12. Henry’s biographical note, written after her death in Dec. 1817, appeared in the first edition (1818) of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion .
13. Her letter of 10 Jan. 1796 makes this clear. See Chapter 11.
14. JA wrote a piece of dialogue about the merits of Emmeline and Ethelinde in Catharine, or the Bower, an unfinished story written in 1792 when she was sixteen.
15. These are Catharine’s words; she also speaks of Smith’s novels as “Books universally read and Admired, [and that have given rise perhaps to more frequent Arguments than any other of the same sort].” The square brackets mark Austen’s own deletion, but the phrase suggests they were much discussed in the family and among friends. Charlotte Smith, 1749–1806, was the daughter of a Sussex gentleman. She had an early love of reading and started writing at her boarding school, to which she was sent at seven (her mother died when she was three). When her father remarried she was persuaded to marry too, at the age of fifteen, a young man who proved entirely uncongenial. She had seven children before she was twenty-five; at this point she and her husband moved to Hampshire, where they lived at Ly’s Farm, Brookwood Park, near Selborne, from 1774 until 1783 or 1784, and were thus neighbours of the Austens. Mr. Smith became Sheriff of Hampshire in 1781, but his reckless spending reduced them to poverty and he was imprisoned for debt in the King’s Bench in 1783. Mrs. Smith saved the situation financially by publishing her poems, and then turned to translating and writing novels; and she parted from her husband. She sympathized with the French Revolution at first and scandalized some readers by allowing that women who committed adultery might not always be irretrievably wicked. She was a friend of Cowper and also of Romney. She went on writing until the end of her life, producing educational books for children as well as novels. Walter Scott admired her work, especially The Old Manor House, published in 1793.
16. James-Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, p. 89.
17. Charlotte Grandison seems to me to stand in the line that runs from Shakespeare’s comic heroines to Jane Austen’s.
7
WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS
1. Eliza refers to this in a letter of 1792, Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, 26 Oct. 1792, AP, p. 148.
2. Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, 7 Jan. 1791, AP, pp. 139–40.
3. Goodnestone is pronounced “Gunstone.”
4. Edward Shorter, A History of Women’s Bodies (1983), pp. 18–19, gives the end of the eighteenth century as the time of the latest onset of the menarche. In France it was fifteen years and nine months between 1750 and 1799, getting younger steadily thereafter.
5. See JA to CEA, 8 Jan. 1799.
6. Deirdre Le Faye notes that James Austen’s name appears in the diary of Kempshott Hunt, made by William Poyntz between 1791 and 1793, and held at the Royal Library, Windsor; and that the Prince of Wales sometimes hunted with the Kempshott during this period.
7. Breast cancer was sometimes eradicated by surgery. Fanny Burney, for example, had an entirely successful operation to remove one breast in France in 1811; but this was a very rare case, requiring an exceptional surgeon and an equally exceptional patient. There was of course no anaesthetic available. She displayed extraordinary courage, and wrote her own account of the operation. She lived for many years afterwards in good health, and died in 1840, aged eighty-eight.
8. Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, 23 June 1791, AP, p. 141.
9. Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, 1 Aug. 1791, HRO 23M93/M1.
10. Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, 23 June 1791, HRO 23M93/M1.
11. Philadelphia Walter to James Walter, 9 Oct. 1791, AP, p. 143.
12. The sum is given in her will in the Public Record Office.
13. The grave slab is still in place in the churchyard of St. John-at-Hampstead, but the inscription has gone and is replaced by a brief name and date. See Deirdre Le Faye, “Hancock Family Grave,” Jane Austen Society Report (1981), p. 182.
14. Victoria County History of Hampshire (1900).
15. Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, 26 Oct. 1792, AP, pp. 147–50.
16. JA to CEA, 5 Jan. 1801.
17. Catharine, or the Bower is printed in R. W. Chapman’s Minor Works and in the Oxford paperback Catharine and Other Writings, eds. Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray.
18. Deirdre Le Faye, A Family Record, p. 77, citing the Hubback MS. Anna Austen was actually called Jane Anna Elizabeth, but always known as Anna.
19. The only existing manuscript of Lady Susan is a copy made on paper water-marked 1805, and while some commentators have suggested it was written then, most now agree that its composition dates from at least ten years earlier. In particular Brian Southam argues persuasively in Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts: A Study of the Novelist’s Development (1964) that she would hardly have reverted to writing an epistolary novel after rejecting the form earlier, as she did when she rewrote Elinor and Marianne in 1797. Certain dating is not possible; recent guesses place its writing between 1793 and 1795, before Austen was twenty.
20. Congreve’s Double-Dealer, Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem , Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (reworked by Sheridan as A Trip to Scarborough), with the scheming Berinthia and her “Ah, Amanda, it’s a delicious thing to be a young widow,” all come to mind. These could well have been in Mr. Austen’s library, and we know that Garrick’s Bon Ton, in which the two heroines scheme and betray up to the last scene, was played at Steventon.
21. “A wholly sinister figure” is the phrase used in Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters (1913) by William and R. A. Austen-Leigh. Brian Southam’s excellent account of the book in Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts (1964) is odd only in insisting that she is unfeminine because she is aggressive and predatory.
8
NEIGHBOURS
1. Carleton was Governor of Quebec in the 1760s, defended it successfully against the Americans from Dec. 1775 to May 1776, and lived there as governor again in the 1780s and 1790s. Nothing is left of Kempshott House today but the stables.
2. Hackwood is still standing, a late seventeenth-century house remodelled and enlarged for the Boltons in the early 1800s by Lewis Wyatt.
3. Northanger Abbey, II, 9.
4. Mrs. Cassandra Austen to Susannah Walter, 6 June 1773, AP, p. 29.
5. Mrs. Cassandra Austen to Susannah Walter, 12 Dec. 1773, AP, p. 30.
6. The house JA visited was built by James Wyatt in the 1770s for the second Earl. It was burned down in 1870.
7. Byron to Hargreaves Hanson, 19 Aug. 1805 and 28 Aug. 1805, Leslie A. Marchand (ed.), Byron’s Letters and Journals (12 vols., 1973–82), Vol. I, pp. 76, 77. Byron and young Hanson joked in their letters about a “Mr. Terry” who is surely the sporting squire of Dummer, or one of his sons.
8. Leslie A. Marchand (ed.), Byron’s Letters and Journals, Vol. III, p. 248. Other information from Doris Langley Moore, Lord Byron: Accounts Rendered (1974), Appendix 3.
9. Northanger Abbey was first written between 1798 and 1799, according to CEA. JA herself wrote in the advertisement she prepared in 1816 that it was “finished in 1803.” At this stage it was called Susan. In 1803, with Henry Austen’s assistance, she sold the MS for £10 to publishers called Crosby & Co., who advertised but failed to publish it. Ten years later she paid £10 to have it back, but then did nothing with it until 1816, when she changed its name to Catherine and wrote the advertisement. She then did nothing further, and it was Henry who changed the title to the one we know, and published it in 1818, after her death, so that she did not have the chance to revise or read proofs.
10. The manor house can still be seen at Dummer, next to the equally delightful church.
11. Laverstoke House, built by Joseph Bonomi, is still standing, but no longer owned by the Portals, and closed to the public.
12. JA to CEA, 25 Jan. 1801.
13. Mackreth is not mentioned in Austen letters, but appears on p. 45 of James-Edward Austen-Leigh’s Recollectio
ns of the Early Days of the Vine Hunt, where he is described as an Indian nabob who started life as a servant. Only the second part seems to be correct, at any rate according to the DNB.
14. The painting, reproduced in the first insert, is by Daniel Gardner (1750?– 1805), and is entitled Sir William Heathcote, the Revd William Heathcote and Major Gilbert out Hunting. It belongs to the National Trust and can be seen at Montacute, where it hangs in the main drawing room.
15. The Vyne is now owned by the National Trust, and both house and grounds well repay a visit.
16. Tom Chute’s adopted niece, Caroline Wiggett, described him as full of wit and fun in a paper of reminiscences written in 1869, HRO 31M57/1070. There are many references to Tom visiting James Austen in later years in Mrs. Chute’s diaries, and also in those of Mary Austen.
17. Eliza Chute’s diaries, or ladies’ pocket-books, are held in HRO. I have examined the volumes for 1790, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800, 1802, 1804, 1807, 1813, 1814, 1815, 1816 and 1817. The others for the period between 1790 and 1817 are missing. The diaries are beautiful objects, calf bound—mostly red, a few tan, one pale green—with gilt edges and closing flaps, a pocket for extra notes inside, and some with marbled endpapers. They have printed matter at the front, information about hackney-cab prices, names of banks and other miscellaneous practical stuff, and engravings of fashions and theatrical scenes and places. They also print contemporary verse, much of it by women, at the back. Some have obituary and birth notices; for instance, there is a notice of the death of Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1798 diary, and in another the birth of a daughter to “Mrs. Jordan of Drury Lane Theatre.” The fashion for these diaries established itself strongly during this period, and further mention will be made of those belonging to Mrs. James Austen and Fanny Austen, the eldest daughter of Jane’s brother Edward.
18. A frank was the signature of an MP on a letter, which allowed it to be sent through the mail without payment. The system was so widely abused by MPs giving their franks to friends and neighbours that even the most respectable people asked for them unhesitatingly. Letters without a frank were paid for by the recipient.
19. Mrs. Sarah Smith to Eliza Chute, “Xmas 1793,” HRO 23M93/70/3/1.
20. She wrote an account of Box Hill to a friend (HRO 23M93/74/1/3) and mentioned it in her diary a few days before James Austen dined with her on 3 Oct. On 28 Oct. Jane and Cassandra were staying with James.
21. JA to CEA, 15 Jan. 1796, and JA to CEA, 25 Oct. 1800.
22. Morning by James Austen, MS poem, no date, HRO 23M93/60/3/1.
23. Mrs. Sarah Smith to Eliza Chute, MS letter 1797, HRO 23M93/70/3/16.
24. See Deirdre Le Faye, “The Austens and the Littleworths,” Jane Austen Society Report (1987), p. 16, quoting from the Bellas MS.
25. JA to CEA, 27 Oct. 1798, and JA to CEA, 23 June 1814.
26. See Deirdre Le Faye, “James Austen’s Poetical Biography of John Bond,” Jane Austen Society Report (1992), pp. 9–13. John Bond and his wife buried their first child Hannah four months after their wedding.
27. Mrs. Cassandra Austen to Mrs. Mary Austen, 19 Nov. 1820, HRO 23M93/62/2/5.
28. James Austen tells the story in a blank verse poem now in the Austen-Leigh Archive in the HRO, “The Œconomy of Rural Life”; the relevant part is printed by Deirdre Le Faye in “James Austen’s Poetical Biography of John Bond,” Jane Austen Society Report (1992), pp. 10–12.
9
DANCING
1. Henry Austen, in his biographical note to Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
2. Mrs. Bramston was the sister of William and Tom Chute; it was she who later saw a resemblance between herself and Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park. The maiden sister is Augusta Bramston. Squire Hicks is Michael Hicks, who married a Bramston cousin in 1779; his son William Hicks-Beach inherited Oakley Hall in 1832.
3. Eliza Chute’s diary, Sat., 9 Aug. 1794, HRO 23M93/70/1/4.
4. Henry’s movements established by Clive Caplan in “The Military Career of Captain Henry Thomas Austen of the Oxfordshire Regiment of Militia, 1793–1801,” unpublished at time of writing but intended for Persuasions (magazine of the Jane Austen Society of North America), 1996 issue.
5. “Les meubles de feu M. Feuillide furent vendus le 12 thermidor l’an II pour 2858 francs,” Abbé Michel Devert, “Le Marais de Gabarret et de Barbotan,” Bulletin de la Société de Borda (1970), p. 13. See also “Cazaubon pendant la période révolutionnaire,” Revue de Gascogne (1885), p. 328: “le 8 mai 1794 Lafontan, commissaire del. pour la vente des meubles de Capot-Feuillide, propriétaire du Marais, en Barbotan: J’ai reáu hier soir le certificat qui atteste la résidence du citoyen à Paris (on voulait le faire passer pour un émigré et vendre ses biens). Le domestique de son frère est parti cette nuit pour le faire enregistrer au district.”
6. George Austen to Warren Hastings, 8 Nov. 1794, British Library Add. MSS 29,173, f. 281.
7. See Charles’s account of his career in British Library Add. MSS 38,039, f. 181.
8. All this information about Henry’s regiment from Clive Caplan’s unpublished article “The Military Career of Captain Henry Thomas Austen of the Oxfordshire Regiment of Militia, 1793–1801.”
9. British Library Add. MSS 29,174, f. 25 (AP, p. 153).
10. Anna Lefroy’s description of her aunt’s rooms comes from family papers, and is quoted in Constance Hill’s Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends (1902). Deirdre Le Faye’s account of the colour of the curtains and wallpaper, taken from George Austen’s account with his Basingstoke suppliers, is from p. 69 of her A Family Record.
11. Deirdre Le Faye speculates that a “Small Mahogany writing Desk with 1 long Drawer and Glass Ink Stand” bought for twelve shillings at Basingstoke by Mr. Austen on 5 Dec. 1794 was a nineteenth birthday present for Jane.
12. Parson Woodforde witnessed and recorded this incident on 29 Oct. 1795 when he was in London.
10
THE DOLL AND THE POKER
1. These four descriptions—all posthumous, but all from people who saw her many times and three from close relatives—come from Sir Egerton Brydges, brother of Mrs. Lefroy, who was the Austens’ neighbour from 1786 to 1788, and saw Jane again in 1803, in his Autobiography (2 vols., 1834), Vol. II, pp. 39–42; from her niece Caroline Austen, James’s younger daughter, born in 1805, writing in 1867 (My Aunt Jane Austen, a Memoir, 1952); from her niece Anna, James’s elder daughter, born in 1793, who grew up very close to Jane, cited by Deirdre Le Faye, “Anna Lefroy’s Original Memories of Jane Austen,” Review of English Studies , NS xxxix, 155, Aug. 1988, pp. 417–21; and from her niece Louisa, Edward’s daughter, born in 1804, who became Lady George Hill, her remarks reported in a letter of 1856 from Pamela Fitzgerald to Lord Carlyle, and cited by Elizabeth Jenkins, “Some Notes on Background,” Jane Austen Society Report (1980), p. 166.
2. A view that persists, though surely without any basis.
3. The four quotations here are from the following sources: Fulwar-Craven Fowle’s remarks were recorded by a Mrs. Mozley in 1838, and reproduced by Kathleen Tillotson, TLS, 17 Sept. 1954, p. 591. Miss Middleton’s description is cited by Deirdre Le Faye, “Recollections of Chawton,” TLS, May 1985, p. 495. Sir Egerton Brydges is again from his Autobiography , Vol. II, p. 39, and Anna Lefroy as above. Note also Caroline’s letter of 4 May 1819 to her brother, about her cousin Marianne Knight: “I cannot admire Marianne so much as you do. She is certainly I think pretty, but I never saw her look anything like beautiful. Her greatest personal recommendation to me, is being very like poor Aunt Jane” (cited by Deirdre Le Faye, A Family Record, p. 236).
4. Anna Lefroy to James-Edward Austen-Leigh, 20 July 1869, cited by Deirdre Le Faye, A Family Record, p. 253.
5. Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, 14 Nov. 1791, AP, p. 144; Henry’s biographical note to the first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
6. James-Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, p. 87.
7. JA to CEA, 20 Nov.
1800. Elizabeth Bennet’s untidy hair is criticized by Bingley’s sisters after her walk from Longbourn to Netherfield, an indication of their false values.
8. JA to CEA, 8 Jan. 1799.
9. Egerton Brydges, Anna Lefroy, Miss Middleton (neighbour at Chawton), Mary Russell Mitford.
10. James-Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, p. 87.
11. Henry’s description from his biographical note, as above. Her step is described by Anna Lefroy, as above.
12. Elizabeth Jenkins reported on the bronze colour of the piece of JA’s hair in the possession of the Jane Austen Society. Dark hair fades with time.
13. Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855), best known as the author of Our Village, wrote in Dec. 1814 a letter to Sir William Elford in which she describes Jane Austen first as having been “the prettiest, silliest, most affected husband-hunting butterfly” who turned later into a “perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of ‘single blessedness’ . . . no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire screen or any other thin, upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quiet” until she became known as the author of Pride and Prejudice, when she became “a poker of whom every one is afraid.” The tone is patently malicious, but this does not mean she is wholly wrong in what she says.
11
A LETTER
1. CEA’s note, reproduced in R. W. Chapman’s edition of the Minor Works in 1954 (facing p. 242), reads “Sense & Sensibility begun Nov. 1797 / I am sure that something of the same story & characters had been written earlier & called Elinor & Marianne.” Family tradition, relayed in William and R. A. Austen-Leigh’s Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, a Family Record, suggests that she was writing this early version in 1795 and reading it aloud en famille.
2. Such dramas are vividly described in a letter written in Oct. 1795 to one of the Austens’ neighbours, Mrs. William Chute, from her mother Mrs. Sarah Smith, describing a dance in Wiltshire at which two blazing Comets made their appearance a Buzz soon went round who are they?—one a foreign Baron, the other a very handsome young Yorkshire Baronet Sir John Coghile . . . no lady was left unengaged with difficulty one Lady was resigned by her Partner to the Baron, & Mrs. Dickenson was almost prevailed to dance but when Sir John found she was a Married lady; he preferred a flirtation with Emma, & poor Salmon was obliged to be a Silent witness to the Tryumph of the Baronet who could charm the ear with the account of the gayetiess of London, a Theme unknown to the other, our handsome hero flourished . . . , Lounged on the Benches & appeared what he really was, a different Being to those around so that all the Beaus sank in their own estimation, & the Devizes Belles may many a day recount the dangers of that night . . . HRO 23M93/70/3/15.
Jane Austen Page 38
