Jane and Dorothy

by Marian Veevers

  Despite glib talk about ‘the Prozac Generation’, depression is very far from being a modern illness9. It was around in Georgian days under such titles as ‘melancholy’, ‘lowness of spirits’ and the ubiquitous ‘nervous diseases’ to which the physician William Buchan devoted a whole chapter in his popular Domestic Medicine or the Family Physician of 1769. A sense of not being in control of one’s own life is often cited by counsellors today as a contributing factor in this illness, and a lack of autonomy may have triggered many of those nervous diseases which were endemic among Georgian ladies.

  Causes of depression are cited on the NHS website as including ‘an upsetting or stressful life event – such as bereavement, divorce, illness, redundancy and job or money worries.’ Jane’s uprooting from her home would certainly have been a stressful life event; and, as we have seen, it may well have raised anxieties about money and her uncertain financial future. In addition, ‘Becoming cut off from your family and friends can increase your risk of depression.’ Jane had been taken away from her established support network. ‘The sisters had never known any other home but Steventon,’ wrote Fanny Caroline, ‘and the leaving it involved in a great measure the loss of their dearest friends and connections.’10

  Among the symptoms of depression listed in this modern analysis are ‘Having no motivation or interest in things’ and ‘not doing well at work’ – both of which are evident in the difficulty Jane found in writing during her Bath years. The description of ‘not getting any enjoyment out of life’ calls to mind the ‘stupid’ parties of which she complained during her early months in the city, and another symptom, ‘feeling irritable and intolerant of others’, was certainly a problem for Jane at this time. Her reluctance to make new friends was turning to peevishness; ‘I cannot anyhow continue to find people agreeable,’ she announced in May 1801.11

  Then there is that flatness, that lack of excitement, in the assembly room as the penultimate ball of the Bath season played out around her. Was depression the root of that? A ‘lack of interest in sex (loss of libido)’ is – according to the NHS site – another symptom of depression. Perhaps that is why the beaus of the Bath ballroom roused no flicker of interest in Jane.

  The question of why Jane Austen never married is frequently raised, and the answer to it must, of course, be complex: her poverty, her character, her high expectations of marital love, the wars with France which were horrifically diminishing the supply of eligible young men (‘ . . . the melancholy part was to see so many dozen young Women standing by without partners . . . ’ wrote Jane of a ball in 180812), her devotion to her career – all these things must have played their part.

  However, another cause may have been that, during these crucial few years which represented her last chance of forming an alliance, these few years when she was fairly well placed to meet a soul-mate, a crushing, debilitating illness, by robbing her of natural sexual feelings, made it impossible for her to desire a man enough to wish to share his bed.

  It was, perhaps, a cruel chance which denied Jane this last opportunity to form the kind of happy, companionate union to which she had made Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood aspire: the kind of union which Dorothy had achieved for a while in the wilds of Westmorland.

  There is evidence that Jane remained attractive to men throughout her twenties. There is the man who found her ‘fair and handsome’ and there would be, in the next few years, two proposals of marriage, both of which she might herself have described as unexceptionable. Mr William Digweed (whose attachment some thought had been the cause of the move from Steventon) seems to have remembered Jane with particular affection all his life. ‘I knew him as an old man,’ recalled Jane’s great-niece, ‘and certainly fancied there was some charm linked with her name’.

  However, after the departure of Tom Lefroy, there is only one report of Jane Austen being attracted to a man, and that is an odd, vague story.

  In 182913 (twelve years after Jane’s death) Cassandra told her niece Caroline of a charming and rather mysterious man that the sisters had met on one of the seaside holidays taken during their Bath years. Caroline believed the meeting might have taken place in Devonshire. ‘He seemed greatly attracted by my Aunt Jane,’ wrote Caroline, and ‘ . . . when they had to part . . . he was urgent to know where they would be next summer, implying or perhaps saying that he should be there also . . .  [T]he impression left on Aunt Cassandra was that he had fallen in love with her sister, and was quite in earnest. Soon after they heard of his death.’ But Cassandra seems to have felt that the unnamed man ‘was worthy of her sister . . . and also . . . that he would have been a successful suitor.’

  The story is as blurred and faded as an old sepia photo, and perhaps already a little distorted by the time Caroline recorded it. Over the years it would change again as different members of the family handled it, with the anonymous lover sometimes being confused with the suitor that Mrs Lefroy had encouraged a few years earlier, and taking the name of Mr Blackall.

  In the hands of great-niece Fanny Caroline, the essential points of the charming lover and the early death remained, but the location was fixed at Teignmouth and the couple apparently ‘parted on the understanding that he was to come to Steventon.’ And when, in 1884, the tale was recorded in Lord Brabourne’s first edition of Jane Austen’s letters the scene had shifted to Sidmouth and the lover now pressed ‘to be allowed to join them later on in their tour’.

  It is, perhaps, significant that Jane’s suitor becomes more ardent with each retelling. In the oldest surviving version of the tale he is content to let a whole year pass before being reunited with the woman with whom he has, apparently, fallen in love – which does not seem very promising. In Fanny Caroline’s Family History he wishes to come to Steventon to visit Jane, which is odd, since she was now living in Bath14, but at least he is not willing to postpone their next meeting for twelve months. Finally, in the published version, he is so eager to pursue the affair that he is determined to follow the Austens on their present holiday.

  It seems as if the members of Jane’s loving and loyal family were making the most of a rather insubstantial story: trying to assert her claim to being worthy of love. Maybe, after more than twenty years, even Cassandra’s version of the story was influenced by a desire to raise her sister to the dignity she had achieved herself of having loved and lost.15 By the tale Jane was saved from the disgrace of never having married because she was never sought but, in case anyone might think she was in danger of succumbing to that ‘peevishness and chagrin’ which Dr Gregory ascribed to disappointed spinsters, Caroline wished her brother – in his memoir – to let his readers know that ‘Aunt Jane never had any attachment that overclouded her happiness, for long. This [the seaside romance] had not gone far enough, to leave misery behind.’16

  Beyond this hint of a lost love, no reason for Jane’s continued celibacy was ever suggested by those who knew her. No friend or member of her family ever suggested that her career (and it is unreasonable to deny that such a dedicated writer had a career) was a justification for remaining single.

  However, Thomas de Quincey claimed to know the cause of Miss Wordsworth’s single state. ‘[S]he had rejected all offers of marriage, out of pure sisterly regard to her brother . . . ’ he said, with obvious approval.17

  The idea of a woman giving up marriage and children to pursue her own vocation as a writer would have seemed unfeminine. As Robert Southey was to tell Charlotte Brontë when she applied to him for advice, ‘literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.’ However, for a woman to sacrifice those personal blessings for the sake of a man’s genius was entirely acceptable.

  Twenty-Two

  Marriage: The Settlement We Should Aim At

  Dorothy never married. Her soul remained absorbed in her brother’s fame and writing for the rest of her life but, by the time the Grasmere Journal opens, she seems to have determined that William should marry. She prom
oted the match with Mary Hutchinson at every opportunity.

  It is clear that William was experiencing strong sexual feelings in 1802, feelings which made him restless and unhappy. Later – like the good husband that he was – he would assure Mary that these were entirely directed towards her. But the reading of the Jonson poem suggests that there was an element of guilt mixed with his impulses, guilt which a Georgian man would be unlikely to feel about longings for a woman he could honourably marry.

  Still single in their early thirties, both William and Dorothy must have been aware of a significant part of their natures unfulfilled, and between 1800 and 1802 there seems to be a growing resolve to find a solution. That the solution they adopted furthered William’s happiness rather more than Dorothy’s was entirely in keeping with the spirit of self-sacrifice which is evident in other areas of her life. William – who could not adequately support the daughter he already had – was now to have a new partner and start a new family, while Dorothy apparently gave up all thoughts of ever enjoying a physical relationship.

  In June 1802, just after William had announced his engagement, Dorothy made clear her own determination to remain single. She wrote then to her brother Richard about her future, in a very revealing letter. In it Dorothy states unequivocally that ‘I shall continue to live with my Brother William’ – thereby relieving Richard of any anxiety he might have felt that she wished to live with him. However, now he was marrying, William would have ‘nothing to spare’ and she must ask her other brothers to help her with money. It seems that Christopher and John had already pledged support, and she was sure that Richard too would contribute. The letter displays the old confidence that ‘while my brothers have a farthing in their pockets I shall not starve’.

  Having explained her needs, Dorothy continued: ‘Observe I am speaking now, of a provision or settlement for life, and it would be absurd at my age (30 years) to talk of any thing else.’ It seems Dorothy had decided, at the age of thirty, that she would never marry.

  In many readers of Jane Austen’s novels, the notion of a woman of thirty being past marriageable age may raise a smile, but little surprise. However, although in Georgian fiction women almost invariably marry in their teens or very early twenties, real life was slightly different. Research shows that through the second half of the eighteenth century the average age at first marriage for women was twenty-five1. If twenty-five was an average, later marriages must have been quite common, and Dorothy’s own experience would certainly not have led her to expect to be ‘on the shelf’ at thirty. William’s intended, Mary Hutchinson, was thirty-two; Aunt Dorothy Cookson was thirty-four when she married; Aunt Threlkeld became a bride for the first time at the age of forty-five.

  With these precedents in her close family, it seems unlikely that it was age alone that had led Dorothy to abandon thoughts of marriage. It is more likely that she was too deeply committed to William, too important to him, to consider another close relationship. And, though he had now made up his mind to marry, there is some evidence that William himself clung to his sister and, as the wedding approached, attempted to bind her to him more firmly than ever.

  It is not possible to know that Dorothy chose – or helped to choose – Mary Hutchinson as a wife for William, but neither is it possible to imagine a wife who could have fitted with less pain and disruption into the established home at Dove Cottage. She and Dorothy were to live together for a little more than fifty years and in all their correspondence there is no real sign of disagreement.

  The Wordsworths had known the Hutchinson sisters since childhood but, when Mary came to stay at Racedown back in 1797, she seems to have come simply as a friend and companion for Dorothy, because William left on a visit to Bristol just after she arrived. She was certainly someone with whom Dorothy felt at ease, as the companionable poem-copying and shirt-sewing of the Racedown visit proved.

  Dorothy and William’s long stay with the Hutchinsons after their return from Germany would have given William an opportunity to get to know Mary better, and she was the Wordsworths’ first visitor at Grasmere, arriving at the end of February 1800 and staying for more than five weeks.

  Then, in May 1800 – on the day the Grasmere Journal opens – William and John set off to visit Mary at Gallow Hill in Yorkshire where she and her brother were now living, leaving Dorothy weeping beside the lake. For the next three weeks – until William returned on 7th June – Dorothy waited anxiously for news, often troubled by ‘my saddest thoughts’ and ‘the deepest melancholy’.

  It is possible that Dorothy began her Grasmere Journal because she wished to record a way of life which she knew could not last. The Alfoxton Journal was begun soon after she discovered that her home there must be given up; perhaps again at Grasmere she wrote as a defence against change and insecurity: as a way of not ‘quarrelling with herself’ over the difficult decisions that were being forced upon her.

  It was after the intense, claustrophobic time in Germany – and the writing of the first Lucy poems – that Mary Hutchinson had begun to be a more important part of William and Dorothy’s lives. Perhaps it was on their return to England that they began to consider admitting a third person into their relationship. Mary was there at Grasmere almost from the start – as if Dorothy was making a trial, finding out what it was like to live with another woman in her ideal home.

  What was there about Mary that made her a suitable wife for a great poet, or a suitable third party at Dove Cottage? Some people believed that Mary’s intellect was ‘not of an active order’. But Wordsworth assured his university-educated friend, Francis Wrangham, that she was someone ‘with whom you would converse with great pleasure.’ She was so calm and unassuming that Thomas Clarkson claimed she could only say ‘God bless you!’ But her taste, wit and liveliness were apparent to those who knew her well. Dorothy’s journal refers to her reading aloud and to her sense of humour. Consistently loyal to those she loved, Mary was quite capable of making barbed comments about those outside the charmed circle of her affection. ‘[H]er countenance belies her if her mind is not made of lard . . . ’ she remarked of one acquaintance2 and the curate of Grasmere was dismissed as having ‘a vulgar Presbyterian look with him.’3

  There was little in her looks to arouse the envy of another woman. She was tall, thin and fair-skinned, had a squint (‘an obliquity of vision’4) and was generally considered plain; or rather she would have been plain had it not been for ‘a sunny benignity – a radiant gracefulness’5 in her air. Like Mary Lloyd, Mary Hutchinson was ‘not either rich or handsome’ and she was no longer young when she married. Observers might have regarded both Marys as having been fortunate to make a match at all. But there was a world of difference in the relationships they established with their new sisters-in-law. There was never any danger of Dorothy being squeezed out of the family home as Jane had been, as the Dashwood sisters are, or – if Mary Wollstonecraft and Amanda Vickery are to be believed – rather a lot of Georgian spinster sisters were.

  ‘Mary Hutchinson’ reported Dorothy, ‘is a most excellent woman – I have known her long, and I know her thoroughly; she has been a dear friend of mine, is deeply attached to William, and is disposed to feel kindly to all his family.’6 It was usual to praise the prospective bride when an engagement was announced, but the deep attachment of the lady should not have been mentioned – at least not without making it clear that her fiancé felt a reciprocal passion. If a woman should not be in love before she was sure of the gentleman’s feelings, it was certainly not polite for her friends to imply a one-sided attachment. But Dorothy says nothing of William’s feelings – only her own and Mary’s.

  Though it is not possible to be certain, I believe that Dorothy was an active force in this courtship. In April 1801 she pressed Mary urgently for another visit: ‘My dearest Mary I look forward with joy to seeing you again, you must come in Autumn or before.’ In November 1801 Mary responded to the warm invitation and during this visit an attachment seems to have begun to d
evelop.

  William’s behaviour – or maybe Dorothy’s hints – raised a suspicion in Molly Fisher, the Wordsworths’ part-time servant who, on 16th November was ‘very witty with Mary all day’ on the subject of love. Perhaps their unchaperoned walks had aroused her wit. During this visit Dorothy seems to have deliberately made time for Mary and William to be alone together. On 18th November, for example ‘Wm and Mary walked to Rydale’, while Dorothy stayed at home.

  Sometimes she lingered behind as on 30th November: ‘We walked round the Lake. Wm and Mary went first over the stepping stones. I remained after them and went into the prospect field above Benson’s to sit . . . ’ On 24th November the three started a walk together but – ‘I was obliged to return for my fur tippet and Spenser it was so cold.’ Perhaps this was a bit of devious plotting on Dorothy’s part, like Emma Woodhouse’s scheme to leave her friend Harriet alone with the eligible Mr Elton!

  Dorothy noticed any signs of happy courtship with approval. On 25th November the couple had been walking alone and ‘came in at nine o’clock . . . chearful blooming and happy.’ On 2nd December, after another tête-à-tête walk, ‘They looked fresh and well when they came in.’ When they all took a walk together on 12th December, Dorothy allowed them to linger behind. ‘I came home first –’ she wrote, ‘they walked too slow for me.’ As Christmas approached Mary took her place quietly in their cosy domesticity: ‘We sate snugly round the fire. I read to them . . . ’

  It was after this visit that Dorothy became gradually more outspoken in her journal about her affection for her brother. Perhaps it was the fear of losing him that made the expressions of love spill out; perhaps she felt safer, more able to let her love show, now that they had agreed on their future. It seems likely that, by the time Mary left them, an ‘understanding’ had been reached.