The Real Jane Austen
Page 39
28 ‘This morning brought me a letter from Mrs Knight, containing the usual Fee, and all the usual Kindness’ (Letter 53, June 1808).
29 Letter 95, Nov 1813.
30 1818 ‘Biographical Notice’, in Memoir, p. 140.
31 Letter 70, Apr 1811.
32 Critical Review, Feb 1812; British Critic, May 1812.
33 Family Record, p. 171.
34 Ibid., p. 168.
35 Jane to Frank: ‘You will be glad to hear that every Copy of S and S is sold and that it has brought me £140’ (Letter 86, July 1813).
36 Letter 77, Nov 1812.
37 Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton made around £450 from the first two editions of Pride and Prejudice.
38 British Critic, Feb 1813, and see also the New Review or Monthly Analysis of General Literature, Apr 1813, pp. 393–6.
39 Critical Review, Mar 1813, pp. 318–24.
40 See Gilson, Bibliography, pp. 25–7.
41 To Amelia Opie, 11 Oct 1813, quoted, Fergus, Jane Austen: A Literary Life, p. 188.
42 Letter 79, Jan 1813.
43 All quotations from Letter 80, Feb 1813.
44 Letter 81, Feb 1813.
45 See Hillan, May, Lou and Cass, p. 37.
46 Letter 95, Nov 1813.
47 Ibid.; the information about Mrs Fletcher reached Austen via a Mrs Carrick.
48 Letter 81, Feb 1813.
49 Letter 80, Feb 1813.
50 Letter 95, Nov 1813.
51 Letter 85, May 1813.
52 Letter 86, July 1813.
53 Gilson, Bibliography, p. 49.
54 Letter 97, Mar 1814.
55 Ibid.
56 ‘Opinions of Mansfield Park’, pp. 431–5.
57 Family Record, p. 184.
58 Letter 98, Mar 1814.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE ROYALTY CHEQUE
1 It is now in the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland.
2 Letter 90, Sept 1813. The ‘third’ novel is Mansfield Park.
3 Letter 109, Nov 1814.
4 Letter 110, Nov 1814.
5 Letter 96, Nov 1813.
6 Letter 114, Nov 1814.
7 Letter 118, Feb/Mar 1815.
8 Letter 104, Aug 1814.
9 Letter 107, Sept 1814.
10 Letter 115, Dec 1814.
11 Letter 146, Dec 1816.
12 Memoir, p. 119.
13 Letter 102, June 1814.
14 Letter 77, Nov 1812.
15 Letter 78, Jan 1813.
16 Letter 82, Feb 1813.
17 Letter 102, June 1814.
18 Letter 136, 1816.
19 Emma was actually published in December 1815, though the title page says 1816. The second edition of Mansfield Park was published in February 1816.
20 See Kathryn Sutherland, ‘Jane Austen’s Dealings with John Murray and his Firm’, Review of English Studies, Mar 2012, http://res.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/03/31/res.hgs020.full.
21 The letter has been known since the publication of a Victorian biography of John Murray II, but there it is incorrectly dated a year later. The Murray–Gifford correspondence is in the John Murray Archive in the National Library of Scotland. I quote the letters from Sutherland’s article.
22 29 Sept 1815. Another version of this letter also survives in the Murray Archive; dated 21 Sept 1815, it is probably an unsent draft: ‘I have read the Novel, and like it much – I was sure, before I rec’d your letter, that the writer was the author of P. and Prejudice etc. I know not its value, but if you can procure it, it will certainly sell well. It is very carelessly copied, though the hand-writing is excellently plain, and there are many short omissions which must be inserted. I will readily correct the proof for you, and may do it a little good here and there, though there is not much to do, it must be confessed.’ Gifford did indeed make ‘improvements’ to the manuscript of Emma, as Sutherland has shown.
23 Undated, but almost certainly early Oct 1815.
24 Letter 121, Oct 1815.
25 Letter 122(A), Henry Austen to John Murray, Oct 1815.
26 Letter 124, Nov 1815.
27 Letter 121, Oct 1815.
28 Letter 127, Nov 1815.
29 Ibid.
30 Jane Austen to John Murray, Letter 126, Nov 1815.
31 Caroline Austen, ‘My Aunt Jane Austen’, in Memoir, p. 176.
32 See Lewis Melville, The First Gentleman of Europe (1906), p. 30 and A. M. W. Stirling, ed., The Diaries of Dummer (1934), p. 80.
33 To Martha Lloyd, Letter 82, Feb 1813.
34 Caroline Austen, ‘My Aunt Jane Austen’, in Memoir, p. 176.
35 Letter 125, Nov 1815.
36 James Stanier Clarke to Jane Austen, Letter 125(A), Nov 1815.
37 Letter 128, Nov 1815.
38 To John Murray, Letter 130, Dec 1815.
39 Letter 129, Dec 1815.
40 Murray to Scott, 25 Dec 1815.
41 Scott, Quarterly Review, Oct 1815, repr. in Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, ed. B. C. Southam (1968), pp. 58–69. Subsequent quotations from same source.
42 Letter 139, Apr 1816.
43 Letter 132(A), Stanier Clarke to Austen, Dec 1815.
44 Letter 138(A), Stanier Clarke to Austen, Mar 1816.
45 Letter 138(D), Apr 1816.
46 ‘Plan of a Novel’, in Minor Works, pp. 428–30.
47 1818 ‘Biographical Notice’, in Memoir, p. 138.
48 Ibid., p. 139.
49 Ibid., p. 169.
50 Letter 13, Dec 1798.
51 Family Record, p. 254.
52 Ibid., pp. 198–9.
53 Letter 87, Sept 1813.
54 Letter 106, Sept 1814.
55 See my ‘Who was Miss Jane Austin? A possible alternative to Aunt Jane: the professional writer at work’, Times Literary Supplement, 13 Apr 2012, and Deirdre Le Faye’s response (14 May). Also Deborah Kaplan’s judicious account, ‘“There She is at Last”: The Byrne Portrait Controversy’, Persuasions, issue 34 (2012).
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE BATHING MACHINE
1 See Andrea Richards’s excellent online article for the Jane Austen Society of Australia, ‘“The Bathing was so delightful this morning”: The bathing experience of Jane Austen and others’, http://www.jasa.net.au/seaside/Bathing.htm (accessed 1 Sept 2012), to which I also owe the references to Smollett, Grant and Burney.
2 Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771, repr. 2 vols, 1793), 1.245.
3 Eliza Letters, pp. 97–9.
4 Elizabeth Grant, Memoirs of a Highland Lady (1950), pp. 106–7.
5 Pride and Prejudice, 2.18.
6 Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, vol. 5, pp. 35–6.
7 Clifford Musgrave, Life in Brighton (1970), p. 199.
8 James Walvin, Beside the Seaside: Social History of the Popular Seaside Holiday (1978), p. 25.
9 Letter 39, Sept 1804.
10 The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (2005), p. 246.
11 Chronology, p. 261.
12 John Feltham, Guide to all Watering and Sea-Bathing Places (1803), p. 366.
13 Ibid., p. 365.
14 Letter 25, Nov 1800.
15 Feltham, Guide to all Watering and Sea-Bathing Places, p. 418.
16 Chronology, p. 272.
17 Feltham, Guide to all Watering and Sea-Bathing Places, p. 420.
18 Sense and Sensibility, 2.14; Letter 104, Aug 1814.
19 Persuasion, 1.11.
20 Letter 57, Oct 1808.
21 See George Roberts, The History and Antiquities of the borough of Lyme Regis and Charmouth (1834), pp. 171–2.
22 Letter 39, Sept 1804.
23 Hill, Jane Austen: Her Homes and her Friends, pp. 142–4.
24 Persuasion, 1.11.
25 Ibid., 1.12.
26 Ibid.
27 The Works of Lord Byron, 6 vols (1831), vol. 2, p. 68.
28 Persuasion, 2.9.
29 Letter 39, Sept 1804.
30 Ibid.
31 Sanditon, ch. 4.
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32 Ibid., ch. 2.
33 Ibid., ch. 2.
34 Ibid., ch. 9.
35 Ibid., ch. 10.
36 Ibid., ch. 10.
37 Ibid., ch. 12.
38 Ibid., ch. 8.
39 Letter 157, Apr 1817.
40 Sir Zachary Cope was the first to suggest that she was suffering from Addison’s. See ‘Jane Austen’s Final Illness’, British Medical Journal, 18 July 1964.
EPILOGUE
1 The often reproduced (and often reworked) sketch, assumed to be by Cassandra and now in the National Portrait Gallery, is not signed or identified on the back. Though it almost certainly is Jane, it is unfinished, was regarded by family members as unlike, and may even be best construed, as Kathryn Sutherland brilliantly suggests in her Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood (2007), as a caricature rather than a portrait (p. 115).
2 Quoted, R. W. Chapman, Jane Austen: Facts and Problems (1948), p. 213. My reproduction is of a black and white photograph of the sketch, published as the frontispiece to Chapman’s edition of Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others (1932, repr. 1952). According to Chapman’s note to his ‘List of Illustrations’, the original drawing was inserted by Anna Lefroy into her manuscript volume of family history and at least two copies of it exist in other family collections.
3 Persuasion, 1.11.
INDEX
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12th Light Dragoons 127–8
Abbey School, Reading 23–4
Ackermann, Rudolph 109
Adlestrop (Gloucester) 36, 76, 110, 226, 231, 233
adoption 14–15, 24, 25–7
Age (stage-coach) 116
Alton Book Society 78–9
Alton library 280
American War of Independence 221
Amis, Kingsley 7
Andover 15
Anstey, Christopher, New Bath Guide 158, 166
Antigua 220, 221
Ashe Park 220
Ashe rectory 193–4, 195
Astley’s Theatre (Lambeth) 141, 142
Augustus, Prince 241
Austen, Anna (niece) see Lefroy, Anna
Austen, Caroline Mary Craven (b.1805)
account of Jane’s death 209
comment on Jane’s relationship with Cassandra 96
comment on Jane’s romantic attachments 181–2, 189
correspondence with Jane 259
description of Jane 305
Jane’s advice on her literary efforts 290, 292
memoir by 297
Austen, Cassandra Leigh (d.1827)
agrees to Edward’s adoption by the Knights 14–15
birth of children 16, 17, 20
comment on poor Lady Saye and Sele 231
comment on travelling across Bagshot Heath 113
death of 18
and family madness 19
financial position 279
gives a description of Stoneleigh 229–31
love of food 230–1
marriage 35
moves to Bath 135, 160, 165, 226
popular with the schoolboys 20
sends girls to boarding school 23
stomach complaints 268–9
takes George Hastings on honeymoon with her 14, 35–6
visits to Bath 155–6
Austen, Cassandra Elizabeth (1773–1845)
begs Jane to change ending of Mansfield Park 286–7
as caricaturist 64
closeness to Jane 102, 106, 190
comment on death of Jane 209
comment on Jane’s seaside romance 179–80
considered the finest comic writer of her age by Jane 96
contracts typhoid 23
correspondence with Jane 21, 84, 93–4, 95, 96–8, 132, 146, 159, 178–9, 283, 296, 299–300, 305, 315
death of her fiancé 95
death of 199
destroys Jane’s letters 17
encourages Jane in becoming a published author 102
engagement to Tom Fowle 93, 102, 174, 175
inherits books from Jane 76
invitations to Goodnestone Park 225
Jane as ‘plaything for’ 16
and Jane’s short-lived engagement 181, 183
meets Eliza Hancock 41
mentions an Indian shawl 29
remembered by some of the schoolboys 21–2
romantic nature 105, 186
sent to boarding school 23–4, 55
sketch of Jane 327–8
supports Edward Knight and Mary Knatchbull when they eloped 105–6
visits to Bath 14, 155
Austen, Cassandra Esten (‘Cassy’) 199, 259
Austen, Charles John (1779–1852)
adored his children 261
awarded prize money for capture of French privateer 237–8
birth of 17
character and description 20, 239, 261
death of his wife 101
and death of Jane 120–1
death of 239
dragged by Jane to meet father’s chaise 15, 20
as father of eight children 256
influence on Jane’s work 5, 63, 238–9, 261
marriage to Fanny Palmer 99–101, 221
marriage to Harriet Palmer 102
and theatricals at Steventon 139, 140
Austen, Edward (1767–1852) see Knight, Edward
Austen, Fanny Palmer 99–101, 221
Austen, Florence (great-niece) 205
Austen, Francis (great-uncle) 16, 34
Austen, Admiral Francis William ‘Frank’ ‘Fly’ (1774–1865)
character and description 6, 19, 243–4
comment on parents’ move to Bath 160
correspondence with Jane 289
correspondence with Susan Quincy 4–6, 7
death of 251
in favour of abolition 218
helps out family financially 244
influence on Jane’s work 5, 7, 63, 238, 240–1
Jane’s poem on 19
marriage to Martha Lloyd 94
marriage to Mary Gibson 226, 244
naval career 239–44, 247, 251
treasures advice letter from his father 240
Austen, Revd George (1731–1805) 219
acts on sister Phila’s behalf 39
agrees to adoption of Edward by the Knights 14–15
busy with parish duties 18
character and description of 176–7
childhood 31–2
connection with Nibbs family 220
death of 197–8, 225, 275, 279
disapproves of Eliza’s marriage 39
education 35
encouraged art and reading 137
family background 31
friendship with Warren Hastings 38
marriage 35
purchase of writing box 267
purchases a carriage 112
receives miniature of Phila 38
retires to Bath 135, 160
sends girls to boarding school 23
takes George Hastings on honeymoon with him 14, 35–6
takes in schoolboys 20, 220
Austen, George (1766–1838) 17, 18, 45, 256
Austen, Harriet Palmer 102
Austen, Henry Thomas (1771–1850) 6, 7, 16, 18, 26, 270
character and description 125
as childless 256
collapse of his bank 325
comment on Jane’s compositional methods 276
comment on Jane’s novels 285–6, 303
comment on Jane’s religious feelings 200
comment on sketch of Jane 327–8
and death of Jane 120
description of Jane 304
enters the Church 133
illness of 297, 303
investments and bankruptcy 131–2
lists Jane’s favourite novelists 80
literary skills 292
love of theatricals 137–8, 142–3
marriage to Eliza Hancock Feuillide 41–2, 129–33
military career 64, 123–30
romantic attachments 41–2, 129
Austen, James (1765–1819)
character and description 66
childhood 18
and death of Jane 120
as father of three children 256
forms and directs Jane’s taste in reading 78
goes on the Grand Tour 66–7
inherits Steventon 125
and Jane’s short-lived engagement 181
launches the Loiterer periodical 67
love of theatricals 137
marriage to Mary Lloyd 94
meeting with Anne Lefroy 196
military career 130
ordained deacon 67
son’s biography of Jane 6
studies at Oxford 23, 66
Austen, James Edward (b.1798) 13, 156, 189, 228
Austen, Jane (1775–1817)
character and description 5–6, 20, 97, 304–8, 327–8
childhood 15–18
closeness to her family 19–20, 25, 95–6, 174, 237–8
connection with slave trade and plantation owners 219–21
correspondence with Cassandra 21, 84, 93–4, 95, 96–8, 132, 146, 159, 178–9, 283, 296, 299–300, 305, 315
correspondence with nephews and nieces 55, 104, 182, 185, 187–8, 190, 202, 291, 292–3
and death of her father 197–8
depiction of pairs of sisters 103–5
dislike of the Prince Regent 298–300
education 23–4
family memoirs of 6
final illness and death 199, 209–10, 325
love of books and reading 76–81, 82–3, 86–9, 92, 140–1
love of the seaside 1–2, 311–24, 328–9
moves to Chawton 259
observational powers 2–3
possible contribution to the Loiterer 69–70
reaction to family removing to Bath 159–60, 163, 165
relationships with women 94–5, 98–9, 102, 130, 195, 196–7
religious beliefs 198–210
romantic attachments 174–90
social life 119, 132–3, 136–50, 140, 158–9, 163, 166–71, 219, 255, 317–18
as social satirist 55–64, 97–8, 159
strong bond with Cassandra 98, 102–3, 105, 106
as well-travelled woman 110–21
wishes to make money and receive approbation for her works 289–90, 295–6
writing style and method 2, 103–5, 275–6
influences on her writing
adoption 27
children 256–65
exotic locations and goods 30–1
games 255