saw
... her form (for she has no body) is delicate even to fragility; her
countenance the most animated in the world; the sprightly vivacity of
fifteen, with the judgment and experience of a Nestor.”
In art there had never before been seen in England such a trio of
masters as Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney. Isolated portrait
painters of brilliant genius, though not always native born, there had
been in England,—Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, and Hogarth are all
in the first rank,—but that three such men as the trio above should
flourish contemporaneously was little short of miraculous.
In 1775, Sir Joshua had passed the zenith of his fame, though he lived
until 1792. Gainsborough, who was established in a studio in Schomberg
House, Pall Mall, was in 1775 at the beginning of his most successful
years; his rooms were crowded with sitters of both sexes, and no one
considered they had proved their position in society until they had
received the hall-mark of being painted by him. He was only sixty-one
at his death in 1788. Romney, who lived to 1802, never took quite the
same rank as the other two, yet he was popular enough at the same time
as Gainsborough; Lady Newdigate (_The Cheverels of Cheverel Manor_)
mentions going to have her portrait painted by him, and says that
“he insists upon my having a rich white satin with a long train made
by Tuesday, and to have it left with him all the summer. It is the
oddest thing I ever knew.” Sir Thomas Lawrence and Hoppner carried on
the traditions of the portrait painters, the former living to 1830;
with names such as these it is easy to judge art was in a flourishing
condition.
Among contemporary landscape painters, Richard Wilson, who has been
called “the founder of English Landscape,” lived until 1782. But
his views, though vastly more natural than the stilted conventional
style that preceded them, seem to our modern eyes, trained to what
is “natural,” still to be too much conventionalised. Among others the
names of Gillray, Morland, Rowlandson stand out, all well on the way to
fame while Jane was still a child.
These preliminary remarks have been made with a view to giving some
general idea of that England into which she was born, and they refer
to those subjects which only affected her indirectly. All those
things which entered directly into her life, such as her country
surroundings, contemporary books, prices of food, fashions, and a host
of minor details, are dealt with more particularly in the course of the
narrative.
As we have said, matters of history are not mentioned or noticed
in Jane Austen’s correspondence, which is taken up with her own
environment, her neighbours, their habits and manners, and illumined
throughout by a bright insight at times rather too biting to be
altogether pleasant. Of her immediate surroundings we have a very clear
idea.
Of all the writers of fiction, Jane Austen is most thoroughly English.
She never went abroad, and though her native good sense and shrewd
gift of observation saved her from becoming insular, yet she cannot be
conceived as writing of any but the sweet villages and the provincial
towns of her native country. Even the Brontës, deeply secluded as their
lives were, crossed the German Ocean, and saw something of Continental
life from their school at Brussels. Nothing of this kind fell to
Jane Austen’s share. Yet people did travel in those days, travelled
amazingly considering the difficulties they had to encounter, among
which were the horrors of a sailing-boat with its uncertain hours.
Fielding, in going to Lisbon, was kept waiting a month for favourable
winds! There was also the terrible embarking and landing from a small
boat before such conveniences as landing-stages were built.
In one of Lord Langdale’s letters, dated 1803, we have a vivid
description of these horrors: “We left that place [Dover] about six
o’clock last Saturday morning, and arrived at Calais at four in the
afternoon. Our passage was rather disagreeable, the wind being chiefly
against us, and rain sometimes falling in torrents. I never witnessed
a more curious scene than our landing. When the packet-boat had come
to within two miles of the coast of France, we were met by some French
rowing boats in which we were to be conveyed on shore. The French
sailors surrounded us in the most clamorous and noisy manner, leaping
into the packet and bawling and shouting so loud as to alarm the
ladies on board very much. To these men, however, we were to consign
ourselves, and we entered their boats, eight passengers going in each.
When we got near the shore, we were told it was impossible for the boat
to get close to land, on account of the tide being so low, and that
we must be carried on the men’s shoulders. We had no time to reflect
on this plan before we saw twelve or fourteen men running into the
water,—they surrounded our boat and laid hold of it with such violence,
that one might have thought they meant to sink it, and fairly pulled
us into their arms.... For my part I laughed heartily all the time,
but a lady who was with us was so much frighted, that I was obliged
to support her in my arms a considerable time before she was able to
stand.”
It was not only in the arms of men that passengers were thus carried
ashore, in _Napoleon’s British Visitors and Captives_, by J. G. Alger,
there is a still more extraordinary account quoted from a contemporary
letter. “In an instant the boathead was surrounded by a throng of women
up to their middles and over, who were there to carry us on shore. Not
being aware of this manœuvre, we did not throw ourselves into the arms
of these sea-nymphs so instantly as we ought, whereby those who sat at
the stern of the boat were deluged with sea spray. For myself, I was in
front, and very quickly understood the clamour of the mermaids. I flung
myself upon the backs of two of them without reserve, and was safely
and dryly borne on shore, but one poor gentleman slipped through their
fingers, and fell over head and ears into the sea.”
From the same entertaining book we learn that, “For £4, 13s. you could
get a through ticket by Dover and Calais, starting either from the
City at 4.30 a.m. by the old and now revived line of coaches connected
with the rue Notre Dame des Victoires establishment in Paris, or
morning and night by a new line from Charing Cross. Probably a still
cheaper route, though there were no through tickets, was by Brighton
and Dieppe, the crossing taking ten or fifteen hours. By Calais it
seldom took more than eight hours, but passengers were advised to
carry light refreshments with them. The diligence from Calais to Paris,
going only four miles an hour, took fifty-four hours for the journey,
but a handsome carriage drawn by three horses, in a style somewhat
similar to the English post-chaise, could be hired by four or five
fellow-travellers, and this made six miles an hour.”
During a great part of Jane Austen’s life, much of the Continent was
closed to English people because of the perpetual state of war between
us and either Spain or France, but in any case such an expedition would
seem to have lain quite outside her limited daily round, and was never
even mooted.
Steventon Rectory, where she was born on December 16, 1775, has
long ago vanished, and a new rectory, more in accordance with modern
luxurious notions, has been built. Of the old house, Lord Brabourne,
great-nephew to Jane Austen, writes: “The house standing in the valley
was somewhat better than the ordinary parsonage houses of the day;
the old-fashioned hedgerows were beautiful, and the country around
sufficiently picturesque for those who have the good taste to admire
country scenery.”
Steventon is a very small place, lying in a network of lanes about
seven miles from Basingstoke. The nearest points on the high-roads are
Deane, on the Andover Road, and Popham Lane on the Winchester Road.
There is an inn at the corner of Popham Lane to this day, and that
there was an inn there in Jane Austen’s time we know, for Mrs. Lybbe
Powys, writing in 1792, says: “We stopped at Winchester and lay that
night at a most excellent inn at Popham Lane.” At this time, curiously
enough, her fellow-travellers were Dr. Cooper, Jane Austen’s uncle,
and his son and daughter, though whether the party made a détour to
visit the rectory we do not know. Of course at that time Jane was of
no greater importance than any seventeen-year-old daughter of a country
clergyman, and there would be no reason to mention her.
It is difficult to find Steventon, so little is there of it, and that
so much scattered; a few cottages, a farm, and beyond, half a mile
away, the church, with a pump in a field near to mark the site of the
old rectory house where Jane Austen was born. This is all that remains
of her time. The new rectory stands on the other side of the narrow
road, raised above it, and sheltered by a warm backing of trees in
which evergreens are conspicuous. A very substantial-looking building
it is, much superior to what was considered good enough for a clergyman
in the eighteenth century. The country is well wooded, and the roads
undulating, so that there are no distant views. Probably a good deal
of the planting has been done since Jane Austen’s time, but that there
were trees then we know from her own account, and some of the fine
oaks that still stand can have altered but little since then. Mr.
Austen-Leigh’s account of the house in which she was born is worth
quoting—
“North of the house, the road from Deane to Popham Lane ran at a
sufficient distance from the front to allow a carriage drive through
turf and trees. On the south side, the ground rose gently, and was
occupied by one of those old-fashioned gardens in which vegetables and
flowers are combined, flanked and protected on the east by one of the
thatched mud walls common in that country, and overshadowed by fine
elms. Along the upper or southern side of this garden ran a terrace
of the finest turf, which must have been in the writer’s thoughts when
she described Catherine Morland’s childish delight in ‘rolling down the
green slope at the back of the house.’”
Though there is so little left to see, and the church has been
“restored,” yet it is worth while to pass through this country to
realise the environment in which the authoress spent her childhood.
There are still left in the neighbourhood, notably at North Waltham,
some of the old diamond-paned, heavily-timbered brick houses with
thatched roofs, to which she must have been accustomed. The gentle
curves of the roads, the oak and beech and fir overshadowing the sweet
lanes, the wild clematis, which grows so abundantly that in autumn
it looks like hoar-frost covering all the hedgerows, these things
were prominent objects in the scenery amid which she lived. It is not
likely she looked on her surroundings in the same way as any ordinarily
educated person would now look on them. Love of scenery had not then
been developed. The artificial and formal landscape gardening, with
“made” waterfalls, was the correct thing to admire. Genuine nature,
much less homely nature, was only then beginning to be observed. This
is strange to us, for, as Professor Geikie says, “At no time in our
history as a nation has the scenery of the land we live in been so
intelligently appreciated as it is to-day.”
But Jane was not in advance of her times, and though she loved her
trees and flowers, we find in her writings no reflections of the scenes
amid which she daily walked; in her books scenery is simply ignored. We
know if it rained, because that material fact had an influence on the
actions of her heroines, but beyond that there is little or nothing;
yet she greatly admired Cowper, one of the earliest of the “natural”
poets.
Mr. Austen-Leigh, her own nephew, speaks of the scenery around her
first home as “tame,” and says that it has no “grand or extensive
views,” though he admits it has its beauties, and says that Steventon
“from the fall of the ground, and the abundance of its timber, is
certainly one of the prettiest spots.” But this quiet prettiness,
without the excessive richness to be found in other south-country
villages, is perhaps more thoroughly characteristic of England than any
other.
The impressions of childhood are invariably deep, and are cut with a
clearness and minuteness to which none others of later times attain.
Just as a child examines a picture in a story-book with anxious and
searching care, while an adult gains only a general impression of the
whole, so a child knows the place where it has played in such detail
that every bough of the trees, every root of the lilacs, every tiny
depression or ditch is familiar. And thus Jane must have known the home
at Steventon.
Writing about a storm in 1800, she says: “I was just in time to see
the last of our two highly valued elms descend into the Sweep!!! The
other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and which was
the nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sunk amid
our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce fir, beating
off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of
several branches in its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of
the two on the left-hand side as you enter, what I call, the elm walk,
was likewise blown down; the maple bearing the weathercock was broke
in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is that all the three
elms which grew in Hall’s meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are
gone.”
This bespeaks her intimate acquaintance with the trees, of which each
one was a friend.
The country and the writer suited each other so wonderfully, that one
pauses for a moment wondering whether, after all, environment may not
have that magic influence claimed for it by some who hold it to be more
powerful than inherited qualities. Influence of course it has, and one
wonders what could possibly have been the result if two such natures as
those of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë had changed places; if Jane
had been brought up amid the wild, bleak Yorkshire moors, and Charlotte
amid the pleasant fields of Hampshire. As it is, the surroundings of
each intensified and developed their own peculiar genius.
Jane was born of the middle class, her father, George Austen, being a
clergyman in a day when clergymen were none too well thought of, yet
taking a better position than most by reason of his own family and good
connections. George Austen had early been left an orphan, and had been
adopted by an uncle. He showed the possession of brains by obtaining
first a scholarship at St. John’s College, Oxford, and subsequently a
fellowship.
He took Orders which, in the days when rectories were looked upon
simply as “livings,” was a recognised mode of providing for a young
man, whether he had any vocation for the ministry or not. But he seems
to have fulfilled his duties, or what were then considered sufficient
duties, creditably enough. Of George Austen one of his sons wrote—
“He resided in the conscientious and unassisted discharge of his
ministerial duties until he was turned of seventy years.” He was
a “profound scholar” and had “exquisite taste in every species of
literature.”
The subject of the clergy at that date, and the examples of them
which Jane has herself given us in her books, is an interesting one,
and we shall return to it. The rectory of Steventon was presented to
George Austen by Mr. Knight, the same cousin who afterwards adopted
his son Edward; and the rectory of Deane, a small place about a mile
distant, was bought by an uncle who had educated him, and given to
him. The villages were very small, only containing about three hundred
persons altogether. In those days parish visiting or parochial clubs
and entertainments were unthought of, Sunday schools in their earliest
infancy, and we hear nothing whatever throughout the whole of Jane
Austen’s correspondence which leads us to think that she, in any way,
carried out the duties which in these days fall to the lot of every
clergyman’s daughter. This is not to cast blame upon her, it only means
that she was the child of her times; these things had not then been
organised.
[Illustration: THE REV. JAMES AUSTEN]
[Illustration: THE REV. GEORGE AUSTEN]
George Austen married Cassandra, youngest daughter of the Rev. Thomas
Leigh, who was of good family, her uncle was Dr. Theophilus Leigh,
Master of Balliol College, a witty and well-known man. These things are
not of importance in themselves, but they serve to show that the family
from which Jane sprang was on both sides of some consideration. The
Austens lived first at Deane, but moved to Steventon in 1771. They had
undertaken the charge of a son of Warren Hastings, who died young, and
they had a large family of their own, as was consistent in days when
families of ten, eleven, and even fifteen were no uncommon thing.
There were five sons and two daughters in all, and Jane was the
youngest but one. (See Table, p. 326.) James, the eldest, was probably
too far removed in age from his younger sister ever to have been very
intimate with her. It is said that he had some share in her reading
and in forming her taste, but though she was very fond of him she
never seems, as was very natural, to have had quite the same degree
of intimate affection for him as she felt for those of her brothers
nearer to her own age. James was twice married, and his only daughter
by his first wife was Anna, of whom Jane makes frequent mention in
her letters, and to whom some of the published correspondence was
addressed. His second wife was Mary Lloyd, whose sister Martha was the
very devoted friend, and frequent guest, of the girl Austens, and who
late in life married Francis, one of Jane’s younger brothers. The son
of James and Mary was James Edward, who took the additional name of
Leigh, and was the writer of the _Memoir_ which supplies one of the
only two sources of authoritative information about Jane Austen. He
died in 1874.
The next brother, Edward, as already stated, was adopted by his cousin
Mr. Knight, whose name he took. He came into the fine properties of
Chawton House in Hampshire and Godmersham in Kent, even during the
lifetime of Mr. Knight’s widow, who looked on him as a son and retired
in his favour. Edward married Elizabeth Bridges, and had a family
of eleven children, of whom the eldest, Fanny Catherine, married Sir
Edward Knatchbull, and their eldest son was created Lord Brabourne;
to him we owe the _Letters_ which are the second of the authoritative
books on Jane Austen.
Jane Austen was attached to her niece Fanny Knight in a degree only
second to that of her attachment to her own sister Cassandra. Fanny’s
mother, Mrs. Edward Austen or Knight (for the change of name seems not
to have taken place until her death), died comparatively young, and the
great responsibility thrown upon Fanny doubtless made her seem older,
and more companionable, than her years; of her, her famous aunt writes—
“I found her in the summer just what you describe, almost another
sister, and could not have supposed that a niece would ever have been
so much to me. She is quite after one’s own heart. Give her my best
love and tell her that I always think of her with pleasure.”
The third Austen brother, Henry, interested himself much in his
sister’s writing, and saw about the business arrangements for her,
when, after many years, she decided to publish one of her own books
at her own risk. He was something of a rolling stone, filling various
positions in turn, and at length taking Orders and succeeding his
brother James in the Steventon living. During part of his life he
lived in London, where Jane often stayed with him. He married first
his cousin Eliza, the daughter of George Austen’s sister; she was the
widow of a Frenchman, the Count de Feuillade, who had suffered death
by the guillotine. Eliza was very popular with her girl cousins, as
we can see from Jane’s remarks; she died in 1813, and in 1820 Henry
married Eleanor, daughter of Henry Jackson. The two youngest brothers,
Francis and Charles, came above and below Jane, with about three years’
interval on either side. They both entered the navy, and both became
admirals.
Frank rose to be Senior Admiral of the Fleet, and was created G.C.B.;
he lived to be ninety-two. He, like another of his brothers, was twice
married,—a habit that ran abnormally in the family,—and his second wife
was Martha, the sister of his brother James’s wife, mentioned above.
Charles married first Fanny Palmer, and was left a widower in 1815 with
three small daughters. He married secondly her sister Harriet. The two
Fannies, Mrs. Charles Austen and the eldest daughter of Edward Knight,
sometimes cause a little confusion. Jane Austen mentions calling with
the younger Fanny on the motherless children of her brother, one of
whom was also Fanny, soon after their loss. “We got to Keppel Street,
however, which was all I cared for, and though we could only stay
a quarter of an hour, Fanny’s calling gave great pleasure, and her
sensibility still greater; for she was very much affected at the sight
of the children. Little Fanny looked heavy. We saw the whole party.”
It has been necessary to give a few details respecting the brothers
who played so large a part in Jane’s life, because her visits away from
home were nearly all to their houses, her letters are full of allusions
to them, and the great family affection which subsisted between them
all made the griefs and joys of the others the greatest events in a
very uneventful life. The dearest, however, of the whole family was
the one sister Cassandra, who, like Jane herself, never married, which
seems the stranger when we consider how many of the brothers married
twice. There was a sad little love-story in Cassandra’s life. She
was engaged to a young clergyman who had promise of promotion from a
nobleman related to him. He accompanied this patron to the West Indies
as chaplain to the regiment, and there died of yellow fever. There is
perhaps something more pathetic in such a tale than in any other, the
glowing ideal has not been smirched by any touch of the actual sordid
daily life, it is snatched away and remains an ideal always, and the
happiness that might have been is enhanced by romance so as to be a
greater deprivation than any loss of the actual.
The two sisters were sisters in reality, sharing the same views, the
same friendships, the same interests. When away, Jane’s letters to
Cassandra are full and lively, telling of all the numberless little
events that only a sister can enjoy. And if Jane’s own estimate is to
be believed, Cassandra’s are to the full as vivacious.
“The letter which I have this moment received from you has diverted me
beyond moderation. I could die of laughter at it, as they used to say
at school. You are indeed the finest comic writer of the present age.”
Cassandra lived to 1845, long enough to see that her beloved sister’s
letters would in all probability be published; she was of a reticent
nature, with a strong dislike to revealing anything personal or
intimate to the public, she therefore went through all these neatly
written letters from Jane, which she had so carefully preserved, and
destroyed anything of a personal nature. One cannot altogether condemn
the action, greatly as we have been the losers; the letters that
remain, many in number, deal almost entirely with outside matters,
trivialities of everyday life, and they are written so brightly that we
can judge how interesting the bits of self-revelation by so expressive
a pen would have been.
In 1869, when Mr. Austen-Leigh published his _Memoir_, only one or
two of Jane Austen’s letters were available; but in 1882, on the
death of Lady Knatchbull (_née_ Fanny Knight), the letters above
referred to, which Cassandra Austen had retained, were found among her
belongings, having come to her on her aunt’s death. Her son, created
Lord Brabourne, therefore published these in two volumes in 1884, and
when quotations and extracts are given in this book without further
explanation, it must be inferred that these are taken from letters of
Jane to Cassandra, as given by Lord Brabourne.