Jane Austen

by Valerie Grosvenor Myer

  Crosby replied that although what she said was true up to a point, there had been no stipulation that the book should be published, nor was he bound to publish. If she or anybody else did so proceedings would be taken. He offered to sell her manuscript back to her for £10. She bought it. Discouragement could hardly be more severe.

  Soon after the move to Chawton in 1809 the second fertile period began. Jane started revising her earlier novels for the press. Not all achieved publication. For example, in Catharine, or the Bower she substituted Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife, published in 1809, for the original example of pious (and dull) reading, Bishop Seckar’s Explanation of the Catechism; but Catharine remained unfinished and was not published until Jane’s early fragments and short pieces were collected by R W Chapman in the twentieth century.

  Sense and Sensibility, the first of Jane’s novels to be published, appeared in 1811. Pride and Prejudice was later revised and retitled, as another novel called First Impressions by Mrs Margaret Holford had appeared in 1801. Pride and Prejudice was not published till 1813. The phrase ‘pride and prejudice’ came from Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and was repeated in one of Jane Austen’s favourite novels, Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, The new title, contrasting alliterative abstract nouns on the model of Sense and Sensibility, was an improvement and provided continuity. The words ‘Sense and Sensibility’ appeared as a headline in a journal called The Lady’s Monthly Museum in 1799 and may have struck Jane Austen as crisper than Elinor and Marianne.

  Less than six years elapsed between the final revision of Sense and Sensibility, and the completion of her final novel, Persuasion. All the novels originally appeared anonymously: Sense and Sensibility as ‘by a Lady’ and Pride and Prejudice as ‘by the author of Sense and Sensibility’.

  After Jane’s writing found acceptance, the tone of her letters to Cassandra utterly changed. The letters of her early thirties were bored, complaining, on the edge of being sour: as soon as she started to publish books, she chattered away excitedly on paper as fast as she could write. She had found a role and her self-confidence increased.

  Jane Austen’s career as a published author began only after she had a settled home at Chawton, comparatively small though it was. The days of wandering from lodging to lodging in Bath and confinement in cramped quarters in her brother’s house at Southampton were over at last. Back in her beloved native county she could settle down to serious writing and earn money. She was much happier and her creativity blossomed. She revised Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, all of which had been drafted at Steventon, and composed Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion, all in rapid succession. Mansfield Park appeared in 1814, Emma in 1816.

  Despite the celebrity of Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth, fiction writing was not altogether regarded as a respectable activity for a gentleman’s daughter. There were many now-forgotten novels by and for women, borrowed from circulating libraries for a small subscription. Novels were expensive. At the beginning of the nineteenth century novels were bound in three volumes, often each containing 100,000 words and sold at one and a half guineas, when half a guinea was a weekly wage for many people. Life was slower and duller, and it is not surprising that people with not enough to do should find novel-reading addictive. Moralists attacked the habit. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, ‘Where the reading of novels prevails … it occasions in time the entire destruction of the powers of the mind; it is such an utter loss to the reader, that it is not so much pass-time as kill-time.’

  Yet despite such contumely, the novel form was well established by the time Jane Austen was writing and her earliest works were parodies. After her death her brother Henry wrote proudly that his sister’s work had ‘by many… been placed on the same shelf as a D’Arblay or an Edgeworth’. Madame D’Arblay was the married name of Fanny Burney. Maria Edgeworth hedged her bets: she asserted that novels only encouraged ‘folly, error and vice’ and insisted her own fictions were not novels but ‘moral tales’.

  The novels of Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth are now read only by students and scholars while Jane Austen’s increase in popularity. But in her own day Jane Austen felt the need to defend her own productions in a famous passage from Northanger Abbey declaring that novels exhibit genius, wit, taste and knowledge of human nature.

  18

  Chawton, 1809

  CHAWTON COTTAGE STANDS in a picturesque and traditional English village, many of its houses roofed with thatch. On 7 July 1809 Mrs Austen and her daughters moved in. For all three of them it was to be their last home. Martha Lloyd moved in with them. Five days later at Rose Cottage, Alton, a mile away, Frank’s wife gave birth to a son, a brother for Mary-Jane, and Jane sent her brother a congratulatory letter in rhyming couplets including these lines:

  Cassandra’s pen will give our state

  The many comforts that await

  Our Chawton home - how much we find

  Already in it to our mind,

  And how convinced that when complete,

  It will all other houses beat,

  That ever have been made or mended,

  With rooms concise or rooms distended.

  You’ll find us very snug next year;

  Perhaps with Charles and Fanny near …

  Chawton is in country even more beautiful, because hillier, than secluded Steventon. Enclosures had been carried out early in Hampshire and the farmlands had matured into a patchwork of fields and woods. Chawton parish had some sixty families, amounting to some 400 people, most of them labourers. Chawton Cottage had been the home of Mr Knight’s late bailiff Bridger Seward. His widow had to move out. Edward paid for extensions and improvements. Structural alterations cost him £45 19s 6d and plumbing £35 6s 5d. His labourers delivered firewood, chopped it up and dug the garden. He provided a donkey carriage and spent £3 4s 6d that winter on hay and corn.

  Edward has been criticized for not providing earlier or more handsomely for his mother and sisters but he had eleven children, two estates to manage and consequent expenses together with a tug-of-war over his inheritance. He was amiable, kind and indulgent to all connected with him and possessed a spirit of fun and liveliness which made him popular with young people despite his perpetual ill-health.

  Edward’s fourth son, William, born 1798, was busy embroidering a footstool. Jane was sure his grandmamma would value it very much as a proof of his affection and industry and decided she must make a muslin cover in her favourite satin stitch to protect it from dirt. She longed to know what colours the ten-year-old boy was using.

  Chawton Cottage was a real cottage which might have pleased Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, for it had dormer windows and a picket fence guarding a narrow strip of front garden, so small that the door opened almost directly on to the road. According to rumour the house had once been a roadside inn. The cottage stood at a fork where the Winchester road branched off from the one to Gosport. In the fork stood a fingerpost on a grassy patch and nearby was a large shallow duckpond. The fingerpost and the duckpond have disappeared but Chawton is in a peculiarly beautiful and unspoiled part of Hampshire about five miles from Selborne, home of the naturalist Gilbert White, author of The Natural History of Selborne’, whose life overlapped Jane Austen’s.

  Built of brick with a steep tiled roof and sash windows on two storeys, the house was formerly whitewashed and had a thatched lean-to at the side. Facing the road were two parlours called the dining and the drawing room. The large drawing room window was blocked up and made into a backing for a bookcase when Mrs Austen moved in, and another decorative window with the newly fashionable Gothic glazing bars opened up at the side. Edward, used to looking out on spacious parkland, assumed his mother and sisters would be distressed by their close proximity to the road though Mrs Austen’s pleasure was watching the world go by Passers-by could watch the Austens eating their meals in the dining room.

  The house was modest, with low ceilings
roughly finished, and none of the six bedrooms was large. At the back were the ‘offices’, consisting of a barn, granary, bakehouse-washhouse and a well. From the dining room all that could be seen was the busy road, with the daily spectacle of Collyer’s morning coach from Winchester drawn by six horses, while the evening coach back had only four because the return journey was downhill. At noon there was the coach from Portsmouth. Boys travelling to and from school at Winchester passed with their boxes. In 1816 Jane watched countless post chaises full of 'future heroes, legislators, fools and villains’. There was a wagon for luggage or for passengers who could not afford coach fare. The house was right on the road so that, as Caroline remembered, passing carriages seemed to shake the beds.

  Behind the house in Jane’s time was a higgledy-piggledy sort of garden and orchard with sheds and outhouses. Three pieces of land had been put together. A thick, tall hedge divided this garden from the Winchester road, and round it was a pleasant shrubbery walk with a rough bench or two. There is a story that an oak tree, only felled in the last few years, was planted by Jane herself. And why not? We know she loved trees and mourned the fallen elms at Steventon. She could well have picked up an acorn and planted it. The tree believed to be hers has been replaced.

  Within the garden were lawns, borders, fruit trees, vegetables and flowers. A turf walk, flanked by flowerbeds with a sundial at the centre, led to a yew arbour. Mrs Austen, now almost seventy, pursued needlework and gardening. She still grew her own vegetables. It was a quiet life. All the women read a great deal, and besides the housekeeping Jane and Cassandra, far from rich themselves, concerned themselves with ‘the poor’. Cassandra is said after her sister’s death to have taught children ‘here and there’ reading, writing, catechism and sewing, the obligations of their class, though Jane’s letters make no mention of such charitable activity. Cassandra had a dog called Link, who always went with the servant William Littleworth for milk, and carried the milk can home in his mouth. Mrs Austen finally got her manservant.

  Jane did treat herself to the pianoforte she had promised herself in Southampton. She must have been miserable over the previous years, with no means of making music until her small legacy enabled her to hire an instrument. Now, happy to have a pianoforte of her own once more, she practised chiefly before breakfast, a custom observed by other ladies at the time, and in the evenings would sing old songs to her own accompaniment. She was fond of a little French ditty about swallows: ‘Que j'aime à voir les hirondelles/Volent ma fenêtre tous les jours,’ She said she would play country dances to amuse the nephews and nieces.

  Several music books of hers survive; one, half-bound with mottled paper sides, contains ‘twelve canzonettes for two voices, by William Jackson, of Exeter’, followed by a collection of Scots songs including ‘The Yellow Haired Laddie’. On the fly-leaf is written ‘Jane Austen’ in her own delicate writing. A manuscript book of music, bound in parchment, bears her name on the cover. Among its pieces are to be found the song called ‘Ask if the Damask Rose Be Sweet’, from ‘Susannah, an oratorio by Mr Handel’, and one of Handel’s minuets. Jane was fond of songs from the shows, with titles like ‘I’m Jolly Dick the Lamplighter’ and ‘The Tippling Philosophers’. She had ‘The Wife’s Farewell’ from a farce called Of Age Tomorrow and ‘The Soldier’s Adieu’ by Dibdin. As she copied out the words ‘Remember thou’rt a soldier’s wife’ Jane carefully crossed out the word ‘soldier’s’ and, loyal as always to the senior service, wrote in above the line the word ‘sailor’s’ instead. Her niece Caroline said Jane’s music was ‘disgracefully easy’. But Jane enjoyed it.

  Making breakfast for nine o’clock was her responsibility and she was in charge of the tea, sugar and wine stores. At the time these expensive luxuries were normally locked up. Cassandra and Martha Lloyd did the rest as Mrs Austen had given up housekeeping and no longer even sat at the head of her own table. After lunch the sisters usually went for a walk, sometimes into Alton for shopping, at others to visit the Great House, especially when their brothers were there.

  Lacking money and with only a donkey cart for transport, the women led a restricted social life, mixing chiefly with relatives. Martha Lloyd’s frustrations can only be guessed at, though when over sixty she married Frank, by then a widower, and ended up as Lady Austen when he was knighted. At Alton were Jane’s old friend Harry Digweed and his wife, née Jane Terry. It was of her that Jane Austen said she could not bear the thought of Mrs Digweed not being ‘foolishly happy after a ball’.

  Jane used to climb a stile at the bottom of their garden and walk across a field to visit Miss Prowting at a neighbouring farm. The Prowtings lived in a house larger than Chawton Cottage, set back from the road. Mr William Prowting was a magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant for the county. He had two unmarried daughters, Catherine-Ann and Ann-Mary both a little younger than Cassandra and Jane. In 1811 Ann-Mary married a sailor, Captain Benjamin Clement, and the couple lived across the road from Ann-Mary’s father and sister.

  Generally the Austen sisters formed few close friendships with neighbours at this time but kept up as much contact as possible with their brothers and their growing families. Edward’s sons would drop by regularly on their way to and from school in Winchester. Family conversation was lively but never quarrelsome. James’s daughters, Anna and Caroline, adored their Aunt Jane and her playful talk. Jane had a talent to amuse not only adults but children as well. Caroline too wrote poems and stories. Jane gently warned her that it might be wiser to write less and read more, at least until she was sixteen.

  The Great House, or Chawton Manor, was only a few hundred yards away, on rising ground. The current tenant was Mr John Charles Middleton, a widower with six young children. His sister-in-law, gushing Miss Maria Beckford, kept house for him.

  In the hollow lies the church where the church clerk, William Carter, played the bassoon. He and four singers sat in the front gallery, the boys and sexton in the one at the back. One of Edward’s daughters helped train the male voice choir. Old Mrs Knight employed a music teacher called Mr Giffin to train the school children in hymn-singing.

  One of the church singers, William Arnold, was the village postman. As well as the fee according to the weight of the letter, twopence had to be paid on delivery, one penny for the postmaster, one for the postman. Delivery services were not universal. Some letters had to be collected from the Post Office and where no post office existed, from inns. A branch of Henry’s bank, Austen Gray and Vincent, was at 10 High Street Alton, so family letters could travel with bank business, saving on postage.

  The Rector of Chawton was the Revd John Rawstome Papillon. In 1803 Mr Papillon had rebuilt his rectory and lived there with his unmarried sister Elizabeth. Old Mrs Knight, who took a kindly interest in the Austen sisters’ welfare, told Cassandra that he would be just the man for Jane to marry. Presumably she considered Jane at thirty-three still eligible but expected Cassandra, nearly three years older, to be dedicated to the memory of Thomas Fowle. Jane was amused and told Cassandra:

  I am very much obliged to Mrs Knight for such a proof of the interest she takes in me - and she may depend upon it, that I will marry Mr Papillon, whatever may be his reluctance or my own. I owe her much more than such a trifling sacrifice.

  Their circle was full of single women, many of them genteel but poor. Men who had lost their wives, as so many did, often married not spinsters but widows, as Jane recorded in her letters. By this time Jane had probably outgrown all hopes of love and marriage for herself. She and Cassandra were better off than poor Miss Benn, sister of the Revd John Benn, rector of the neighbouring parish of Farringdon. Mr Benn had twelve children. Hard-pressed himself, he could not help his sister. She rented a cold leaky hovel from one of the villagers, old Philmore, who in 1813 ordered her out because his son wanted it. Jane mentioned old Philmore‘s funeral in March 1817. Miss Benn’s meagre existence was a painful reminder of how far Jane and Cassandra might have sunk if Edward had not been adopted by the Knights
and if other brothers had not been generous.

  Jane used to write in the small living room on the right-hand side of the house where the family meals were eaten. According to family tradition she was careful that nobody, not even the servants, should know what she was about, so she wrote on small sheets of paper which could easily be put away or covered with a piece of blotting paper, relying on a creaking door to warn her when anybody was coming. This may be true, though there comes a time when scrappy jottings have to be collated and woven into coherence. A full-length novel in fair copy is a bulky object. The creaking door is still there, unoiled, as a curiosity and its noise demonstrated to visitors. It is easy for the word-processor generation to forget the sheer drudgery of writing a full-length book by hand. When it was not possible to shunt paragraphs at the touch of a button a writer had to have a clear idea of what she wanted to say and the way she wanted to say it before she started.

  Edward stayed for extended periods at Chawton and lent the house to Frank and Charles when they were ashore after Middleton’s lease expired. Edward arrived on 21 October 1809 with Fanny and his fifth son, little Charles, to stay at the cottage for three weeks. In November Edward went home with his children via Steventon, collecting Anna and taking her back with him.

  Anna was in disgrace, having become engaged at the age of sixteen to the Revd Michael Terry, who was twice her age. Anna was unhappy at home and looking for an escape route. She had grown up starved of affection, except from her grandmother and her aunts. Michael was one of thirteen children and a graduate of St John’s College, Cambridge. He would have been a good match for he was tall, good-looking and well connected; he had in prospect a good family living. But James and Mary refused to recognize the engagement and packed Anna off to Godmersham. Mary was nearing forty, and plain. She cannot have been altogether pleased to have a pretty stepdaughter flaunting evidence of her own sexual attractiveness.