Memoir of Jane Austen
Page 29
The two following letters… written in November 1800: these, amounting to over six pages, are both added in Ed. 2. Ed. 1 reads at this point: ‘Her letters scarcely ever have the date of the year, and are never signed with her Christian name at full length. [new paragraph] The following letters must have been written in 1801, after the removal of the family from Steventon had been decided on, but before it took place.’ Ed.1, then, has only the two short extracts of naval news from letters to Cassandra of 11 February and 26–7 May 1801 .
Steventon, Saturday evening, Nov. 8th.: no. 25, in Letters, bequeathed by Cassandra to Caroline Austen in 1845. A comparison between the version in the Memoir and in Letters, 54–8, shows that JEAL repunctuated extensively, smoothed out grammatical awkwardnesses, and corrected JA’s eccentric spellings. He also edited matter as well as style, silently omitting substantial sections of domestic detail and family gossip (e.g. the section in Letters, 56). This is his consistent policy with the letters he includes in the Memoir, and it extends elsewhere to the substitution of initials for full names and the suppression of details which he considers still likely to embarrass the families of those to whom JA makes occasional indiscreet or humorous reference. All further letters quoted by JEAL will be supplied with the relevant reference to the version in Letters, with which comparison should be made. I will note below only the most salient of JEAL’s alterations or omissions.
Charlotte Graham… Harriet Bailey: Lady Georgiana Charlotte Graham, eldest daughter of the third Duke of Montrose (Letters, 529).
Mr. Chute’s frank: William John Chute (1757–1824), Member of Parliament for Hampshire 1790–1806 and 1807–20 (Letters, 507). By an Act of 1763, MPs were entitled to free postage (expensive at this time) and often extended their frank to friends, by writing the address and date in their own hand.
one constant table: JA wrote ‘our constant Table’ (Letters, 55).
Pembroke: a small four-legged table with hinged flaps.
chiffonniere: a small cupboard with drawers.
Earle Harwood: (1773–1811), second son of John and Anne Harwood, the Austens’ neighbours at Deane House. He had joined the Royal Marines and in 1797 married Sarah Scott, ‘a girl of apparently doubtful reputation’ (Letters, 533).
Marcau: JA wrote ‘Marcou’ (Letters, 55). The islands of St Marcouf off the French coast at Normandy, then occupied by British forces.
Mr. Heathcote: See JEAL’s note at p. 55.
Lord Portsmouth’s ball: see JEAL’s note at p. 54.
Sweep: the curved drive leading to the house.
maple: JA wrote ‘Maypole’, which makes better sense (Letters, 57).
Miss Lloyd: Martha Lloyd (1765–1843), eldest daughter of the Revd Nowis (or Noyes) Lloyd and his wife, and a close friend of the Austens. She became part of their household in 1805, living with them at Bath, Southampton, and Chawton. In 1828 she married JA’s brother Frank as his second wife. The letter to Martha Lloyd is no. 26 in Letters, and it recapitulates many of the details in that to Cassandra of four days earlier. It remained in Frank Austen’s possession after Martha’s death and was given by him to an autograph hunter, Eliza Susan Quincy, of Boston, Mass., in 1852. She supplied JEAL with a copy for Ed.2 of the Memoir. In Chapter 9 below, JEAL includes under ‘Opinions of American Readers’ the letter from Susan Quincy to Frank Austen which elicited the sending of JA’s letter to Martha to America. (See M. A. DeWolfe Howe, ‘A Jane Austen Letter With Other “Janeana” From an Old Book of Autographs’, Yale Review, 15 (1925–6), 319–35, for fuller details of the correspondence between Frank Austen and Susan Quincy. In sending the autograph, Frank wrote: ‘I scarcely need observe that there never was the remotest idea of its being published’ (ibid. 322). See, too, Farnell Parsons, ‘The Quincys and the Austens: A Cordial Connection’, Jane Austen Society Report (2000), 49–51.)
Ibthorp: JA writes here and elsewhere Ibthrop (Letters, 58), giving some indication of the pronunciation. It was Martha’s home until 1805, and Cassandra and Jane were frequent guests there.
Manydown: the home of other close friends, the Bigg-Wither family, at Wootton St Lawrence, six miles from Steventon. Catherine and Alethea Bigg were particular friends of JA, and their younger brother Harris Bigg-Wither was to propose to her in 1802 (see note to p. 29 above).
Henry’s History of England: Robert Henry, History of Great Britain (6 vols., 1771–93).
desultory: JA wrote ‘disultary’ (Letters, 59).
battle of Trafalgar: October 1805, when the British fleet under Lord Nelson defeated the French and Spanish. Frank Austen wrote to his fiancée, Mary Gibson, of his disappointment at missing the action (Sailor Brothers, 155).
My Dear Cassandra: written from Manydown, the home of JA’s friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg, 11 February 1801. This is an extract only from a longer letter, for which see no. 34 in Letters. The autograph letter was bequeathed by Cassandra to Charles Austen whose daughter Cassy Esten made it available to JEAL. Cassandra was at the time of its writing staying in London with Henry and Eliza Austen, and JA is sending the latest news of Frank and Charles, both on recent active service in the Mediterranean, Charles on HMS Endymion and Frank now on his way home after distinguished action as commanding officer of HMS Petrel.
Sir Ralph Abercrombie: General Sir Ralph Abercromby (1734–1801), appointed in 1801 to command British troops in the Mediterranean.
jolly and affable: JA wrote ‘fat, jolly & affable’ (Letters, 80).
while Steventon is ours: the Austens left Steventon in May 1801, before which Edward, Frank, and Charles all made farewell visits to their old home (Life & Letters, 164).
later in the same year: a short extract from a much longer letter to Cassandra, written from Bath, 26–7 May 1801 (no. 38 in Letters). Again, JEAL was indebted to Charles’s daughter Cassy Esten for it.
privateer: an armed vessel, owned and officered by private persons, but with a government commission to act against hostile nations.
gold chains and topaze crosses for us: according to Le Faye, the two topaz crosses remained with Letter 38 as it descended through Charles Austen’s family and later into the auction rooms (Letters, 379, n. 4). (See G. H. Tucker, ‘Jane Austen’s Topaz Cross’, Jane Austen Society Report (1978), 76–7.) The gift provided JA with the idea for the ‘very pretty amber cross’ which William Price brought from Sicily for his sister Fanny in MP, ch. 26. Charles Austen’s experiences as a midshipman in the West Indies and his adventurous early career (Sailor Brothers, 21–2) are generally considered to be the originals for William Price.
afterwards in Green Park Buildings: the Austens arrived in Bath in May 1801, when they took the lease on No. 4 Sydney Place (not Terrace as JEAL writes), though they did not move in until the autumn, spending the intervening months with the Leigh Perrots (see notes below) or on holiday on the Devonshire coast and, for a short time, back in Steventon. They moved to 3 Green Park Buildings in October 1804 (Fam. Rec., 117–20; 126).
Mr. Leigh Perrot: Mrs Austen’s brother (see note to p. 37 above). He now divided his time between Scarlets, his Berkshire estate, and Bath, where he sought treatment for chronic gout. At this time he and his wife were renting 1 Paragon Buildings, Bath. On the death of Mrs Leigh Perrot in 1836 JEAL inherited Scarlets, with the proviso that he take the name of Leigh in addition to Austen.
Northleigh: Northleach in Ed.1. It was this Oxfordshire estate, inherited in 1751 (when he added Perrot to his name), which Mr Leigh Perrot sold to buy Scarlets.
a niece of Sir Montague Cholmeley: Jane Cholmeley (1744–1836), and according to Life & Letters, 134, he was her cousin. As Mrs Leigh Perrot she was another of JA’s more colourful relations. In 1799 she was charged with shoplifting—stealing lace from a shop in Bath—and committed to Ilchester Gaol, facing the death sentence or, more likely, transportation, if convicted. Her trial took place in March 1800, when she was acquitted, though her innocence has subsequently been questioned. In Life & Letters, the first family biography to mention the inci
dent, W. and R. A. Austen-Leigh include material which suggests that Mrs Austen offered to send either Jane or Cassandra to stay with their aunt while in gaol. The offer was declined, but they conclude with a melodramatic flourish: ‘So Cassandra and Jane just escaped a residence in gaol and contact with criminals’ (p. 135). None of these exciting events, occurring only a year before the Austens moved to Bath, finds its way into JEAL’s account, though they must have continued to hang in the air and to affect the family’s social standing in the city. (See Fam. Rec., 106–10; and David Gilson’s Introduction to the recent reprint of Sir F. D. MacKinnon, Grand Larceny, Being the Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot, Aunt of Jane Austen (1937); repr. in Jane Austen: Family History (5 vols., 1995); vols. not numbered.)
the Master of Balliol: the Revd Dr Theophilus Leigh (1693–1785), mentioned at pp. 11–13 above. For a possible example of Mr Leigh Perrot’s skill with epigrams, see p. 37 and note above.
The unfinished story… residence in Bath: a sentence added in Ed.2, which prints for the first time The Watsons (so-called by JEAL ‘for the sake of having a title by which to designate it’) from the manuscript in Caroline Austen’s possession. In Ed.1 the opening sentence of this paragraph reads: ‘She does not appear to have had any work in hand during her four years’ residence at Bath… ‘, suppressing at this time knowledge of the unfinished story.
fall of Louisa Musgrove: an incident in JA’s last completed novel, P, ch. 12. The Cobb is the large, raised, stone breakwater, broad enough for walking on, skirting the harbour at Lyme Regis in Dorset.
then removed to Southampton: the time-scale was less compressed than JEAL suggests. The Revd George Austen died 21 January 1805; Mrs Austen and her daughters moved in March to No. 25 Gay Street, Bath; but they did not leave Bath finally until July 1806 or take lodgings in Southampton until October of that year, when they set up home with the newly married Frank Austen.
those four years: the period spent in Bath—May 1801 to July 1806—was five and not four years; but it was an unsettled time in JA’s life, with much travelling. Letters, nos. 35–48, are recorded as belonging to this period —more than JEAL knew of, but still not many. Biographers have variously interpreted these unstable years: that they contributed to a conjectured depression which may have prevented JA from building on the intense fictional creativity of the later 1790s and may also have inclined Cassandra to destroy its evidence in letters; and that, on the contrary, these years propelled JA into a social whirl and a life of external stimulus which itself left no time for writing. The real point is that we simply do not know. (Cf., for instance, the divergent views of two recent biographers, Tomalin, Jane Austen, 173–5, and Nokes, Jane Austen, 350–2.)
Extract from a letter… to her Sister: no. 39 in Letters; bequeathed by Cassandra to Charles Austen’s family. The extract is heavily and silently edited, omitting family news and gossip and some topics and expressions, presumably in the interests of good taste. For example, of the family housekeeping at Lyme, JEAL prints: ‘[I] keep everything as it was under your administration’, but JA wrote: ‘[I] give the Cook physic, which she throws off her Stomach. I forget whether she used to do this, under your administration.’
not seeing the Royal Family: George III, the Duke of Gloucester, and other members of the royal family were staying at Weymouth in September 1804 at the same time as Cassandra Austen.
offices: the part of a house in which the domestic work was carried on —kitchen, pantries, dairy, etc.
But do not mention: JA wrote ‘But I do not mention’ (Letters, 94).
Letter from Jane Austen… Cassandra: added in Ed.2. The letter is no. 43 in Letters, and was probably bequeathed by Cassandra to Caroline Austen. It is again heavily edited.
riding-house… Miss Lefroy’s performance: ‘There were two riding-houses (i.e. riding-schools combined with livery stables) in Bath’; Miss Lefroy here is ‘Lucy, now Mrs Henry Rice’ (Letters, 382, n. 2).
affidavits: literally, a written declaration or oath; but JA is referring jokingly to visiting-cards.
as the exit we have witnessed: Mrs Lloyd died at Ibthorpe on 16 April 1805. Her daughter Mary, referred to later in this letter, had married James Austen as his second wife in 1797. Her eldest daughter Martha now joined forces with JA, Cassandra, and Mrs Austen. Presumably the ‘peaceful and easy’ end recently witnessed was that of JA’s father on 21 January 1805.
hack postchaise: an enclosed four-wheeled carriage, hired from stage to stage of a journey.
rambles… last summer: when the Austens, with Henry and Eliza Austen, visited Lyme Regis.
From the same to the same: extracts from a long letter, written over several days from the lodgings in Gay Street, Bath, temporarily occupied by JA and her mother, to Cassandra then on an extended visit to Martha Lloyd at Ibthorpe. It is no. 44 in Letters, where it is dated Sunday 21-Tuesday 23 April 1805. The autograph was bequeathed by Cassandra to Charles Austen’s family, on the strength of its references to Charles’s services to Lord Balgonie, at that time a naval officer. Balgonie’s parents were the seventh Earl of Leven and his wife. Several items of interest to Austen biographers are omitted from the extracts JEAL presents: in particular, JA’s reference to the Austens’ intention of joining households with Martha Lloyd whose mother had just died (‘I am quite of your opinion as to the folly of concealing any longer our intended Partnership with Martha, & whenever there has of late been an enquiry on the subject I have always been sincere; & I have sent word of it to the Mediterranean in a letter to Frank. —None of our nearest connections I think will be unprepared for it; & I do not know how to suppose that Martha’s have not foreseen it’, Letters, 105); and her evident weariness at Bath society (‘I shall be glad when it is over, & hope to have no necessity for having so many dear friends at once again’, ibid. 106).
Mrs. Stent: See JEAL’s note at p. 55.
a Mr. L., Miss B.: a misreading of the original, which has ‘a Mr & Miss B’, though here and throughout the letter JA writes in full the names that JEAL signals by initials only. In this case, ‘B’ is ‘Bendish’. See Letters, 103–6.
Miss A.: presumably the Miss Armstrong met at Lyme Regis during the previous summer and whose mother darned stockings during JA’s visit (see p. 60 above). In Bath society, the connection is clearly less desirable.
I have been: JA wrote ‘that we have been’ (Letters, 105).
Lady Roden: Juliana Anne, Lady Roden, an aquaintance or connection, either through Hampshire society or the Navy (Letters, 383, n. 6).
to say himself what was untrue: JA wrote ‘tell a lie himself’ (Letters, 105).
the Rev. George Leigh Cooke: (1779–1853). His father had married JA’s mother’s first cousin and was JA’s godfather.
Before the end of 1805… Southampton: JEAL’s dates are wrong here, with the result that he overestimates the length of the Austens’ time in Southampton: it was closer to two and a half than four years. They moved there in October 1806, taking a lease on the house in Castle Square in February 1807. Here Mrs Austen, Cassandra, Jane, and Martha Lloyd remained until spring 1809, sharing for much of that time with Frank and his new wife.
I have no letters… at Southampton: see note to p. 50 above.
I will record them: Le Faye (Fam. Rec., 149) conjectures a date of September 1808, when James Austen and his family visited Southampton, for JEAL’s childhood memories. He would have been almost 10 years old.
The well-appointed… Embark his royalty: Shakespeare, King Henry V, 111. Chorus, 4–5.
second Marquis… in the title: John Henry Petty (1765–1809), second Marquis of Lansdowne, who bought the old ruined castle within Southampton city walls in 1804, enlarging it into a Gothic fantasy. The title and estates passed subsequently to Lord Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice (1780–1863), moderate Whig politician (for whom, see note to p. 113 below).
phaeton: an open, four-wheeled carriage.
‘like the baseless fabric of a vision’: Shakespeare, The Tempest, iv. i, 151.