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Transcriber's note:
Obvious punctuation errors have been corrected.
The title page lists the authors as Austen-Leigh. The text
omits the hyphen. This was retained.
Text that was superscripted in the original is enclosed within
curly brackets preceded by a carat character. Example: Ser^{t,}
In the interests of maintaining the integrity of the Austen
letters, archaic or unusual spellings were retained as was
inconsistent capitalization. For example: expence,
acknowlegement; d'Arblay, D'Arblay.
Readers who print this text should be warned that it contains
family trees up to 209 characters in width.
More detailed notes, including a list of corrections, will be
found at the end of the text.
JANE AUSTEN
HER LIFE AND LETTERS
A Family Record
by
WILLIAM AUSTEN-LEIGH
and
RICHARD ARTHUR AUSTEN-LEIGH
With a Portrait
London
Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place
1913
[_All rights reserved_]
[Illustration: J. Zoffany R. A. pinxit Emery Walker Ph. sc.
Jane Austen
see p. 62]
PREFACE
Since 1870-1, when J. E. Austen Leigh[1] published his _Memoir of Jane
Austen_, considerable additions have been made to the stock of
information available for her biographers. Of these fresh sources of
knowledge the set of letters from Jane to Cassandra, edited by Lord
Brabourne, has been by far the most important. These letters are
invaluable as _memoires pour servir_; although they cover only the
comparatively rare periods when the two sisters were separated, and
although Cassandra purposely destroyed many of the letters likely to
prove the most interesting, from a distaste for publicity.
Some further correspondence, and many incidents in the careers of two of
her brothers, may be read in _Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers_, by J. H.
Hubback and Edith C. Hubback; while Miss Constance Hill has been able to
add several family traditions to the interesting topographical
information embodied in her _Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends_.
Nor ought we to forget the careful research shown in other biographies
of the author, especially that by Mr. Oscar Fay Adams.
During the last few years, we have been fortunate enough to be able to
add to this store; and every existing MS. or tradition preserved by the
family, of which we have any knowledge, has been placed at our disposal.
It seemed, therefore, to us that the time had come when a more complete
chronological account of the novelist's life might be laid before the
public, whose interest in Jane Austen (as we readily acknowledge) has
shown no signs of diminishing, either in England or in America.
The _Memoir_ must always remain the one firsthand account of her,
resting on the authority of a nephew who knew her intimately and that of
his two sisters. We could not compete with its vivid personal
recollections; and the last thing we should wish to do, even were it
possible, would be to supersede it. We believe, however, that it needs
to be supplemented, not only because so much additional material has
been brought to light since its publication, but also because the
account given of their aunt by her nephew and nieces could be given only
from their own point of view, while the incidents and characters fall
into a somewhat different perspective if the whole is seen from a
greater distance. Their knowledge of their aunt was during the last
portion of her life, and they knew her best of all in her last year,
when her health was failing and she was living in much seclusion; and
they were not likely to be the recipients of her inmost confidences on
the events and sentiments of her youth.
Hence the emotional and romantic side of her nature--a very real
one--has not been dwelt upon. No doubt the Austens were, as a family,
unwilling to show their deeper feelings, and the sad end of Jane's one
romance would naturally tend to intensify this dislike of expression;
but the feeling was there, and it finally found utterance in her latest
work, when, through Anne Elliot, she claimed for women the right of
'loving longest when existence or when hope is gone.'
Then, again, her nephew and nieces hardly knew how much she had gone
into society, or how much, with a certain characteristic aloofness, she
had enjoyed it. Bath, either when she was the guest of her uncle and
aunt or when she was a resident; London, with her brother Henry and his
wife, and the rather miscellaneous society which they enjoyed;
Godmersham, with her brother Edward and his county neighbours in East
Kent;--these had all given her many opportunities of studying the
particular types which she blended into her own creations.
A third point is the uneventful nature of the author's life, which, as
we think, has been a good deal exaggerated. Quiet it certainly was; but
the quiet life of a member of a large family in the England of that date
was compatible with a good deal of stirring incident, happening, if not
to herself, at all events to those who were nearest to her, and who
commanded her deepest sympathies.
We hope therefore that our narrative, with all its imperfections and its
inevitable repetition of much that has already been published, will at
least be of use in removing misconceptions, in laying some new facts
before the reader, and in placing others in a fresh light. It is
intended as a narrative, and not as a piece of literary criticism; for
we should not care to embark upon the latter in competition with
biographers and essayists who have a better claim to be heard.
Both in the plan and in the execution of our work we have received much
valuable help from another member of the family, Mary A. Austen
Leigh.[2]
An arrangement courteously made by the owners of the copyright has
procured for us a free and ample use of the Letters as edited by Lord
Brabourne[3]; while the kindness of Mr. J. G. Nicholson of Castlefield
House, Sturton-by-Scawby, Lincolnshire, has opened a completely new
source of information in the letters which passed between the Austens
and their kinsmen of the half-blood--Walters of Kent and afterwards of
Lincolnshire. Miss Jane Austen, granddaughter of Admiral Charles Austen,
and Miss Margaret Bellas, great-granddaughter of James Austen, are so
good as to allow us to make a fuller use of their family documents than
was found possible by the author of the _Memoir_; while Mr. J. H.
Hubback permits us to draw freely upon the _Sailor Brothers_, and
Captain E. L. Austen, R.N., upon his MSS. Finally, we owe to Admiral
Ernest Rice kind permission to have the photograph taken, from which the
reproduction of his Zoffany portrait is made into a frontispiece for
this volume. We hope that any other friends who have helped us will
accept this general expression of our gratitude.
W. A. L.
R. A. A. L.
_April 1913._
In the notes to the text, the following works are referred to under the
shortened forms here given:--
_Memoir of Jane Austen_, by her nephew, J. E.
Austen Leigh: quoted from second edition, 1871. As
_Memoir_.
_Letters of Jane Austen_, edited by Edward Lord
Brabourne, 1884. As _Brabourne_.
_Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers_, by J. H. Hubback
and Edith C. Hubback, 1906. As _Sailor Brothers_.
_Jane Austen: Her Homes and her Friends_ Constance
Hill, 1902. As _Miss Hill_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Father of one of the present writers, and grandfather of the other.
[2] Daughter of the author of the _Memoir_.
[3] It has not, however, been possible to consult the originals except
in the instance of the letters from Jane to Anna Lefroy.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE v
CHRONOLOGY xiii
I. AUSTENS AND LEIGHS, 1600-1764 1
II. STEVENTON, 1764-1785 11
III. WARREN HASTINGS AND THE HANCOCKS, 1752-1794 31
IV. FAMILY LIFE, 1779-1792 46
V. GROWTH AND CHANGE, 1792-1796 67
VI. ROMANCE, 1795-1802 84
VII. AUTHORSHIP AND CORRESPONDENCE, 1796-1798 95
VIII. GODMERSHAM AND STEVENTON, 1798-1799 109
IX. THE LEIGH PERROTS AND BATH, 1799-1800 126
X. CHANGE OF HOME, 1800-1801 141
XI. BATH AGAIN, 1801-1805 165
XII. FROM BATH TO SOUTHAMPTON, 1805-1808 189
XIII. FROM SOUTHAMPTON TO CHAWTON, 1808-1809 209
XIV. _SENSE AND SENSIBILITY_, 1809-1811 235
XV. _PRIDE AND PREJUDICE_, 1812-1814 255
XVI. _MANSFIELD PARK_, 1812-1814 273
XVII. _EMMA_, 1814-1815 299
XVIII. _PERSUASION_, 1815-1816 325
XIX. AUNT JANE, 1814-1817 341
XX. FAILING HEALTH, 1816-1817 369
XXI. WINCHESTER, 1817 388
APPENDIX: THE TEXT OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS 405
BIBLIOGRAPHY 421
PEDIGREES _to face page_ 428
I. Austen
II. Leigh
III. Craven, Fowle, and Lloyd Families
INDEX 429
* * * * *
PORTRAIT OF JANE AUSTEN _Frontispiece_
CHRONOLOGY OF JANE AUSTEN'S LIFE
1775, Dec. 16 Birth, at Steventon.
1779, June Charles John Austen born.
1780, July James Austen matriculated at Oxford (St. John's).
1782 Jane and Cassandra at Oxford under care of Mrs. Cawley
(sister of Dr. Cooper).
1783 Mrs. Cawley having moved to Southampton, Jane nearly
died there of a fever. Mrs. Cooper (her aunt) took
the infection and died (October).
1784 _The Rivals_ acted at Steventon.
1784 or 1785 Jane and Cassandra left Mrs. Latournelle's school at
Reading, and returned home.
1786 Eliza Comtesse de Feuillide came to England.
Birth of her son.
1787 James Austen in France.
1788, July Henry Austen matriculated at Oxford (St. John's).
Francis Austen went to sea.
1791 Edward Austen married Elizabeth Bridges.
1792, March James Austen married Anne Mathew.
1794, Feb. Comte de Feuillide guillotined.
1795 (?) Cassandra engaged to Thomas Fowle.
May Mrs. James Austen died.
1795-6 Mr. Tom Lefroy at Ashe.
1796 _First Impressions_ (_Pride and Prejudice_) begun.
Jane subscribed to _Camilla_.
1797, Jan. James Austen married Mary Lloyd.
Feb. Thomas Fowle died of fever in the W. Indies.
Nov. Jane, with mother and sister, went to Bath.
_First Impressions_ refused by Cadell.
_Sense and Sensibility_ (already sketched in _Elinor and
Marianne_) begun.
Dec. enry Austen married Eliza de Feuillide.
1798, Aug. Lady Williams (Jane Cooper) killed in a carriage accident.
Mrs. Knight gave up Godmersham to the Edward Austens.
Jane's first visit there.
1798, Aug. First draft of _Northanger Abbey_ begun.
1799, May Jane at Bath with the Edward Austens.
Aug. Mrs. Leigh Perrot's trouble at Bath.
1801, May Family move from Steventon to Bath. Visit to Sidmouth.
Possible date of Jane's romance in the west of England.
1802 Austens at Dawlish and Teignmouth.
Visit of sisters to Steventon and Manydown.
Jane received an offer of marriage from an old friend.
1803 _Northanger Abbey_ (called _Susan_) revised, and sold to
Crosby of London.
1804 Probable date of _The Watsons_.
Sept. Austens at Lyme.
Dec. Mrs. Lefroy of Ashe killed by a fall from her horse.
1805, Jan. Death of Jane's father at Bath.
1806, July Austens left Bath for Clifton, Adlestrop, and Stoneleigh.
1806-7 Austens settled at Southampton.
1807, March Took possession of house in Castle Square.
1808, Sept. Cassandra at Godmersham.
Oct. Mrs. Edward Austen died there after the birth of her
eleventh child (John).
1809, April Jane attempted to secure publication of _Susan_
(_Northanger Abbey_).
Austens left Southampton.
July Austens took possession of Chawton (having been at
Godmersham). Jane's authorship resumed.
1811, April Jane with Henry in London (Sloane Street) bringing out
_Sense and Sensibility_.
Oct. _Sense and Sensibility_ published.
1812 Death of Mrs. T. Knight. Edward Austen took the name of
'Knight.'
1813, Jan. Publication of _Pride and Prejudice_.
April Death of Mrs. Henry Austen (Eliza).
Sept. Jane's last visit to Godmersham.
Second edition of _Sense and Sensibility_.
1814, Jan. _Emma_ begun.
March Jane went to London with Henry (reading _Mansfield Park_
by the way).
May _Mansfield Park_ published.
Threat of lawsuit for Chawton.
Nov. Marriage of Anna Austen to Ben Lefroy.
1815, March _Emma_ finished.
Oct. Illness of Henry.
Nov. Jane shown over Carlton House by Dr. Clarke.
Dec. Publication of _Emma_.
1816, March Bankruptcy of Henry Austen (Jane's health began to break
about this time).
May Jane and Cassandra at Kintbury and Cheltenham.
July _Persuasion_ finished.
Aug End of _Persuasion_ re-written.
Henry took Orders.
1817, Jan. Jane began new work.
March Ceased to write.
Death of Mr. Leigh Perrot.
Jane made her will.
May 24 Jane moved to Winchester, and revived somewhat.
June 16 Cassandra sent a hopeless account to Fanny Knight.
July 18 Death.
July 24 Burial in Winchester Cathedral.
JANE AUSTEN
CHAPTER I
AUSTENS AND LEIGHS
1600-1764
At the end of the sixteenth century there was living at Horsmonden--a
small village in the Weald of Kent--a certain John Austen. From his will
it is evident that he was a man of considerable means, owning property
in Kent and Sussex and elsewhere; he also held a lease of certain lands
from Sir Henry Whetenhall, including in all probability the manor house
of Broadford in Horsmonden. What wealth he had was doubtless derived
from the clothing trade; for Hasted[4] instances the Austens, together
with the Bathursts, Courthopes, and others, as some of the ancient
families of that part 'now of large estate and genteel rank in life,'
but sprung from ancestors who had used the great staple manufacture of
clothing. He adds that these clothiers 'were usually called the Gray
Coats of Kent, and were a body so numerous that at County Elections
whoever had their vote and interest was almost certain of being
elected.'
John Austen died in 1620, leaving a large family.[5] Of these, the
fifth son, Francis, who died in 1687, describes himself in his will as a
clothier, of Grovehurst; this place being, like Broadford, a pretty
timbered house of moderate size near the picturesque old village of
Horsmonden. Both houses still belong to the Austen family. Francis left
a son, John, whose son was another John. This last John settled at
Broadford (while his father remained at Grovehurst), and, when quite
young, married Elizabeth Weller. He seems to have been a careless,
easy-going man, who thought frugality unnecessary, as he would succeed
to the estate on his father's death; but he died of consumption in 1704,
a year before that event took place. One of his sisters married into the
family of the Stringers (neighbours engaged in the same trade as the
Austens), and numbered among her descendants the Knights of
Godmersham--a circumstance which exercised an important influence over
the subsequent fortunes of the Austen family.
Elizabeth Weller, a woman happily cast in a different mould from her
husband, was an ancestress of Jane Austen who deserves commemoration.
Thrifty, energetic, a careful mother, and a prudent housewife, she
managed, though receiving only grudging assistance from the Austen
family, to pay off her husband's debts, and to give to all her younger
children a decent education at a school at Sevenoaks; the eldest boy
(the future squire) being taken off her hands by his grandfather.[6]
Elizabeth left behind her not only elaborately kept accounts but also a
minute description of her actions through many years and of the motives
which governed them. It may be interesting to quote one sentence
relating to her move from Horsmonden to Sevenoaks for the sake of her
children's education. 'These considerations with y^{e} tho'ts of having
my own boys in y^{e} house, with a good master (as all represented him
to be) were y^{e} inducements that brought me to Sen'nock, for it seemed
to me as if I cou'd not do a better thing for my children's good, their
education being my great care, and indeed all I think I was capable of
doing for 'em, for I always tho't if they had learning, they might get
better shift in y^{e} world, with w^{t} small fortune was alloted 'em.'
When the good mother died in 1721, her work was done. Schooldays were
over, the daughter married, and the boys already making their way in the
world.
The young squire and his son held gentle sway at Broadford through the
eighteenth century; but much more stirring and able was the next
brother, Francis. He became a solicitor. Setting up at Sevenoaks 'with
eight hundred pounds and a bundle of pens,' he contrived to amass a very
large fortune, living most hospitably, and yet buying up all the
valuable land round the town which he could secure, and enlarging his
means by marrying two wealthy wives. But his first marriage did not take
place till he was nearer fifty than forty; and he had as a bachelor been
a most generous benefactor to the sons of his two next brothers, Thomas
and William.
His second wife, who became in due course of time godmother to her
great-niece, Jane Austen, was the widow of Samuel Lennard, of West
Wickham, who left her his estate. Legal proceedings ensued over the
will, and Mrs. Lennard took counsel of Francis Austen, who ended by
winning both the case and her hand. Francis's son by his first wife
(known as Motley Austen) rounded off the family estate at Sevenoaks by
purchasing the Kippington property. Motley's third son, John, eventually
inherited the Broadford estate. Francis's two most distinguished
descendants were Colonel Thomas Austen of Kippington, well known as M.P.
for Kent, and the Rev. John Thomas Austen, senior wrangler in 1817.
Both the two next brothers of Francis Austen adopted the medical
profession. Thomas, an apothecary at Tonbridge, had an only son, Henry,
who graduated at Cambridge, and, through his uncle's interest, held the
living of West Wickham for twenty years. His descendants on the female
side are still flourishing.
William, the surgeon, Jane Austen's grandfather, is more immediately
interesting to us. He married Rebecca, daughter of Sir George Hampson, a
physician of Gloucester, and widow of another medical man, James Walter.
By her first husband she had a son, William Hampson Walter, born in
1721; by her second she had three daughters, and one son, George, born
in 1731. Philadelphia--the only daughter who grew up and married--we
shall meet with later. Rebecca Austen died in 1733, and three years
later William married Susanna Holk, of whom nothing is known except that
she died at an advanced age, and did not mention any of the Austens in
her will; neither is there any trace of her in any of the family records
with which we are acquainted; so it is hardly probable that little
George Austen (Jane's father), who had lost both his parents when he was
six years old, continued under the care of his stepmother. However, all
that we know of his childhood is that his uncle Francis befriended him,
and sent him to Tonbridge School, and that from Tonbridge he obtained a
Scholarship (and subsequently a Fellowship) at St. John's College,
Oxford--the College at which, later on, through George's own marriage,
his descendants were to be 'founder's kin.' He returned to teach at his
old school, occupying the post of second master there in 1758, and in
the next year he was again in residence at Oxford, where his good looks
gained for him the name of 'the handsome proctor.' In 1760 he took
Orders, and in 1761 was presented by Mr. Knight of Godmersham--who had
married a descendant of his great-aunt, Jane Stringer--to the living of
Steventon, near Overton in Hampshire. It was a time of laxity in the
Church, and George Austen (though he afterwards became an excellent
parish-priest) does not seem to have resided or done duty at Steventon
before the year 1764, when his marriage to Cassandra Leigh must have
made the rectory appear a desirable home to which to bring his bride.
Before we say anything of the Leighs, a few sentences must be devoted to
George Austen's relations of the half-blood--the Walters. With his
mother's son by her first husband, William Hampson Walter, he remained
on intimate terms. A good many letters are extant which passed between
the Austens and the Walters during the early married life of the former,
the last of them containing the news of the birth of Jane. Besides this,
William Walter's daughter, 'Phila,' was a constant correspondent of
George Austen's niece Eliza.
The Walter family settled in Lincolnshire, where they have held Church
preferment, and have also been well known in the world of sport. Phila's
brother James seems to have been at the same time an exemplary parson,
beloved by his flock, and also a sort of 'Jack Russell,' and is said to
have met his death in the hunting-field, by falling into a snow-drift,
at the age of eighty-four. His son Henry distinguished himself in a more
academical manner. He was second wrangler in 1806, and a Fellow of St.
John's. Nor was he only a mathematician; for in June 1813 Jane Austen
met a young man named Wilkes, an undergraduate of St. John's, who spoke
very highly of Walter as a scholar; he said he was considered the best
classic at Cambridge. She adds: 'How such a report would have interested
my father!' Henry Walter was at one time tutor at Haileybury, and was
also a beneficed clergyman. He was known at Court; indeed, it is said
that, while he declined higher preferment for himself, he was consulted
by George IV and William IV on the selection of bishops.
The wife that George Austen chose belonged to the somewhat large clan of
the Leighs of Adlestrop in Gloucestershire, of which family the
Leighs[7] of Stoneleigh were a younger branch. Her father was the Rev.
Thomas Leigh, elected Fellow of All Souls at so early an age that he was
ever after called 'Chick Leigh,' and afterwards Rector of Harpsden, near
Henley.
Both these branches of the Leigh family descended from Sir Thomas Leigh,
Lord Mayor of London, behind whom Queen Elizabeth rode to be proclaimed
at Paul's Cross. He was rich enough and great enough to endow more than
one son with estates; but while the elder line at Adlestrop remained
simple squires, the younger at Stoneleigh rose to a peerage. The latter
branch, however, were now rapidly approaching extinction, while the
former had many vigorous scions. The family records have much to say of
one of the squires--Theophilus (who died in 1724), the husband of Mary
Brydges and the father of twelve children, a strong character, and one
who lived up to fixed, if rather narrow, ideas of duty. We hear of his
old-fashioned dress and elaborate bows and postures, of his affability
to his neighbours, and his just, though somewhat strict, government of
his sons. It is difficult to picture to oneself a set of modern Oxford
men standing patiently after dinner, in the dining-parlour, as
Theophilus's sons did, 'till desired to sit down and drink Church and
King.' Meanwhile, his brother-in-law, the Duke of Chandos (the patron of
Handel), used to send for the daughters to be educated in the splendour
of Canons (his place in Middlesex), and to make such matches as he chose
for them with dowries of L3000 a-piece.
Cassandra's father, Thomas, was the fourth son of Theophilus Leigh. An
older and better known brother was another Theophilus, Master of Balliol
for more than half a century.
The story of his election, in 1727, is remarkable. The Fellows of
Balliol could not agree in the choice of any one of their own body; and
one set, thinking it would be no disadvantage to have a duke's brother
as master, invited their visitor, Dr. Brydges[8], to stand. On his
declining, they brought forward his nephew, Theophilus Leigh, then a
young Fellow of Corpus. The election resulted in a tie, and the visitor
had no qualms of conscience in giving his casting vote to his nephew.
Theophilus proved to be a man 'more[9] famous for his sayings than his
doings, overflowing with puns and witticisms and sharp retorts; but his
most serious joke was his practical one of living much longer than had
been expected or intended.' He no doubt became a most dignified Head,
and inspired the young men with fear and respect; but he must have
sometimes remembered the awful day when he first preached before his
father, who immediately turned his back on the divine, saying
afterwards: 'I thank you, Theo, for your discourse; let us hereafter
have less rhetoric and more divinity; I turned my back lest my presence
might daunt you.' When Theo in turn was an old man, and when Jane
Austen's eldest brother went to Oxford, he was asked to dine with this
dignified kinsman. Being a raw freshman, he was about to take off his
gown, when the old man of eighty said with a grim smile: 'Young man, you
need not strip; we are not going to fight.'[10]
Cassandra Leigh's youth was spent in the quiet rectory of Harpsden, for
her father was one of the more conscientious of the gently born clergy
of that day, living entirely on his benefice, and greatly beloved in his
neighbourhood as an exemplary parish-priest. 'He was one of the most
contented, quiet, sweet-tempered, generous, cheerful men I ever knew,'
so says the chronicler of the Leigh family, 'and his wife was his
counterpart. The spirit of the pugnacious Theophilus dwelt not in him;
nor that eternal love of company which distinguished the other brothers,
yet he was by no means unsocial.' Towards the end of his life he removed
to Bath, being severely afflicted with the gout, and here he died in
1763. His peaceful wife, Jane Walker, was descended on her mother's
side from a sufficiently warlike family; she was the daughter of an
Oxford physician, who had married a Miss Perrot, one of the last of a
very old stock, long settled in Oxfordshire, but also known in
Pembrokeshire at least as early as the fourteenth century. They were
probably among the settlers planted there to overawe the Welsh, and it
is recorded of one of them that he slew 'twenty-six men of Kemaes and
one wolf.' A contrast to these uncompromising ancestors was found in
Mrs. Leigh's aunt, Ann Perrot, one of the family circle at Harpsden,
whom tradition states to have been a very pious, good woman. Unselfish
she certainly was, for she earnestly begged her brother, Mr. Thomas
Perrot, to alter his will by which he had bequeathed to her his estates
at Northleigh in Oxfordshire, and to leave her instead an annuity of one
hundred pounds. Her brother complied with her request, and by a codicil
devised the estates to his great-nephew, James, son of the Rev. Thomas
Leigh, on condition that he took the surname and arms of Perrot.[11]
Accordingly, on the death of Mr. Thomas Perrot at the beginning of 1751,
James Leigh became James Leigh Perrot of Northleigh. His two sisters,
Jane and Cassandra, also profited by the kindness of their great-aunt,
who left two hundred pounds to each. Another legacy which filtered
through the Walkers from the Perrots to the Austens was the advantage of
being 'kin' to the Founder of St. John's College, Oxford--Sir Thomas
White--an advantage of which several members of the family availed
themselves.
Northleigh, for some reason or other, did not suit its new owner. He
pulled down the mansion and sold the estate to the Duke of Marlborough,
buying for himself a property at Hare Hatch on the Bath Road, midway
between Maidenhead and Reading. We shall meet him again, and his devoted
wife, Jane Cholmeley; and we shall see a remarkable instance of his
steadfast love for her.
George Austen perhaps met his future wife at the house of her uncle, the
Master of Balliol, but no particulars of the courtship have survived.
The marriage took place at Walcot Church, Bath, on April 26, 1764, the
bride's father having died at Bath only a short time before. Two
circumstances connected with their brief honeymoon--which consisted only
of a journey from Bath to Steventon, broken by one day's halt at
Andover--may be mentioned. The bride's 'going-away' dress seems to have
been a scarlet riding-habit, whose future adventures were not
uninteresting; and the pair are believed to have had an unusual
companion for such an occasion--namely, a small boy, six years old, the
only son of Warren Hastings by his first wife. We are told that he was
committed to the charge of Mr. Austen when he was sent over to England
in 1761, and we shall see later that there was a reason for this
connexion; but a three-year-old boy is a curious charge for a bachelor,
and poor little George must have wanted a nurse rather than a tutor. In
any case, he came under Mrs. Austen's maternal care, who afterwards
mourned for his early death 'as if he had been a child of her own.'[12]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] _History of Kent._
[5] For further particulars respecting the earlier Austens, we venture
to refer our readers to _Chawton Manor and its Owners_, chap. vii.
[6] This almost exclusive care of the old man for his eldest grandson
may possibly have been the model for the action of old Mr. Dashwood at
the beginning of _Sense and Sensibility_.
[7] We are allowed to quote freely from a manuscript _History of the
Leigh Family of Adlestrop_, written in 1788; some part of which appeared
in an article written by the Hon. Agnes Leigh and published in the
_National Review_ for April 1907.
[8] Brother both of the Duke of Chandos and of Mrs. Leigh.
[9] _Memoir_, p. 5.
[10] The author of the _Memoir_ remarks on the fact that the Leigh arms
were placed on the front of Balliol towards Broad Street, now pulled
down. He did not live to see the same arms occupy a similar place on the
new buildings at King's College, Cambridge, erected when his son
Augustus was Provost.
[11] The Perrots seem to have set great store by their armorial
bearings: at least we are told that two branches of them lived at
Northleigh at the same time in the eighteenth century, hardly on
speaking terms with each other, and that one cause of quarrel was a
difference of opinion as to whether the three 'pears'--which, in punning
heraldry, formed a part of their coat of arms--were to be silver or
gold.
[12] In the absence of any information as to where George Hastings died
or was buried, it is at present impossible to be sure about the details
of this interesting tradition.
CHAPTER II
STEVENTON
1764-1785
Steventon is a small village tucked away among the Hampshire Downs,
about seven miles south of Basingstoke. It is now looked down upon at
close quarters by the South-Western Railway, but, at the time of which
we are writing, it was almost equidistant from two main roads: one
running from Basingstoke to Andover, which would be joined at Deane
Gate, the other from Basingstoke to Winchester, joined at Popham Lane.
Communication with London was maintained--at any rate, in 1800--by two
coaches that ran each night through Deane Gate. It does not appear,
however, to have been by any means certain that an unexpected traveller
would get a place in either of them.[13]
The surrounding country is certainly not picturesque; it presents no
grand or extensive views: the features, however, being small rather than
plain.[14] It is, in fact, an undulating district whose hills have no
marked character, and the poverty of whose soil prevents the timber from
attaining a great size. We need not therefore be surprised to hear that
when Cassandra Leigh saw the place for the first time, just before her
marriage, she should think it very inferior to the valley of the Thames
at Henley. Yet the neighbourhood had its beauties of rustic lanes and
hidden nooks; and Steventon, from the fall of the ground and the
abundance of its timber, was one of the prettiest spots in it. The
Rectory had been of the most miserable description, but George Austen
improved it until it became a tolerably roomy and convenient habitation.
It stood 'in a shallow valley, surrounded by sloping meadows, well
sprinkled with elm-trees, at the end of a small village of cottages,
each well provided with a garden, scattered about prettily on either
side of the road. . . . 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[15] 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 the
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."
'But the chief beauty of Steventon consisted in its hedgerows. A
hedgerow in that country does not mean a thin formal line of quickset,
but an irregular border of copse-wood and timber, often wide enough to
contain within it a winding footpath, or a rough cart-track. Under its
shelter the earliest primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be
found; sometimes the first bird's nest; and, now and then, the unwelcome
adder. Two such hedgerows radiated, as it were, from the parsonage
garden. One, a continuation of the turf terrace, proceeded westward,
forming the southern boundary of the home meadows; and was formed into a
rustic shrubbery, with occasional seats, entitled "The Wood Walk." The
other ran straight up the hill, under the name of "The Church Walk,"
because it led to the parish church, as well as to a fine old
manor-house of Henry VIII's time, occupied by a family named Digweed,
who for more than a century rented it, together with the chief farm in
the parish.'
The usefulness of a hedgerow as a place where a heroine might remain
unseen and overhear what was not intended to reach her ears must have
impressed itself early on the mind of our author; and readers of
_Persuasion_ will remember the scene in the fields near Uppercross where
Anne hears a conversation about herself carried on by Captain Wentworth
and Louisa Musgrove. The writer had possibly intended to introduce a
similar scene into _Mansfield Park_, for, in a letter to her sister, of
January 29, 1813, when turning from _Pride and Prejudice_ to a new
subject, she says: 'If you could discover whether Northamptonshire is a
country of hedgerows I should be glad again.' Presumably, her question
was answered in the negative, and her scrupulous desire for accuracy did
not allow of her making use of the intended device.
Steventon Church 'might have appeared mean and uninteresting to an
ordinary observer; but the adept in church architecture would have
known that it must have stood there some seven centuries, and would
have found beauty in the very narrow Early English windows, as well as
in the general proportions of its little chancel; while its solitary
position, far from the hum of the village, and within sight of no
habitation, except a glimpse of the grey manor-house through its
circling green of sycamores, has in it something solemn and appropriate
to the last resting-place of the silent dead. Sweet violets, both purple
and white, grow in abundance beneath its south wall. One may imagine for
how many centuries the ancestors of those little flowers have occupied
that undisturbed sunny nook, and may think how few living families can
boast of as ancient a tenure of their land. Large elms protrude their
rough branches; old hawthorns shed their annual blossoms over the
graves; and the hollow yew-tree must be at least coeval with the church.
But whatever may be the beauties or defects of the surrounding scenery,
this was the residence of Jane Austen for twenty-four years. This was
the cradle of her genius. These were the first objects which inspired
her young heart with a sense of the beauties of nature. In strolls along
these wood-walks, thick-coming fancies rose to her mind, and gradually
assumed the forms in which they came forth to the world. In that simple
church she brought them all into subjection to the piety which ruled her
in life and supported her in death.'
To this description of the surroundings of the home, given by the author
of the _Memoir_, whose own home it was through childhood and boyhood, we
may add a few sentences respecting its interior as it appeared to his
sister, Mrs. Lefroy. She speaks of her grandfather's study looking
cheerfully into the sunny garden, 'his own exclusive property, safe
from the bustle of all household cares,' and adds:
'The dining-or common sitting-room looked to the front and was lighted
by two casement windows. On the same side the front door opened into a
smaller parlour, and visitors, who were few and rare, were not a bit the
less welcome to my grandmother because they found her sitting there
busily engaged with her needle,[16] making and mending. In later
times--but not probably until my two aunts had completed their short
course at Mrs. Latournelle's at Reading Abbey, and were living at
home--a sitting-room was made upstairs: "the dressing-room," as they
were pleased to call it, perhaps because it opened into a smaller
chamber in which my two aunts slept. I remember the common-looking
carpet with its chocolate ground, and painted press with shelves above
for books, and Jane's piano, and an oval looking-glass that hung between
the windows; but the charm of the room with its scanty furniture and
cheaply painted walls must have been, for those old enough to understand
it, the flow of native wit, with all the fun and nonsense of a large and
clever family.' Such was the room in which the first versions of _Sense
and Sensibility_ and _Pride and Prejudice_ were composed.
We have anticipated somewhat in describing the Rectory as it appeared
after George Austen's reforms, and when his children were growing up in
it. As it appeared to him and his wife on their arrival, it must have
left much to be desired.
The young couple who now entered upon a home which was to be theirs for
thirty-seven years had many excellent and attractive qualities. George
Austen's handsome, placid, dignified features were an index to his mind.
Serene in temper, devoted to his religion and his family, a good father
and a good scholar, he deserved the love and respect which every
evidence that we have shows him to have gained from his family and his
neighbours. His wife's was a somewhat more positive nature: shrewd and
acute, high-minded and determined, with a strong sense of humour, and
with an energy capable of triumphing over years of indifferent health,
she was ardently attached to her children, and perhaps somewhat proud of
her ancestors. We are told that she was very particular about the shape
of people's noses, having a very aristocratic one herself; but we ought
perhaps to add that she admitted she had never been a beauty, at all
events in comparison with her own elder sister.
If one may divide qualities which often overlap, one would be inclined
to surmise that Jane Austen inherited from her father her serenity of
mind, the refinement of her intellect, and her delicate appreciation of
style, while her mother supplied the acute observation of character, and
the wit and humour, for which she was equally distinguished.
Steventon was not the only preferment in the neighbourhood that George
Austen was to hold. His kind uncle Francis, who had helped him in his
schooling, was anxious to do something more for him. He would have
liked, it is said, to have put him into the comfortable living of West
Wickham in Kent, which was in the gift of his wife; but he considered
that another nephew, the son of a brother older than George's father,
had a prior claim. Francis, however, did the best thing he could by
buying the next presentations of two parishes near Steventon--namely,
Ashe and Deane--that his nephew might have whichever fell vacant first.
The chances of an early vacancy at Ashe, where Dr. Russell--the
grandfather of Mary Russell Mitford--had been established since 1729,
must have seemed the greater; but fate decided otherwise. Dr. Russell
lived till 1783, and it was Deane that first fell vacant, in 1773.
The writer of the _Memoir_, who was under the impression that George
Austen became Rector of both Steventon and Deane in 1764, states that
the Austens began their married life in the parsonage at Deane, and did
not move to Steventon till 1771, seven years later. This cannot be quite
correct, because we have letters of George Austen dated from Steventon
in 1770; nor is it quite easy to understand why Mr. Austen should have
lived in some one else's Rectory in preference to his own, unless we
conceive that the Rector of Deane was non-resident, and that George
Austen did duty at Deane and rented the parsonage while his own was
under repair. It seems impossible now to unravel this skein. The story
of the move to Steventon, in 1771, is connected with a statement that
the road was then a mere cart-track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be
impassable for a light carriage, and that Mrs. Austen (who was not then
in good health) performed the short journey on a feather-bed, placed
upon some soft articles of furniture in the waggon which held their
household goods. This story is too circumstantial to be without
foundation, nor is there any reason to doubt the badness of a country
lane; but the particular family-flitting referred to must be left
uncertain.
George Austen was thirty-three years old when he settled down at his
Hampshire living. His wife was some eight years younger. Their means
were not large, but George was able to supplement his income both by
farming and by taking pupils. Life too was simpler in those days; and we
read of Mrs. Austen being without a new gown for two years, and spending
much of the time in a red riding-habit, which even then had not finished
its usefulness, for it was cut up some years later into a suit for one
of her boys. Her time, indeed, was soon busily employed; her eldest boy,
James, was born on February 13, 1765; the second, George, on August 26,
1766; and the third, Edward, on October 7, 1767. The Austens followed
what was a common custom in those days--namely, that of putting out
their children to nurse. An honest woman in Deane had charge of them all
in turn, and we are told that one or both of their parents visited them
every day.
The only excitements to vary the tranquil life at Steventon were
occasional visits to or from their near relations. Cassandra's brother
was now living on his property called Scarlets, at Hare Hatch, in the
parish of Wargrave, and was thus within a day's journey from Steventon.
He had married a Miss Cholmeley, of Easton in Lincolnshire, but they had
no children. Cassandra's only sister, Jane (the beauty of the family),
was married at the end of 1768 to Dr. Cooper, Rector of Whaddon, near
Bath. Edward Cooper was the son of Gislingham Cooper, a banker in the
Strand, by Ann Whitelock, heiress of Phyllis Court and Henley Manor. Dr.
and Mrs. Cooper divided their time between his house at Southcote, near
Reading, and Bath--from which latter place no doubt he could keep an
eye on his neighbouring parish. The Coopers had two children, Edward and
Jane. They and the Austens were on very intimate terms, and it is
probable that Jane Austen's early knowledge of Bath was to a great
extent owing to the visits paid to them in that place. Another family
with whom the Austens were on cousinly terms were the Cookes. Samuel
Cooke, Rector of Little Bookham in Surrey and godfather to Jane, had
married a daughter of the Master of Balliol (Theophilus Leigh), and
their three children, Theophilus, Mary, and George, belonged, like the
Coopers, to an inner circle of relations on both sides (Leigh Perrots,
Coopers, Cookes, Walters, and Hancocks), who made up--in addition to the
outer-circle of country neighbours--the world in which the Austens
moved.
A few letters addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Walter (extracts from which we
shall venture to quote) will give the best idea of the happy, peaceful
life passed at Steventon Rectory during these early years. On July 8,
1770, George writes from Steventon of his wife's journey to London to be
present at the birth of her sister's child, and adds:--
[17] . . . My James . . . and his brother are both
well, and what will surprise you, bear their
mother's absence with great philosophy, as I doubt
not they would mine, and turn all their little
affections towards those who were about them and
good to them; this may not be a pleasing
reflection to a fond parent, but is certainly
wisely designed by Providence for the happiness of
the child.
A month or so later Cassandra is back again, and writing:--
I was not so happy as to see my nephew
Weaver[18]--suppose he was hurried in time, as I
think everyone is in town; 'tis a sad place, I
would not live in it on any account, one has not
time to do one's duty either to God or man. . . .
What luck we shall have with those sort of cows I
can't say. My little Alderney one turns out
tolerably well, and makes more butter than we use,
and I have just bought another of the same sort,
but as her calf is but just gone, cannot say what
she will be good for yet.
_December 9, 1770._--My poor little George is come
to see me to-day, he seems pretty well, tho' he
had a fit lately; it was near a twelve-month since
he had one before, so was in hopes they had left
him, but must not flatter myself so now.
In June 1771, the Austens' fourth child, Henry, was born, and Mrs.
Austen writes on November 8, 1772:--
My little boy is come home from nurse, and a fine,
stout little fellow he is, and can run anywhere,
so now I have all four at home, and some time in
January I expect a fifth, so you see it will not
be in my power to take any journeys for one
while. . . . I believe my sister Hancock will be so
good as to come and nurse me again.
Unfortunately, poor little George never recovered sufficiently to take
his place in the family, and we hear no more of him, though he lived on
as late as 1827.
The fifth child, Cassandra, was born in January 1773, and on June 6,
1773, Mrs. Austen writes:--
We will not give up the hopes of seeing you both
(and as many of your young people as you can
conveniently bring) at Steventon before the summer
is over. Mr. Austen wants to show his brother his
lands and his cattle and many other matters; and I
want to show you my Henry and my Cassy, who are
both reckoned fine children. Jemmy and Neddy are
very happy in a new playfellow, Lord Lymington,
whom Mr. Austen has lately taken the charge of; he
is between five and six years old, very backward
of his age, but good-tempered and orderly. He is
the eldest son of Lord Portsmouth, who lives about
ten miles from hence. . . . I have got a nice dairy
fitted up, and am now worth a bull and six cows,
and you would laugh to see them; for they are not
much bigger than Jack-asses--and here I have got
duckies and ducks and chickens for Phyllis's
amusement. In short you must come, and, like
Hezekiah, I will show you all my riches.
_December 12, 1773._--I thank God we are all quite
well and my little girl is almost ready to run
away. Our new pupil, Master Vanderstegen, has been
with us about a month, he is near fourteen years
old, and is very good tempered and well disposed.
Lord Lymington has left us, his mamma began to be
alarmed at the hesitation in his speech, which
certainly grew worse, and is going to take him to
London in hopes a Mr. Angier (who undertakes to
cure that disorder) may be of service to him.
A sixth child, Francis William, was born in April 1774.
_August 20, 1775._--We are all, I thank God, in
good health, and I am more nimble and active than
I was last time, expect to be confined some time
in November. My last boy is very stout, and has
run alone these two months, and is not yet sixteen
months old. My little girl talks all day long, and
in my opinion is a very entertaining companion.
Henry has been in breeches some months, and
thinks himself near as good a man as his brother
Neddy. Indeed no one would judge by their looks
that there was above three years and a half
difference in their ages, one is so little and the
other so great. Master Van. is got very well
again, and has been with us again these three
months; he is gone home this morning for a few
holidays.
The new infant, however, did not appear quite so soon as was expected,
and the last letter of the series is written by George Austen on
December 17, 1775.
Steventon: December 17, 1775.
DEAR SISTER,--You have doubtless been for some
time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and
perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age
grown such bad reckoners, but so it was, for Cassy
certainly expected to have been brought to bed a
month ago; however, last night the time came, and
without a great deal of warning, everything was
soon happily over. We have now another girl, a
present plaything for her sister Cassy, and a
future companion. She is to be Jenny, and seems to
me as if she would be as like Harry as Cassy is to
Neddy. Your sister, thank God, is pure well after
it.
George Austen's prediction was fully justified. Never were sisters more
to each other than Cassandra and Jane; while in a particularly
affectionate family there seems to have been a special link between
Cassandra and Edward on the one hand, and between Jane and Henry on the
other.
Jane's godparents were Mrs. Musgrave (a connexion of her mother's), Mrs.
Francis Austen (another Jane), wife of George's kind uncle, and Samuel
Cooke, Rector of Little Bookham. We may suppose that, like the rest of
her family, she spent a considerable part of the first eighteen months
of her existence at the good woman's at Deane.
We have, indeed, but little information about the household at Steventon
for the next few years. Another child--the last--Charles, was born in
June 1779. There must, as the children grew older, have been a bright
and lively family party to fill the Rectory, all the more so because the
boys were educated at home instead of being sent to any school. One of
George Austen's sons has described him as being 'not only a profound
scholar, but possessed of a most exquisite taste in every species of
literature'; and, even if we allow for some filial exaggeration, there
can be no doubt that it was a home where good teaching--in every sense
of the word--good taste, and a general love of reading prevailed. To
balance this characteristic the Austen nature possessed yet
another--spread over many members of the family--namely, an enthusiastic
love of sport. The boys hunted from an early age, in a scrambling sort
of way, upon any pony or donkey that they could procure, or, in default
of such luxuries, on foot; perhaps beginning the day with an early
breakfast in the kitchen. A wonderful story is told, on good authority,
of a piece of amateur horse-dealing accomplished by the youngest son but
one, Francis, at the mature age of seven: how he bought on his own
account (it must be supposed with his father's permission) a pony for L1
11_s._ 6_d._; hunted it, jumping everything that the pony could get its
nose over; and at the end of two years sold it again for L2 12_s._ 6_d._
It was a bright chestnut, and he called it 'Squirrel'; though his elder
brothers, to plague him, called it 'Scug.' This was the boy for whose
benefit his mother converted into a jacket and trousers the scarlet
riding-habit which played so important a part in her early married life.
If he mounted 'Squirrel' in this costume, the future Admiral of the
Fleet was hunting 'in pink' with a vengeance, and must have contributed
not a little to the gaiety of the field.
It is evident that part of the good training at Steventon consisted in
making the boys, while quite young, manly, active, and self-reliant.
When the time came for their leaving home they would not be found
unprepared.
Mr. Austen found it a pleasant task to educate his own sons with his
other pupils, and thereby to dispense with the cost of public schools.
We get a glimpse of him as a teacher in a letter of his son Henry,
written many years later to Warren Hastings. Henry, by the way, made use
of a style that one is thankful Jane did not adopt.
Suffer me to say that among the earliest lessons
of my infancy I was taught by precept and example
to love and venerate your name. I cannot remember
the time when I did not associate with your
character the idea of everything great, amiable,
and good. Your benevolence was a theme on which my
young attention hung with truer worship than
courtiers ever pay the throne. Your works of
taste, both of the pencil and the pen, were
continually offered to my notice as objects of
imitation and spurs to exertion. I shall never
forget the delight which I experienced when, on
producing a translation of a well-known Ode of
Horace to my father's criticism, he favoured me
with a perusal of your manuscript, and as a high
mark of commendation said that he was sure Mr.
Hastings would have been pleased with the perusal
of my humble essay.
There is also a pleasant picture of home life at Steventon drawn for us
in the _History of the Leigh Family_, in which the writer speaks of
Cassandra, 'wife of the truly respectable Mr. Austen,' and adds: 'With
his sons (all promising to make figures in life), Mr. Austen educates a
few youths of chosen friends and acquaintances. When among this liberal
society, the simplicity, hospitality, and taste which commonly prevail
in affluent families among the delightful valleys of Switzerland ever
recur to my memory.'
But though it might be an easy thing to educate his sons at home, it was
another matter to teach his daughters, and, according to a family
tradition, Cassandra and Jane were dispatched at a very early age to
spend a year at Oxford with Mrs. Cawley, a sister of Dr. Cooper--a fact
which makes it likely that their cousin, Jane Cooper, was also of the
party. Mrs. Cawley was the widow of a Principal of Brasenose College,
and is said to have been a stiff-mannered person. She moved presently to
Southampton, and there also had the three girls under her charge. At the
latter place Cassandra and Jane Austen were attacked by a putrid fever.
Mrs. Cawley would not write word of this to Steventon, but Jane Cooper
thought it right to do so, upon which Mrs. Austen and Mrs. Cooper set
off at once for Southampton and took their daughters away. Jane Austen
was very ill and nearly died. Worse befell poor Mrs. Cooper, who took
the infection and died at Bath whither she had returned. As Mrs. Cooper
died in October 1783, this fixes the date roughly when the sisters went
to Oxford and Southampton. Jane would have been full young to profit
from the instruction of masters at Oxford (she can hardly have been
seven years old when she went there), and it must have been more for the
sake of her being with Cassandra than for any other reason that she was
sent.
On the same principle, she went to school at Reading soon after the
Southampton experience. 'Not,' we are told, 'because she was thought old
enough to profit much by the instruction there imparted, but because she
would have been miserable without her sister'; her mother, in fact,
observing that 'if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane
would insist on sharing her fate.'
The school chosen was a famous one in its day--namely, the Abbey School
in the Forbury at Reading, kept by a Mrs. Latournelle, an Englishwoman
married to a Frenchman. Miss Butt, afterwards Mrs. Sherwood, who went to
the same school in 1790, says in her Autobiography[19] that Mrs.
Latournelle never could speak a word of French; indeed, she describes
her as 'a person of the old school, a stout woman, hardly under seventy,
but very active, although she had a cork leg. . . . She was only fit for
giving out clothes for the wash, and mending them, making tea, ordering
dinner, and in fact doing the work of a housekeeper.'
But in Mrs. Sherwood's time she had a capable assistant in Madame St.
Quentin, an Englishwoman, married to the son of a nobleman in Alsace,
who in troubled times had been glad to accept the position of French
teacher at Reading Grammar School under Dr. Valpy. Mrs. Sherwood says
that the St. Quentins so entirely raised the credit of the seminary that
when she went there it contained above sixty pupils. The history of the
school did not end with Reading, for the St. Quentins afterwards
removed to 22 Hans Place, where they had under their charge Mary Russell
Mitford. Still later, after the fall of Napoleon, the St. Quentins moved
to Paris, together with Miss Rowden, who had long been the mainstay of
the school. It was while the school was here that it received Fanny
Kemble among its pupils.[20]
Mrs. Sherwood tells us that the school-house at Reading, 'or rather the
abbey itself, was exceedingly interesting, . . . the ancient building . . .
consisted of a gateway with rooms above, and on each side of it a vast
staircase, of which the balustrades had originally been gilt. . . . The
best part of the house was encompassed by a beautiful, old-fashioned
garden, where the young ladies were allowed to wander under tall trees
in hot summer evenings.'
Discipline was not severe, for the same lady informs us: 'The liberty
which the first class had was so great that if we attended our tutor in
his study for an hour or two every morning . . . no human being ever took
the trouble to inquire where else we spent the rest of the day between
our meals. Thus, whether we gossiped in one turret or another, whether
we lounged about the garden, or out of the window above the gateway, no
one so much as said "Where have you been, mademoiselle?"'
After reading this we are no longer surprised to be told that Cassandra
and Jane, together with their cousin, Jane Cooper, were allowed to
accept an invitation to dine at an inn with their respective brothers,
Edward Austen and Edward Cooper, and some of their young friends.
School life does not appear to have left any very deep impression on
Jane Austen.[21] Probably she went at too youthful an age, and her stay
was too short. At any rate, none of the heroines of her novels, except
Anne Elliot,[22] are sent to school, though it is likely enough, as
several writers have pointed out, that her Reading experiences suggested
Mrs. Goddard's school in _Emma_.
Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a school--not of
a seminary, or an establishment, or anything which
professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense,
to combine liberal acquirements with elegant
morality upon new principles and new systems--and
where young ladies for enormous pay might be
screwed out of health and into vanity, but a real,
honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a
reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold
at a reasonable price, and where girls might be
sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves
into a little education, without any danger of
coming back prodigies. Mrs. Goddard's school was
in high repute. . . . She had an ample house and
garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome
food, let them run about a great deal in the
summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains
with her own hands. It was no wonder that a train
of twenty young couples now walked after her to
church. She was a plain, motherly kind of woman.
Jane herself finished her schooling at the early age of nine. The rest
of her education was completed at home. Probably her father taught her
in his leisure hours, and James, when he was at home, gave her many
useful hints. Father, mother, and eldest brother were all fully capable
of helping her, and perhaps even Cassandra did her share. But for the
most part her culture must have been self-culture, such as she herself
imagined in the case of Elizabeth Bennet. Later on, the French of
Reading Abbey school was corrected and fortified by the lessons of her
cousin Eliza. On the whole, she grew up with a good stock of such
accomplishments as might be expected of a girl bred in one of the more
intellectual of the clerical houses of that day. She read French easily,
and knew a little of Italian; and she was well read in the English
literature of the eighteenth century. As a child, she had strong
political opinions, especially on the affairs of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. She was a vehement defender of Charles I and his
grandmother, Mary, and did not disdain to make annotations in this sense
(which still exist) on the margin of her Goldsmith's _History_. As she
grew up, the party politics of the day seem to have occupied very little
of her attention, but she probably shared the feeling of moderate
Toryism which prevailed in her family. Politics in their larger
aspect--revolution and war--were of course very real at that date to
every patriotic citizen, and came home with especial force to the
Austens, whose cousin's husband perished by the guillotine,[23] and
whose brothers were constantly fighting on the sea. In her last
published sentence at the end of _Persuasion_ the author tells us how
her Anne Elliot 'gloried' in being the wife of a sailor; and no doubt
she had a similar feeling with regard to her two naval brothers. But
there was then no daily authentic intelligence of events as they
occurred. Newspapers were a luxury of the rich in those days, and it
need excite no surprise to find that the events are very seldom
mentioned in Jane's surviving letters.[24]
We can be in no doubt as to her fervent, and rather exclusive, love for
her own country. Writing to an old friend, within a few months of her
own death, she says: 'I hope your letters from abroad are satisfactory.
They would not be satisfactory to _me_, I confess, unless they breathed
a strong spirit of regret for not being in England.'
Of her favourite authors and favourite pursuits, we will speak later.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Charles Austen failed to do so in January 1799. See p. 124.
[14] The description of Steventon is taken, almost entirely, from the
_Memoir_, pp. 18-22.
[15] This was written nearly half a century ago, before the revival of
mixed gardens.
[16] Her daughters seem to have looked upon this publicity of useful
needlework with some suspicion. See letter from Lyme, September 14, 1804
(p. 179).
[17] These letters, hitherto unpublished, are inserted by the kind
permission of Mr. J. G. Nicholson of Castlefield House, Sturton by
Scawby, Lincolnshire.
[18] Son of Mr. and Mrs. Walter.
[19] _Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood_, edited by F. J. Harvey Darton,
p. 124.
[20] _Records of a Girlhood_, vol. i. p. 99. By Frances Ann Kemble.
London, 1878.
[21] There are, we think, but two references to school in her surviving
correspondence--namely, in a letter to Cassandra, dated September 1,
1796, where she remarks of her sister's letter: 'I could die of laughter
at it, as they used to say at school'; and in another, dated May 20,
1813, where she describes a room at a school as being 'totally
unschool-like.'
[22] In the same novel, _Persuasion_, Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove have
brought back 'the usual stock of accomplishments' from a school at
Exeter.
[23] See next chapter.
[24] It was no uncommon occurrence for the richer folk to hand on their
newspaper to their neighbours. Thus we find the Austens, while at
Steventon, apparently getting theirs from Mr. Holder at Ashe (p. 148);
and, later, getting Mr. Pinckard's paper at Lyme (p. 180). Much in the
same way Sir John Middleton in _Sense and Sensibility_ would not be
denied the satisfaction of sending the Dashwoods his newspaper every
day.
CHAPTER III
WARREN HASTINGS AND THE HANCOCKS
1752-1794
The title of this chapter may seem at first sight to remove it far from
the life of Jane Austen; but Mrs. Hancock (who had been Philadelphia
Austen) was her aunt, and Eliza Hancock not only a cousin but also a
close friend; and both were always welcome visitors at Steventon. The
varying fortunes of these ladies would therefore be an object of
constant thought and discussion at the Rectory, and Jane had an early
opportunity of becoming interested in the affairs both of India and of
France.
How the acquaintance of the family with Warren Hastings began, we cannot
exactly say; but it certainly lasted long, and resulted on their side in
an admiration for his genius and his kindness, and a readiness to defend
him when he was attacked.
In one of Jane's early unpublished sketches occurs the following
passage:--
The eldest daughter had been obliged to accept the
offer of one of her cousins to equip her for the
East Indies, and tho' infinitely against her
inclinations, had been necessitated to embrace the
only possibility that was offered to her of a
maintenance; yet it was one so opposite to all her
ideas of propriety, so contrary to her wishes, so
repugnant to her feelings, that she would almost
have preferred servitude to it, had choice been
allowed her. Her personal attractions had gained
her a husband as soon as she had arrived at
Bengal, and she had now been married nearly a
twelvemonth--splendidly, yet unhappily married.
United to a man of double her own age, whose
disposition was not amiable, and whose manners
were unpleasing, though his character was
respectable.
When Jane wrote this she may have been thinking of her father's sister,
Philadelphia, whose fate is described not very incorrectly, though with
a certain amount of exaggeration, in this passage. That Philadelphia
Austen went to seek her fortune in India is certain, and that she did so
reluctantly is extremely likely. She had at an early age been left an
orphan without means or prospects, and the friends who brought her up
may have settled the matter for her. Who those friends were, we do not
know; but from the intimate terms on which she continued through
life--not only with her brother, George Austen, but also, in a less
degree, with her half-brother, William Walter--it is probable that she
had spent much of her youth with her mother's family.
Her brother George, however, as a young man, was poor, and had no home
to offer her; but the banishment which threatened entirely to separate
the brother and sister proved in the end to have a contrary effect.
Philadelphia did in time come back to England, as a wife and as the
mother of one daughter, and her husband's subsequent return to India
caused her to depend much for companionship upon her English relations.
At Steventon little Betsy would find playfellows, somewhat younger than
herself, in the elder Austen children, while her mother was discussing
the last news from India with the heads of the family.
Our first definite information about Philadelphia is, that in November
1751 she petitioned the Court of East India Directors for leave to go to
friends at Fort St. David by the _Bombay Castle_; but who these friends
were, or what induced her to take so adventurous a journey in search of
them, we cannot say. Her sureties were also sureties for a certain Mary
Elliott, so they may have been friends intending to travel together.
But, according to Sydney Grier's conjecture, Mary Elliott did not, after
all, sail in the _Bombay Castle_, but remained behind to marry a certain
Captain Buchanan, sailing with him to India the following year. Captain
Buchanan lost his life in the Black Hole, and his widow (whether she was
Mary Elliott or not) married Warren Hastings. By her second husband she
had two children, a son, George, born about 1758, and a daughter born
about 1759 who lived only three weeks. The short history of the boy we
have already told. Mrs. Hastings died on July 11, 1759, at
Cossinbazar.[25]
Philadelphia reached Madras on August 4, 1752. It is probable that in
those days no girl was long in India without receiving offers of
marriage. In fact, Dr. Hancock writing twenty years later, to deprecate
his daughter's coming out to India, says to Philadelphia 'You know very
well that no girl, tho' but fourteen years old, can arrive in India
without attracting the notice of every coxcomb in the place; you
yourself know how impossible it is for a young girl to avoid being
attached to a young handsome man whose address is agreeable to her.' If
there _was_ any handsome young man in Philadelphia's case, it was
probably not Mr. Hancock, who must have been forty or more when he
married her at Cuddalore on February 22, 1753. The name of Tysoe Saul
Hancock appears in the list of European inhabitants at Fort St. David
for 1753, as surgeon, at L36 per annum; and at Fort St. David he and
Philadelphia remained for three years after their marriage. Where the
Hancocks were during the troublous times which began in 1757 is not
known; but by the beginning of 1762 they were certainly in Calcutta, for
their daughter Elizabeth--better known as Betsy--was born there in
December 1761. Warren Hastings, at this time resident at Murshidabad,
was godfather to Elizabeth, who received the name he had intended to
give to his own infant daughter. The origin of the close intimacy that
existed between the Hancocks and Warren Hastings is uncertain; but if
Mary Elliott really became the wife of the latter, the friendship of the
two women may perhaps explain the great obligation under which Hastings
describes himself as being to Philadelphia.
The news of the death of his little son was the first thing Hastings
heard on landing in England in 1765, and we are told it left a shadow on
his face for years. He seems always to have been especially fond of
children, and his intimate friends knew they could give no greater
pleasure than by informing him of the welfare of his favourites, or by
sending messages to them. Thus Marriott, writing to Hastings from India
on August 15, 1765, sends his kisses and salaam to 'little ("_great_" I
believe I should say) Betsy Hancock,' and a 'good hearty shake by the
hand to George; I suppose if I were to go to kiss him he would give me
a box on the ears.--Write me particularly how these little ones go.'
It seems likely that the Hancocks sailed with Warren Hastings for
England in the _Medway_ in 1764-5; but, whenever they went, we learn
from Hancock's letters that the journey home cost them the large sum of
L1500. He (Hancock) no doubt thought that he had amassed a sufficient
fortune--perhaps from trading, or from private practice, for it can
hardly have been from his official income--in India to enable him to end
his days comfortably at home. But either his Indian investments turned
out badly, or he discovered that living in good style in England cost
much more than he had anticipated; and after three years he found
himself under the disagreeable necessity of a second residence in
Bengal, in order to secure a fresh provision for his wife and daughter.
So low, indeed, were his finances at the time, that he was forced to
borrow money from Hastings to pay for his passage out. He reached
Calcutta in 1769, but did not prosper on this second visit. His health
was bad, his trading ventures turned out amiss, and there were perpetual
difficulties about remitting money home to Philadelphia. Hastings
evidently foresaw how matters would end, and with his wonted generosity
gave a sum amounting at first to L5000, and increased later to L10,000,
in trust for Hancock and his wife during their lives, and, on the death
of the survivor, to Betsy.
Mr. Hancock himself died in November 1775, 'universally beloved and
deeply regretted' (in the words of a young man whom he had befriended),
'the patron of the widow and the fatherless.'[26] He seems indeed to
have been a man of affectionate and anxious disposition, strongly
attached to his wife and daughter; but the last part of his life was
passed away from them amid difficulties and disappointments, and his
spirits were hardly high enough to enable him to bear up against unequal
fortune. He alludes in his letters, with expressions of regard, to his
brother-in-law, George Austen; but characteristically deplores his
growing family, thinking that he will not be able to put them out in the
world--a difficulty which did not eventually prove to be insuperable.
When the news of his death reached England--which would be in about six
months' time--George Austen and his wife were, fortunately, present to
comfort Philadelphia under the sad tidings. She and Betsy had now been
living in England for ten years, and had seen, no doubt, much of the
Steventon Austens. Warren Hastings's loyal attachment to the widow and
daughter of his friend remained unchanged, and they lived on terms of
intimacy with his brother-in-law Woodman and his family. As long as
Hancock lived he wrote constantly to wife and child, and gave
advice--occasionally, perhaps, of a rather embarrassing kind--about the
education of the latter. He discouraged, however, an idea of his wife's
that she should bring Betsy out to India at the age of twelve. At last
Mrs. Hancock, who, though a really good woman, was over-indulgent to her
daughter, was able to fulfil the chief desire of her own heart, and to
take her abroad to finish her studies, and later to seek an entry into
the great world in Paris. Her husband's affairs had been left in much
confusion, but Hastings's generous gift of L10,000 put them above want.
Betsy, or rather 'Eliza' ('for what young woman of common gentility,'
as we read in _Northanger Abbey_, 'will reach the age of sixteen without
altering her name as far as she can?'), was just grown up when this
great move was made. In years to come, her connexion with her Steventon
cousins was destined to be a close one; at the present time she was a
very pretty, lively girl, fond of amusements, and perhaps estimating her
own importance a little too highly. But she had been carefully educated,
and was capable of disinterested attachments. She seems to have had a
special love for her uncle, George Austen, and one of her earliest
letters from Paris, written May 16, 1780, announces that she is sending
to him her picture in miniature, adding 'It is reckoned like what I am
at present. The dress is quite the present fashion of what I usually
wear.' This miniature is still in existence, and represents a charming,
fresh young girl, in a low white dress edged with light blue ribbon, the
hair turned up and powdered, with a ribbon of the same colour passed
through it. Our knowledge of her character at this time is principally
derived from a series of letters written by her to her cousin, Phila
Walter--letters singularly frank and gossipy, and of especial interest
to us from the sidelights they throw on the family circle at Steventon.
There are also interesting letters from Phila to her own family.
Such a girl as Eliza was not likely to pass unnoticed in any society;
and in August 1781 Mr. Woodman writes to tell Warren Hastings that she
is on the point of marriage with a French officer, and that 'Mr. Austen
is much concerned at the connexion, which he says is giving up all their
friends, their country, and he fears their religion.'[27] The intended
husband was Jean Capotte, Comte de Feuillide,[28] aged thirty, an
officer in the Queen's Regiment of Dragoons, and owner of an estate
called Le Marais, near Gaboret, in Guyenne. The marriage took place in
the same year, and in the following March, Eliza, now Comtesse de
Feuillide, writes Phila a long letter praising the Comte and his
devotion to herself.
The man to whom I have given my hand is everyways
amiable both in mind and person. It is too little
to say he loves me, since he literally adores me;
entirely devoted to me, and making my inclinations
the guide of all his actions, the whole study of
his life seems to be to contribute to the
happiness of mine. My situation is everyways
agreeable, certain of never being separated from
my dear Mama, whose presence enhances every other
blessing I enjoy, equally sure of my husband's
affection, mistress of an easy fortune with the
prospect of a very ample one, add to these the
advantages of rank and title, and a numerous and
brilliant acquaintance amongst whom I can flatter
myself I have some sincere friends, and you will
unite with me in saying I have reason to be
thankful to Providence for the lot fallen to my
share; the only thing which can make me uneasy is
the distance I am from my relations and country,
but this is what I trust I shall not always have
to complain of, as the Comte has the greatest
desire to see England, and even to make it his
residence a part of the year. We shall certainly
make you a visit as soon as possible after the
peace takes place.
In the same letter she mentions how gay the season has been, on account
of the birth of the Dauphin, and of the fetes which accompanied that
event. Neither she nor her 'numerous and brilliant acquaintance' had
any prevision of the terrible days that awaited all their order, nor any
knowledge of the existence of the irresistible forces which were soon to
overwhelm them, and to put a tragical end to every hope cherished by the
bride, except that of rejoining her English friends. For the present,
she led a life of pleasure and gaiety; but that it did not make her
forgetful of Steventon is shown by another letter to Phila, dated May 7,
1784:--
I experienced much pleasure from the account you
gave me of my Uncle Geo: Austen's family; each of
my cousins seems to be everything their parents
could wish them; such intelligence would have
given me the completest satisfaction had it not
been accompanied by the melancholy news of the
death of the valuable Mrs. Cooper. I sincerely
lament her loss and sympathize with the grief it
must have occasioned. Both Mama and myself were
very apprehensive of the influence of this event
on my aunt's health, but fortunately the last
accounts from Steventon assure us that the whole
family continue well.
On January 19, 1786, she again writes on the subject of a visit to
England, about which she hesitates, partly because of the state of her
health, and partly because she was expecting a long visit from her
cousin, James Austen (eldest son of George Austen)--a young man who,
having completed his undergraduate residence at Oxford, was spending
some months in France.
To England, however, she came, hoping to see much of the Austen family.
'I mean,' she writes, 'to spend a very few days in London, and, if my
health allows me, immediately to pay a visit to Steventon, because my
uncle informs us that Midsummer and Christmas are the only seasons when
his mansion is sufficiently at liberty to admit of his receiving his
friends.' The rectory was certainly too small a 'mansion' to contain the
Comtesse and her mother, in addition to its own large family party and
various pupils; so it is to be hoped that Eliza carried out her project
in June, before she was otherwise engaged. She settled for a time in
London, at 3 Orchard Street, and there it must be supposed her one
child--a little boy--was born in the autumn, to be named Hastings after
her own godfather. The Comte, who was himself detained by business in
France, had, for some unexplained reason, desired that their child might
be born in England. Whether she went again to Steventon at Christmas is
uncertain, for her next letter is dated April 9, 1787. Eliza was then in
town and expecting a visit from her cousin, Henry Austen--by this time a
youth of sixteen about to go into residence at Oxford. She had been
indulging in such gaieties as London had to offer her.
As to me, I have been for some time past the
greatest rake imaginable, and really wonder how
such a meagre creature as I am can support so much
fatigue, of which the history of one day will give
you some idea, for I only stood from two to four
in the drawing-room and of course loaded with a
great hoop of no inconsiderable weight, went to
the Duchess of Cumberland's in the evening and
from thence to Almack's, where I staid till five
in the morning: all this I did not many days ago,
and am yet alive to tell you of it. I believe
tho', I should not be able to support London
hours, and all the racketing of a London life for
a year together. You are very good in your
enquiries after my little boy who is in perfect
health, but has got no teeth yet, which somewhat
mortifies his two Mamas.
Eliza's domestic cares and her gaieties must still have left her some
time to think with anxiety and apprehension of the impeachment of her
godfather and benefactor, Hastings. We have a glimpse of this in a
letter of Phila Walter, who was staying with her aunt and cousin in
Orchard Street, in April 1788. They went to the trial one day 'and sat
from ten till four, completely tired; but I had the satisfaction of
hearing all the celebrated orators--Sheridan, Burke, and Fox. The first
was so low we could not hear him, the second so hot and hasty we could
not understand, the third was highly superior to either, as we could
distinguish every word, but not to our satisfaction, as he is so much
against Mr. Hastings whom we all wish so well.'
In August 1788, Eliza writes:--
What has contributed to hurry me and take up my
time is my having been obliged to pay some visits
out of town. We spent a little time at Beaumont
Lodge,[29] and I am but just returned from an
excursion into Berkshire, during which we made
some little stay at Oxford. My cousin[30] met us
there, and as well as his brother was so good as
to take the trouble of shewing us the lions. We
visited several of the Colleges, the Museum, etc.,
and were very elegantly entertained by our gallant
relations at St. John's, where I was mightily
taken with the garden and longed to be a _Fellow_
that I might walk in it every day; besides I was
delighted with the black gown and thought the
square cap mighty becoming. I do not think you
would know Henry with his hair powdered in a very
_tonish_ style, besides he is at present taller
than his father.
You mention the troubles in France, but you will
easily imagine from what I have said concerning my
approaching journey, that things are in a quieter
state than they were some months ago. Had they
continued as they were it is most probable M. de
F. would have been called out, and it would have
been a very unpleasant kind of duty because he
must have borne arms against his own countrymen.
We hear but little of Eliza during the next two or three years, which
she seems to have spent partly in France, partly in England. She must
have been much engrossed by the stirring events in Paris, the result of
which was eventually to prove fatal to her husband.
In January 1791 she is at Margate for the benefit of her boy, and,
though the place is very empty, occupies herself with reading, music,
drawing, &c. She adds:--
M. de F. had given me hopes of his return to
England this winter, but the turn which the
affairs of France have taken will not allow him to
quit the Continent at this juncture. I know not
whether I have already mentioned it to you, but my
_spouse_, who is a strong _Aristocrate_ or
Royalist in his heart, has joined this latter
party who have taken refuge in Piedmont, and is
now at Turin where the French Princes of the Blood
are assembled and watching some favourable
opportunity to reinstate themselves in the country
they have quitted. I am no politician, but think
they will not easily accomplish their purpose;
time alone can decide this matter, and in the
interim you will easily imagine I cannot be wholly
unconcerned about events which must inevitably in
some degree influence my future destiny.
Eliza had another terrible anxiety in June 1791, in the failure of her
mother's health. In September she is hoping for a visit from her
husband, when, if her mother's health allows, they will all go to
Bath,--
a journey from which I promise myself much
pleasure, as I have a notion it is a place quite
after my own heart; however, the accomplishment of
this plan is very uncertain, as from the present
appearance of things, France will probably be
engaged in a war which will not admit of an
officer's (whose services will certainly be
required) quitting his country at such a
period. . . . My mother has this very morning
received a letter from Steventon, where they all
enjoy perfect health. The youngest boy, Charles,
is gone to the Naval Academy at Portsmouth. As to
the young ladies, I hear they are perfect
Beauties, and of course gain hearts by dozens.
In November she says:--
Edward A. I believe will . . . in another month or
two take unto himself a spouse. He shewed me the
lady's picture, which is that of a very pretty
woman; as to Cassandra, it is very probable, as
you observe, that some son of Neptune may have
obtained her approbation as she probably
experienced much homage from these gallant
gentlemen during her acquatic excursions. I hear
her sister and herself are two of the prettiest
girls in England.
Mrs. Hancock died in the winter of 1791-2, and our next letter from
Eliza is not till June 7, 1792. In the interval she had been--together
with M. de Feuillide, who had perhaps come over to attend the death-bed
of Philadelphia--to Bath, from which place she had derived little
amusement owing to the state of her spirits. Returning to London, M. de
Feuillide had hoped to stay there some time;--
but he soon received accounts from France which
informed him that, having already exceeded his
leave of absence, if he still continued in England
he would be considered as one of the Emigrants,
and consequently his whole property forfeited to
the nation. Such advices were not to be neglected,
and M. de F. was obliged to depart for Paris, but
not, however, without giving me hopes of his
return in some months, that is to say, when the
state of affairs would let him, for at present it
is a very difficult business, for a military man
especially, to obtain leave to absent himself.
On September 26 she writes:--
I can readily believe that the share of
sensibility I know you to be possessed of would
not suffer you to learn the tragical events of
which France has of late been the theatre, without
being much affected. My private letters confirm
the intelligence afforded by the public prints,
and assure me that nothing we there read is
exaggerated. M. de F. is at present in Paris. He
had determined on coming to England, but finds it
impossible to get away.
The crisis of her husband's fate was not far distant. How the tragedy
was led up to by the events of 1793, we do not know; but in February
1794 he was arrested on the charge of suborning witnesses in favour of
the Marquise de Marboeuf. The Marquise had been accused of conspiring
against the Republic in 1793;[31] one of the chief counts against her
being that she had laid down certain arable land on her estate at
Champs, near Meaux, in lucerne, sainfoin, and clover, with the object of
producing a famine. The Marquise, by way of defence, printed a memorial
of her case, stating, among other things, that she had not done what she
was accused of doing, and further, that if she had, she had a perfect
right to do what she liked with her own property. But it was evident
that things were likely to go hard with the Marquise at her trial. The
Comte de Feuillide then came upon the scene, and attempted to bribe
Morel, one of the Secretaries of the Committee of Safety, to suppress
incriminating documents, and even to bear witness in her favour. Morel
drew the Count on, and then betrayed him. The Marquise, her agent and
the Count were all condemned to death, and the Count suffered the
penalty on February 22, 1794.[32]
We cannot tell where Eliza was through this trying time. The tradition
in the family is that she escaped through dangers and difficulties to
England and found a refuge at Steventon; but we have no positive
information of her having returned to France at all. It is quite
possible that she was at Steventon, and if so, the horror-struck party
must have felt as though they were brought very near to the guillotine.
It was an event to make a lasting impression on a quick-witted and
emotional girl of eighteen, and Eliza remained so closely linked with
the family that the tragedy probably haunted Jane's memory for a long
time to come.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] _The Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife._ Introduced and
annotated by Sydney C. Grier, p. 456 _et seq._ For articles by the same
author on the Hancock family, see 'A Friend of Warren Hastings' in
_Blackwood's Magazine_, April 1904, and 'A God-daughter of Warren
Hastings' in _Temple Bar_, May 1905.
[26] _Genuine Memoirs of Asiaticus_, by Philip Dormer Stanhope, London,
1784.
[27] This did not prove to be the case.
[28] This, and not 'de Feuillade,' is the correct spelling.
[29] Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, where Warren Hastings was then living.
[30] Henry Austen, and his elder brother, James.
[31] In the _Memoir_ this action is by mistake attributed to the Count.
[32] _National Archives_, Paris (de Feuillide), W. 328, dossier 541, and
T. 738; (Marboeuf), W. 320, dossier 481.
CHAPTER IV
FAMILY LIFE
1779-1792
The eldest brother of the family, James, was nearly eleven years older
than Jane, and had taken his degree at Oxford before she left school. He
had matriculated at St. John's (where he obtained a 'founder's kin'
Scholarship and, subsequently, a Fellowship) in 1779, at the early age
of fourteen; his departure from home having been perhaps hastened in
order to make room for the three or four pupils who were sharing his
brothers' studies at that time. His was a scholarly type of mind; he was
well read in English literature, had a correct taste, and wrote readily
and happily, both in prose and verse. His son, the author of the
_Memoir_, believes that he had a large share in directing the reading,
and forming the taste, of his sister Jane. James was evidently in
sympathy with Cowper's return to nature from the more artificial and
mechanical style of Pope's imitators, and so was she; in _Sense and
Sensibility_, Marianne, after her first conversation with Willoughby,
had happily assured herself of his admiring Pope 'no more than is
proper.' In 1786 we hear of James being in France; his cousin Eliza was
hoping for a visit of some months from him; but in the next year he had
returned, and he must have soon gone into residence at Oxford as a
young Fellow of his College; for there, in 1789, he became the
originator and chief author of a periodical paper called _The Loiterer_,
modelled on _The Spectator_ and its successors. It existed for more than
a twelvemonth, and in the last number the whole was offered to the world
as a 'rough, but not entirely inaccurate Sketch of the Character, the
Manners, and the Amusements of Oxford, at the close of the eighteenth
century.' In after life, we are told, he used to speak very slightingly
of this early work, 'which he had the better right to do, as, whatever
may have been the degree of their merits, the best papers had certainly
been written by himself.'
Edward Austen's disposition and tastes were as different from James's as
his lot in life proved to be. Edward, as his mother says, 'made no
pretensions' to literary taste and scholarship; but he was an excellent
man of business, kind-hearted and affectionate; and he possessed also a
spirit of fun and liveliness, which made him--as time went
on--especially delightful to all young people. His history was more like
fiction than reality. Most children have at some time or other indulged
in day-dreams, in which they succeed to unexpected estates and
consequent power; and it all happened to Edward. Mr. Thomas Knight of
Godmersham Park in Kent, and Chawton House in Hampshire, had married a
second cousin of George Austen, and had placed him in his Rectory at
Steventon. His son, another Thomas Knight, and his charming wife,
Catherine Knatchbull, took a fancy to young Edward, had him often to
their house, and eventually adopted him. The story remains in the family
of Mr. and Mrs. Knight's asking for the company of young Edward during
his holidays, of his father's hesitating in the interests of the Latin
Grammar, and of his mother's clinching the matter by saying 'I think, my
dear, you had better oblige your cousins and let the child go.' There
was no issue of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Knight, and by degrees they
made up their minds to adopt Edward Austen as their heir. This
resolution was not only a mark of their regard for Edward but also a
compliment to the Austen family in general, whose early promise their
cousins had probably observed; the relationship not being near enough to
constitute any claim. But Mr. Knight was most serious in his intentions,
for in his will he left the estates in remainder to Edward's brothers in
succession in case of the failure of his issue, and Mrs. Knight always
showed the kindest interest in all the family. Edward was now more and
more at Godmersham and less and less at home. Under the Knights'
auspices, he was sent, not to the University, but on a 'grand tour,'
which included Dresden and Rome. He was probably away on this tour at
the date which we have now reached.
Jane's favourite brother, Henry, was nearly four years younger than
Edward, and was no doubt still profiting by his father's instructions.
By 1789 he was not only at Oxford but was contributing to _The Loiterer_
a paper on the sentimental school of Rousseau, and considering 'how far
the indulgence of the above-named sentiments affects the immediate
happiness or misery of human life.' Henry, whose course in life was
marked by sharper curves than that of any of his brothers, was no doubt
a very attractive personality. His niece, Mrs. Lefroy, says of him:--
He was the handsomest of his family and, in the
opinion of his own father, also the most talented.
There were others who formed a different estimate,
and considered his abilities greater in show than
in reality; but for the most part he was greatly
admired. Brilliant in conversation he was, and,
like his father, blessed with a hopefulness of
temper which in adapting itself to all
circumstances, even the most adverse, seemed to
create a perpetual sunshine. The race, however, is
not all to the swift, it never has been, and,
though so highly gifted by nature, my uncle was
not prosperous in life.
There can be no doubt that by his bright and lovable nature he
contributed greatly to the happiness of his sister Jane. She tells us
that he could not help being amusing, and she was so good a judge of
that quality that we accept her opinion of Henry's humour without demur;
but he became so grandiloquent when wishing to be serious that he
certainly must have wanted that last and rarest gift of a humorist--the
art of laughing at himself.
Very different again was the self-contained and steadfast Francis--the
future Admiral of the Fleet; who was born in April 1774, and divided in
age from Henry by their sister Cassandra. He must have spent some time
at home with his sisters, after their return from school, before he
entered the Royal Naval Academy, established in 1775 at Portsmouth under
the supreme direction of the Lords of the Admiralty. Francis joined it
when he was just twelve, and, 'having attracted the particular notice of
the Lords of the Admiralty by the closeness of his application, and been
in consequence marked out for early promotion,'[33] embarked two and a
half years later as a volunteer on board the frigate _Perseverance_
(captain, Isaac Smith), bound to the East Indies. His father on this
occasion wrote him a long letter--of which a great part is given in
_Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers_.[34] Nothing in this wise and kind
letter is more remarkable than the courtesy and delicacy with which the
father addresses his advice to the son, who was but a boy, but whom he
treats as an officer, and as a young man of whom he already cherished
the highest hopes, consequent upon his previous good conduct. He speaks
on many topics, religious duties being given the first place among them.
He rejoices in the high character Francis had acquired in the academy
and assures him that 'your good mother, brothers, sisters and myself
will all exult in your reputation and rejoice in your happiness.' The
letter concludes thus: 'I have nothing more to add but my blessing and
best prayers for your health and prosperity, and to beg you would never
forget you have not upon earth a more disinterested and warm friend than
your truly affectionate father, Geo. Austen.' We need not be surprised
to learn that this letter was found among the Admiral's private papers
when he died at the age of ninety-one.
The remaining brother, Charles, his sisters' 'own particular little
brother,' born in 1779, must have been still in the nursery when his
sisters left school.
These brothers meant a great deal to Jane[35]; 'but dearest of all to
her heart was her sister Cassandra, about three years her senior. Their
sisterly affection for each other could scarcely be exceeded. Perhaps it
began on Jane's side with the feeling of deference natural to a loving
child towards a kind elder sister. Something of this feeling always
remained; and even in the maturity of her powers, and in the enjoyment
of increasing success, she would still speak of Cassandra as of one
wiser and better than herself.' 'Their attachment was never interrupted
or weakened; they lived in the same home, and shared the same bedroom,
till separated by death. They were not exactly alike. Cassandra's was
the colder and calmer disposition; she was always prudent and
well-judging, but with less outward demonstration of feeling and less
sunniness of temper than Jane possessed. It was remarked in the family
that "Cassandra had the _merit_ of having her temper always under
command, but that Jane had the _happiness_ of a temper which never
required to be commanded."'
Such was the family party at Steventon; and 'there was so much that was
agreeable in it that its members may be excused if they were inclined to
live somewhat too exclusively within it.[36] They might see in each
other much to love and esteem, and something to admire. The family talk
had abundance of spirit and vivacity, and was never troubled by
disagreements even in little matters, for it was not their habit to
dispute or argue with each other; above all, there was strong family
affection and firm union, never to be broken but by death. It cannot be
doubted that all this had its influence with the author in the
construction of her stories,' in which family life often plays a large
part.
The party which we have described was for many years 'unbroken[37] by
death and seldom visited by sorrow. Their situation had some peculiar
advantages beyond those of ordinary rectories. Steventon was a family
living. Mr. Knight, the patron, was also proprietor of nearly the whole
parish. He never resided there, and, consequently, the Rector and his
children came to be regarded in the neighbourhood as representatives of
the family. They shared with the principal tenant the command of an
excellent manor, and enjoyed, in this reflected way, some of the
consideration usually awarded to landed proprietors. They were not rich,
but, aided by Mr. Austen's power of teaching, they had enough to afford
a good education to their sons and daughters, to mix in the best society
of the neighbourhood, and to exercise a liberal hospitality to their own
relations and friends.' 'A carriage and pair of horses were kept'; but
this could be done more cheaply in the eighteenth century than in the
nineteenth. 'There were then no assessed taxes; the carriage, once
bought, entailed little further expense; and the horses, probably, like
Mr. Bennet's (in _Pride and Prejudice_), were often employed on farm
work. Moreover, it should be remembered that a pair of horses in those
days were almost a necessity, if ladies were to move about at all; for
neither the condition of the roads nor the style of carriage-building
admitted of any comfortable vehicle being drawn by a single horse';
indeed, the object of the builders seems to have been 'to combine the
greatest possible weight with the least possible amount of
accommodation.'[38]
Jane Austen lost no time in entering on the career of authorship. She
wrote because she must, and with very little prevision of the path which
her genius was afterwards to mark out for her. She was urged onward 'by
the first stirrings of talent within her and the absorbing interest of
early composition.
'It is impossible to say at how early an age she began. There are
copy-books extant containing tales, some of which must have been
composed while she was a young girl, as they had amounted to a
considerable number by the time she was sixteen. Her earliest stories
are of a slight and flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be
nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually
preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It
would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days
had not escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most
characteristic feature in those early productions is that, however
puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple English,
quite free from the over-ornamented style which might be expected from
so young a writer.'[39] The following is a specimen:--
THE MYSTERY.
AN UNFINISHED COMEDY.
* * * * *
DEDICATION.
TO THE REV. GEORGE AUSTEN.
SIR,--I humbly solicit your patronage to the
following Comedy, which, though an unfinished one,
is, I flatter myself, as complete a _Mystery_ as
any of its kind.
I am, Sir, your most humble Servant,
THE AUTHOR.
THE MYSTERY, A COMEDY.
_DRAMATIS PERSONAE._
_Men._
Col. ELLIOT.
OLD HUMBUG.
YOUNG HUMBUG.
Sir EDWARD SPANGLE
_and_
CORYDON.
_Women._
FANNY ELLIOTT.
MRS. HUMBUG
_and_
DAPHNE.
ACT I.
SCENE I.--_A Garden._
_Enter_ CORYDON.
_Corydon._ But hush: I am interrupted. [_Exit_ CORYDON.
_Enter_ OLD HUMBUG _and his_ SON, _talking._
_Old Hum._ It is for that reason that I wish you to follow my advice.
Are you convinced of its propriety?
_Young Hum._ I am, sir, and will certainly act in the manner you have
pointed out to me.
_Old Hum._ Then let us return to the house. [_Exeunt._