The Real Jane Austen

by Paula Byrne

  She wanted money and approbation: that is only human, though it is not how the family represented her in the posthumous memoir.

  Every scrap of praise was important to her. ‘Make everybody at Hendon admire Mansfield Park,’ she told Anna.4 She had heard that Sense and Sensibility was ‘much admired at Cheltenham’ and that it had been given to the author Elizabeth Hamilton: ‘It is pleasant to have such a respectable writer named.’5 But plaudits were not enough. She was also writing for cash. She told Fanny that Egerton was havering over a second edition: ‘People are more ready to borrow and praise, than to buy … but tho I like praise as well as anybody, I like what Edward calls Pewter too.’6 She was encouraged that she had made more than £300 from Mansfield Park even though she had always felt that it would not be as popular as Pride and Prejudice. If Egerton was going to mess her around, Henry would be dispatched to find a better publisher.

  Despite her own success, she still made time to encourage the literary endeavours of her nieces and nephews. Caroline, Anna and Edward all fancied themselves as authors, and asked the advice of the expert: their aunt. Her letters to them, regarding the novels they were reading as well as those they were writing, shed valuable light on her own high literary standards: ‘there are a thousand improbabilities in the story’, she complained of Laetitia Hawkins’s Rosanne, when Anna asked her opinion of it.7

  Anna Austen was writing a novel called Which is the Heroine? She sent it to Aunt Jane, who read it aloud to Cassandra and her mother, then conveyed back comments. Anna, in a fit of despondency, later destroyed her novel, along with her aunt’s annotations. The key advice was to keep things ‘natural’ – characters should not be ‘very Good or very Bad’. Aunt Jane was also punctilious about solecisms: ‘There is no such Title as Desborough,’ ‘As Lady H is Cecilia’s superior, it would not be correct to talk of her being introduced.’ A little scene was ‘scratched out’ for being unrealistic: ‘I think it can be so little usual as to appear unnatural in the book.’ But many of her comments (she sent four long letters of detailed analysis and criticism) were supportive: ‘we are all very much amused and like the work as well as ever … St Julien is the delight of one’s Life.’ Cassandra joined in with the task: ‘Your Aunt C. and I both recommend your making a little alteration in the last scene … We think they press him too much – more than sensible Women or well-bred Women would do.’8

  It was in reference to Anna’s novel that Jane Austen made her much quoted observation: ‘You are now collecting your People delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life; – 3 or 4 families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on.’9 This has been taken as a manifesto for Jane Austen’s own oeuvre but it should be remembered in its context. She is referring to Anna’s novel and not her own. It is important to remember, too, that at this time Jane Austen was working on Emma, her only novel set in one location and with a cast confined to ‘3 or 4 families in a Country Village’. In the other novels there are important scenes set in the cities of London, Bath and Portsmouth. Before Emma there had been Mansfield Park, in which the village and neighbouring families play a minimal part. After Emma, she would return to the city of Bath in Persuasion, where she also tried her hand at a seaside setting, a location she then moved centre-stage in Sanditon. The point of her remark was to support young Anna: three or four families in a country village was the right subject matter for the girl because that was what she knew. Jane Austen herself knew much more: the city, naval life, families with plantations in the West Indies or relatives in the East, great houses such as Godmersham and even greater ones such as Stoneleigh, scandal in high places and women eking out a living in service as governesses.

  To Caroline Austen, who also sent her own novel for approval, she noted drily: ‘I wish I could finish Stories as fast as you can.’10 Likewise, her comments regarding her nephew’s novel point to his over-hasty composition in contrast to her own painstaking work. It was here that Austen compared her art to that of the portrait miniaturist. The phrase about her ‘little bit of ivory’ is often quoted, but its context is usually neglected. It comes in a letter to her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, in a passage that begins by referring to the literary skills of Henry Austen:

  Uncle Henry writes very superior Sermons. You and I must try to get hold of one or two, and put them into our Novels; it would be a fine help to a volume; and we could make our Heroine read it aloud on a Sunday Evening, just as well as Isabella Wardour, in the Antiquary, is made to read the ‘History of the Hartz Demon’ in the ruins of St Ruth, though I beleive, on recollection, Lovell is the Reader. By the bye, my dear Edward, I am quite concerned for the loss your Mother mentions in her Letter. Two Chapters and a half to be missing is monstrous! It is well that I have not been at Steventon lately, and therefore cannot be suspected of purloining them; two strong twigs and a half towards a Nest of my own would have been something. I do not think however, that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety and Glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?11

  Putting the quotation back in context puts Jane Austen back into her literary context. Brother Henry’s sermons are in their way literary works of art. Nephew James Edward is writing a novel: Aunt Jane jokily asks if he has thought of inserting one of his uncle’s sermons into the story. After all, in the most recent fashionable novel of the day – Sir Walter Scott’s The Antiquary, which Austen devoured as soon as it was published – there is a digressive insertion read aloud by one of the characters. Austen then turns to the news that two and a half chapters of her nephew’s novel have gone missing. Perhaps they had been used by a maid to light a fire. Or could they have been stolen? Kleptomania was, as has been seen, far from a joking matter in the Austen family, but here she is unquestionably making a joke: her nephew’s ‘manly’ style – something akin, no doubt, to what Sir Walter Scott called his own ‘bow-wow strain’ – could never be stitched together with hers. It would be like trying to paste a bold landscape sketch to a finely executed portrait miniature.

  John Murray II, whom Jane Austen called ‘a Rogue of course, but a civil one’

  Her new novel, with a heroine most unlike the dispossessed and sickly Fanny Price, was another literary gamble of the kind Jane Austen hugely enjoyed. ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,’ she announced.12 Despite the fact that Emma is indeed irritatingly meddlesome, pleased with herself, misguided, spoilt, manipulative, the novel takes for its theme, kindness. Kindness especially to neighbours, and to dispossessed single women, such as Miss Bates, is crucial.

  Jane Austen, who often joked about spotting real-life characters in novels, was amused when others started imagining that they were the models for characters in hers. There was, for example, a Miss Dusautoy whom she met at Godmersham: ‘Miss D. has a great idea of being Fanny Price, she and her younger sister together, who is named Fanny.’13

  One of her neighbours at Chawton was Mary Benn, a spinster living in greatly reduced circumstances. She was the sister of the Reverend John Benn, rector of nearby Farringdon. It was Miss Benn who had greatly admired Elizabeth Bennet when in attendance at the first family reading of the published copy of Pride and Prejudice. The Chawton women were extremely kind to Mary, inviting her to tea and supper, buying presents, offering hospitality frequently. Jane is never tart when she is speaking of ‘Poor Miss Benn’. Martha Lloyd wanted to give her a present and because her cottage was so cold and had been lashed by recent storms, Jane suggested a warm shawl ‘to wear over her Shoulders within doors in very cold weather … but it must not be very handsome or she would not use it. Her long Fur tippet is almost worn out.’14

  She was the worry of the neighbourhood. Jane reassured Miss Benn’s friends that she ‘is not being neglected by her neighbours … Miss
B dined last Wednesday at Mr Papillons, on Thursday with Capt and Mrs Clement – friday here – saturday with Mr Digweed and Sunday with the Papillons again.’15 But then, to Jane Austen’s dismay, Miss Benn was evicted from her cottage (or in Austen’s words, her ‘wretched abode’) and had to find new lodgings: ‘Poor Creature! You may imagine how full of cares she must be, and how anxious all Chawton will feel to get her decently settled somewhere.’16 Another time she wrote that though Miss Benn had been ill, ‘her Spirits are good and she will be most happy I beleive to accept any Invitation’.17

  Following the spinster’s death in 1816, Jane sent Emma to her friend Catherine Prowting: ‘Had our poor friend lived these volumes would have been at her service, and as I know you were in the habit of reading together and have had the gratification of hearing that the Works of the same hand had given you pleasure.’18 Miss Benn and Catherine Prowting, like so many others in Austen’s wide circle of acquaintance, clearly knew the secret of her authorship. Sadly, it was too late for poor Miss Benn to read about poor Miss Bates.

  One wonders how she would have reacted had she lived. Was the mischievous part of Jane Austen risking offence, like Emma at Box Hill? Or was the kindly part of her performing an act of good neighbourliness by giving a little bit of immortality to a woman who had lived a hard life?

  She finished Emma in March 1815, and was keen to see it in print. By October she had had an offer from John Murray, who as well as publishing Emma was happy to release a second edition of Mansfield Park. Both books appeared in early 1816.19 This was probably a commercial error: they competed with one another, reducing the number of copies sold and forcing Murray to remainder 539 of the two thousand copies of Emma.

  The scholar Kathryn Sutherland has argued convincingly that John Murray’s interest in Austen’s novels dates from earlier than hitherto assumed.20 Having scoured the Murray archive, she has redated to November 1814 an important letter from Murray’s reader, William Gifford, drawing his attention to Austen’s work. ‘I have, for the first time, looked into “Pride and Prejudice;” and it is really a very pretty thing. No dark passages – no secret chambers, no wind-howling in long galleries, no drops of blood upon a rusty dagger – things that should now be left to lady’s maids, and sentimental washerwomen.’21 Murray was a publisher of modern poetry – Byron, pre-eminently – and of travel books and history. He kept away from novels, the ‘trash of the circulating library’. But here Gifford, one of the most astute editors and critics of the age, is implying that Murray might consider taking a punt on Austen because of the power of her realism. Another letter unearthed by Sutherland reveals that he also read, and thought highly of, Mansfield Park.

  So it was timely when John Murray was approached with the manuscript of Emma. Gifford read it for him, and expressed great enthusiasm. ‘Of Emma, I have nothing but good to say,’ he reports on the manuscript, strongly advising publication: ‘I was sure of the writer before you mentioned her. The M.S., though plainly written has yet some, indeed many little omissions, and an expression may now and then be amended in passing through the press. I will readily undertake the revision.’22 Murray was thinking of offering the generous sum of £500, presumably for Emma together with the copyright of Mansfield Park. Gifford replies: ‘Five hundred pounds seems a good deal for a novel … Cannot you get the third novel thrown in, Pride and Prejudice? I have lately read it again – tis very good.’23

  In the event, Murray offered just under five hundred for the copyright of Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Emma. ‘Mr Murray’s letter has come,’ Jane wrote to Cassandra from Henry’s new home in Hans Place, London, on 17 October 1815, ‘he is a Rogue of course, but a civil one. He offers £450 – but wants to have the copyright of MP and SandS included. It will end in my publishing for myself I daresay.’24 Henry Austen rejected the offer – ‘the Terms you offer are so very inferior to what we had expected, that I am apprehensive of having made some great Error in my Arithmetical Calculation’25 – but illness prevented him from continuing negotiations and Jane took over herself. Her reluctance to part with her copyrights for the sum proposed meant that they fell back on a commission arrangement. In hindsight, Jane Austen would have done better to accept Murray’s offer for the copyright. All her profits from Emma were offset against the losses incurred on the reprint of Mansfield Park, which meant that her only profit was the cheque for £38 18s 1d. However, she could say with pride that she was the first female novelist to be published by the same house as Lord Byron, the most famous poet since Shakespeare.

  Murray had moved premises in 1812 to the fashionable Mayfair address of 50 Albemarle Street. It was the centre of a literary circle, fostered by Murray’s tradition of ‘Four o’clock friends’ – writers who came to afternoon tea. We have no surviving evidence of Austen’s attendance at any of his salons – she once passed up the opportunity to meet the famous Madame de Staël – but she did engage directly with Murray. While nursing Henry back to health, Jane sought a meeting with her new publisher: ‘desirous of coming to some decision on the affair in question, I must beg the favour of you to call on me here any day that may suit you best … A short conversation may perhaps do more than much Writing.’26

  In the meantime she told Cassandra that she was pleased with Murray’s opinion of Emma: ‘He sends more praise however than I expected. It is an amusing letter. You shall see it.’27 Once terms were agreed, Jane Austen went full speed ahead in urging immediate publication. Her letters hint at her frustration at the dilatoriness of the printers. Henry wrote to the printer, Roworth, to complain. Jane wrote to Murray to complain. The blame in the meantime was thrown on the stationer: ‘The Printers have been waiting for Paper’ and the stationer ‘gives his word that I shall have no further cause for dissatisfaction’.28 Cassandra was kept informed of all the problems of proof-reading: ‘A Sheet come in this moment. 1st and 3rd vol. are now at 144. – 2nd at 48. – I am sure you will like Particulars. We are not to have the trouble of returning the Sheets to Mr Murray any longer, the Printer’s boys bring and carry.’29 Hans Place was becoming a professional literary household, couriers knocking at the door with regular deliveries of proof packages.

  ‘The “ne plus ultra” of Life in London – Kate, Sue, Tom, Jerry and Logic viewing the throne room at Carlton Palace’, from Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1822). Jane Austen achieved the ‘ne plus ultra’ of a viewing, thanks to the Prince Regent’s librarian

  In her frustration, Austen cunningly used the news of a potential dedicatee as a bargaining tool to hurry things along. ‘Is it likely that the Printers will be influenced to greater Dispatch and Punctuality by knowing that the Work is to be dedicated, by Permission, to the Prince Regent?’30 (In 1811, the madness of King George had been deemed so severe that the Prince of Wales had formally become Prince Regent.)

  According to the memory of Caroline Austen, Henry Austen shared a doctor with the Prince. This was probably Sir Henry Halford, who was brought in to minister to Henry when his illness took a sharp turn for the worse. As Henry recovered, Halford continued to visit, met Jane Austen, was informed that she was the author of Pride and Prejudice and let drop the information that the Prince was a great admirer of her novels, ‘that he had often read them, and had a set in each of his residences’.31 Perhaps his friend Sheridan had recommended them.

  The doctor told the Prince that Jane Austen was in London and the Prince advised his librarian to wait upon her. The librarian, the Reverend James Stanier Clarke, called on her at Hans Place and invited her, at the Prince’s request, to visit Carlton House, the Regent’s London residence. She duly visited on 13 November 1815, where Clarke gave her a guided tour. The Prince himself was away at a shoot in Staffordshire.

  Carlton House was huge and spectacular, with a frontage in excess of two hundred feet. Visitors entered the house through a portico of Corinthian columns that led to a foyer flanked on either side by anterooms. From there, one proceeded to a double-storey top-lit Great Hall decorat
ed with Ionic columns of yellow marble scagliola. Beyond the hall was an octagonal room that was also top lit. The octagon room was flanked on the right by the grand staircase and on the left by a courtyard, while straight ahead was the main anteroom. Once in the anteroom, the visitor either turned left into the private apartments of the Prince of Wales or right into the formal reception rooms: Throne Room, Drawing Room, Music Room, Dining Room. Decor and furnishings were in the grand French style and the walls were hung with a superb collection of paintings, ranging from Old Masters to modern portraits.

  The library, on the basement floor, was a beautiful room with Gothicstyle open bookcases, furnished with Buhl furniture and Tudor ebony chairs. Miss Jane Austen from Chawton must have felt quite the important literary figure as she was shown around the opulent room with its shelves and shelves of fine bindings. On the visit, Stanier Clarke suggested that Austen should dedicate her latest novel to the Prince.

  She was horrified. Her dislike of the Prince Regent went back a long way. From 1788 to 1795, he rented Kempshott Park near Steventon, where he ensconced Mrs Fitzherbert, the mistress whom he had secretly (and illegally) married. He humiliated his legal wife, Princess Caroline, by taking her to Kempshott for their honeymoon. Lord Minto, who was a close friend of the Princess and was there during the honeymoon, remarked that the scene at Kempshott resembled that of Eastcheap in Henry IV Part One, Shakespeare’s play about an unruly Prince of Wales.32 Jane Austen’s brother James sometimes rode to hounds with the Prince and there was much gossip in the neighbourhood about the wild parties at Kempshott, and the huge debts that the Prince had incurred, so she had no illusions about his lifestyle.