Memoir of Jane Austen

by Austen-Leigh, James Edward; Sutherland, Kathryn;

  Miss Lloyd: Martha Lloyd; see notes to pp. 53 and 63 above.

  only a sojourner in a strange land: Exodus, 2: 22.

  A good-sized entrance… which supported it were not large: apart from the clause ‘and was capable of receiving other members of the family as frequent visitors’, this section describing Chawton Cottage was added in Ed.2. As early as 20 November 1808 JA is writing to Cassandra of its ‘six Bedchambers’ and ‘Garrets for Storeplaces’ (Letters, 153); and in her letter in verse from Chawton on 26 July 1809, congratulating Frank on the birth of his son, she describes in passing the renovations to ‘rooms concise’ and ‘rooms distended’ (Letters, 178). This added section in Ed.2 owes much to Caroline Austen’s memories, which JEAL absorbs almost verbatim (cf. MAJA, 167–8, in this collection). Caroline had spent considerable periods of her childhood at Chawton.

  Cowper’s unattractive house… Southey’s edition of his works: The Works of William Cowper, with a Life of the Author, ed. Robert Southey, were issued in 15 volumes (1835–7), and included an engraved plate in volume 1 of Cowper’s house in the village of Olney, Buckinghamshire.

  The building indeed still stands: unlike Steventon rectory, pulled down in 1824. The Jane Austen Memorial Trust purchased Chawton Cottage in 1947 and they continue to administer it as a museum.

  Description of JA’s person… and tastes: JEAL draws heavily in this chapter on the memories of his sister Caroline and half-sister Anna, written out in 1867 and 1864, respectively, though not published until 1952 and 1988.

  likeness prefixed to this volume has been taken: Cassandra’s sketch, a lightly executed pencil-and-watercolour portrait, is the only authentic representation known to exist. It is dated c.1810, soon after the move to Chawton, and is held in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The steel-engraved portrait, the Memoir’s frontispiece, is taken from a Victorian likeness, executed by a Mr Andrews of Maidenhead, after Cassandra’s original. The differences between the two are marked and provide the clearest indication of JEAL’s purpose with regard to the selective account of his aunt that he chose to make public. He commissioned Andrews’s enhancement of Cassandra’s portrait and sanctioned the transformation of its sharp-faced, unsmiling original into something altogether softer and more compliant. Ed.2 was first issued without the portrait, but the reference to it at this point in the text led to enquiries for it, and it was included in later printings.

  linger in my memory: compare with this the Revd Fulwar William Fowle’s memory of hearing JA sing and play the piano: ‘I well remember her singing—& “The yellow haired Laddie” made an impression upon me, which more than half a century has had no power to efface,’ in a letter of 9 January 1870, acknowledging a copy of the Memoir. JEAL and Caroline were his cousins. For a fuller extract, see the Appendix (HRO, MS 23/M93/66/2/1). JA’s letter of 27–8 December 1808 records her plan to have a piano when they move to Chawton, ‘Yes, yes, we will have a Pianoforte, as good a one as can be got for 30 Guineas—& I will practise country dances, that we may have some amusement for our nephews & neices, when we have the pleasure of their company’ (Letters, 161). There are music manuscript notebooks held by the Jane Austen Memorial Trust at Chawton Cottage containing music written out by JA.

  knew something of Italian: JEAL owed this information to Anna Lefroy, in her letter of 16 April [1869?] (see the Appendix, p. 183).

  Goldsmith, Hume, and Robertson: Oliver Goldsmith’s History of England (4 vols., 1771) was in its full and its abridged form of 1774 his most successful history, and a popular schoolroom text. The unabridged 1771 edition is recorded among the books JA is known to have read, and a family copy, with the signature ‘James Austen, Steventon’, has been preserved in the family and includes marginal comments in JA’s hand. David Hume, The History of England (6 vols., 1759–62), the front free endpaper of vol. 1 bearing the inscription ‘Jane Austen 1797’ (perhaps a gift from her uncle James Leigh Perrot), descended to JEAL and now has his bookplate. (see David Gilson, ‘Jane Austen’s Books’, Book Collector, 23 (1974), 27–39). William Robertson was the author of many histories, including History of Scotland (2 vols., 1759).

  his grandmother Mary: in her early spoof ‘History of England from the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st. By a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian’, written out according to her own dating in November 1791, when she was not quite 16, JA inverted the conventionally approved account of the past (as the gradual, Whiggish progress towards liberty and the defeat of Stuart absolutism) by setting up history as a pro–Stuart tragedy. Its climax and conclusion is the execution of Charles I in 1649, and its heroine is his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, ‘one of the first Characters in the World’, also executed, in 1587. (See ‘The History of England’, in Catharine and Other Writings, ed. Doody and Murray, 136; and Christopher Kent, ‘Learning History with, and from, Jane Austen’, in Jane Austen’s Beginnings, 59–72.) JA’s contrasted presentation of Mary and Elizabeth I, the one vulnerable, beautiful, and innocent, the other unattractive and severe, resembles that in Sophia Lee’s The Recess, or A Tale of Other Times (1783–5). JEAL is unnecessarily po-faced in accounting for his aunt’s hilarious exercise in political uncorrectness. In MAJA, his sister Caroline presents the same detail with less qualification.

  the ‘Spectator’ downwards: see note to p. 16 above. In MP, ch. 16, Samuel Johnson’s periodical papers, under the general title of The Idler (1758–60), are described as among the heroine Fanny Price’s precious collection of books.

  Richardson’s works… living friends: Henry Austen in his ‘Biographical Notice’ (1818) recorded that his sister’s ‘favourite moral writers were Johnson in prose, and Cowper in verse’, while Richardson, and particularly his last novel Sir Charles Grandison, ranked highest with her for fiction. JA’s juvenilia are peppered with references to Richardson’s novels; in ‘Jack and Alice’, in Volume the First, Grandison’s models of male and female perfection offer a precise point of departure for the parody. In 1977 a manuscript play ‘Sir Charles Grandison’, previously attributed to Anna Lefroy, though transcribed in JA’s hand, was reassigned to JA. See Jane Austen’s ‘Sir Charles Grandison’, ed. Brian Southam (1980). In Grandison, members of the aristocracy (Lady L., Lady G.) are referred to by initials only, a convention of the novel-in-letters designed to suggest the authenticity of what was recorded and the consequent need to hide ‘real’ identities. Lady L. and Lady G. are Sir Charles’s two sisters; the younger, Charlotte, marries Lord G. on April 11 (vol. 4, letter 16), while Caroline, the elder sister, is married to the Earl of L., an event narrated retrospectively at vol. 2, letter 25. The cedar parlour is at Selby House, one of the idealized domestic settings of the novel.

  Johnson in prose… stood high: JEAL echoes his uncle Henry Austen’s account (see previous note). Samuel Johnson is referred to as ‘my dear Dr Johnson’ in Letters, 121, while Fanny Price reads The Idler (see note above). George Crabbe’s metrical Tales (1812) are among Fanny Price’s reading (MP, ch. 16), and her name may be taken from Crabbe’s earlier poem The Parish Register (1807), a moralistic study of various levels of village life, in which Fanny Price is a ‘lovely’ and ‘chaste’ young girl. William Cowper (see notes to pp. 37 and 69) is much quoted in JA’s novels—by Marianne Dashwood, in S&S, ch. 3, where his ‘beautiful lines… have frequently almost driven me wild’; and by Fanny Price, in MP, chs. 6 and 45; JA mentions her father reading ‘Cowper to us in the evening’, in Letters, 27.

  a sister novelist: a reference to Fanny Burney, for whom see note to p. 20 above.

  fancy being Mrs. Crabbe: see JA’s letter to Cassandra, 21 October 1813: ‘No; I have never seen the death of Mrs Crabbe. I have only just been making out from one of his prefaces that he probably was married. It is almost ridiculous. Poor woman! I will comfort him as well as I can, but I do not undertake to be good to her children’ (Letters, 243). Sarah Crabbe had died on 21 September 1813. On her recent stay in London (September 1813) JA had joked about hoping to
catch sight of Crabbe, known to be there too.

  Scott’s poetry… merits of ‘Waverley’: Walter Scott (1771–1832), poet and novelist. Scott’s medievalized verse tales were huge bestsellers between 1805 and 1815, setting a fashion for historical romance and extravagant adventure which would be continued in his novels, the first of which was Waverley, appearing in 1814, the same year as MP. In MP, ch. 9, Fanny Price quotes from Scott’s poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), and in P, ch.11, Anne Elliot and Captain Benwick argue the relative merits of Scott’s two most successful poems, Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). In both instances, JA uses an enthusiasm for Scott’s poetry to signal the sensitivity and melancholy romanticism of the characters, and, more critically, to suggest their disinclination to reality. JA in fact lived to see five of Scott’s novels published, not three: Waverley (1814), Guy Mannering (1815), The Antiquary (1816), The Black Dwarf (1816), and Old Mortality (1816), the last two appearing together as Tales of My Landlord. In 1816 Scott provided JA with her first major critical appraisal when he reviewed E for the Quarterly Review (see Ch. 8 below). From her letter to JEAL of 16–17 December 1816, it is clear that JA has read The Antiquary (Letters, 323).

  no business to write novels: an extract from a letter of 28 September 1814, to Anna Austen (she became Lefroy in the November), no. 108 in Letters. Unlike his poetry, Scott’s novels were published anonymously; hence JA’s ready attribution of Waverley to him is interesting. How did she know? The novel appeared in a first edition in July 1814 and quickly went through three more editions before the end of the year. A notice of publication in the Edinburgh Review, 23 (Sept. 1814), 509, listed MP and Waverley together, which may possibly account for JA’s jealous reference in this letter.

  Mrs. ——’s: JA wrote ‘Mrs West’s Alicia de Lacy’ (Letters, 277). The novelist was Jane West (1758–1852), a moral and conservative writer, and this her latest work was also published in 1814 and listed in the same notice in the Edinburgh Review as Waverley and MP.

  Miss Edgeworth’s, E. ’s, and my own: JA wrote: ‘Miss Edgeworth’s, Yours & my own’ (Letters, 278). The alteration is significant. All three of James Austen’s children tried their hand at writing novels and turned to their aunt for advice. JEAL, who was called Edward in the family, is not likely to have made this alteration as a flattering reference to himself, but his half-sister Anna in copying her letter from JA for him to use in the Memoir may well have considered this a tactful or a modest change. Miss Edgeworth is Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), Irish novelist and educational writer, much admired by JA. Her novel Belinda (1801) is one of the works described in the narrator’s defence of the novel as a literary form in NA, ch. 5: ‘only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.’

  two of her nieces. One says: JEAL’s half-sister Anna and his sister Caroline. The first two extracts are from Caroline’s account (see MAJA, in this collection, where it appears with slight verbal differences).

  two of her other nieces: named in Caroline’s account as ‘Mary Jane and Cassy’ (MAJA, 174)—that is, Frank Austen’s daughter Mary Jane (1807–36), and Charles’s daughter Cassandra Esten (1808–97). This second extract from Caroline’s account was added by JEAL to his Memoir in Ed.2.

  of another niece: extracted from Anna Lefroy’s account, but heavily edited, removing mention of the preference for Cassandra over JA in the intellectually insipid atmosphere of Godmersham Park, Edward Austen Knight’s home. (See the fuller account in RAJ in this collection.)

  A nephew of hers: identified by Deirdre Le Faye as Frank Austen’s second son, Henry Edgar Austen (1811–54), who was only 6 years old when JA died (‘Jane Austen’s Nephew—A Re-identification’, Notes and Queries, 235 (1990), 414–15). JEAL is at this point paraphrasing something recorded by his sister Caroline (MAJA, 170). The section ‘A nephew of hers… her enlivening influence’ was added in Ed.2.

  quizzed: ‘to quizz’ is ‘to make fun of’. ‘She never abused… less prevalent now than it was then’, was added in Ed.2.

  Mr. Gell to Miss Gill, of Eastbourne: JEAL is the first to publish this verse. There are at least two surviving manuscripts (David Gilson, ‘Jane Austen’s Verse’, Book Collector, 33 (1984), 28–9). In Memoir Ed.1 it was also reproduced as an apparently autograph manuscript facsimile, where it appears as two stanzas, with each of the four printed lines forming two short lines. In the manuscript version, ‘eyes’ and ‘ease’ are thus written out with the consequent loss of some of the playful punning of JEAL’s printed ‘iis’ and ‘ees’. Minor Works, 444, appears to base its text on this manuscript version. The illustration from Ed.1 is reproduced in this edition at p. 78.

  On the Marriage… in her Youth: JA mentions this verse in a letter of 29 November 1812, jokingly referring to her brother James’s ‘great improvement’ to it (Letters, 196–7). No surviving manuscript is presently known, and Chapman prints the version from the Memoir as the most authoritative text in Minor Works, 444. But a variant text suggests that two versions were in circulation in the family. In the other version:

  Camilla good humoured & merry & small

  For a Husband it happened was at her last stake;

  & having in vain danced at many a ball

  Is now very happy to Jump at a Wake.

  This version is taken from the diary, now in Hampshire Record Office, of Stephen Terry, father-in-law to Anna Lefroy’s fourth daughter Georgiana (printed in Letters, 409, n. 7). It is possible that James Austen’s improvements included the changes, for discretion’s sake, to ‘Maria’ and the more flattering ‘handsome, and tall’. If so, his children kept both versions alive—one for private enjoyment and the other perhaps for more public circulation. The occasion of the verse was the engagement of Urania Wallop (her mother was Camilla) to the elderly Revd Henry Wake. The title is supplied in the Memoir.

  at the play last night… in Isabella: an extract from a letter to Anna Lefroy, 29 November 1814 (no. 112 in Letters). JA is at this time staying in London at her brother Henry’s. The play was David Garrick’s Isabella; or the Fatal Marriage (1776).

  ‘So, Miss B. is actually married… in print’: again, from a scrap of an undated letter to Anna Lefroy, of February or March 1815 (no. 118 in Letters).

  In measured verse I’ll now rehearse: no manuscript of these verses is known, and all other printings derive from JEAL’s. Caroline suggested in her letter of 1 April [1869?] (see the Appendix, p. 185) that her brother include the poem by way of ‘stuffing’, as a harmless piece unlikely to embarrass the family or compromise their aunt’s mature reputation. It is taken to be written for Anna Austen (later Lefroy) and to reflect the ‘mercurial and excitable’ aspects of her character in youth (Life & Letters, 241). As such, the dating within the family is closer to 1810 than the 15 July 1817 (three days before she died) confidently but inexplicably attached to it by Doody and Murray in Catharine and Other Writings, 233. The geography of the poem—’Ontario’s lake’, in fact the smallest of the five Great Lakes, ‘Niagara’s Fall’, and ‘transatlantic groves’ (groves beyond the Atlantic)—represents a popular, even hackneyed, setting for romantic adventure in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See, for example, Charlotte Smith, The Old Manor House (1793) and Mary Brunton, Self-Control (1810), to which JA makes amused reference in a letter to Cassandra: ‘I am looking over Self Control again… an excellently-meant, elegantly-written Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura’s passage down the American River, is not the most natural, possible, every-day thing she ever does’ (Letters, 234).

  a niece… amusing herself by attempting a novel: again, the reference is to JA’s correspondence with Anna Lefroy, at this time still Anna Austen, who was writing a novel under the title ‘Which is the Heroine?’ In her manu
script ‘Family History’ (written c.1880–5), Anna’s daughter Fanny Caroline Lefroy, looking back from old age to events before her own life, records of her mother’s early attempt at fiction: ‘With no Aunt Jane to read, to critic[i]se and to encourage, it was no wonder the M.S. every word of which was so full of her, remained untouched. Her sympathy which had made the great charm of the occupation was gone and the sense of the loss made it painful to write. The story was laid by for years and then one day in a fit of despondency burnt. I remember sitting on the rug and watching its destruction amused with the flame and the sparks which kept breaking out in the blackened paper. In later years when I expressed my sorrow that she had destroyed it, she said she could never have borne to finish it. but incomplete as it was Jane Austen’s criticisms would have made it valuable’ (HRO, MS 23M93/85/2/unpaginated). Although this early attempt was destroyed, Anna Lefroy subsequently published a novella, Mary Hamilton, in the Literary Souvenir for 1833 and two slight works for children—The Winter’s Tale (1841) and Springtide (1842); she also attempted and later abandoned the completion of JA’s unfinished novel Sanditon.

  Chawton, Aug. 10, 1814: extract from a much longer letter full of critical comment and advice (no. 104 in Letters), written between 10 and 18 August. This portion is from 18 August.