May, Lou & Cass

by Sophia Hillan

  In one way, the course of May, Lou and Cass’s lives was dictated by the changing times in which they lived. Even as Jane Austen lay dying, and the girls were still in the schoolroom, the Georgian world into which they had all been born, and for which they were assiduously prepared, was already disappearing. The Knight sisters, like their aunt, knew well and observed carefully the rules of mannered Georgian society where, as Amanda Vickery has observed, ‘a gentlewoman’s honour lay in the public recognition of her virtue, a gentleman’s in the reliability of his word’.6 In many ways, it was a very comfortable environment in which to grow up: the girls knew no want or deprivation, lived in delightful surroundings on the great estate of Godmersham, and were as well-educated as any other young ladies of their station. They were schooled not only in languages, music, dancing and art, but also in the nuances of polite behaviour. Propriety was everything, and a subtle code was learned: for all their privilege and position, they were to show courtesy to all, in whatever station in life, until or unless the rules by which they lived were breached. Edward Knight’s daughters understood that their brothers would inherit, or serve their country in the army, navy or Church: the responsibilities of the daughters of the house were to guard their honour, respect their parents, nurture any members of the family requiring care and, if possible, make prudent marriages with gentlemen in a similar stratum of society. Following the battle of Waterloo in 1815, however, as Stella Tillyard observes, ‘the prevailing tone of the age’ was ‘conservative, cautious and evangelical’.7 Yet, there were good reasons for the change in the tone of the age:

  Everything that happened in the second decade of the nineteenth century must be set against the background of the French revolution and the wars to which it gave rise. The growth of evangelicalism, the changes in morality and in the nation’s self-definition were all, in large part, reactions to a notion of Frenchness and revolutionary France that Britain, or more particularly, England, wished to define itself against.8

  Certainly, the revolution in France in 1789, and that in America thirteen years before, had rocked the certainties of the late eighteenth century. The Austens were personally touched by the French revolution when the Comte de Feuillide, husband of Jane’s cousin Eliza, was executed on the guillotine; and they suffered anxiety over Henry Austen’s serving under Cornwallis in Ireland during 1799, following what has been described as that country’s ‘forceful pacification’.9 Henry never forgot the experience, and it may have been his account of the country which made Jane so wary of Ireland that she advised her niece Anna, daughter of her eldest brother James, not to attempt to write about it. She knew nothing of the place or its ways, Jane told her, and might give a false impression. How strange Jane Austen might have found it to think of three others of her nieces making their way to live on that incomprehensible island, where French ideas of liberty fired the imagination not only of the poor and downtrodden, but also of members of the aristocracy and the landed gentry. She might have been more puzzled still to learn that the children of convicted rebels, prepared to attempt the overthrow of the British establishment, would be the trusted friends of her family in Ireland.

  By the mid-nineteenth century, little remained of life as the Georgians had known it. Where Jane Austen’s brothers had fought in the Napoleonic wars, their sons and nephews would be called upon to fight for the Empire as far away as the Crimea and India. Accepted levels of status in society were to be challenged: marches and demonstrations, demands for greater parity from the disgruntled, dissident or dispossessed would alarm the Knights of Godmersham, especially when such upheavals affected their source of income, or threatened the well-being of family members. Yet, none of it – the Peterloo massacre, the rise of Chartism, the debate over Catholic Emancipation – would prove as frustrating or as baffling as the struggle to understand what was happening in Ireland. The Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland, with which the new century began, did not bring an end to rebellion and discontent in Ireland. If anything, it signalled a new and more militant era. ‘The abolition of the Irish parliament,’ as Matthew Kelly has pointed out, ‘earned the Ascendancy a stay of execution rather than a reprieve. Much of its direct political power had gone at a stroke; later reform legislation … saw the bases of Ascendancy social and economic power wither away.’10 Given her family’s experiences, Jane Austen was quite justified in a certain wariness about this neighbouring island.

  Yet, the fact that her three nieces did, for their different reasons, decide to live there made events in Ireland of paramount importance to the family. Failures of the harvest and consequent famine; insurrections and evictions; land acts and Home Rule debates became, as the century progressed, of increasing interest. Though the Knight sisters’ lives were to present them with situations and circumstances uncannily close to those imagined by their aunt, theirs is ultimately a story which Jane Austen, determined as she was to keep her novels to tales of ‘two or three country families in a village’, might well have decided to leave alone. What they witnessed was, as she would have been the first to acknowledge, quite beyond her experience: Ireland could never be England, and England was what she and her family knew.

  The extraordinary stories of these daughters of the house speak to the grace, courage and compassion instilled in them by their Georgian upbringing, and by the rare privilege of having Jane Austen as their aunt and early teacher. The values they learned in childhood at Godmersham and Chawton were to stand to all three, in their long years of exile in Ireland.

  Chapter 1: ‘Everybody is Rich There’

  Jane Austen and the Knights of Godmersham

  1779–1817

  Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply.

  MANSFIELD PARK

  From the distance of two hundred years and considering her acknowledged greatness as a writer, it may be difficult to appreciate that Jane Austen was a single woman for whom a place in the family had to be found. The younger daughter and seventh of eight children born to the Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra Leigh, Jane had no money of her own. Her sister Cassandra had the benefit of a small legacy from the fiancé who had died before they could be married, and her mother had a small allowance.1 Jane, however, never knew wealth or lasting security in her adult life, and even fame, which she did not seek, came only in the last few years before her death. Yet, with access to her father’s library in the Rectory of Steventon in Hampshire where she grew up, with guidance from him and her scholarly brother James, and piano lessons from the organist at nearby Winchester Cathedral, Jane wanted for nothing. She could have said, with Elizabeth Bennet: ‘We were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary.’2 Her nephew James Edward would later consider her ‘not highly accomplished according to the present standard’, yet his daughter, Mary Augusta Austen Leigh, believed that she was most accomplished, if self-deprecating.3

  This contented childhood at Steventon was interrupted only by an interlude at boarding school, where her parents made the curious decision to send her, at the age of six, with Cassandra. Jane almost died when ‘putrid fever’, the illness so vividly attributed to Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, broke out at their first school. Surprisingly, this did not prevent her parents from sending both girls to yet another school in nearby Reading, from which they did not return until Jane was eleven years old. Yet, giving them an education may have been a matter of simple expediency to provide the girls with the means of earning a living. Neither their father, on the limited means of a clergyman, nor their mother, despite a well-connected family which included the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, could provide any guarantee of an inheritance, or even of a permanent home.4 George Austen had been fortunate in winning a scholarship to university. He took his degree at St John’s College, Oxford; his sons, James and Henry, would be enabled to attend the same university because
of their mother’s descent from one of the original benefactors of the college.5 No such provision could be made for a girl, however bright. If she did not marry well, or earn her living by another means, she would be poor throughout her life. With considerable strength of will Jane, like her heroine Elizabeth Bennet, declined at least one offer of a comfortable marriage from Mr Harris Bigg-Wither whom, though he was a neighbour and the brother of a dear friend, she could not love.6 As a consequence, it was only during the last eight years of her life, when Edward allowed his mother and sisters to live in what had been the bailiff’s cottage at Chawton, that she had any security of tenure.

  Edward was, within his own limits, a kindly brother to his sisters and mother. Sadly, it was by no means unusual, as Sense and Sensibility demonstrates, for brothers inheriting under the prevailing custom of primogeniture to overlook the unmarried or otherwise superannuated female members of their families. Indeed, for Marianne Knight, Edward’s own third daughter and seventh of his eleven children, the position of the single woman without fortune meant that dependent status continued until she died, despite the fact that she devoted over half her life to the care of her father and his household, and most of the rest to the care of her brothers. In her ninetieth year she would find herself profoundly grateful to her nephew Montagu Knight for the offer of a ‘refuge for [her] old age’.7 For her, as for Jane, everything depended on the decision of one of the men in the family.

  At Marianne’s birth in 1801, however, this circumstance of her life could not have been anticipated. Her father, Edward Austen, was uniquely favoured among his siblings through his adoption by rich, childless relatives. His good fortune would not seem out of place in fiction and, indeed, a similar device was used by his sister to explain the case of Frank Churchill in her novel, Emma. A distant cousin, Thomas Knight of Kent, the benefactor who owned the living, or parish, of Steventon which George Austen held, married Catherine Knatchbull in May 1779. On their wedding journey, calling to the Rectory at Steventon to introduce the bride to the groom’s cousins, they met and were so taken with the young Edward, who was then twelve, that they brought him with them on the rest of their journey and, when the family had almost forgotten the incident, surprisingly proposed to make him their heir. Two years after his marriage, Thomas Knight inherited the large estate of Godmersham Park, ‘a handsome Palladian mansion ... about eight miles from Canterbury and set in a landscaped park in the Stour valley with wooded downland rising behind it’.8

  It was shortly afterwards that the proposal to adopt Edward was made, as Jane’s brother Henry remembered:

  A letter arrived from Godmersham begging that little Edward might be allowed to spend his holydays there — and proposing to send for him. His Father was not however inclined to consent to Mr Knight’s request, looking only to the consequences of so many weeks’ idleness, and a probably falling behind in the Latin Grammar — but while he hesitated a few simple words from his Wife gently turned the scale — ‘I think, my Dear, you had better oblige your cousins, and let the Child go’ — And accordingly go he did ... Edward Austen returned from Godmersham ostensibly as much Edward Austen as ever, & remained for some years as such under the care of his natural Parents — By degrees however, it came to be understood in the family that Edward was selected from amongst themselves as the adopted son & heir of Mr Knight; and in further course of time he was taken more entire possession of, & sent to study in some German university.9

  Edward seems to have joined the Knights as their formally adopted son in 1783.

  What his own feeling may have been is not recorded. His mother’s shrewd assessment of him was that he was ‘quite a man of Business’, with ‘an active mind, a clear head, & a sound judgement’, suggesting a temperament well-suited to his new situation. To ‘Classical Knowledge, Literary Taste, and the power of elegant composition,’ she added, with the same detachment which induced her to urge her husband to give up their young son, ‘he makes no pretentions’.10 To the Austens, just as boarding school had been best for their little girls, this was the best provision they could make for their second son.

  After a gentleman’s education, including the then mandatory Grand Tour of Europe, Edward married in 1791, at the age of twenty-four.

  His bride, Elizabeth Bridges, then in her eighteenth year, was the daughter of a baronet, Sir Brook Bridges of Goodnestone Park, near Sandwich. The Bridges were an established family in Kent; following his adoption, Edward was considered an eligible prospect and was described by Elizabeth’s mother, Lady Bridges, as ‘a very sensible, amiable young man’.11

  In 1797, his fortunes rose further when his adopted mother invited him to move to Godmersham, proposing that she live in a smaller house in Canterbury.12 Edward was reluctant at first, fearing that Mrs Knight would miss the home he knew she loved, and adding that he did not want her to make this sacrifice ‘to enrich us’. With great fondness, she insisted. ‘From the time that my partiality for you induced Mr Knight to treat you as our adopted child I have felt for you the tenderness of a mother,’ she wrote, ‘and never have you appeared more deserving of affection than at this time’.13 Catherine Knight prevailed; Edward and his young family moved from their first Kent home at Rowlings to Godmersham in 1798, while his adopted mother, taking an income of £2,000 a year, retired as she had intended to Canterbury.

  In a letter written to her elder sister Cassandra in early 1799, Jane Austen commented with characteristic irony on Mrs Knight’s gesture:

  I am tolerably glad to hear that Edward’s income is so good a one — as glad as I can at anybody’s being rich besides You & me ... Mrs Knight giving up the Godmersham estate to Edward was no prodigious act of Generosity after all, it seems, for she has reserved herself an income out of it still; this ought to be known, that her conduct may not be overrated. I rather think Edward shows the most magnanimity of the two, in accepting her Resignation with such Incumbrances ... 14

  The birth in 1793 of Edward and Elizabeth’s first child, Fanny Catherine, was followed the next year by that of her brother Edward, then by George (1795) and Henry (1797). The family continued to grow following the move to Godmersham, where William (1798), Elizabeth (1800), Marianne (1801), Charles (1803), Louisa (1804), Cassandra Jane (1806) and finally Brook John (1808) were born.

  The family naturally divided between the five oldest children and the five youngest ones, whose natural leader was Marianne. Elizabeth, or Lizzy, was the child in the middle: she was close to Marianne, but also accepted as one of the older group.

  As Cassandra Austen was in regular demand to help her sister-in-law at the time of her confinements, frequent opportunities arose for Jane to observe the Godmersham life, and although she was not as popular with Elizabeth as Cassandra, she was invited if her sister was unavailable. Among the older boys, an early favourite was George, or ‘Dordy’ as he styled himself when a child. ‘My dear itty Dordy’s remembrance of me is very pleasing to me,’ she wrote to Cassandra in 1798, ‘foolishly pleasing, because I know it will be over so soon. My attachment to him will be more durable; I shall think with tenderness & delight on his beautiful and smiling countenance & interesting Manners, till a few years have turned him into an ungovernable, ungracious fellow.’15 Time was to bear out her prophecy: in the meantime, though occasionally tired by the sheer exuberance of the growing boys and lively little girls, she continued to be involved with them, learning to know them individually by entertaining and providing home comforts for her nephews on their way to and from school at Winchester, and spending time with her nieces at home. Writing to her sister Cassandra during a visit to their cousins, the Cages, in late August 1805, she remarked:

  I have asked Sophie [Cage] if she has anything to say to Lizzy in acknowledgement of the little bird, and her message is that, with her love, she is very glad Lizzy sent it. She volunteers, moreover, her love to little Marianne, with the promise of bringing her a doll next time she goes to Godmersham.16

  As she approached her fourth b
irthday, dolls were favourite playthings of Marianne’s: Jane’s bond with her nieces and nephews was forged by her noticing, appreciating and remembering what each of the eleven was interested in, however briefly the interest lasted, and by her ability to keep up the acquaintance through letters and personal messages.

  If, however, a little distance existed between the Austen sisters and their brother Edward’s family it may have been because their economic circumstances were so very different. Edward alone had had the good fortune to be made wealthy and independent. His brothers, with the exception of his older brother, George Austen, were fortunate enough to have the benefit of university education, with its guaranteed entry to the professions, or to enter the navy and rise to distinction there, but they did not achieve the social cachet he enjoyed.17 By contrast, his two unmarried sisters and his mother lived an almost nomadic existence after the Reverend George Austen retired in 1801, moving first to Bath and then, after his death, to Southampton. For Jane those years were less than happy; she found it difficult to settle and, with the notable exception of the tantalising fragment later known as The Watsons, almost impossible to work on her novels. ‘Everybody who comes to Southampton finds it either their duty or pleasure to call upon us,’ she wrote in 1808, with a certain weary resignation, to Cassandra at Godmersham.18 There seemed little possibility of any material change in their circumstances until Edward made over to them the small house in the village of Chawton, not far from Steventon where Jane had been so happy. Jane loved the Chawton house almost immediately and, whatever she may have thought, voiced no envy of her brother’s good fortune. Yet, as Claire Tomalin notes in her biography, the difference in their situations was so marked that the hairdresser who attended the Knight ladies automatically offered Jane a reduced rate, ‘so obviously did she appear a poor relative’.19 Her dry remark to Cassandra, however, soon after Edward’s removal to Godmersham in 1798: ‘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,’ may indicate more in its ironic understatement than a catalogue of complaints.20 The Austen women were not well-off: after her father’s death, and the cessation of his income, Jane and her mother and sister were left in reduced circumstances, their mother having only £210 per year, slightly more than one tenth of the income enjoyed by Edward’s wealthy adopted mother, Catherine Knight. Among the Austen brothers, however, an arrangement was made: Henry, Francis and James agreed that each would give their mother £50 per year. Edward offered to contribute £100. Their mother now had £460 per year, which, while not wealth, and still very far from Mrs Knight’s £2,000, was not poverty.21