In the New Year of 1810 Mr Terry’s sister Charlotte pleaded on his behalf and Fanny wrote to Cassandra begging her to mediate. James reluctantly gave his consent and Mr Terry was permitted to call at Godmersham to see Anna. She returned to Hampshire and in April went to stay for three days with the Terry family. As her Aunt Jane had done seven years previously, Anna decided she had made a mistake and her father put an end to the relationship. One of Anna’s daughters thought Mr Terry not clever enough for Anna, saying it would have been as bad as a match between Lizzie Bennet and Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Fanny, having interfered from the best of motives, was disappointed. She decided Anna was as unstable as the family said she was. ‘What a girl!’ wrote Fanny in her diary. ‘Heavens! What will she do next?’ Anna’s father and stepmother were exasperated and banished her to Chawton Cottage for three months. Jane, whose own equilibrium had been hard won, was worried by Anna’s emotional volatility which made her fear for the girl’s future happiness. She wrote a ‘Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend’, beginning:
In measured verse
I’ll now rehearse
The charms of lovely Anna;
And first her mind is unconfined
Like any vast savannah.
Ontario’s lake may fitly speak
Her fancy’s ample bound;
Its circuit may, on strict survey,
Five hundred miles be found …
Jane’s talent was not for poetry. But she was warning her niece in true eighteenth-century fashion about the dangers of emotional self-indulgence. Anna went home in mid-July with Mrs Austen.
Jane and Cassandra went to stay at Manydown and came to dinner at Steventon early in August. Young Fulwar-William Fowle, nephew to Mary and Martha, visited and heard Jane reading aloud. She was, he said, a very sweet reader. She had just finished the first canto of Marmion and was reading the second when William Digweed was announced. For the young boy it was like the shattering of a pleasant dream. Jane had clearly overcome her distaste for Scott’s poem. Caroline said that when her Aunt Jane read aloud from Fanny Burney’s novel Evelina it was like a play. Jane had histrionic abilities as well as a speaking voice generally agreed to be pleasant.
Edward and Fanny came to Steventon in October. Edward was also good at story-telling and the parsonage children loved him. He and Fanny went on to Chawton and stayed three weeks.
In contrast to the quiet domestic lives of their brothers and sisters the naval Austens travelled the world and pursued increasingly successful careers. Frank had returned from China earlier than expected, having managed to bring his crew safely away from Canton after friction with the Cantonese. The East India Company rewarded him with 1,000 guineas. Charles wrote from Bermuda to say he had a second daughter, Harriet-Jane, and the following May he was promoted post-captain into the 74-gun HMS Swiftsure.
The sisters had been together for two years without a break. In April 1811 Jane visited Henry in London, where she was correcting proofs of Sense and Sensibility. She had agreed to publish it at her own expense and was putting money aside to cover the expected loss.
Various commentators have assumed that Jane Austen distrusted the city and endorsed the values of rural life but in fact she seems to have found London stimulating. I find all these little parties very pleasant/ she told Cassandra. She might have gone to town more often if she had not been so poor, and tasted the cosmopolitan social delights enjoyed by Eliza de Feuillide, instead of making do with occasional balls in Basingstoke. Jane always took pleasure in shopping.
‘I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant and spending all my money; and what is worse for you, I have been spending yours too,’ she wrote cheerfully to Cassandra, though her writing had earned her nothing as yet. She had bought herself some checked muslin at seven shillings the yard. She had been tempted into laying out on ten yards of pretty coloured muslin with a small red spot for Cassandra at half that price. If Cassandra did not like it Jane would not be put out, she said, but would happily keep the lot. She had also bought some beaded trimming at two shillings and fourpence and three pairs of silk stockings for a little under twelve shillings though the shop had been so crowded she had been forced to wait half an hour to be served. She was having a new hat made, straw, of the riding hat shape, as well as a pretty new bonnet. ‘I am really very shocking,’ said Jane, taking pleasure in her own recklessness. New pelisses cost only seventeen shillings apiece, she was pleased to learn, though the buttons were expensive.
Henry would have taken her to the theatre but a cold had kept her at home. She had hoped to see Shakespeare’s King John with the celebrated Sarah Siddons as Constance the bereaved mother, but Hamlet had been substituted. They settled for Macbeth the following Monday, but hearing that Mrs Siddons would not be acting gave up their seats. In the event they went on the Saturday to the Lyceum and saw The Hypocrite, based on Molière‘s Tartuffe. Jane was grieved to miss seeing Mrs Siddons. ‘I could swear at her for disappointing me,’ she told Cassandra.
Eliza and Henry lived in some style. A grand party, with eighty people invited, was in the offing: there was to be ‘some very good music’ with five professionals, three of them glee singers, as well as amateur performers. ‘One of the hirelings is a capital [performer] on the harp, from which I expect great pleasure,’ added Jane. Eliza went shopping with Jane, Eliza for chimney-lights for her party, thrifty Jane for darning cotton.
In the upshot everything went off well. The rooms, dressed up with flowers, looked pretty. The festivities started with a dinner of Very fine soles’ at half-past five, the musicians arrived at half-past seven in two hackney coaches and by eight o’clock ‘the lordly company’ began to appear. The music was as good as Jane had hoped. Glees sung included ‘Strike the Harp in Praise of Bragela’, In Peace Love Tunes’, ‘Rosabelle’, The Red Cross Knight’ and ‘Poor Insect’. There were performances on the harp, and on harp and pianoforte together. The harp player was Wiepart, whose name Jane was told was famous though unknown to her. There was one female singer, a short Miss Davis all in blue, bringing up for the public line [training as a professional], whose voice was said to be very fine indeed; and all the performers gave great satisfaction by doing what they were paid for, and giving themselves no airs. No amateur could be persuaded to do anything.’ The party, which did not break up till after midnight was mentioned in the Morning Post next day. Unfortunately Eliza’s name was misspelled as ‘Mrs H Austin’.
In addition there was news of the sailor brothers. Frank had been superseded in the Caledonia. Where would he live? What would he do? Frank now had a second son, born 21 April at Portsmouth. Charles was likely to be in England within the month.
The D’Antraigues and their son Comte Julien could not come to Eliza’s party so the Austens went to them. ‘It will be amusing to see the ways of a French circle,’ said Jane.
On the way there was a near-accident in the carriage where the horses jibbed at some fresh gravel and everybody got out. Eliza caught cold. The Frenchmen took too much snuff to please Jane. Monsieur the Count was a fine-looking man with quiet manners, ‘good enough for an Englishman,’ said the chauvinistic Jane. He was a man of great information and taste and had some fine paintings which delighted Henry as much as his son’s music had delighted Eliza. Jane, who could read French but could neither speak it fluently nor follow rapid conversation, said that if the Count would only speak English she could take to him.
Comte Emmanuel-Louis D’Antraigues and his beautiful wife. Anne, an opera singer, were rather different from Jane’s usual acquaintances. The highly educated Count was a forger and a spy. The following year, he and his wife were murdered in their house in Barnes by their servant, whose motive could have been political.
Jane was going to Catherine Bigg, now Mrs Hill, at Streatham, then still outside London, the first week in May and Eliza would kindly carry her there. By the end of the month Jane was making her usual resolutions about spending no more money and denying
herself a trimming for her new pelisse.
19
Publication, 1811-12
THE EXCITING FAMILY news was that Jane had a novel coming out, but her authorship was a secret. Only Mrs Austen, Cassandra and Martha, the brothers and their wives, the Leigh-Perrots, old Mrs Knight and Fanny Knight had been let into it. Cassandra wrote to Fanny more than once, imploring her to tell nobody Anna, though almost the same age as the responsible Fanny, was not allowed to know. Her aunts considered her less discreet. Cassandra, who was at Godmersham, imagined that the social pleasures and attractions of the capital might distract Jane from preoccupation with her novel. The author was almost indignant. ‘No, indeed, I am never too busy to think of S and S. I can no more forget it than a mother can forget her sucking child and I am much obliged to you for your inquiries. I have had two sheets to correct, but the last only brings us to Willoughby’s first appearance.’ She reported that Mrs Knight regretted, ‘in the most flattering manner’, that she would have to wait till May to read the book but Jane was not hopeful of its being ready before July. Henry was nagging the printer. I am very much gratified by Mrs K’s interest in it… I think she will like my Elinor, but cannot build on anything else.’
As she settled into the role of professional writer Henry’s house became Jane’s London base and her business office. His experience in financial negotiations was invaluable to her and it was he who dealt on her behalf with publishers.
Before returning to Hampshire Jane wrote another letter to Cassandra. Among the guests at Eliza’s smart musical evening had been old Mrs Knight’s brother Mr Wyndham Knatchbull. His impressions of the party had been relayed to Jane, whom he had described as a pleasing-looking young woman. Jane was thirty-five. She sighed that although she could not now hope for better in the way of admiration she was thankful to have had it continue a few years longer. Women will know what she meant.
At the end of May she was back at Chawton and Cassandra still at Godmersham. Life was back to visits, gardening and gossip. Always interested in weddings, Jane noted that Colonel Orde had married their distant cousin Margaret Beckford, the Marchioness of Douglas’s sister. The newspapers were saying Miss Beckford had been disinherited, but Jane opined slyly that Orde would not have married her without ‘a handsome independence of her own’. Miss Beckford’s father was certainly displeased. The flower seeds were coming up nicely except for the mignonette. The young peony at the foot of the fir tree had just blown and was looking handsome; the shrubbery border would soon be gay with pinks and sweet williams; the columbines were already in bloom. The syringas were coming out. A good crop of Orleans plums was expected but not many greengages.
Frank and his Mary were at Cowes and Jane and her mother thought of inviting them to Chawton on their way to Steventon. Mrs Austen offered to give up her room to them but that would leave only the best bedroom to accommodate two nursemaids and three children. Finding enough bedrooms for brothers and their growing families was as serious and recurrent a problem as transport.
Brother James was most attentive to his mother, and frequently took his daughters, Anna and Caroline, on horseback, for the lanes were too rough for a carriage, to see their grandmother and aunts. Anna was now eighteen and the seventeen years’ gap between her and her Aunt Jane seemed unimportant. Anna spent her summers at Chawton and Jane tells Cassandra how on one occasion Anna had been with the Prowtings all the previous day. She had gone to learn how to make feather trimmings from their daughter Catherine-Ann and stayed to dinner. This proved convenient as the Digweeds had invited the Austens to meet Mrs and Miss Terry. Because Anna’s brief and unfulfilled engagement to Michael Terry in the winter of 1809-10 had caused general embarrassment Jane was relieved that Anna was out of the way.
Anna created considerable amusement for herself and her aunt by borrowing popular novels from the circulating library at Alton. These she would scan and mockingly summarize for the ears of her aunt, who sat patiently at her needlework, nearly always for the poor. Anna and Jane found these sessions hilarious and even Cassandra was entertained though she teased them for being foolish and implored them not to make her laugh so much. Jane and Anna had laughed until they cried over Lady Maclairn, the Victim of Villainy, an eight-volume novel by Rachel Hunter, in which the heroine and numerous other characters, male and female, were always in floods of tears.
Jane composed a satirical letter to Mrs Hunter who lived in Norwich, though of course it was never intended for the post. It ran:
Jane Austen’s tears have flowed over each sweet sketch in such a way as would have done Mrs Hunter’s heart good to see: if Mrs Hunter could understand all Miss Jane Austen’s interest in the subject she would certainly have the kindness to publish at least four more volumes about the Flint family, and especially would give many fresh particulars on that part of it which Mrs Hunter has hitherto handled too briefly viz., the history of Mary Flint’s marriage with Howard.
Miss Jane Austen cannot close this small epitome of the miniature abridgment of her thanks and admiration without expressing her sincere hope that Mrs Hunter is provided at Norwich with a more safe conveyance to London than Alton can now boast; as the Car of Falkenstein, the pride of that town, was overturned within the last ten days.
Although this pretentious name for Collyer’s daily coach sounds like something from a Gothic novel by Mrs Radcliffe, that is what it really was called.
A battle had been fought at Almeida in Portugal almost on the Spanish border and the Hampshire Telegraph had reported it. ‘How horrible it is to have so many people killed!’ lamented Jane; then pulling herself together with unsentimental realism she added, ‘And what a blessing that one cares for none of them.’ It was always a relief in wartime to find no names of relatives or friends on the casualty lists.
The garden was looking well and an apricot had been detected on one of the trees. Henry would bring Cassandra back from Godmersham to his house in Sloane Street where she would be staying about a week. Jane and Martha had unpacked some new Wedgwood ware and were about to buy currants to make wine.
In August 1811 Henry’s wife Eliza arrived at Chawton, and so did Charles after seven years away. He introduced his gentle young wife, with whom he seemed very happy, and two pretty little girls. Cassandra, writing to Phila - now Mrs George Whitaker, having recently married late in life - said, ‘There must always be something to wish for, and for Charles we have to wish for rather more money. So expensive as everything in England is now, even the necessaries of life, I am afraid they will find themselves very poor.’ Charles was soon appointed to command HMS Namur and to save money his wife and children lived on board with him while the ship was in port. This was cheaper than living in lodgings, though naval wives with children had to put up with that when their husbands were at sea. The Namur was the flagship of Admiral Sir Thomas Williams, whose first wife had been Charles’s cousin Jane Cooper.
Old King George III was expected to die, though he lived till 1820. People bought mourning black just in case. Anna and her friend Harriet walked with Jane into Alton to buy theirs and Mrs Austen had a black bombazine, a dull-surfaced twill fabric, handy.
Sense and Sensibility was published in October 1811. It was advertised in the Star of 30 October and the Morning Chronicle of 31 October and priced at fifteen shillings. The book was published at the author’s expense. Cassandra wrote again to Fanny Knight to beg the Knight family not to mention that Jane had written it. The title page named her only as ‘a Lady’ and said, ‘London: Printed for the author by C. Bosworth, Bell-yard, Temple Bar, and published by T. Egerton, Whitehall, 1811’. In its later editions the title page read, ‘By the author of Pride and Prejudice.
There were no early reviews but the book’s reputation spread by word of mouth. Jane’s immediate family knew her value. James sent her an anonymous rhyming appreciation in a disguised hand. It went:
To Miss Jane Austen the reputed author of Sense and Sensibility, a novel lately published:
; On such subjects no wonder that she should write well
In whom so delighted those qualities dwell;
Where ‘dear sensibility’, Sterne’s darling maid,
With sense so attempered is finely portrayed.
Fair Elinor’s self in that mind is expressed
And the feelings of Marianne live in that breast.
Oh then, gende lady! continue to write
And the sense of your readers t’amuse and delight.
This is a charming tribute from an intelligent and sympathetic reader who took a brotherly pride in his sister’s success. The stress falls on the first syllable of ‘Marianne’, suggesting it was pronounced more like ‘Marian’.
When reviews came they were favourable. The first appeared in the Critical Review for February 1812. The book earned:
particular commendation … it is well written; the characters are in genteel life, naturally drawn and judiciously supported. The incidents are probable, and highly pleasing, and interesting; the conclusion such as the reader must wish it should be, and the whole is just long enough to interest without fatiguing. It reflects honour on the writer, who displays much knowledge of character and very happily blends a great deal of good sense with the lighter matter of the piece.
Such just appreciation is what every first novelist dreams of. The British Critic said it was ‘a very pleasing and entertaining narrative’. The first edition sold out. Jane made a profit of £140. Had the book failed she could not have afforded to publish the rest. Although Jane had already started work on Mansfield Park she interrupted composition in order to revise and prune the manuscript of First Impressions. Pride and Prejudice as we now have it was altered to fit the calendars of 1811-12.
Jane Austen Page 21