Jane Austen

by Valerie Grosvenor Myer

  The fierce Dowager Lady Stanhope, wife of the second earl and mother of the third, was living in the Dower House. She was the grandmother of Lady Hester Stanhope, the noted traveller and eccentric. Hester was the same age as Jane and a distant relative on her mother’s side. Old Lady Stanhope, whose Christian name was Grizel, was in her seventies, and domineering. Her bossiness provided the model for Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and her mother-in-law’s name was, interestingly, Catherine Burghill. Catherine’s portrait is hung in Chevening Great House.

  Travelling, as has been noted previously, held perpetual difficulties for Jane. Her father only briefly kept his own carriage, her widowed mother had none at all, and Jane had to rely on lifts.

  Journeys could be eventful. Jane wrote to her sister from the Bull and George at Dartford in Kent describing a near-disaster in 1798. The desk on which she wrote was nearly lost. Jane and her parents were on their way home to Steventon from Godmersham. After a night at the Bull and George it was discovered that Jane’s writing and dressing boxes had accidentally been put on to the wrong post chaise, which was on its way towards Gravesend en route for the West Indies. A man on horseback was immediately dispatched and caught up with the chaise after three miles. In Jane’s writing box was the sum of £7, which she said was all her worldly wealth. At the beginning of the twentieth century the manuscript of her unfinished novel The Watsons was kept in the narrow drawer of this desk in her house at Chawton. The desk is now in the possession of the family.

  The Austens had to stop on the journey to have the coach wheels greased and their luggage nearly slipped off the vehicle. Mrs Austen suffered from the fatigue of travelling and was a good deal indisposed from that particular kind of evacuation which has generally preceded her illnesses’. Mrs Austen’s bowels were known to give her trouble; she also had gouty swellings of the ankles. She took twelve drops of laudanum and dandelion tea.

  Throughout Jane’s letters to Cassandra their mother’s ailments are a running theme. Jane’s tone is one of dry resignation and she hints that Mrs Austen is something of a hypochondriac. When Mrs Austen claimed to have a severe head cold Jane remarked that she could feel small compassion on so-called colds without fever or sore throat. On the other hand Mrs Austen had given birth to eight children, which must have taken its toll, although she lived to be eighty-seven.

  When her mother was ill and her sister away Jane took over the housekeeping, choosing things she enjoyed herself: veal stew and haricot mutton, ox-cheek with dumplings, pea soup, spare ribs. The hour for dinner, the main meal, shifted during the eighteenth century from noon until early evening and a new meal, afternoon tea, was invented to fill the gap. The Bingleys in Pride and Prejudice dine at six-thirty, later than their country neighbours.

  In 1798 Jane wrote to Cassandra who was at Godmersham, We dine now at half after three, and have done dinner I suppose before you begin. We drink tea at half after six. I am afraid you will despise us. My father reads Cowper to us in the evenings, to which I listen when I can. How do you spend your evenings? -1 guess that Elizabeth works, that you read to her and Edward goes to sleep.’ ‘Work’ for ladies meant sewing. Writing from Rowling two years earlier, Jane mentioned how they were all at work making Edward’s shirts and she was proud of being the neatest worker in the party. As for the dinner hour, the Austen household gradually followed the fashion, for ten years later in 1808 Jane wrote from Southampton that the dinner hour was now five.

  Jane tells Cassandra in 1808 of a dinner party at White Friars with the widowed Mrs Knight, her brother, Mr Wyndham Knatchbull, and the Moores, Elizabeth Austen’s sister Harriot and her husband, the Revd George Moore. The occasion and company are typical of Jane’s Kent visits, which were sociable, far more so than the quiet household in Southampton. Mr Knatchbull left early and Mr Moore followed him. After their departure ‘we sat quietly working and talking till ten, when he ordered his wife away and we adjourned to the dressing room to eat our tart and jelly’. Next morning Mrs Knight had a ‘sad headache’ (could it have been a hangover?) which kept her in bed. Jane paid a few calls and found her hostess up and recovered.

  ‘But early as it was - only twelve o’clock - we had scarcely taken off our bonnets before company came - Lady Knatchbull and her mother; and after them succeeded Mrs White, Mrs Hughes, and her two children, Mr Moore, Harriot and Louisa, and John Bridges.’ The intervals between callers were so short that Jane and Mrs Knight had little time for comfortable talk yet they had time to say a little of everything. Edward came to dinner and at eight o’clock he and Jane ‘got into the chair’, and the pleasures of her visit concluded with a ‘delightful drive home.’ A ride in a carriage was a treat.

  16

  Grief at Godmersham, 1808

  FRANK AND MARY moved in September 1808 to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. By October Jane was back in Southampton and Cassandra was once more at Godmersham. Edward’s sixth son, Brook-John, had been born on 28 September and the child’s aunts rejoiced. Jane was relieved the birth had been over before Cassandra arrived. Mr Lyford the medical man had been with Jane and recommended cotton moistened with oil of sweet almonds for her earache, a remedy which proved successful. Jane had finished hemming a handkerchief for James’s wife Mary and was expecting James to arrive and receive it on Mary’s behalf. ‘Mrs JA’ had heard that Catherine Bigg was to be married in a fortnight. Such was Jane’s life, concerned with family, friends and news.

  Mrs Austen had hopes of getting away from Southampton and settling in Alton where Henry’s bank had a branch. She was reconciled to the idea of buying furniture and talked of the trouble involved without considering the expense. ‘Although Sunday, my mother begins it without any ailment,’ wrote Jane sarcastically. Martha was away and Jane complained of being ‘alone’ although she had plenty of visitors. Her mother’s company did not count. Jane had a mischievous running joke that there was a love affair between Martha and the Revd Dr Mant, rector of All Saints’ Church. Dr Mant had been highly successful as Master of King Edward’s Free Grammar School in the city from 1770 to 1795, and had ten children of his own.

  A week later Jane wrote to say how pleased they were that Elizabeth was recovering so well from the birth of her latest child, and wished Edward a happy forty-first birthday The chimney at Southampton was in a tumbledown state and being repaired by masons. The late Thomas Knight’s sister had died, and Mrs Austen, unable to afford new mourning black, had picked an old silk pelisse to pieces, intending to have it made into a dress and dyed. Unfortunately their usual tailor had moved on. Jane asked Cassandra anxiously, ‘How is your blue gown? Mine is all to pieces. I think there must have been something wrong in the dye, for in places it divided with a touch.’ Jane seriously regretted the four shillings thrown away. It was settled that Cassandra’s gown, too, was to be unpicked. Though it was the custom for very few mourners to be present at the burial, even distant connections were expected to go into black.

  Jane had played Commerce with the Maitlands but she could risk only one game as the stake was three shillings and she could not afford to lose six. The Misses Maitland had been a^ civil and as silly as usual’. Jane was in a trap of poverty and boredom. Martha was about to come back, and spruce beer had been brewed to welcome her.

  Life lacked excitement though not incident. There had been a fire at the local pastrycook’s and a back room had been destroyed. The flames appeared as near as those at Lyme had been. Valuable china had been taken out of the house and thrown down anyhow. The house next door, a toyshop, was equally damaged and Mr Hibbs, whose house came next, was so scared out of his senses that he was giving away all his goods, including valuable laces, to anybody who would take them.

  Jane was delighted to hear from Godmersham that Fanny was growing up so charming. Jane looked on this niece as almost another sister. ‘[I] could not have supposed that a niece could ever have been so much to me. She is quite after one’s own heart; give her my best love, and tell her I always think of her with pleasure,
’ wrote the maiden aunt.

  Martha brought back several good things for the larder and the Mr Grays of Alton had sent a pheasant and a hare. Jane suspected Henry’s connivance. Martha had stopped in Winchester an hour and a half with Edward’s three schoolboy sons. She admired young Edward’s manners, and saw in George a likeness to his handsome Uncle Henry.

  While Cassandra was at Godmersham, mourning clothes became more urgently necessary than ever. Edward’s gracious wife Elizabeth died suddenly on 10 October. Although not excessively clever, she had beautiful manners and the gift of making her guests as well as her nearest and dearest happy. Her loss was a dreadful blow for her husband, her eleven children, her widowed mother and her in-laws, who were all fond of her. Her new baby lived to be seventy. Jane was shattered, but thankful that poor Edward had a religious mind to bear him up, and that Fanny had her Aunt Cassandra with hen

  Fanny wrote in her diary with an unsteady hand: ‘Oh! the miserable events of this day! My mother, my beloved mother torn from us! After eating a hearty dinner, she was taken violently ill and expired (may God have mercy on us) in half an hour!’

  The boys at Winchester were sent away for a few days. They went to Steventon to stay with James, though Jane would have liked them to be with her. She consoled herself for what she frankly confessed to be a disappointment by thinking there would be more in the way of exercise and amusement for them there than they would have had in Southampton. Jane grieved for all the bereaved and promised to do her share of writing the necessary letters to relatives and friends. She was sure that the news would be anguish for Henry but he would exert himself to be of use and comfort. Martha was a rock, a friend and sister under every circumstance. With warmth and sincerity, Jane concluded her letter to Cassandra:

  We need not enter into a panegyric on the departed - but it is sweet to think of her great worth, of her solid principles, her true devotion, her excellence in every relation of life. It is also consolatory to reflect on the shortness of the sufferings which led her from this world to a better.

  In Jane’s next letter she said how terrible Edward’s loss was and that it was too soon to think of getting over it. She hoped that Fanny, who was prostrated, would exert herself to comfort her beloved father. As for little Lizzie, only eight years old, Jane’s heart ached for her. Jane was sending Cassandra black clothes and shoes. Jane was to wear bombazine and crepe, according to Southampton fashion. However, Jane reflected that going into mourning would not impoverish her (always a consideration) for having had her black velvet pelisse newly lined she would not need any new clothes for the winter. She had used her old cloak for the lining, and was sending Cassandra’s with the like idea in mind, though she believed Cassandra’s pelisse was in better repair than her own. One Miss Baker was to make Jane’s mourning gown, and another her bonnet, silk covered with crepe. It was a great relief to Jane to know that the shock of Elizabeth’s death had not made Mrs Knight or Elizabeth’s mother, the dowager Lady Bridges, physically ill. Edward’s boys were to continue to stay at Steventon. Meanwhile, the funeral had to be got through. Jane was not sure whether Edward would be able to face it. She took it for granted that Cassandra would take a last look at the corpse before the coffin lid was screwed down.

  ‘Tomorrow will be a dreadful day for you all! Mr Whitfield’s will be a severe duty! Glad shall I be to hear that it is over,’ wrote Jane. ‘That you are forever in our thoughts, you will not doubt. I see your mournful party in my mind’s eye under every varying circumstance of the day; and in the evening especially figure to myself its sad gloom -the efforts to talk - the frequent summons to melancholy orders and cares - and poor Edward restless in misery going from one room to another - and perhaps not seldom upstairs to see all that remains of his Elizabeth … We are heartily rejoiced that the poor baby gives you no particular anxiety.’

  Jane’s cool detachment in society could not be maintained in the bosom of her family. She was grief-stricken and in this crisis offered her sister, her bereaved brother and his motherless children all the warmth of her concern and love. Her practical side came into action, enhanced by her strong sense of family loyalty.

  The following week Edward’s eldest sons, Edward and George, arrived at Southampton, very cold, having chosen to sit on the outside of the stage-coach without overcoats but sharing the one Mr Wise the coachman kindly gave up to them. Jane was delighted with her nephews, now in their early teens: they behaved well and spoke affectionately of their father. George, the younger boy, sobbed aloud.

  One is surprised that their Aunt Mary sent the boys on a journey late in October without seeing they were well wrapped up. Jane excused her by saying she had only had time to get them one suit of clothes apiece. With no ready-mades, outfitting was a slow business. Other suits were being made locally, though Jane sighed that she did not believe Southampton to be famous for its tailoring. She hoped it would be better than what Mary had provided in Basingstoke. Edward had a black coat already but both the boys were in need of black pantaloons. ‘Of course/ said their kind aunt, ‘one would not have them made uncomfortable by the want of what is usual on such occasions.’

  She kept the lads amused with bilbocatch (cup and ball), at which George was indefatigable, spillikins, paper ships, riddles, cards, watching the ebb and flow of the river and walks. The three of them had been to church and young Edward was deeply moved by the sermon on the text ‘All that are in danger, necessity or tribulation’. After church they went to the quay where George was happily flying about from one side to the other and skipping aboard a collier. In the evening they had psalms and lessons and read a sermon at home but Jane smiled at the boys’ resilience and return to conundrums as soon as the service was over. That she should have thought such a ceremony appropriate confirms her brother Henry’s description of her as ‘thoroughly religious and devout’.

  She was afraid that her brother Edward, after the bustle of the funeral was over, might sink into depression. Fanny had written a pleasing letter. The St Albans had sailed the day on which the letters telling Frank that Elizabeth had died reached Yarmouth, so they could not expect to hear from him. Mary (Mrs JA) had written pleasantly to Edward’s boys. Jane sniffed that this was more than she had hoped. She found it hard to give Mary credit for anything. As a treat, Jane had meant to take young Edward and George to see the celebrated ruins of Netley Abbey but it had rained.

  ‘While I write now George is most industriously making and naming paper ships, at which he afterwards shoots with horse-chestnuts, brought over from Steventon on purpose; and Edward equally intent over The Lake of Killarney, twisting himself about in one of our great chairs.’ This is an attractive glimpse of life with Aunt Jane. The Lake of Killarney was a novel by Anna Maria Porter published four years previously.

  Next day they went out in a boat, rowing up the River Itchen, the boys taking the oars part of the way. Jane found their talk amusing. George’s inquiries were endless, and his eagerness in everything reminded Jane of his Uncle Henry. In the evening she taught the boys a card game, Speculation, which they enjoyed so much that they could hardly be persuaded to give it up.

  In the meantime, letters were flying between Southampton and Godmersham every day among various family members. A kind letter had arrived from the Fowles at Kintbury with two hampers of apples: the floor of the little garret was almost covered. At Kintbury, of the four Fowle brothers only Fulwar was still alive. He was vicar of Kintbury and Lieutenant-Colonel in the Berkshire Volunteers. Reviewing the volunteer troops near Reading in June 1805, King George III said to Fulwar, ‘I knew you were a good clergyman and a good man; now I know that you are a good officer.’ Fulwar and Eliza, sister to Martha and Mary Lloyd, had six children. It was their son, Fulwar-William, who described Jane Austen as ‘pretty … like a doll …’ and, memorably, as ‘animated’.

  The Stoneleigh business was concluded. Mrs Austen and her daughters got nothing. Jane writes sharply of her Aunt Leigh-Perrot’s complaints and discontent
. Mrs Austen was shocked, but Jane was not surprised: her aunt’s was ‘a sad nature’. There was news about which Jane was ambivalent: she heard via Mary at Steventon that the Leigh-Perrots were to allow James £100 a year. ‘My expectations for my mother do not rise with this event,’ she wrote grimly. ‘We will allow a little more time, however, before we fly out.’ James was expected, and Jane hoped he would take her and Martha to the theatre.

  His extra £100 a year meant he planned to increase the number of his horses from one to three and Mary wanted two of them fit for women to ride. Jane suspected that Edward would be called upon to provide one of them as a present to his godson James-Edward, then ten years old. James’s income would now be £1,100 a year after paying his curate £50. This was about double what his father’s had been in the same living. John Bond, who had been employed by George Austen, still worked occasionally for James.

  Jane was happy on Anna’s account that a children’s ball was planned at Manydown and Anna, now nearly sixteen, had new white shoes. In the event the Manydown ball was a smaller thing than Jane expected but it apparently made Anna very happy Jane said it would not have satisfied her when she was Anna’s age.

  Jane’s home, even now Frank and his family had moved out, can hardly have been anything but cramped. However, plans were now afoot for Mrs Austen and her daughters to move into a house provided by Edward.

  He was able to offer his mother and sisters the choice of two houses, one at Wye in Kent near Godmersham, the other near Chaw-ton House, his occasional residence in Hampshire. Without even looking at either they decided they preferred Hampshire. In Kent they would have been conspicuously the poor relations among Edward’s friends. Edward had inherited the Chawton estate at the same time as he had inherited Godmersham but had always lived in Kent. His Hampshire properties he had rented out, merely checking on them twice a year. Now Godmersham held too many memories and he considered taking up occasional residence at Chawton House.