Jane Austen

by Claire Tomalin

  James and Mary were married at the start of 1797, and the news of Tom’s death came in May. In June, Eliza de Feuillide took advice from a lawyer and asked to have the money put in trust for her by Warren Hastings removed from the trustees—one of them her Uncle Austen— and made directly available to her. This was promptly done, and six months afterwards, on the last day of the year, she married Henry in Marylebone Church. If the Austens were taken by surprise, Mr. Austen at least was delighted enough with the marriage between his favourite son and his niece to send the considerable sum of £40 to the regiment for celebrations.10 Champagne was not the drink in England in 1797, when the war was at its most dangerous point, but the money was enough for some considerable feasting.

  Henry was twenty-six, Eliza ten years older; he had his officer’s pay, recently augmented to about £300 a year by becoming regimental Paymaster and Captain, and she had what was left of her fortune, plus the possibility of a very large inheritance in France should the old system be restored there. Both were worldly enough to understand a bargain, sexual and financial, but it looks as though there was a genuine flame burning; one that had flickered, burnt up, been extinguished and revived itself several times over many years. Perhaps Eliza had been piqued by his engagement to Mary Pearson; she was also increasingly worried about the management of her own affairs, with rising rents in London, servants expecting to be paid more, and new taxes. She saw him in London in May 1797, heard he had given up all idea of the Church, and decided he had prospects; and they contrived to meet during the autumn in East Anglia, where his regiment was stationed and she took Hastings for sea bathing. In theory she was planning a visit to friends in the north in December, postponed only on account of Hastings’s ill health; so the wedding was an almost impromptu affair. She wrote to Warren Hastings three days before the day from her house in Manchester Square, explaining that Henry had been for some time in Possession of a comfortable Income, and the excellence of his Heart, Temper, and Understanding, together with steady attachment to me, his Affection for my little Boy, and disinterested concurrence in the disposal of my Property in favor of this latter, have at length induced me to an acquiescence which I have withheld for more than two years.11

  There was some truth and some fantasy here, for Henry had been engaged to Mary Pearson in 1796, as all the Austens knew—Jane indeed met her—and Eliza too, who had sympathized with him when he told her he had been jilted. He also owed Eliza money, and his actual income was sufficient for a single man but scarcely comfortable by the standards of Warren Hastings or Eliza herself.12 The words about little Hastings were closer to reality; he was very ill in December, with convulsions and fever. He could now walk, it seems, but remained backward and delicate; fortunately Eliza had acquired a new “confidential maid,” the charming Françoise Bigeon from Calais, who had fled the Terror with her eighteen-year-old daughter Marie Marguerite and who now took over much of the care of Hastings. Eliza continued to lavish love on him too, and Henry was able to show enough affection to please her. Soon they were all off to Ipswich, she expressing skittish doubts about Henry’s coachmanship, Hastings with Madame Bigeon “on whose care you know I can thoroughly depend.”13 They took a house with a garden, and the boy was able to be out in the fresh air most of the day which, even in February, Eliza thought better for him than medicine.

  In the regiment, Eliza was warmly welcomed by the colonel, Lord Charles Spencer, “so mild, so well bred, so good . . . if I was married to my third husband instead of my second I should still be in love with him,” and Henry’s particular friend Captain Tilson (“remarkably handsome”).14 She was delighted to be granted the precedence due to a comtesse, and there were calls, parties and dances with the officers and their wives, one so fashionably dressed that even Eliza was shocked by her failure to wear stays, her naked bosom and her ultra-fashionable little black wig: “Such a mode of dress or undress would be remarked even in London so that you may judge what an uproar it makes in a Country Town.”15 These excitements aside, Henry was demonstrating that he possessed an “excellent heart, understanding & temper”; better still, he understood that he should let her have her own way in everything, knowing “that I have not been much accustomed to controul & should probably behave rather awkwardly under it”; and did not mind her aversion to the word “husband.”16

  In the same cheerful letter she plans a visit to Hampshire and writes of the threatened French invasion, expected to take place on rafts with wheels. She expresses her belief that the French will make the attempt, and seize her fortune; and tells Phila that the regiment is increasing its numbers and holding itself in readiness to march at the shortest notice; she would not be Eliza if she did not add, “I am going to be drilled & bespeak my regimentals without further delay.”

  James, Edward, Henry and Cousin Eliza were now all married and settled; Cassandra had turned her face against the idea, but Jane had not. As though to make amends for her Irish nephew, Mrs. Lefroy invited a young Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to stay at Ashe in 1797; this was when Jane was working on First Impressions. The Revd. Samuel Blackall was thought to be in want of a wife for the very good reason that he was due to give up his fellowship, with the prospect of his college appointing him to a good parish; it was the point at which most young clergymen set out on their wooing, and Mrs. Lefroy seems to have persuaded herself that he and Jane might suit one another. Jane’s laconic account of the meetings that followed suggests that Mr. Blackall made his needs and hopes heavily obvious, but failed to charm. Their opportunities for conversation must have been carefully engineered at both parsonages. She warmed neither to him nor to the situation; even her much loved Mrs. Lefroy could be tactless. The Lefroys invited him again at Christmas 1798, but although he wrote expressing a hope of “creating to myself a nearer interest” with the Austen family, something held him back and he failed to return to press his suit in person. Jane was at her sourest explaining to Cassandra that it was “most probable that our indifference will soon be mutual, unless his regard, which appeared to spring from knowing nothing of me at first, is best supported by never seeing me. Mrs. Lefroy made no remarks on the letter, nor did she indeed say anything about him as relative to me. Perhaps she thinks she has said too much already.” You can only sympathize with Jane, wincing away from such clumsy matchmaking efforts and so leaden a pursuit. The best that can be got out of the episode is the hope that Mr. Collins’s manner of proposing to Elizabeth Bennet may owe something to Mr. Blackall’s efforts to interest Jane. In life, she bore him no malice. Years later, in 1813, hearing he was to be married, she recalled him as “a peice of Perfection, noisy Perfection himself which I always recollect with regard”; and expressed the hope that his wife would be “of a silent turn & rather ignorant”—adding politely, “but naturally intelligent & wishing to learn.”

  She was proud, and quick to suspect she was not wanted. Describing a ball she attended in January 1799, soon after her report on Blackall, she told Cassandra, “I do not think I was very much in request—. People were rather apt not to ask me till they could not help it . . . There was one Gentleman, an officer of the Cheshire, a very good looking young Man, who I was told wanted very much to be introduced to me;—but as he did not want it quite enough to take much trouble in effecting it, we never could bring it about.” The acuteness that allowed her to formulate this uncomfortable account must have made her an alarming partner to any gentleman not quite sure of himself; however cheerfully she smiled, however lightly she trod the floor, her cleverness disquieted. In Sense and Sensibility , Lady Middleton reflects of Elinor and Marianne that “because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical.” Similar thoughts no doubt went through the heads of ladies and gentlemen in Hampshire and in Kent.

  13

  Friends in East Kent

  The ladies and gentlemen in Kent whom she risked disquieting with her cleverness were the Edward Austens and their ci
rcle; that some of them looked her over with sharp eyes of their own became clear many years later when her niece Fanny took up her pen to describe the impression made by Aunt Jane as a poor relation lacking in refinement. Perhaps she had in mind the sort of jokes Jane and Cassandra exchanged in their letters. When the widowed Mrs. Knight, Edward’s benefactress, was indisposed, Cass suggested she was really giving birth, and Jane went one further: “I do not think she would be betrayed beyond an Accident at the utmost”—which looks as though she means an abortion.1

  But Jane’s accounts of her visits to Kent are sunny on the surface at least. They normally took place in the warmer months, and the Edward Austens lived very much more spaciously and comfortably than the Steventon Austens. Jane joked about their affluence, writing from Hampshire in winter: “People get so horridly poor & economical in this part of the World, that I have no patience with them.—Kent is the only place for happiness, Everybody is rich there.”2 She was in Kent in the summers of 1794 and 1796, and again in 1798, when she went with Cassandra and both parents to Godmersham for the first time. By then Edward and Elizabeth had four children—Fanny was followed by three sons—and were expecting a fifth; they had moved from their first home, Rowling, at the insistence of Mrs. Knight, who thought they could do with the space she no longer needed, and took herself off to a house in Canterbury.

  The Austen sisters soon became polite and respectful about Mrs. Knight. They found she was unusually thoughtful and generous, and extended her generosity to Jane, to whom she gave what appears to have been a discreet annual allowance. Jane herself is our informant; she refers to it as her “usual Fee,” and it makes Mrs. Knight her only known patron.3 Jane’s gratitude became real friendship; Mrs. Knight at least was exempt from what she referred to as “the happy indifference of East Kent wealth.”

  Rowling was a good-sized family house, Godmersham of another order altogether. It occupies a wide, serene and beautiful grassy site in the valley of the River Stour, between Ashford and Canterbury, standing close to the old pilgrims’ route. In 1798 there were deer in the park, and the gently rising hills were planted with picturesque circular copses, meant both to please the eye and provide shelter for game. The house was large and up to date, and set, like most English Palladian houses, in splendid isolation. Modern land-owners did not want their tenants’ cottages cluttering the view, and the park was surrounded by walls which kept out everyone but family, guests and servants; a key was needed to get in and out of the private grounds.4 The central block of the house, with its marble-paved and plasterworked hall and large main rooms, dated from the 1730s; wings had been added in the 1770s, one for the kitchens, the other for the great library, in which Jane Austen found herself sitting on one occasion with “five tables, eight and twenty chairs and two fires all to myself.” A Greek garden temple or summerhouse was set on a knoll across the river, to catch the eye and provide an object for a stroll. There was another “Hermitage” in the grounds, and a bathing house on the river; swimming and boating both became very popular with the children. There was a “serpentine walk,” walled gardens and an orchard; and an ice house, to keep the house supplied with that luxury. The church was within easy walking distance, through the park and out of one of the locked doors in the park wall; a few estate houses were clustered around it. Edward kept horses, carriages and chaises enough to make frequent and agreeable trips into Canterbury and visits to neighbours; he could spend sixty guineas on a pair of carriage horses without stopping to consider. The contrast with Steventon, where the Austens acquired a carriage in 1797 only to be obliged to give it up a year later, was marked.

  At Godmersham the rituals of the year were kept with ceremony. Every January and every July there was a rent day, when the estate workers came to the house and Edward dined with his tenants, with a drum and pipes playing at the door of the servants’ hall; the ladies did not attend. Christmas was celebrated with carols, card games, blindman’s buff, battledore, bullet pudding5 and dancing; at Twelfth Night there was another feast, and the choosing of a King and Queen from among the children. Edward’s and Elizabeth’s wedding anniversary was also fêted by the whole family, and on their birthdays all the children got half-holidays from their lessons with their governesses. There were pets, birds and kittens, and Fanny even had her own cow; and she played at gardening and haymaking. Edward was a jolly father; he took Fanny riding, and one day at breakfast offered her sixpence if she would hold her tongue for five minutes. He enjoyed shooting and fishing, but did not hunt. In the summer there were cricket matches, and he organized trips to the seaside, especially Ramsgate with its pier. His duties as a land-owner included attending the Quarter Sessions in Canterbury; and when a French invasion was feared he was in charge of the volunteers, exercising them, parading them through the park and to church, and marching off to Ashford with them for two weeks’ serious training.

  The house, airy and spacious, was made for guests. It was maintained by dozens of servants. Fires were lit in all the bedrooms; breakfast was at ten, and dinner might be as late as six thirty; trays of food and drink would be brought to suit everyone’s appetite in the hours between. Elizabeth’s sisters were the most frequent guests, but Austens were regularly welcomed too. Henry Austen in particular gravitated towards Godmersham whenever he could; even after his marriage, he came several times a year, almost always on his own, like a favourite bachelor friend of the family.6 He knew how to make himself part of the household, and was popular with the children, handing out sixpences and joining in their games. He would come in winter for the festivities, attend the Canterbury and Ashford balls and make up parties for the theatre, with dinner at the Fountain Inn; and he read Shakespeare aloud to anyone who would listen in the evenings. In summer he went to the races, or for rambles with Elizabeth; once as they walked in Chilham Park he gallantly saved her from an angry buck, getting a finger broken in the process. He would ride over to Ramsgate and Deal. He shot rabbits and went ferreting with Edward, and fished for pike and eels in the Stour; later in the year there would be partridges, pheasant, guinea fowl and landrails to shoot. He enjoyed his brother’s good French wine, and drove his various vehicles, the chaise, the chair and the sociable. No wonder he called Godmersham “The Temple of Delight” and wrote a poem in its praise, casting himself as a modern Canterbury pilgrim:

  Gentle Pilgrim, rest thy feet,

  Open is the gate to thee;

  Do not doubt that thou shalt meet

  Mirth and Hospitality.

  Elegance and grace shall charm thee,

  Reason shall with wit unite—

  Stirling sense shall here inform thee

  How domestic love can find

  All the blessings, which combined

  Make the Temple of Delight.7

  Henry was Elizabeth’s favourite brother-in-law, but Frank was often a visitor too, and when he became engaged to a Ramsgate girl, she was invited to stay. Charles was occasionally there, James brought his family for a few weeks one summer, and Anna was invited on her own when she was old enough. The Austen parents came in 1798. Cassandra was frequently invited to help Elizabeth at her confinements; Jane was there less often. According to her Hampshire niece Anna, who knew them all, Aunt Jane was not much liked by her sister-in-law; Elizabeth was, she wrote, “a very lovely woman, highly educated, though not I imagine of much natural talent. Her tastes were domestic, her affections strong, though exclusive.” Anna went on to say that, as between Cassandra and Jane, Elizabeth “very much preferred the elder Sister.” The reason? “A little talent went a long way with the Goodnestone Bridgeses of that period, & much must have gone a long way too far.”8 Although Anna’s view must be taken cautiously, her comments ring true in the light of everything else we know.

  They get confirmation from Fanny, whose memories of Aunt Jane and her deficiencies were jotted down privately in 1869, when she was in her seventies. Fanny remembered that she was not so refined as she ought to have been from her talent . . . They [t
he Austens] were not rich & the people around with whom they chiefly mixed, were not at all high bred, or in short anything more than mediocre & they of course tho’ superior in mental powers & cultivation were on the same level as far as refinement goes . . . Aunt Jane was too clever not to put aside all possible signs of “common-ness” (if such an expression is allowable) & teach herself to be more refined . . . Both the Aunts [Cassandra & Jane] were brought up in the most complete ignorance of the World & its ways (I mean as to fashion &c) & if it had not been for Papa’s marriage which brought them into Kent . . . they would have been, tho’ not less clever & agreeable in themselves, very much below par as to good Society & its ways.9

  This passage has upset and angered Jane Austen’s admirers, and been taken as an example of disloyalty and the wrongheadedness of mid-Victorian ideas of refinement; but it should be remembered that Fanny was very fond of her aunt, and that she ended the passage, which was written in a private letter to her sister Marianne, “If you hate all this I beg yr. pardon, but I felt it at my pen’s end, & it chose to come along & speak the truth.” As such it is important, not least because it suggests how Jane was received at Godmersham: kindly, without a doubt, but with enough condescension for her to feel it. For instance, a visiting hairdresser who came regularly to cut and dress the ladies’ hair made a point of lowering his rates for her, so obviously did she appear as a poor relative.

  For an author who took social discomfort as one of her main themes, it meant that Godmersham was precious as a place in which to observe and record, but not always an entirely congenial place to be. There is nothing unusual about such a situation: in fact it is a classic one for a writer. No one observes the manners of a higher social class with more fascination than the person who feels they do not quite belong within the magic circle. Evelyn Waugh is the obvious example in this century, and there are others; Henry James gave authoritative accounts of life in the grandest English country houses without being more than an outside observer himself. Both learnt, like Austen, to “put aside all possible signs of ‘common-ness’ ”; and, again like her, found themselves hailed as impeccable guides to the behaviour of true gentlemen and ladies.