Another move was under discussion, but Jane still had no control over her own destiny and was only able to observe as someone else took the decisions which controlled her life: ‘In general however,’ she wrote in October 1808, ‘[Mrs Austen] thinks more of Alton, & really expects to move there.’8
Alton in Hampshire, about fifteen miles from Steventon, was close to Edward’s Estate at Chawton and was also a town in which Henry had business interests. The rents would probably be lower there than in fashionable Southampton. But before a suitable house could be found in Alton, tragedy struck. At Godmersham, on 10th October, Elizabeth, though safely delivered of her baby and seeming to make a good recovery, was suddenly taken ill and died within half an hour.
The whole family was shocked. ‘We have felt, we do feel for you all,’ Jane wrote to Cassandra who was still at Godmersham, ‘ . . . may the Almighty sustain you all’.9 Edward, she wrote, ‘has a religious Mind to bear him up, & a Disposition that will gradually lead him to comfort.’
Maybe one of the comforts that occurred to Edward was that of helping his poor relations, for, oddly, his grief seems to have reminded him that he owned property not far from Alton: property which his mother and sisters might be able to make use of. By the end of the year he had offered – and Mrs Austen had accepted – the cottage at Chawton which was to be Jane’s final home.
It is impossible to know why this offer was made now, nor why it had not been made years earlier. But it is also impossible not to wonder whether the recent bereavement might be the solution to both puzzles. Jane suspected that (like John Dashwood) her brother James was too much influenced by his wife: ‘his Opinions on many points [are] too much copied from his Wife’s’10, she wrote after his visit to Southampton. Perhaps Edward had also been influenced by his wife – with whom, according to Anna’s recollections, Jane was not a great favourite. Anna wrote that, ‘[the Godmersham children] were not really fond of her. I believe that their mother was not . . . ’11 It is not unlikely that Elizabeth’s feelings about Jane would have had some influence on her daughters, and this is how Elizabeth’s eldest daughter, Fanny, would remember her Aunt Jane in 1869:
‘from various circumstances [she was] not so refined as she ought to have been from her talent . . . They 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” . . . and teach herself to be more refined, at least in intercourse with people in general. Both the Aunts (Cassandra & Jane) were brought up in the most complete ignorance of the World & its ways . . . & had it not been for Papa’s marriage which brought them into Kent, and the kindness of Mrs Knight, who used often to have one or the other of the sisters staying with her, they would have been, tho’ no less clever & agreeable in themselves, very much below par as to good Society & its ways.’12
It is a scathing passage, particularly shocking because Jane and Fanny seem (from the evidence of Jane’s letters) to have had an affectionate relationship. Jane’s anxiety and shame at being looked down on as a poor relation was not a product of her own imagination; other people really did see her that way. This description makes that painfully clear.
Interestingly, there is some evidence to support Fanny’s claim that her aunt tried to ‘put aside all possible signs of common-ness’. In 1804 Jane wrote disapprovingly to Cassandra of a Mrs Armstrong who ‘sat darning a pair of Stockings the whole of my visit – . But’, she cautioned, ‘I do not mention this at home, lest a warning should act as an example’.13 Maybe a touch of old-fashioned vulgarity – such as might allow the sight of stockings in a drawing room – was one of the ways in which Mrs Austen offended her daughter.
However, since Fanny’s recollection refers to her aunts’ upbringing and a state of affairs before ‘Papa’s marriage’ – a time which Fanny cannot possibly have known about first-hand – it might well preserve prejudices expressed by her mother. If any part of this was Elizabeth’s opinion, then it is easy to see why she might not have wished to have her sisters-in-law settled near her, in a mediocre and unrefined sort of establishment.
It is unpleasant to think of Jane benefitting from, or rejoicing in, anything to do with her brother’s terrible loss, and unpleasant to think of Elizabeth as another sister-in-law on her guard against the depredations of impecunious relations. Perhaps Edward’s offering the house just at this moment was simply an odd coincidence.
The offer must have pleased Jane very much. She certainly seems to have seen her new home as a place in which she could settle down and write. As the preparations for the move got underway, she began to consider her career and to take action. Hiding behind the assumed name of Mrs Ashton Denis (where did that come from?) she wrote to Crosby and Co about the ‘novel in 2 vol entitled Susan [which] was sold to you by a Gentleman of the name of Seymour . . . of which I avow myself the authoress’. She reminded them that early publication had been promised and offered to provide a copy if they had lost the original manuscript. ‘Should no notice be taken of this Address,’ she concluded firmly, ‘I shall feel myself at liberty to secure the publication of my work, by applying elsewhere.’14
Crosby replied promptly and rudely to say he was not obliged to publish, he would ‘take proceedings’ against her if she attempted to publish elsewhere, and she could have the manuscript back if she paid the £10 he had originally given for it.
She did not have any money and was unable to do any more about it. The support which her family offered to her writing did not stretch to advancing £10.
The year 1808 was also a time of great change in Westmorland. By the time Jane Austen ended her empty itinerant years and came to rest at last in a real home, Dorothy Wordsworth had lost her beloved home at Dove Cottage.
The small house had become desperately crowded. Sara Hutchinson was living with them for much of the time now and, by 1808, there were three small children (John, Dora and Thomas). Dorothy explained that: ‘[W]e are never thoroughly [comfortable] till after seven o’clock in the evening, when the children are put to bed, and the business of the house is over; for the kitchen not being ceiled, we can almost hear every word that is spoken when we are in the sitting-room, and every foot that stirs.’15
In the summer of 1808 – with Mary expecting a fourth child – the family moved into the large, newly built Allan Bank about a mile from their old home. Standing in its own grounds with elegant, high-ceilinged rooms and glorious views to the lake and woods, their new home must have been a wonderful change (at least until winter set in and it was discovered that the chimneys smoked uncontrollably). But Dorothy’s relief was mixed with regret at losing the home she had so long dreamed of possessing, the home which had been – for a short time – so completely her own, and the place in which she had written freely. ‘[B]ut the dear cottage!’ she exclaimed as the move was completed. ‘I will not talk of it. Today the loveliness of the outside . . . made me quite sad – and all within how desolate!’16
However, this move coincided with a dramatic change in Dorothy’s outlook on life.
The truth was that, although the family desperately needed more space, the Wordsworths could not afford the rent or the running of such a home as Allan Bank. Even with the Lowther case settled and some of his work published, Wordsworth could not support his rapidly expanding household.
In the Spring of 1808 he went to London, meaning to raise funds by selling his long poem The White Doe of Rylstone. But once he got there, he began to have doubts about its reception; perhaps he would not publish after all. Dorothy’s tone was shrill and desperate when she heard this news:
‘We are exceedingly concerned, to hear that you, William! Have given up all thoughts of publishing your Poem. As to the Outcry against you, I would defy it – what matter, if you get your 100 guineas into your pocke
t . . . without money what can we do? New house! New furniture! Such a large family! Two servants and little Sally! We cannot go on so another half year; and as Sally will not be fit for another place, we must take her back again into the old one,17 and dismiss one of the Servants, and work the flesh off our poor bones. Do, dearest William! do pluck up your Courage – overcome your disgust to publishing – It is but a little trouble, and all will be over, and we shall be wealthy, and at our ease for one year, at least.’18
Dorothy’s life was no longer a rural idyll of virtuous poverty, in which it was possible to have ‘a pleasant conversation’ about the inordinate desires of the rich. This frantic anxiety over money and servants and furniture was certainly not the future she had anticipated when she strode off into the Lake District with her brother, gaily washing her feet in streams and defying Aunt Crackenthorpe.
It was domestic cares – the need to look after William’s growing family – that had so abruptly narrowed Dorothy’s existence and changed her outlook. How different her life might have been if those old Pantisocratic ideas of shared housework had found their way into the revolution fomented in the Quantock Hills! She herself now found it all but impossible to write. Once her account of the Scottish tour was completed it was several years before she attempted anything else like it.
Nor was there much time now for Dorothy to involve herself in William’s work: to listen to him, to discuss ideas and memories, to write as he dictated. And she was no longer writing the journal which had provided sketches from which he could compose poems. So much of that sense of purpose which had once ennobled her poverty and hard labour would have been lost.
The demands of housework and child-care are difficult to reconcile with a creative life. ‘I wanted a few days quiet, & exemption from the Thought & contrivances which any sort of company gives,’ Jane Austen would write from Chawton in 1816 on one occasion when the house had been full of visitors. ‘Composition seems to me Impossible,’ she went on to say, ‘with a head full of Joints of Mutton & doses of rhubarb.’
Her own experience made Jane wonder about another female author of the day. ‘[H]ow good Mrs West could have written such Books & collected so many hard words with all her family cares,’ she wrote, ‘is still more a matter of astonishment.’19
Jane West was an extremely conservative writer who produced a large amount of didactic improving novels, poems and advice literature; but who very ‘properly’ shrank from the idea of being considered an authoress, asserting that, ‘my needle always claims the pre-eminence of my pen.’
Though the products of Mrs West’s needle may have been extremely useful to her family, those of her pen have long since ceased to charm anyone. Jane Austen’s reference to collecting hard words, and the slightly patronising ‘good Mrs West’, suggest that she was not a great admirer of her fellow author and may have found her attitudes a little smug. For by 1816 Jane herself understood the cost of sustained creative work.
The move to Chawton established her in a home where writing was once more possible – at least when the house was not full of visitors. In 1809, just as Dorothy was exiled from the place where her creativity had flowered, Jane Austen was escaping from her rootless life. As Dorothy’s pen fell idle (and her needle, undoubtedly, became more active) Jane was resuming the work which could give meaning to her life.
Chawton Cottage – though it too had once been an inn – was much larger and more comfortable than Dove Cottage. It had two storeys, plus attics and cellars, good-sized gardens, a dining room, a parlour and bedrooms to spare for visitors; it was comfortable, but not grand, and not unlike the old home at Steventon. Standing at the junction of two main roads at the very heart of the village, it would have been as noisy as Dorothy’s old home, for ‘Before the railroad opened there were 3 coaches passed through for travellers 2 from Winchester, one from Portsmouth. There was a . . . wagon for luggage or passengers that could not pay coach fare’20 and all these vehicles would have rattled past the Austen ladies’ dining room window.
In this house, according to family recollections, Jane took on the usual role of a genteel, unmarried woman, living ‘a very quiet life according to our ideas but they were readers and besides the housekeeping our aunts occupied themselves in working [sewing] for the poor and teaching here and there some boy or girl to read and write.’21 Amazingly nothing is said in this recollection of the labour which must have occupied a great deal of Jane’s waking hours. The picture presented is simply one of a genteel spinster (with her needle as busy as good Mrs West’s) leading just the kind of life that was expected of her.
At Chawton the ladies took on the role of patrons to the lower classes. In 1816 Edward Austen Knight paid £10, to ‘Miss Austen [probably Cassandra] donation to Chawton poor’. But even as they distributed largesse on behalf of their wealthy brother to those worse off than themselves, Jane, her mother and her sister were the recipients of charity. Now that he had taken his poor relations under his wing, Edward was generous, making several fairly substantial payments to workmen for maintenance or improvements to Chawton Cottage, such as £45.19s.0d. ‘Paid [to] John Dyer a Bill for work and materials at Mrs Austen’s house’, and also supplying firewood from his estate.22 His generosity meant that theirs was no longer a household with just one female domestic. At Chawton the Austen ladies were able to employ a cook, a maid and a manservant.
Jane’s new life was firmly embedded in a traditional landscape that was, at its heart, feudal: Chawton Great House with its satellite cottages and farms. She took her place in this hierarchy, taking an interest in the welfare of the poor, but also beholden herself to the generosity of a wealthy patron: her brother. However, her protective armour of cool detachment – so different from Dorothy’s impulsive warmth – now, in her mature years, provided a kind of liberation. The move to Chawton Cottage was not only a homecoming and an escape to the peaceful countryside, it was, more importantly, an escape into creativity, into that infinite space within her head: a place in which she had some element of control.
Once that space was achieved, she was autonomous in a way in which Dorothy could never be. Tied by a network of emotional threads – to William, to his children, to Mary, to Coleridge – her labour given unstintingly to those she loved – Dorothy had no such freedom.
Jane’s first undertaking at Chawton was the revision of her two early novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice – with their controversial themes.
She liked her new home well enough, was certainly not ungrateful to the brothers she loved, and yet the plots of these two first published books lay bare the injustice of decisions taken by families like her own. They concern girls who are left to the arbitrary benevolence of their brother, girls whose father fails to lay aside money for their support. A poor relation, living on the bounty of her brothers, she might now be, but she had long ago learnt that, obliquely expressed and wrapped up in humour, almost any ideas might be safely expressed.
This was where the decisions of their youth had brought these two women. Jane had succeeded in finding a way of expressing herself and had at last been granted the space and time in which to be creative. She was never the centre of home life at Chawton Cottage – Cassandra adopted that role. When her sister was at home Jane’s only part in the housekeeping was making breakfast – after that, she was free to write.
Dorothy, on the other hand, had achieved a home in which she was not only dearly loved and admired but absolutely necessary to those around her. A home in which she gave freely of herself and her energies to those she loved, but a home in which there was little scope for her own creativity.
There seems to have been an uneasiness too about Dorothy as she approached her forties. Since 1793 her greatest wish had been to live a life in which she could honestly and openly express herself. To achieve this ideal she had escaped from Forncett to live with William, enduring poverty and the censure of her family. And yet, when Thomas De Quincey first met her in 1807 – just b
efore the move to Allan Bank – his first impression of her was certainly not that of a woman who appeared to have fully achieved that dream. His description is startling – and rather disturbing.
‘[S]ome subtle fire of impassioned intellect apparently burned within her,’ he recalled, ‘which, being alternately pushed forward into a conspicuous expression by the irrepressible instincts of her temperament, and then immediately checked, in obedience to the decorum of her sex and age, and maidenly condition . . . gave to her whole demeanour and to her conversation, an air of embarrassment and even of self-conflict, that was sometimes distressing to witness.’23
De Quincey’s memories are not always to be trusted, but he was an observant man and there is reason to give this account careful consideration, for Dorothy’s own writing suggests that it may have been, in its way, perceptive. There is something familiar about it for anyone who has read the Grasmere Journal. In the journal the pattern he describes of impulses imperfectly expressed can be found again and again.
Dorothy may have felt free to express her opinions among the people with whom she lived; but feelings were a different matter. For example, in her first journal entry there is an acknowledgment of very deep emotion: ‘My heart was so full that I could hardly speak . . . ’ But (to use De Quincey’s words) it is ‘immediately checked’, first relieved by a solitary fit of weeping and then given only an incomplete examination. ‘The lake looked to me I knew not why dull and melancholy, and the weltering on the shores seemed a heavy sound.’ Dorothy ‘knew not why’ the lake looked dull and melancholy; the sound of the waves on its shore merely seemed a heavy sound. She went no further in seeking to understand herself.
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