16
“SEVEN YEARS I suppose are enough to change every pore of one’s skin and every feeling of one’s mind.” Jane Austen wrote these words to Cassandra in 1805, when she was thirty years old. She is speaking about the shift from country pleasures to the more elevated world of Bath society, but she might just as easily be addressing other major shifts in her life, periods in which she evolved from one being into another. Between the ages of eleven and eighteen she educated herself and began the long process of learning to write. And between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five she wrote three exuberant, confident novels. Seven or eight years of discouragement followed: the large family upheaval, the death of her father, pinched financial circumstances, and the realization that she was unlikely to marry and establish a home of her own. These were her difficult days, when she felt most keenly her lack of power over her own arrangements. She was not writing, and she had not yet convinced a publisher that she was a writer; in fact, she had scarcely tried.
The writing of three more great novels would follow, but she could not have known this at the age of thirty. What she may have felt, though, is that she was steadily humanizing herself, just as she had persisted in her course of self-education at Steventon Rectory. There was time, endless hours, in which to study the ways of society, at least that generous social slice that was offered to her. At an earlier age she had examined specimens through the lens of her father’s microscope. Now she listened and observed the social noise that went on around her, all the time widening her range of human understanding. We don’t know, step by step, the dimensions of her growing awareness, only that when the time came for her to pick up her pen once again at Chawton, she was ready. Her dramatic powers were fully in place and her moral vision of society was steady and focused.
Before the final move to Chawton, however, she was to endure a period of serious displacement. The lodgings in Bath were left behind in 1806, when Mrs. Austen took her daughters off on a long round of family visits before they settled in Southampton, where Francis and his wife Mary were living. A large, pleasant house was rented, but the Austen women found difficulty in establishing new friendships. Their residence was never more than tentative, and one or the other of the Austen sisters was always being called back to Steventon or to Godmersham to help out when a new baby arrived.
Finally, in 1808, when Jane was well into her thirties, her wealthy brother Edward stepped in at last to offer his mother and sisters a comfortable home. Why had he taken so long to attend to this responsibility? He may have been preoccupied with his enormous family and his business dealings. Or perhaps it was his wife, Elizabeth, who stood in his way— Elizabeth had never been fond of Jane, finding her too clever to be good company. But Elizabeth was now dead, a collapse following the birth of her eleventh child. She was only thirty-five years old, the mother of an enormous family, much loved by her children, though viewed with some skepticism by her sister-in-law Jane.
Edward was a wealthy man, with many possibilities at his disposal. He gave his mother and sisters a choice. They might settle either in the attractive Kentish village of Wye, not far from Godmersham, or in a cottage in the Hampshire village of Chawton. Chawton, a village of about sixty families, was immediately selected; it stood in the beloved and familiar Hampshire landscape, and the cottage, at the juncture of three roads, could quickly be made ready for them. They would be only twelve miles from James and Mary at Steventon—this was very important to Mrs. Austen—and within easy walking distance from the town of Alton, where Henry often came on business.
Thousands of Jane Austen readers have by now visited Chawton Cottage, which is open to the public. Visitors divide their response down the middle; there are those who find the house surprisingly modest and located uncomfortably close to the busy road; others are astonished to find a “cottage” with six bedrooms, a garden, and some outbuildings. Architecturally it is a modest L-shaped affair, a twostoried house of red brick with sash windows and a tiled roof, which was already at least a hundred years old when the Austen party moved in. It may have been built as a small inn, but in the early nineteenth century it served as a home for Edward’s bailiff, who had recently—conveniently—died.
A few improvements were made before the ladies arrived, mostly cleaning and decorating. Today’s visitors are surprised to find that the front door opens directly into the dining room. The window of one of the sitting rooms faced the road but was blocked up before the Austen party moved in; this alteration, which was no doubt much discussed between Edward and his sisters, gives the house a somewhat blank, unbalanced look that is oddly charming in its asymmetry. A new, prettier window was installed overlooking the improved garden, a mixture of flowers, shrubs, grass, and orchard. Edward arranged for the planting of a hornbeam hedge between the house and road, thinking, probably, that it would protect the women from noise and dust. In fact, not one of them seems to have found the road a nuisance. The traffic, in fact, entertained them and made them feel in this isolated village that they were part of the ongoing world.
This would be Jane Austen’s final home. Its importance to her was recognized by her nephew in his memoir; she had found a true home at last, whereas at Bath and Southampton she was “only a sojourner in a strange land.”
Chawton made sense. It would be a relief to all the women to have a kinsman for a landlord. Edward would see that repairs were done promptly and that wood was provided for warmth. There would be no alarming rise in rents or leaky roof as there had been in Southampton. Edward Knight’s name was a powerful one in the village, and this alone ensured that the household of women would be guaranteed respect. Two sitting rooms occupied the main floor, and the larger of these contained, once again, a piano for Jane, who played every morning before the other members of the family rose. The smaller sitting room was where she placed her writing table, and where most of her writing took place. The door to the room squeaked when anyone entered, and, according to legend, she specifically asked that the squeaking hinge go unoiled so that she would have notice of interruptions.
A narrow stairway, not in the least ostentatious, led to the second floor, where Martha Lloyd and Mrs. Austen each had a bedroom. Jane and Cassandra continued to share a bedroom; they were used to each other’s company after so many years and had probably taken on some of the characteristics of long-settled couples: reading each other’s thoughts and thinking along similar channels, accustomed to particular routines. A guest room was kept for visitors, and a good many visitors were anticipated, particularly the Austen brothers, who were always welcome. All these rooms were small, but each was adequately furnished in the rather simple style of country parsonages. Under Edward’s eyes the garden was improved by the planting of trees and the construction of the sort of shrubbery walk that was considered suitable for women’s exercise.
Helping to run the house were a cook, a housemaid, and a manservant. Mrs. Austen herself worked in the kitchen garden and, apparently, despite her bouts of poor health welcomed the outdoor exertions. Cassandra seems to have been the head of the house, looking after general housekeeping and accounts and management, with Jane responsible for organizing breakfast for the four women and for monitoring basic supplies of sugar, tea, and wine.
The possibility of achieving a settled state affected Jane Austen even before the actual move took place. Her spirits lifted; she felt emboldened, even silly with happiness. For her brother Francis, just a few days after the move, she composed a piece of cheerful doggerel, saluting the birth of his new son. Her own happiness leaps from the words.
Our Chawton Home, how much we find
Already in it, to our mind;
And how convinced, that when complete
It will all other Houses beat
That ever have been made or mended,
With rooms concise, or rooms distended.
You’ll find us very snug next year,
Perhaps with Charles & Fanny near . . .
Snug, within the easy reach of
an extended family, un-worried about household expenses—all this brought Jane Austen’s old spirits back. Months earlier, still stuck in Southampton but with Chawton in the future, she and Martha Lloyd attended the theater—there would be no theater near Chawton, as they well knew, and no amusements of the sort Bath had offered. None of this mattered. Austen was renewed, confident once again at the thought of the life she was about to inhabit.
Confident enough to write what has been called the famous MAD letter, MAD because she signed it with those initials, standing for Mrs. Ashton Dennis, a newly minted pseudonym. It is a name wittily designed to conceal and reveal her rage. Shortly before leaving Southampton in the spring of 1809, she sat down and composed a letter to the London publisher Crosby & Co. She had, after all, waited six years for a response concerning her manuscript. The tone is perfectly judged; she never abandons the outer boundaries of courtesy, but her intentions are lit with a blazing sense of injustice. Whatever anger she had stored up over the six-year wait was now poured out with finely tuned vitriol. She began with the deadly accurate narrative, followed by sly presumption, then boxed her enemy into a position of response—but never relinquished for a ladylike moment her sense of politesse. It was a letter worthy of Elizabeth Bennet in confrontation with Lady Catherine.
Wednesday 5 April 1809
Gentlemen
In the Spring of the year 1803 a MS Novel in 2 vol. Entitled Susan [Northanger Abbey] was sold to you by a Gentleman of the name of Seymour [Henry Austen’s lawyer] & the purchase money £10 Rec/d at the same time. Six years have since passed, & this work of which I avow myself the Authoress, has never to the best of my knowledge, appeared in print, tho’ an early publication was stipulated for at the time of Sale. I can only account for such an extraordinary circumstance by supposing the MS by some carelessness to have been lost; & if that was the case, am willing to supply You with another Copy if you are disposed to avail yourselves of it, & will engage for no further delay when it comes into your hands.—It will not be in my power from particular circumstances to command this Copy before the Month of August, but then, if you accept my proposal, you may depend on receiving it. Be so good as to send me a Line in answer, as soon as possible, as my stay in this place will not exceed a few days. Should no notice be taken of this Address, I shall feel myself at liberty to secure the publication of my work, by applying elsewhere. I am Gentlemen &c &c
MAD.—
Direct to M/rs Ashton Dennis
Post office, Southampton
It is impossible to miss the lightning bolts bouncing off the page. Jane Austen’s outrage can be understood by any contemporary writer who has been treated in a disrespectful way by a publisher. Her own express helplessness, and the fact that she fully understood that helplessness, makes the situation particularly poignant.
Her letter was coolly dealt with by the publisher, who claimed never to have promised an immediate publication. They countered her threat of finding another publisher with their own: In fact, they stated that they would be ready to block with legal action any such attempt she might make. And—a particularly cruel suggestion—they offered to sell her manuscript back to her for the original £10.
She had no such amount at her disposal (her entire budget for the preceding year had been £50). She had been, it would seem, defeated by the professional, alien world of publishing. But the MAD letter, and its reply, which might have further maddened her, instead produced a ripe satisfaction. She had made her feelings known at last, and she was about to move to Chawton Cottage, in the midst of her beloved Hampshire, to surroundings that were sympathetic and calm, a refuge no less, where she would begin once again, picking up her pen and going forward in her life.
17
IT WASN’T UNTIL July of 1809 that the Austen party moved into Chawton Cottage. Events might have moved along more quickly, but Mrs. Austen, now seventy, had suffered a series of setbacks in her health, and these caused delay after delay. Several family visits intervened—to James and Mary at Steventon and to the grieving Knight family at Godmersham. Meanwhile, Chawton Cottage was being made ready. Repairs were completed under the supervision of Jane’s brother Edward and included renovations to the water pump and back garden privy—which was all the family would have expected in the way of sanitation. Life at Chawton, as envisioned by the four women, was expected to be modest, even frugal. It was assumed that the family would grow and preserve some of their own food. They would exchange services with their neighbors, providing reading lessons for the village children in return for practical produce or labor. There would be no carriage for the ladies, but, in time, a donkey and donkey cart would become part of the Chawton household. Gentility, charm, order, and not extravagance, would rule the house.
Only one letter survives from Jane Austen’s archives between 1809 and 1811, the congratulatory letter in verse to her brother Francis. This lack of correspondence does not point to a period of dead time, but rather to a settled period in which Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra were seldom separated. Routines were established in these early years at Chawton, and it was routine that Jane Austen loved. The immediate neighbors in the region may not have known how the spinster Jane Austen occupied her days, but the other women of the household did, and they accommodated the schedule it demanded.
After a session at the piano, and after organizing the family breakfast, Jane Austen settled down to her writing in the smaller of the two sitting rooms. Dinner, the main meal of the day, was served between three and four-thirty in the afternoon. After that would come the social part of the day: conversation, card games, and still later, tea. The evening was often spent reading aloud from novels, and probably it was during this time that Jane read her ongoing work to her audience of intimates. She was famous for her readings, if we can believe her brother Henry, which were always delivered with a sense of drama. “She read aloud with very great taste and effect,” said Henry in the biographical notice that accompanied the publication of Northanger Abbey shortly after her death.
She was both lucky and unlucky. Lucky because she had a trusted audience with a wide range of taste—her mother, her old friend Martha Lloyd, Cassandra, other visiting siblings who were passing through, and old friends—all of whom had known her since girlhood and had witnessed her developing skills as a novelist. This coterie was knowledgeable about what caught her author’s eye, those moments of moral inaction, the premises that would make or undo a woman’s life. They knew her successes (the spirited, satisfying rondure of Pride and Prejudice) and her failures (the ugly and narratively misshapen Lady Susan). They were not a spontaneous, anonymous audience, but an engaged and humanly bonded readership (listening perhaps rather than actually reading) who had traveled every inch of the way with Jane Austen as she had lived her life and discovered her own writerly process. They were, in fact, part of that complicated process; they understood its hesitations and welcomed its revivals. And, more important, they were sympathetic, a readerly perspective that goes beyond being merely encouraging. They may not have been writers themselves, but they understood to a certain extent the gathering and accretion of Jane Austen’s skill with dialogue, with description and with moral exegesis. She was their sister, daughter, friend, neighbor, not some anonymous writer whose works were borrowed or bought; her struggle belonged at least partly to them—certainly it was known to them. Their personal affection for her made them in many ways an ideal audience; their attachment to the novel form, which was still evolving in the early years of the nineteenth century and which would continue to evolve, gave them a particular credibility. They—her friends, her family—were critically alert, and at the same time emotionally attuned. Writing is in the end a solitary pursuit, but Jane Austen’s novels were written and revised in concert with a remarkable communal consultation. This was part of her good luck.
Her bad luck was that she was enclosed all her life by obscurity. Just as she walked behind a wall of shrubbery at Steventon and later at Chawton, she wrote her nove
ls behind a wall of isolation. Sympathetic readers are one thing, but writers are hugely dependent on the shared experiences of other writers. Why otherwise do we have such an empire of writers’ colonies, writers’ unions, writers’ congresses, writers’ guilds? Writers uphold and defend each other with discussion of their difficulties—this has always been the case—and persuade each other that their individual endeavors, which often seem no more substantial than paper airplanes tossed into the uninterested air, are not egotistical projections, not valueless streams of indulgence, but contributions (what a pompous word that seems!) to an ongoing civil discourse. Writers can also, of course, be jealous and destructive of one another’s efforts, but their shared presence, their friendships and correspondence, always serve notice that writing is valued in a community, and is far from the insane and solitary act it may appear to be.
Jane Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh got a number of things wrong in his aunt’s biography, but he understood the ways in which she might have suffered.
Jane Austen lived in entire seclusion from the literary world; neither by correspondence, nor by personal intercourse was she known to any contemporary authors. It is probable that she never was in company with any contemporary authors. It is probable that she never was in company with any persons whose talents or whose celebrity equaled her own; so that her powers never could have been sharpened by collision with superior intellects, nor her imagination aided by their casual suggestions. Whatever she produced was a home-made article.
The term “home-made article” is a phrase of great originality, an inspired piece of terminology. The novel as a home-made article—what does this mean? Art can be described as “making.” We may think of novelists, in post-modernist terms, as workers who are remaking, revising, reinventing, but novelists in Jane Austen’s era were working at an even sterner forge, where the dimensions of fictional belief and disbelief were being examined: How does a writer extract from real life those components that describe and interrogate “life” without pretending to be a replication? How does the writer signal to the reader that a novel’s fictional skin is something other than reportage? By how many degrees is mimetic art separated from the seen, felt, and heard field of our own being? How closely do we desire an overlapping of the real and the projected? Not at all? Or do we want to be persuaded that fictional truth is congruent with what we know, what we have already heard and accepted?
Jane Austen Page 11
