JANE AUSTEN
by Elizabeth Jenkins
New York
PELLEGRINI & CUDAHY
Book by Elizabeth Jenkins; Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1949. 412 pgs.
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Copyright 1949 by Elizabeth Jenkins. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.
Manufactured in the United States of America at the American
Book--Stratford Press. Design and typography by Joseph Trautwein.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the kindness of the Clarendon Press in
allowing me to make use of Dr. Chapman's editions, Jane Austen's novels and letters.
Also of Sir F. D. Mackinnon in allowing me to quote his opinion, from his work Grand Larceny, on the trial of Mrs. Leigh Perrot.
Thanks are also due to Messrs. John Lane for permission to quote a letter of Captain Frank Austen from Jane Austen and Her Sailor Brothers.
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JANE AUSTEN
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1
THE EIGHTEENTH century was an age such as our imagination
can barely comprehend; weltering as we do in a slough of habitual ugliness, ranging from the dreary horrors of Victorian sham gothic to the more lively hideousness of modern jerry-building, with
advertisements defacing any space that might be left unoffendingly blank, and the tourist scattering his trail of chocolate paper, cigarette ends and film cartons, we catch sight every now and again of a house front, plain and graceful, with a fanlight like the half of a spider's web and a slip of iron balcony; among the florid or stark
disfigurements of a graveyard we discover a tombstone with elegant letters composing, in a single sentence, a well-turned epitaph.Among a bunch of furnishing fabrics, we come upon a traditional eighteenthcentury chintz, formal and exquisitely gay; a print shows us the vista of a London street, with two rows of blond, porticoed houses closing in a view of trees and fields. The ghost of that vanished loveliness haunts us in every memorial that survives the age: a house in its park, a teacup, the type and binding of a book.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
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The words greet us from the lid of a china patch box, a pale, bright yellow, a trivial little object devoted to a silly purpose, but it is stamped with a sentiment from The Deserted Village. We find it almost impossible to realize that the fleeting vision with which our eyes are occasionally blessed was to the eighteenth-century man or woman the common sight of daily life; plain elegance,
uncompromising good taste, surrounded them with an almost
monotonous completeness.
But if we are in danger of breaking our hearts over this spirit of beauty which has vanished from the earth, it is our duty to remember that there existed with it, ignored or tolerated, a state of squalor and wretchedness which, to this relatively humane and hygienic age, is nearly as difficult to visualize as its heavenly obverse. The state of English prisons as revealed by Howard's survey published in 1777, the London slums, in which Dr. Johnson roughly computed that one thousand people starved to death every year, the conditions of the Army and Navy, on active service, and when thrown crippled and destitute, without pension and without charity, on a heedless world, the savage callousness of the officials entrusted with the
administration of Poor Relief, the manifold horrors, already
springing into existence, of the Industrial Revolution--all these things very wholesomely temper our regret, our feeling that, as Dr.
Johnson would have said: "It is a melancholy thing to be reserved to these times," and very nearly resign us to an age of mob mentality and mass production. Nonetheless, when we are considering that age, the last of those in English history which produced works of great art, we must consider too the texture of the daily experience of the ordinary seeing, hearing, feeling individual; vulgarity they had in plenty, but it was the vulgarity of Gilray and Rowlandson's cartoons,
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with their bulbous calves and hectic noses; ghastly realism, but in the medium of Hogarth Gin Lane and The Rake's Progress; the girl of today who can see life only in terms of the cinema had her
counterpart in the eighteenth century, and she spoke in the accents of Lydia Languish. Could there be drawn a more vivid, a more
compendious comparison?
That there was no cheap, sophisticated entertainment for the masses was part of a state of things in which thousands and thousands of people were less comfortable, less well dressed, less entertained, less informed than they are today; but it also meant that there was not a vast majority which by its very numbers imposed its ideas, its prepossessions and its tastes on the world in which the educated person must now exist; the lower middle class, as it is the most considerable among consumers, dictates the canons of a taste which, by its preponderating bulk, has corrupted and destroyed the
standards of language, of architecture, of entertainment and of literature, which once prevailed. This development has brought in its train a great increase in human happiness, and it has annihilated something so precious that its very absence has taken away from us the power to estimate its value. One may find an apt illustration of our gain and loss in the bear-ward who was Tony Lumpkin's
companion at The Three Pigeons: he led a dancing bear, something of which we hate to think, but the tunes to which it danced were Dr.
Arne "Water Parted" and Handel minuet from "Ariadne."
If it be permissible to dwell on the beauty of the eighteenth century without perpetually reminding oneself of its horrors, it is surely so in relation to life in the country. The countryside had then a twofold loveliness; not only were the roads unspoiled, often unpaved, it is true, but bordered with copse and meadow, orchard and stream, but such buildings
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as there were adorned the landscape instead of defacing it.
Hampshire, in the district about the village of Steventon, had, standing back among timbered meadows, houses of many ages, from the Elizabethan half-manor, half-farm-house of rosy, saffron brick, nestling in the shelter of its hill, to the gentleman's seat, a classical stone erection with concealed roof and stone-garlanded, pillared front, planned with an eye to views and crowning a gentle, tree-covered slope. Of the soil itself, Gilbert White said that it was composed of: "a kind of white land, neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough."This white soil," he added, "produces the brightest hops."
The village of Steventon itself was little more than a row of cottages, the important families of the neighborhood living at some distance on their various estates. The Rectory stood on one side of a lane, which had the breadth of a good road, but the weak places in whose unpaved surface were filled up by a man with some shovelfuls of stones whenever an unusual amount of company was expected at the houses beyond it. On one side of the lane stood a spacious barn, on the other, surrounded by meadows sprinkled with elm and chestnut trees, was the Rectory, a house with a flat façade and narrow roof, square sashed windows and a trellised porch; the ground in front had a wide, curving drive and to the right of it a plantation of elm, chestnut and fir. At the back, a bow window looked out onto a
garden where an alley of turf, bordered by strawberry beds, ended in a sundial; a terrace of turf, shaded by elm trees,
ran between the garden and the open meadows, and led to a copse, visible from the house's upper windows.
The bow window belonged to the Rector's study. The Reverend
George Austen was a very handsome man with
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bright hazel eyes and finely curling hair, prematurely white; he was a distinguished classical scholar, and he was also acutely sensitive to the construction of an English sentence. He taught all his own children in their early years, and one of his sons till the latter became of university age, and he augmented his income by taking pupils into the house, three and four at a time until his own family grew too large for them to be accommodated. The Rector enjoyed a state of rational, almost ideal happiness. He lived the life of a scholar, devoting the greater portion of the time that was left over from his parish duties to his books, and at the same time he preserved a simplicity complete enough for perfect freedom yet compatible with every reasonable comfort. He had his strawberry beds, his elm walk, his home meadows, his position in a pleasant neighborhood as a much-respected country gentleman; but though he kept his carriage, the interior of the Rectory had in some respects the plainness of a cottage; the walls and ceiling were joined without any cornice, and some of the walls were whitewashed; the sunlight which struck
through the plantation or the fire and candlelight at night brought out nothing rich, merely the essentials of a living room in an age that made nothing crude or mean; chairs and a table, a pier glass, a glass-fronted cupboard with a gilt china tea service behind its panes. In a small front parlor to the right of the front door, Mrs. Austen with her aristocratic nose was usually to be found, darning the family
stockings whether visitors were there or no. She might, strong in the consciousness of her own, be "amusingly particular" about other people's noses, but with a growing family on her hands, she had no idea of giving in to fine ladyism, and people were welcome to call provided they did not expect her to put away the mending. She
always said that she was no beauty: her sister Jane was beautiful, but she
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was merely good-looking and sensible; but she had a distinguished air and a decisive, epigrammatic turn of speech. It was thought that she had perhaps inherited this from her uncle, Dr. Theophilus Leigh, the Master of Balliol, whose bon-mots were famous. When an
acquaintance was described as having been "egged on" to matrimony, Dr. Leigh had observed: "Let us hope the yoke will sit lightly on him."
Mrs. Austen's early married life, however she might bring to it a shrewd and intellectual mind, was domestic to the exclusion of every other interest; she bore four sons in little more than four years, and when she was not tied to her own house, on one occasion at least she went to London to nurse a sister-in-law in her confinement. The lady whom she nursed in town was Mrs. Walter, the wife of George
Austen's half-brother; to Mr. and Mrs. Walter some very amusing letters were written by their country relatives at Steventon, and in later years, a few containing little pieces of information about the younger daughter of the Rectory. Mrs. Austen much preferred her own country existence, and said of her stay in London: "'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.'" Of Mrs. Austen's first four children, the third, George, was subject to fits and was never able to live with the family, and the temperament of the Austens is
nowhere better shown than by the fact that, affectionate and
forthright as they were, beyond the statement of his death in 1827, not a single word in reference to him is discoverable in any of their printed memoirs and correspondence.
The three other little boys, James, Edward and Henry, were
splendidly healthy and high-spirited; then a daughter was born, called Cassandra after her mother. Like her brothers, she was put out to nurse for the first months, and when
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she was brought home, Mrs. Austen wrote and begged Mr. and Mrs.
Walter to pay a visit, saying: "I want to show you my Henry and my Cassy, who are both reckoned very fine children." Presently she wrote: "My little girl is almost ready to run away!" The child had an aquiline nose, and her eyes were black. Mrs. Austen did not say that she was pretty, but when the baby was two, she wrote to Mrs.
Walter: "My little girl talks all day long, and, in my opinion, is a very entertaining companion." By this time there was another boy, Francis, also doing well; as his mother said: "My last boy is very stout"; and again, their friends in London were expecting to hear of a confinement; until on December 17th, 1775, Mr. Austen wrote to Mrs. Walter:
"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."
Among so many brothers, it must have been a delight to little
Cassandra to have a sister to look after and to play with, and with a good share of her father's affectionate nature and her mother's practical good sense, she soon became, young as she was, the most important figure in her little sister's world. Mrs. Austen had her last child soon after, a sixth son, christened Charles, and with a new baby and a large young
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family, she was only too glad that Cassandra took upon herself so much of the care of Jane. The younger child repaid her sister's affection a hundred-fold, and Mrs. Austen said that if Cassandra were to have her head cut off, she believed Jane would insist on having hers cut off too.
Life in the Rectory was pleasant for a large party of children; for one thing, the Austens, though very lively, were unusually good
tempered. Family disagreements, to say nothing of family quarrels, were unknown to them, and besides being fond of each other, they were very friendly with the pupils their father took into the house.
Mr. Austen was careful as to whom he accepted, taking only "a few youths of chosen friends and acquaintances," and there are several references to the comfortable way the boys settled in with the family.
"Jemmy and Neddy" were "very happy in a new playfellow, Lord Lymington." He was between five and six years old; then there was Master Vanderstegen; he was nearly fourteen, and backward, but
"very good tempered and well disposed." Another reason for the general pleasantness of a family which, living in somewhat close quarters, might have been expected to get in each other's way, was that the boys had vigorous interests of their own. Intelligent as they all were, their father's teaching was at least not irksome to them, and James and Henry had a strong academic bent; but all of them were wildly eager sportsmen. From their earliest years they hunted and shot, and Francis displayed not only the sporting enthusiasm of the family, but a keen business capacity into the bargain. At the age of seven he bought a pony for one pound, eleven shillings and
sixpence. It was a bright chestnut and he called it Squirrel. He rode to hounds on it for two years, jumping "everything that the pony could get his nose over," and then sold it for two pounds, twelve and six.
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For the little girls who could not hunt and shoot, the range of interests was smaller. They did not ride as they might have done.
Mrs. Austen had been a horsewoman, and in her trousseau there had been a scarlet riding habit, but this had long been cut up into coats and trousers for the boys when very little; but there were
amusements to get the girls out of doors. When the weather was good, the walks about Steventon were very beautiful; the lanes were full of primroses and violets in the spring, and the neighborhood had the beauty of Hampshire woodland. Jane said many years
afterwards that she thought beauty of landscape must be one of the joys of heaven. There was a home farm also, where Mrs. Austen's dairy was supplied by five Alderney cows; and though Mr. Edward Austen
Leigh says that his aunts would never have taken a hand in the actual brewing and baking of the Rectory, yet a household which has its own dairy, bakes its own bread, brews its own ale and does its own laundering on the premises, has always something going on of
interest to two eager little girls.
When Cassandra was about ten and Jane seven years old, the Rev.
George Austen seems to have felt that for his daughters, at least, his own teaching was not sufficient. Mrs. Austen's sister, the beautiful Jane, had married Dr. Cooper, a clergyman living near Bath, and Dr.
Cooper had a sister, Mrs. Cawley, who, the widow of a master of Brasenose, undertook the care of a few children at her house in Oxford. Jane was thought to be too young to benefit very much from any educational advantages Mrs. Cawley might bestow, but it was already taken for granted by the family that where Cassandra went, there, if humanly possible, she must go also. With them went their cousin Jane Cooper. Perhaps the three of them together were happy enough, but Mrs. Cawley was somewhat unsympathetic and very
formal in her manners,
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and coming from such a home as Steventon, Cassandra and Jane felt the change very much. One may imagine Jane, a small, slender child with a round face and big black eyes, following Cassandra like a shadow, shy, but ready at once to be friendly and merry with anyone who was kind. After a while Mrs. Cawley moved to Southampton,
and was allowed to take the children with her. Here, however,
Cassandra and Jane fell ill of what was called at the time a putrid fever, which was perhaps diphtheria. Jane Cooper longed for her mother and aunt, but Mrs. Cawley would not allow her to write to them; at last, however, her cousin Jane became so very ill that the homesick, frightened child could bear it no longer and wrote to her mother, who, with Mrs. Austen, came down to Southampton
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